THE MORAL FABRIC IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETIES
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THE MORAL FABRIC IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETIES
INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF SOCIOLOGY The International Institute of Sociology is the oldest continuous sociological association in existence. It was founded in 1893 in Paris by René Worms. Early distinguished members included scholars such as Max Weber, Lujo Brentano, Enrico Ferri, Franklin Giddings, Ludwig Gumplowicz, Achille Loria, Alfred Marshall, Carl Menger, Edward A. Ross, Gustav Schmoller, Georg Simmel, Albion Small, Gabriel Tarde, Edward B. Tylor, Ferdinand Tönnies, Alexandre Tchouprov, Thorstein Veblen, Lester Ward, Sidney and Beatrix Webb, and Wilhelm Wundt.
Executive Board 1997-2002 President
Masamichi Sasaki (Japan)
Past President
Erwin K. Scheuch ( Germany)
Vice Presidents
Eliezer Ben-Rafael (Israel) Elke Koch-Weser (Italy) Graîyna Ska P pska (Poland)
Secretary General/ Treasurer
Karen S. Cook (U.S.A.)
Councillors
Pierpaolo Donati (Italy) Ulrike Schuerkens (Germany) David Sciulli (U.S.A.) Jerzy J. Smolicz (Australia) Michel Wieviorka (France)
Auditor
Edgar F. Borgatta (U.S.A.)
THE ANNALS OF THE INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF SOCIOLOGY NEW SERIES – VOLUME 9
THE MORAL FABRIC IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETIES EDITED BY
GRA¢YNA SKA P PSKA AND
ANNAMARIA ORLA-BUKOWSKA WITH COLLABORATION OF
KRZYSZTOF KOWALSKI
BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON 2003
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Institut international de sociologie. World Congress (35th : 2001 : Kraków, Poland) The moral fabric in contemporary societies / edited by Graîyna Ska P pska and Annamaria Orla-Bukowska, with collaboration of Krzysztof Kowalski. p. cm. — (The Annals of the International Institute of Sociology. New series : v. 9) “Proceedings of the 35th Congress of the International Institute of Sociology, held in July 2001 in Kraków, Poland”—P.. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 90-04-13114-0 1. Moral conditions—Congresses. 2. Social norms—Congresses. 3. Civilization, Modern-21st century—Moral and ethical aspects—Congresses. 4. Civilization, Modern-20th century—Moral and ethical aspects—Congresses. 5. Social problems—Congresses. I. Ska P pska, Graîyna. II. Orla-Bukowska, Annamaria. III. Kowalski, Krzysztof, 1969—IV. Title. V. Series. HM665.I57 2001 306—dc21 2003049649
ISSN 1568-1548 ISBN 90 04 13114 0 © Copyright 2003 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands
CONTENTS Gû S‰, Preface ........................................................
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SECTION ONE
THE MORAL FABRIC OF CONTEMPORARY SOCIETIES: TWO PERSPECTIVES M S, Morality in Contemporary Society .......... Gû S‰, The Moral Fabric in Contemporary Societies: Some Remarks on the Paradigm Shift in Sociological Theory ................................................................
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SECTION TWO
TRUST IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETIES P S, Trust: A Cultural Resource ........................ S E, Some Observations on Problems of Trust in Modern Societies: Construction of Trust, Collective Identity, and the Fragility and Continuity of Democratic Regimes ..................................................................................
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SECTION THREE
PROMISES AND DISAPPOINTMENTS: EASTERN EUROPE AFTER COMMUNISM SEEN FROM WITHOUT AND WITHIN M K, Parables of Hope and Disappointment ...... 85 J ”, Everyday Democracy in the Czech ˆ Republic: Disappointments or New Morals in a Time of Neo-Normalization ............................................................ 93 E Z, The Genealogical Search Initiative and Its Soviet Legacy ............................................................ 103 SECTION FOUR
DIVIDED WORLD—FACES OF INEQUALITIES G T, Dimensions and Processes of Global Inequalities .............................................................................. 119
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P M, Postsocialist Transformations and Various Faces of Inequalities in the Divided World .......... 143 SECTION FIVE
COPING WITH CORRUPTION J K, Is a Sociology of Corruption Possible? .... 157 V F, The Paths of Italian Corruption ............ 165 M D, Trust-Mistrust in European Democracies .... 175 SECTION SIX
THE MORAL SENSE OF MODERNIZATION S E, The Moral Dimensions and Tensions of Modernity .......................................................................... B W, The Cultural Constitution of Modernity ................................................................................ S A A, Modernity, Tradition and the Shi'ite Reformation in Contemporary Iran .................. S K, Literature and the Moral Imagination of Modernity ..........................................................................
203 219 241 263
SECTION SEVEN
TERROR, GENOCIDE, AND VIOLENCE E B-R, The De-Civilizing Process .................... K D, “Women, Children, Older People”: Genocide, Warfare, and the Functional Differentiation of Society .................................................................................... N R, Society as a “Morality-Silencing” Force: Primo Levi, Existential Power, and the Concentration Camp .............................................................. N C, Answers to Atrocities ......................................
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309 335
AFTERWORD K K and A O-B, The Moral Fabric: Diverse Textures in the Postmodern World
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List of Editors and Contributors .............................................. 375
PREFACE This book presents the proceedings of the 35th Congress of the International Institute of Sociology, held in July 2001 in Kraków, Poland. The Congress title as well as its location were not accidental, and its timing was symbolic. It was held at the beginning of the new millennium in a country that had experienced in the twentieth century the most atrocious crimes against humanity and two totalitarianisms. The first is symbolized by nearby Auschwitz, and as a result of the second the country is currently experiencing an overwhelming and difficult transformation—political, economic and social. The entire region has witnessed the collapse of a system believed to liberate society from poverty and people from their vices, but which instead brought economic and social disaster, and resulted in some, insufficiently diagnosed yet, social deformations and pathologies. Last but not least, the Congress was focused on the universal, most burning social issue: the moral fabric in contemporary societies, the worldviews, norms, values, beliefs and institutions that hold them together, and that reflect their convictions about the “good society” and its enemies. The 35th IIS Congress program was based on an important theoretical conviction. As we currently realize, the beginning of a new millennium throws new light on naive, and indeed quite droll ideas about the “end of the history,” and the victory of some simplistic versions of liberalism. The very first years of this millennium prove the suspicion that history is neither the accomplice of utopia, nor does it necessarily evolve in a liberal direction. As a matter of fact, this initial period indicates that history cannot go anywhere unless the societies who are its agents have goals or visions which they believe worth following. Such an observation is especially true in Poland, or in Eastern Europe more generally, where society has proved to be the agent of history indeed, and entirely unexpectedly—at least entirely unexpected by the dominant social and political theories— changed its trajectory. Thus, the program of this Congress, and the contents of this book reflect the deep convictions of Eastern European social thinkers and political figures of such format as Vaclav Havel or Jir˘i Patoka in the Czech Republic, Georgy Konrad in Hungary, and many other
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Eastern European intellectuals that social theory could have a moral foundation and transformative potential, being simultaneously rooted in the real social experiences and life-worlds that give it its most important accountability. The works of the above-mentioned authors heralded a great revival of interest in morality and ethics, in sharp contrast with the end-of-the-century, end-of-the-millennium decadent social philosophies of post modernism, and deconstructivism—the reduction of human communications to language games, social order to “normalization,” and society and its institutions to a system which acts according to its own rules and turns people into its marionettes. This book comprises papers that provide the best evidence of just such a strong conviction of the importance of moral issues for the social sciences. These papers were presented at the Congress plenary and podium sessions and discussed during its debates. Thus, the contents of this volume delve into the issues promoting the “good society” project and reflecting the greatest menace to it—all perceived from the current, global perspective. The deliberations open with the notion of trust as a foundation of social order, and proceed with the burning issue of economic inequalities in the contemporary world. Multiple modernities are here discussed as a crucial theoretical answer to simplistic concepts of social development that advocated some culture-less and history-less version of modernization imposed “from above,” or rather, “from outside,” notwithstanding local cultures and traditions. Also included herein are two debates on the contemporary issues of moral relevance: one devoted to postcommunism, the other to corruption. Finally, one of the four plenary sessions of the 35th IIS Congress was focused on genocide—the ultimate denial of the “good society” project. The success of the 35th Congress of the International Institute of Sociology was due to the efforts of many people and institutions—first and foremost, to the efforts of the then President of the International Institute of Sociology, Professor Masamichi Sasaki; the Local Organizing Committee—especially to Dr. Annamaria Orla-Bukowska and Dr. Krzysztof Kowalski—and the Institute of Sociology of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland. We are very grateful for the generous sponsorship of the Vice-Rector of the Jagiellonian University, Professor Maria Nowakowska, and to the World Bank Office in Poland. The publication of this book has been made possible through the financial
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support of the World Bank Office in Poland, the International Institute of Sociology, the Institute of Sociology of the Jagiellonian University, and Professor Masamichi Sasaki. Graûyna Sk[pska Vice-President of the International Institute of Sociology Chairperson of the Local Organizing Committee
SECTION ONE
THE MORAL FABRIC OF CONTEMPORARY SOCIETIES: TWO PERSPECTIVES
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MORALITY IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY Masamichi Sasaki* I Though morality is seen as an important theme in sociology (see, e.g., Bauman 1993; Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992; Luhmann 1995, 1996; Habermas 1990; and Selznick 1992), it has never been regarded as a major independent field of study, rather being subsumed in fields like the sociology of religion, value studies, social psychology, criminology, deviant behavior, democracy, and so on (cf. Hall 1993). As we shall see, this phenomenon is not especially surprising, for several reasons, the most obvious of which is that morality is traditionally viewed as a central construct and focus of philosophy, having therefore a non (social) scientific quality. While many sociologists tried to incorporate the study of morality, it never solidified into an organized sub-discipline. Twentieth century sociologists generally saw little need to embed morality in their work, stopping short, instead, at the level of values, and treating them in a variety of forms. Despite this, no “sociology of moral values” emerged (Gouldner 1971:140). Jean Piaget, for instance, extended Emile Durkheim’s work, but it, too, never rose to the level of an actual subdiscipline. The same can be said of the work of Max Weber on the sociology of religion and Talcott Parsons and his ‘voluntaristic’ theory (cf. Remmling 1975). Indeed, the International Institute of Sociology has never before addressed the issue on a scale as grand as that of devoting an entire Congress to exploration of the ‘moral fabric of contemporary society.’ Does this not suggest morality’s potential elevation to a higher status as a sub-discipline within sociology? The purposes of the present paper are to provide an overview of where morality fits in sociology, historically and contemporarily. In so doing we shall attempt a discussion of the concept and its definition; * I am indebted to Professor Alex Inkeles at Stanford University for extensive comments, suggestions, and criticisms of a previous draft.
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we shall look at the positioning of morality vis-à-vis social order and religion; we shall examine morality and social solidarity; and we shall explore in some depth the idea of morality and individualism under the notions of individual, collective and public moralities. These studies will then move us into a closer look at moral relativism and moral universalism, as well as moral responsibility and moral choices. We will then ask the question: “What happens to morality over time?” This discussion will then take us to morality with respect to modernity, modernization, and postmodernity, followed by some speculations about morality in our era of globalization and international cooperation. Finally, we will explore the idea of studying morality empirically. M: C D There is something inherently pretentious in proposing to conceptualize and define morality, not entirely dissimilar to proposing a definition of God. Arguably, there are as many definitions and conceptualizations of morality as there are souls on our planet. Nonetheless, the task of exploring the moral fabric of contemporary society calls for some kind of foundation. Thus, to sidestep this problem and avoid its pretentious nature, our best approach is to deal with the issues as related by the principal sociological player, namely Durkheim, along with Wilhelm Wundt and philosopher Immanuel Kant. We will concentrate our focus on Durkheim for he alone saw sociology as the study of morals or morality, indeed as a science of morals or morality. “Moral life begins with membership of a group, however small the group may be” (Durkheim 1974:52). Durkheim (1957) saw morals as objective social facts which, in turn, dictate individual rights and obligations. Durkheim’s “chief preoccupation remained that of explaining the essence of morality, the role that it plays in societies, and the way that it grows and develops there in expressing the ideals (aspirations) of those societies” (Bougle 1974:xxxv; cf. Lukes 1973; Parsons 1978). Tiryakian (1978:217) described Durkheim’s view of morality as: Far from seeing organized society as being fundamentally immoral, Durkheim presupposes its essential moral nature; in fact, morality and society are coextensive. Social life and social organization are made possible and reflect normative arrangements. Social institutions are aggregates of these normative arrangements. . . . Whatever its institu-
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tional arrangement and whatever its developmental stage, the social order as such is a real moral phenomenon. We cannot say that everything we find in the social world today is moral, but that is not the same as the contention that morality lies outside social structures and social organization. For Durkheim, then, morality is a social phenomenon and social phenomena have an intrinsic moral component; of course, as a corollary, what is immoral—that is, what strikes us as against the norms and standards of morality—is also a social phenomenon. Morality is not an intrinsic attribute of things, but a quality of behavior, of social action; morality refers to moral action, rather than being just an individual attitude or a state of mind. What is at the heart of the notion of social order is a moral or normative ordering of interpersonal conduct.
This is certainly an important and elemental construct: morality is a quality of behavior, be it individual or social; it is not just an “individual attitude or state of mind.” That something is moral or not, then, is a function of its social context, a variable if you will, rather than a fixed and intrinsic attribute. Something can be moral or immoral, dependent upon its social context. This, of course, illustrates Durkheim’s significant departure from Immanuel Kant’s (1964[1785]) perspective, in which something is either moral or immoral, period, regardless of its social context. Durkheim did not reject Immanuel Kant’s formulations entirely out of hand; for instance, Durkheim adopted Kant’s notion that moral facts, or social norms, are binding on individuals (cf. Tiryakian 1978). However, Durkheim went beyond Kant in stressing the desirability of moral actions: “Moral actions, like religious actions . . . have the twofold quality of being obligatory and desirable” (Tiryakian 1978:210, talking specifically about Durkheim’s position). This is to say that Durkheim categorically rejected Kant’s position that moral laws are absolute and unconditionally valid. While Durkheim followed Kant in recognizing the need for individuals to “reach beyond” their natural selves if they were to become moral, however, Durkheim viewed moral rules as emotionally grounded products of society. In “The Rules of Sociological Method” (1982[1895]: 50–52), for example, Durkheim associates moral rules with “social facts”; phenomena which are social because they arise through collective sentiments, and come to hold a compelling and coercive power over the individual consciousness. For Durkheim, morality has its basis in a social engagement with the “natural properties” of humans rejected by Kant, however “rational” it may subsequently appear (Shilling and Mellor 1998:195).
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Tiryakian (1978:211), however, cautions that Durkheim “stresses the obligatory aspect of moral behavior much more than its eudaemonic side.” Thus, Durkheim tended to align with Kant in this regard, but on the issue of Kant’s absolute invariability of moral laws, Durkheim made a significant departure, positing a moral relativism which we shall discuss in greater detail later. Durkheim was apparently heavily influenced by Wundt (a member of IIS at its founding), who was a noted proponent of a scientific approach to the study of morality (see Gisbert 1959 for an interesting discussion of Wundt’s influence on Durkheim). Nonetheless, Durkheim departed from Wundt when it came to the latter’s vision of morality as an unattainable ideal. Against Wundt’s postulate of a single ideal to which all religions and moralities tend, and approximate more or less, [Durkheim] agreed that ‘there are as many moralities as there are social types, and the morality of inferior societies is as much a morality as is that of cultivated societies’ (Lukes 1973:91).
We suspect that Wundt’s conceptions of morality lie somewhere between those of Kant and Durkheim, and in particular with respect to the controversial continuum which we loosely characterize as universal versus relative, or perhaps absolute versus relative. Returning to our previous statement that there are myriad, if not nearly infinite definitions and concepts of morality, to Kant, and Wundt to a somewhat lesser or at least different extent, morality was absolute—something is either moral or immoral, regardless of its social or societal context. But Durkheim maintained that because morality was a social phenomenon, whether something was moral or immoral was a function of its social context, implying the ongoing presence of multiple moralities. This further implied that the accompanying norms of moral behavior and sanctions against immoral behavior are also a function of the social context. And, because social systems develop and change over time, any given social arrangement’s moral norms and sanctions will also change over time (Cf. Zube 1972; and Luhmann 1995:156 who noted a contingency: “how much freedom a society makes possible in dealing with morality”). This function of the social context is perhaps Durkheim’s most notable departure from Kant and Wundt. It needs to be contrasted, though, with the moral fabric of contemporary society in the sense that the Durkheimian vision, relevant to his time, nonetheless saw
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morality in a more static sense, thereby contributing to the predictability of society and hence its trustworthiness for its individual participants. This predictability, perhaps even habituation and orderliness, contributed to general social order, as well as provided a framework within which individuals could know and understand their personal obligations. The events of September 11, 2001 are a case in point: contemporary life lacks the predictability and relative trustworthiness of Durkheim’s era—the terrorist acts of that date were deemed moral by their perpetrators. Despite the impossibility of the task of conceptualizing and defining morality, by grounding our discussion on Durkheim’s visions, as the seminal architect of the sociological view of morality, we have been able to focus our thoughts in preparation for a look at the more detailed elements defining the place of morality within social science. We will begin with a discussion of morality, social order and religion. M, S O R We cannot say that contemporary society, in the midst of modernization and globalization, and in the shadow of the events of September 11, 2001, has the relatively comfortable social order enjoyed in Durkheim’s past. As this sort of implied “social consensus” fades in the face of dramatic change, the result is apparently social disorder and all that it implies. What role does morality play in social order? Need they co-exist? Today’s social arrangements are in the throes of abrupt, dramatic and continuous change, and this translates to and impacts the moralities underlying and embedded within these various social arrangements. And by their very nature, we must assume that these moralities are frequently in conflict even as they continuously change. Beck reminds us that Parsons saw “modern society as an enterprise for constructing order and control” (Beck 1999:139). To Beck, it is the task of the modern nation-state to exert social control, which unintentionally begets risk. Fukuyama (1999:263) reminds us that capitalism, while destroying “traditional loyalties and obligations,” replaces them with new norms which create new order: “Indeed, it is likely that capitalism is a net creator of norms and thus a net moralizing force in modern societies.” Durkheim maintained that social order could persevere and survive, his criticism of Ferdinand Tönnies being a case in point. Tönnies
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saw modern society as ultimately destructive of moral tenets. A similar sentiment is expressed by Bauman, who “rejects modern society as a source of moral action and posits the individual’s sensual, emotional body as a bulwark against the immoral, rationalizing impulses of totalizing social orders” (Shilling and Mellor 1998:198; see also Mill 1968[1865]). We could continue this discussion nearly endlessly as there is extraordinarily marked divergence in views on morality vis-à-vis social order. When we add religion to the equation, however, we do encounter a bit more consensus. For Durkheim (1974:69) morality had to have a religious component if it were to continue to be morality. Most subsequent theorists and thinkers on the subject would probably disagree with Durkheim. Religion can and does get supplanted by other elements (therapy, for example, in Parsons’ case; 1966:13), while still others don’t insist that religion ever had a pivotal role for social morality. Misztal (1996:69), for instance, states: “Seen in this way, morality is not founded on religion nor does it depend on something outside of society nor is it a matter of individual choice, but it is viewed as something internalized by members of solidaristic communities.” Even Durkheim supposed that the demise of religion was not necessarily synonymous with the demise of morality, proposing instead that contemporary society could and should construct a new morality adapted to changing social conditions. In contrast, though, Fukuyama (1999:251) stated: “Critical to this process of decline is the secularization of the world, for if religion is the great source of moral action, then the decline of religion in the face of modernization means the end of social order.” Giddens (1990, 1991, 1994) certainly contends that the church is one of the “moral communities” essential for the “continuity of the social order.” The other “moral communities” are the state and the family, the latter about which Giddens is quite emphatic (also cf. Thompson 1998). Similar sentiments, perhaps reminiscent of Alexis de Tocqueville, are echoed by Beyer, though from a different perspective. Beyer (1994:82) attributes the “decline in the central regulatory role of morality . . . [to] the functional problems of religion in modern society.” At the extreme end of this spectrum, de Tocqueville (1968) argued that “no democratic society can survive without a religion.” His “belief in the role of religion in maintaining social order and continuity rested upon the assumption that religion is necessary
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for liberty because it places some limits on human behavior” (Misztal 1996:29). Certainly there are no definitive conclusions to be drawn from this brief examination of morality, social order and religion. As with any attempts to define and conceptualize morality itself, we have seen above the exceptionally broad range of positions on morality and social order and religion. We next turn to an examination of morality and social solidarity. M S S Tönnies, an IIS vice president, saw community as a source, perhaps even as an imposer, of moral norms. In his explications of gemeinschaft and gesellschaft, Tönnies (1988) saw that “the moral bases of unity [had] disappeared in modern society” (Misztal 1996:42). Following Auguste Comte, Tönnies held out for the traditionalist and conservative view which saw the weakening of the traditional sources of moral authority—the family and the church—as forecasting the weakening of social morality and even society itself. Tönnies’ contention was that modern society had lost its moral norms because it had lost the traditional sources of moral norms. Durkheim, on the other hand, argued that modern society was able to retain its moral norms, though they differed in their source from those of traditional society. The division of labor, to Durkheim (1933[1893]), brought with it a new set of rules for social cooperation which in turn led to a new form of social solidarity. This represents the classic shift from gemeinschaft to gesellschaft. Tönnies’ formulation centered around the idea of social “wills,” as representative of social relationships and as perceived by individuals as “moral commandments” (cf. Misztal 1996:38). In the gemeinschaft mind set, “natural will predominates,” and becomes, through repetition, habituated. “With the emergence of Gesellschaft the unity of collective will or collective intention is lost. In society where rational will prevails, social relationships are valued only as means to a particular end” (Misztal 1996:38). Fukuyama aptly describes some of the broad ranging implications and characteristics of gesellschaft: People do not become less connected to one another, but rather connect only with those with whom they choose to associate. The labor union
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or professional association replaces the occupational caste; one joins a Pentecostal church or becomes a Methodist rather than worshipping in a state church; children and not parents select marriage partners. In a way, the Internet represents a technology with the potential to take voluntary social bonds to new and undreamed-of heights: one can associate with people around the globe based on virtually any shared interest, from Zen Buddhism to Ethiopian cuisine, no longer limited by physical location (Fukuyama 1999:47).
Durkheim (1933[1893]) proposed two types of social solidarity, reflective, respectively, of traditional and modern society: mechanical solidarity and organic solidarity. “Mechanical solidarity is based on likeness and a sense of common identity” (Selznick 1992:142), whereas organic solidarity “is based on differentiation . . . with . . . the whole dependent on a functional integration of the parts. Mechanical solidarity presumes individuals are the same; organic solidarity presumes they are different” (Selznick 1992:142). Selznick goes on to discuss how these two types of solidarity relate to legal systems, which in turn implies a characteristic moral tone: under mechanical solidarity, with its “common conscience,” punitive law and repressive sanctions prevail, whereas under organic solidarity restitutive law and contract law prevail, through which equilibrium is restored “by compensating people for losses they incur when other people fail to discharge their lawful obligations” (Selznick 1992:143). To Durkheim, then, organic solidarity carried with it a new set of moral codes: “The result is a new morality capable of serving social cohesion while supporting individual and group autonomy” (Selznick 1992:143). In Parsons’ words, gesellschaft is characterized by “rational pursuit of self-interest” (Parsons 1932:687). Individual choice emerges as key to gesellschaft and organic solidarity. Trust becomes impersonal. Can these characteristics of modern society co-exist with morality? Tönnies did not think so, opting to believe instead that social arrangements operating under this type of solidarity could only take on “immoral qualities” (cf. Fletcher 1971:55). Herbert Spencer, and similarly Durkheim, argued that the “interdependence of individuals in modern society will be a sufficient basis for social integration” (Dodd 1999:20). The above discussion of a classic and sweeping sociological controversy logically leads us into our next discussion where we will take a closer look at morality and individualism—individualism being the logical outgrowth of the concepts of gesellschaft and organic solidarity.
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M: I, C P Durkheim saw the individual as egoistic and sensual, a counterforce to social solidarity, a notable dichotomy in his work. This is not to suggest that individuals were seen by Durkheim as incapable of sublimating their egoism for the social good or social morality. Given some degree of social solidarity, Durkheim noted that this solidarity arises from what is moral. As dichotomies so often do, the result is an ambiguity between the individual and the collective (cf. Shilling and Mellor 1998:196). The individual, then, must submit to society’s overarching moral authority, but in a form involving both the individual’s obligation to abide by this authority and the individual’s genuine commitment to the intrinsic social ideals. To Durkheim, individualism itself formed the basis for a modern conception of morality, which in turn was driven by the recast division of labor. Thus while ambiguity is suggested here, Durkheim maintained that it was possible for individualism to flourish within the socially imposed construct of morality (Cf. Dodd 1999; Miller 1988; Misztal 1996). The growing division of labor not only leads to solidarity but also enhances individuality. Durkheim’s concept of the duality of human existence—that is, the existence of both interest-motivated action and altruistic-idealistic sources for social action—led him to reject Spencer’s definition of individualism as “utilitarian egoism.” . . . [T]he individual and the collectivity are seen here as dependent on each other. Individualism itself, says Durkheim, is a moral phenomenon since it supports a morality of cooperation (Misztal 1996:43).
This again is Durkheim’s organic solidarity. “Individualism is a moral phenomenon because it is a product of society, not something which mitigates against the existence of society itself ” (Dodd 1999:20). Thus, there is a synergy which emerges. As we have said before, Durkheim’s era differed from ours today and thus we must ask ourselves how well his conceptualization and specific thoughts on morality and individualism hold up in today’s social context. Modernization carries with it, as one of its most notable qualities, stress on the individual and all that implies: individualism, narcissism and even egoism. If taken to its extreme implications, then this emphasis on the individual implies social disorder, or certainly at the
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very least, an erosion of morality, of social moral standards. And there are many proponents of this view. In 1978, Lasch attributed great salience to narcissism, which he saw as a direct expression of growing dependencies on bureaucracies, corporations, and states. Much has changed with regard to these three institutions in the past twenty or so years, however. States have certainly suffered and lost some of their characteristics which then fostered dependency. And the same can be said of corporations which are less and less in that once dominant position of engendering dependency, from their employees in particular. We must keep in mind that postmodernism implies and posits a re-adoption of selected traditional values, moral or otherwise. Some have called this a “revivalism,” whereby the moral elements of tradition are retrieved. These include so-called “family values,” religious and spiritual values, patriotic values, loyalty, values of obligation and personal responsibility, to name just a few (Dunn 1998:157; also cf. Giddens 1991; Beck 1999). Beck, for instance, saw the “me-first” generation of the 1990s as one with an individualism reinvented. This new individualism, Beck (1999:9) points out, is moral because of this generation’s revised attitudes toward the environment, gender, race, and human rights. This view, of course, contrasts starkly with those who perceive individualism as encouraging narcissistic, and perhaps even egoistic, moral attitudes. The family is often credited as being the source of moral attitudes and behaviors. The decline of the traditional family is therefore often made out to be the cause of the decline of moral values and the rise of narcissism, the pathological expression of individualism. But postmodernists generally are not so willing to accept this as axiomatic, seeing instead a rebirth of selected traditions. Even if the tradition of the family is not an essential part of this re-adoption of selected traditions, there does appear to be some mechanism for the salvation of morality in postmodernity because postmodern social phenomena probably should not be characterized as narcissistic. Lasch (1978) championed the former view; i.e., that the decline of the family contributed to the rise of narcissism. And while Durkheim never saw the postmodern world, he did have the foresight to theorize about an adaptive system which “led him to believe that the aim of social science should be to establish a morality which could overcome the social condition of anomie” (Misztal 1996:42).
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Obviously there are serious conflicts between these varying views of morality in contemporary society. Other scholars who have very interesting things to say on the subject of narcissism include, among others, David Riesman (1980) and Robert N. Bellah et al. (1985). Perhaps it would make sense at this juncture to ask: where does individual morality come from? Selznick (1992) spoke to this issue and cited George Mead (1981) on moral development, who located the source of individual morality with one’s significant others: “Young children routinely internalize the attitudes and expectations of parents and others who dominate their lives” (Selznick 1992:161). Eventually these “significant others” become the “generalized other.” The generalized other represents the moral views of the community. Internalization of the community’s norms signals the individual’s successful integration into the community. To Durkheim, the internalization process results in the individual coming to have in his/her makeup a set of constraints which, at least in part, dictate how the individual makes moral decisions. In a sense these constraints are, or, more appropriately, become innate because there is no “external coercion”; they act as moral authority not by action but by constraint. The synergism inherent in the relationship between individual morality and collective morality is a key concept. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts: individual development and socialization, creates the individual’s morality, which is an internalization of the collective morality though colorized by elements of the individual consciousness and conscience. Each of these individual moralities then come to form the collective morality, which is greater than the sum of its parts in that it “enhances individuality” and thereby implies a co-dependence between the individual and the collective. From the standpoint of process, “Individualization thus implies, paradoxically, a collective lifestyle” (Beck 1999:9). Solidarity thus becomes possible in a context of individual moralities. Durkheim (1974) viewed this relationship on an objective-subjective continuum in which the objective component was the rules (constraints) of the collective morality as interpreted subjectively by each individual conscience. Durkheim stressed that this schema operates even in contexts of high conformity. The following remarks by Durkheim (1974:51) further underscore the synergy: “We arrive then at the conclusion that if a morality, or system of obligations and duties, exists, society is a
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moral being qualitatively different from the individuals it comprises and from the aggregation from which it derives” (emphasis added). Collective morality requires an additional distinction—that from public morality. Public morality implies externally imposed (perhaps even coercively) moral constructs, imposed by bureaucratic and/or legal organizations, or governments and similar organizational entities. Public morality is not the same as religious, ethnic, communal or individual moralities (Addelson 1990:127), but very well might be cast as an “official morality” (Kohlberg 1971; see also Lockwood 1992; Fukuyama 1992). The fluidic symbiosis of individual and collective moralities is not present in public morality. Public morality is not a function of individual moralities, but rather is an externally imposed morality whose source may or may not derive from individual moralities and the collective morality (Cf. Lowith 1993; Geiger 1969). At this point, we should return to a theme mentioned earlier— moral relativism—as it is especially controversial and has interesting implications for the preceding discussions. M RE M U We begin our discussion of moral relativism by referring back to Immanuel Kant’s position that morality is absolute—things are moral, or immoral, period, regardless of their context. Moral relativism, conversely, posits that things are moral or immoral relative to their situational or circumstantial context. Many scholars other than Kant—if not most others—have argued against Kant’s inflexible posture. Given the fluidic and dynamic nature of morality and things moral, moral relativism contends that each social arrangement has its own set of moral standards (its own collective morality). “Relativism is a normative stance which suggests that various beliefs about the world, and about social and political arrangements within it, cannot be evaluated according to objective or rational criteria” (Dodd 1999:18; also cf. Zube 1972). And we should always keep in mind that sociology is a “transient activity . . . always engaged with current, topical issues” (Bauman 1992:216). Bell (1994) places the entire issue in good perspective, as follows (also cf., among others, Berger and Kellner 1981; Raz 1994): . . . what is morally right is relative to the forms of life typical of particular groups. Thus, there can be no objective standard of compari-
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son by which we can determine the moral correctness of diverse practices of different societies. We are left with no way to condemn cannibalism, physical torture, mutilation, wife-beating, child abuse, slavery, murder, or genocide if they are part of the habitual practice and cultural traditions of a group (Bell 1994:18).
Bell’s remarks constitute a compelling argument in favor of moral relativism. While each of these social practices would be immoral behaviors by Kantian standards, that attitude clearly implies a sort of ethnocentric judgment call on the part of some one or some thing external to the social group in which the practice is an accepted part of the group’s moral conduct and standards. At the same time it is important to keep in mind that such social group standards may well change in the course of the group’s social development. The implied continuum from absolute to relative is perhaps not as simple as it sounds, however. Here we introduce the idea of moral universalism. Despite considerable cultural variations, it is difficult to believe that some universal values such as truth-telling, fidelity, reciprocity, etc., do not exist. And as far as war is concerned, surely most people recognize an atrocity when they see one? (Carlton 1995:78).
Numerous scholars argue that moral relativism co-exists with moral universalism. Bell (1994:19) lists a set of “nearly universal human values,” including the values of human life, knowledge (including truth, education, research, technology), evaluation (accurate judgment), and justice. He goes on to list several others, including wealth, peace, affection, opportunity, respect, honesty, trust. “Such values tend to exist everywhere, regardless of language, culture, and the alternative ways in which they can be achieved. And they tend to remain constant” (Bell 1994:19). But, he adds that “the human future may depend on two contradictory capacities: recognizing and abiding by most universal values and continuing to make changes in other values in response to changing conditions” (Bell 1994:19). Selznick has very similar ideas, and he too cautions that the universals have contexts and circumstances. “But these different renderings of similar impulses cannot be used as evidence of radical discontinuity in human culture” (1992:96). Space precludes our transiting into an extended discourse on the particularities of the relative versus universal, encompassing the work of Habermas and Luhmann especially. Interested readers are referred
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to Schofthaler 1984, and Habermas 1990. Instead, if we look at two examples, we may be able to place these issues in better perspective: Hitler’s genocide and the events of September 11, 2001. In both instances, the acts were relatively moral—relative, that is, to their perpetrators. Of course, these acts fly in the face of moral universalism which insists on the sanctity of human life. The moral universalists would likely argue that the perpetrators were deviant in the extreme, reflecting sociopathic and psychopathic behaviors. Such an argument would be reasonable if there were but a handful of perpetrators; however, in these instances there were thousands of likeminded perpetrators, rendering the pathologic explanation difficult to apply. Thus, if moral relativism allows such events by virtue of social circumstances, and moral universalism disallows such events by virtue of the purported sanctity of human life argument, clearly there is dysfunction in both camps, suggesting that we need, ultimately, to seek some stance or balance between the two. Selznick’s remarks provide a good summary: The killing of babies, when done to protect existing family members, including other children, deeply offends the Western conscience, and a more universal morality as well, but the clash of values is by no means beyond sympathetic understanding (1992:97; also cf. Bauman 1993; Dunn 1998).
We will revisit these ideas below, in our discussion of globalization because, as our societies mature and likely converge to some greater or lesser extent, there will be not only room for cultural diversity and thus moral relativism, but also room for a juxtaposition of at least a loosely constructed set of universal values—as long as we recognize that all this is malleable in the face of changing conditions. M R Not unexpectedly, scholars have difficulty with the concept of moral responsibility and we certainly will not pretend to have any definitive answers on the issue. Rather, we will briefly review a sampling of scholars’ thoughts on the matter of moral responsibility. Part of the difficulty centers around the often close relationship between moral responsibility and ethics. Ethics is a distinct and separate philosophical discipline which is demonstrably beyond the scope of this paper. While
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we will make brief reference to ethics in the following, we do not intend to expand thereon by virtue of the additional complexity the subject’s presence would inject into our present scope and intentions. Contemporary views of moral responsibility—modern and postmodern—reflect distinctive shifts in views of moral responsibility. “In modern society, bureaucratic organizations bypassed the need for individual moral responsibility by adhering rigidly to instrumental reason” (Dodd 1999:169). In the postmodern world, conversely, moral responsibility shifts back to the individual and, as such, is made a part of many theories of postmodernity (cf. Bauman 1993; Carlton 1995; Delanty 1999; Smith 1999). Historically, we could look at social eras and examine moral attitudes, toward moral responsibility in particular, and we would likely find persistent shifts in those attitudes. Each era has its own characteristic mechanisms for dealing with the issues of moral responsibility—mechanisms which are expressed as varying individual and collective attitudes toward moral obligation. Bauman’s writings on the subject are especially cogent in today’s world. In the “risk society,” moral responsibility . . . cannot be argued or promoted in terms that are the most familiar and approved of in our type of society—those of fair exchange and reciprocity of benefits. Whatever else the sought morality is to be, it must be first and foremost an ethics of self-limitation. . . . the task of visualizing the consequences of action or inaction . . . rests fairly and squarely with the actor (Bauman 1993:220).
Bauman extends this position to collective moral responsibility as well and notes that individual and collective moralities “swim in the sea of uncertainty”: “If this is what postmodern self-awareness made clear to us, this new clarity may go a long way toward balancing out the blow it has delivered to our cozy, cloudless certainties” (1993:222). Others might disagree with Bauman’s removal of the norm of reciprocity from the moral responsibility function. Selznick (1992:97), for instance, argues that the norm of reciprocity “is, in one form or another, universally recognized” (see also Gouldner 1960). And Selznick goes on to point out that “Such principals are not accidental developments. They are solutions to problems, rediscovered innumerable times as ways of dealing with ever-present demands of organization and solidarity” (Selznick 1992:97; emphasis added).
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M C
Moral choices parallel moral responsibility in the sense that opportunities for moral choices have expanded and contracted throughout human history. In the postmodern world, moral choices have certainly expanded markedly—some would even say to unprecedented proportions (cf., e.g., Fukuyama 1999). A plethora of moral choices means there are numerous contradictory rules about what is right and wrong. As Bauman put it, “Ours are the times of strongly felt moral ambiguity” (1993:21). The resulting and so-called “postmodern moral crisis” engenders “moral ambivalence and decisional uncertainty.” Selznick echoes these sentiments in his statement that “Modern life offers a welcome if risky challenge to the moral order. As self-determination is enlarged, as awareness is sharpened, the complexity of moral choice increases” (1992:4; also see Yankelovich 1994:19–20, discussion of Dahrendorf on choices and bonds). Indeed, the risk society delivers to us a nearly boundless set of moral choices, each fostered by differing authorities and each characteristically alleged to be the “right” choice. But so many conflicting rules cannot help but engender ambivalence. The freedom to choose, of course, has its price. Were the rules coercive, life would be easier, but coercion and freedom are obviously incompatible. The end result is that each individual must accept moral responsibility and make these moral choices, no matter how ambiguous they may be. This resulting ambivalence both instigates and reflects the uncertainty so central to the postmodern risk society. “In the end, we trust no authority, at least, we trust none fully, and none for long: we cannot help being suspicious about any claim to infallibility” (Bauman 1993:21). Whereas the premodern dialectic attributed social morality to society’s developmental socialization processes, the postmodern view argues society is the result of its individuals’ moral capacities (cf. Bauman 1993; Selznick 1992; Wolfe 1989). D M ‘P’ T? Throughout this paper we have seen over and over that moral attitudes—the moral fabric of contemporary (or then contemporary) society—shift and change over time. But do they progress? On the one hand, Habermas (1990), drawing on the work of Piaget (1965[1932])
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and Kohlberg (1971), contends that because individuals mature, so, too, can societies (cf. Dodd 1999). In a micro-social or micro-historical context this is no doubt true. Societies rise, mature and fall. Thus any given society might be said to progress morally. But what about the macro-socio-historical level? Has there been what might loosely be termed “moral progress” in the last 5,000 years? From the perspective of the prevalence of a universal norm of reciprocity (which we realize is not universally accepted among scholars), it is reasonable to say that this norm has been present in the minds of humans and their social arrangements for many thousands of years. While attitudes toward how the norm is dealt with—individually and collectively—have shifted, changed, and changed back throughout history, the fundamental tenet would seem to have remained the same—implying that progress per se is not a function applicable to morality. Bauman lends additional perspective to this issue in the following remarks: The probable truth is that moral choices are indeed choices, and dilemmas are indeed dilemmas—not the temporary and rectifiable effects of human weakness, ignorance or blunders. Issues have no predetermined solutions nor have the crossroads intrinsically preferable directions. There are no hard-and-fast principles which one can learn, memorize and deploy in order to escape situations without a good outcome and to spare oneself the bitter after-taste (call it scruples, guilty conscience, or sin) which comes unsolicited in the wake of the decisions taken and fulfilled. Human reality is messy and ambiguous—and so moral decisions, unlike abstract ethical principles, are ambivalent. It is in this sort of world that we must live; and yet, as if defying the worried philosophers who cannot conceive of an “unprincipled” morality, a morality without foundations, we demonstrate day by day that we can live, or learn to live, or manage to live in such a world, though few of us would be ready to spell out, if asked, what the principles that guide us are, and fewer still would have heard about the “foundations” which we allegedly cannot do without to be good and kind to each other (1993:32).
M: M, M, P Much of the preceding discussions have made reference to morality vis-à-vis modernity, modernization, and postmodernity. Thus the discussion here will be brief and is intended as a prelude to our discussion of morality and globalization. To avoid repeating our previous references to morality in modern and postmodern contexts, let us
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take a look at the work of Selznick (1992), who has described the concomitant transformation as having taken place in four major ways: (a) separation of spheres, (b) secularization, (c) weakening of social ties, and (d) rational coordination. Spheres separate under modernization in a process of “structural differentiation.” “Examples are the separation of production and consumption, household and work, church and state, religion and community, ownership and management, education and parenting . . .” (Selznick 1992:4). Certain separated spheres are in turn indicative of the second component of the transformation process: secularization, through which there “is a great secular foundation of morality,” making “moral order more remote, more abstract, more dependent on the vagaries of the mind” (1992:5). The third way in which the transformation occurs, according to Selznick is via the weakening of social ties, whereby “modern life tends to loosen the intimate connections of shared experience and interdependence that characterized so much of premodern society” (1992:5). And the final driver of the transformation, rational coordination, “creates new forms of obligation and control,” though Selznick cautions that these may sometimes be more coercive than their predecessors; he also warns that each of these trends is subject to “resistance, backlash, most notably . . . secularization” (1992:5). G, C C If we superimpose the preceding discussions upon the globalization phenomenon, we obviously raise the level of complexity exponentially— that is, by a factor equal to the number of parts which interact to make up the global whole. What does globalization mean for morality? Intrinsic to the globalization phenomenon are, of course, the issues of distance and proximity, self and others. As the “walls of distance break down” (Beck 1998:133), the socalled “other” becomes proximal regardless of real geographical distance (cf. Smith 1999; Dodd 1999; Waters 1993; Giddens 1991; Luhmann 1995; Habermas 1990; Schofthaler 1984; Misztal 1996). And when all “others” become so proximal, then, per Giddens, “there are no ‘others’” (Dodd 1999:192). Globalization takes pluralism out of the equation, albeit slowly, as Giddens has cautioned: “New forms of cooperation are called for; although generally acknowledged, in a
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world of distinct nation-states they are as yet only weakly developed ” (1991:225; emphasis added). Reflexive modernization has transformed self-identity (Dodd 1999; Beck, Giddens and Lasch 1994), but while pluralism wanes, the same cannot immediately be said of morality. In this sense Giddens is right about the only weakly developed means of cooperation. Globalization’s attendant complexity makes it nearly “impossible to say where responsibility and control lie” (Smith 1999:164). This, of course, was the point in our discussions of moral responsibility and moral choices—the ambiguity and thus ambivalence remain very real phenomena when juxtaposed against the process of globalization. Beck (1999:9) provides us with a great deal of food for thought on this subject in his statement: “We live in an age of risk that is global, individualistic and more moral than we suppose. The ethic of self-fulfillment and achievement is the most powerful current in modern Western society.” Reflexive modernization comes to apply not only to institutions but also to the self. Why do humans cooperate? Self-interest. But as the “Do unto others . . .” mentality moves into the distance, the underlying trust which enables human cooperation becomes impersonal. “This new type of social cooperation results in a new moral order, which—in turn—integrates society” (Misztal 1996:43). Misztal brings all this back to our starting place—Durkheim—when she states, “A need for a morality of cooperation means that individuals must consider not only their interests but also their duties to the community, because without this social integration order would be impossible” (1996:43). What can faciliate this emerging morality of social cooperation? Communication. Education. Communication is both cause and effect. Communication, including the internet phenomenon, enhances our knowledge of the world, creates a “unitary framework of experience” (Giddens 1991:5), and hence generates moral obligations (cf. Selznick 1992). Habermas (1990; also cf. Dodd 1999) calls this “postconventional morality” and stresses that communication is its conduit, its facilitator. “Only broad-based agreement through rational dialogue [communication] can establish such universally recognized and generally applicable rights” (Dodd 1999:109). Whether this new “global morality” will become synonymous with “universal morality” remains an open question. Communication in its postmodern expression should inevitably generate the global awareness and global conscience necessary for the emerging morality of social
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cooperation. Communication will illuminate moral choices and thus engender both individual and collective senses of moral responsibility. Education is yet another facilitator, as Durkheim for instance reminded us. In the face of globalization, it seems inevitable that the educational imperative will become obvious. Despite the difficulties with defining individual, collective and public moralities, the education sector must be willing to meet the challenges of globalization, especially by teaching about such postmodern concepts as civic education, community service, environmental education, cross-cultural and ultimately global education (Cf., e.g., Lisman 1998; Rhoads 1997; Claus and Ogden 1999.) Communication and education can and no doubt will make significant contributions toward the formation, perhaps even formalization, of a new morality of global social cooperation. This new morality, along the lines of Etzioni’s (1993, 1995) communitarianism, will preserve individualism and enable it to co-exist with the moral responsibilities of the global community, thus enhancing social solidarity and order while minimizing the presence or influence of anomie. The globalization and postmodernization phenomena are still very far from playing themselves out. In that sense it is difficult to conclude what these processes will ultimately mean for the moral fabric of a future, globalized contemporary society. Certainly we can speculate that the issues of self-interest–others’ interest, distance–proximity, and trust will play key roles in positioning the nature of that moral fabric. And beyond globalization, of course, there will come yet future expressions of human cooperation and social morality, as society and morality will always be “works in progress.” E S M Finally, we should return to a theme touched upon earlier when speaking about Durkheim. Notable among Durkheim’s discourses on morality was his emphasis on morality as something which could be studied empirically, scientifically. Berger and Kellner (1981:84) reiterated that position when they stated, “Morality, as externally established norms and as internalized constituents of individual consciousness, is empirically available, and therefore the proper subject matter of sociology as well as other empirical disciplines (including psychology).” Not everyone felt or feels that morality can be studied empirically. Kant was Durkheim’s polar opposite on morality in general and its
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research potential in particular—Kant was emphatic that one could not study morality empirically. Mestrovic argues that “most contemporary researchers” would agree with Kant because “little consensus exists on what constitutes morality” (1998:52). While Durkheim based his contention on the definability of morality, Mestrovic argues that “no serious contemporary intellectual would dare make such a move” (1998: 176). To define morality would certainly beg endless circuitous debate, but that does not mean that morality cannot be studied empirically. “Moral boundaries are drawn on the basis of moral character; they are centered around such qualities as honesty, work ethic, personal integrity, and consideration for others” (Lamont 1992:4). Attitudinal surveys can and do assess just these qualities, and many more which lend themselves to assessing the moral fabric of contemporary society (see, e.g., Inglehart 1997). Bellah et al. provide a more philosophical validation for the empirical study of morality in their statement: “There is a profound gap in our culture between technical reason . . . and practical or moral reason, the ways we understand how we should live. . . . [ T]echnical reason alone . . . is insufficient to manage our social difficulties or make sense of our lives” (1992:44). Nothing prevents us as sociologists from asking our subjects what they would do when posed with a contrived moral dilemma, or asking their attitudes about characteristics of social norms and morality. Indeed, such studies are the very essence of sociology as defined by Durkheim, Wundt, and many other scholars. When asked and answered in scientific contexts, the results can yield good information for assessing states and trends on social moral issues. Longitudinal cross-national or cross-cultural attitudinal surveys can certainly make important contributions to assessing similarities and differences in moral attitudes and how they may be changing over time. While these tasks would not pretend to define morality, their utility should be clear in enhancing our understanding of the moral fabric of contemporary society. Many of the issues we have discussed throughout this paper can be specifically targeted and assessed by empirical studies of morality. The presence, absence or emergence of a universal morality can be explored. The same is true of collective and global moralities. To directly target individual morality might be problematic, but much could certainly be done to focus upon and improve our understanding of attitudes which reflect the collective morality. In this empirical work, social norms and values of course play a key and pivotal role,
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and we know from experience that we already have a vast repertoire of methodological tools and results at our disposal. There is certainly work and work in progress aimed at determining if traditional values are being revived in postmodernity. By extension, it should be possible to reexamine this work in the context of, for instance, universal human values and the revival of the moral elements of tradition. In a sense, this becomes a restatement of the work in progress, recasting the findings to search out the implications for morality. F R In terms of the implications of technological and scientific progress and advances for multiple moralities and modernities—including, among other things, advances in computing, bio-technology, and physics— phase one of the Human Genome Project is now complete, and it typifies the social dilemmas we face. What are the moral implications of the fully sequenced human genome? Of cloning? Stem cell research? Fetal cell research? Organ transplantation, even organ growth and harvesting? Recombinant DNA research? Brain death? Surrogate motherhood? We can even move sideways and ask about the implications for other global problems, such as global warming and nuclear energy development. There is much existing work to be reassessed and there is much new work for the sociologist who chooses to study these issues empirically. And of course there is no lack of opportunity to speculate, comment, review and otherwise expound upon all these questions centering around the moral fabric of contemporary society. REFERENCES Addelson, K.P. (1990) “Why Philosophers Should Become Sociologists,” in H.S. Becker and M.M. McCall (eds.) Symbolic Interaction and Cultural Studies. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Bauman, Z. (1992) Intimations of Post Modernity. London: Routledge. ——. (1993) Postmodern Ethics. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Beck, U. (1998) Democracy without Enemies. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. ——. (1999) World Risk Society. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Beck, U., Giddens, A. and Lasch, S. (1994) Reflexive Modernization. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Bell, W. (1994) “The World as a Moral Community.” Society 31(5):17–22. Bellah, R., et al. (1985) Habits of the Heart. New York: Harper and Row. ——, et al. (1992) The Good Society. New York: Vintage.
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Berger, P.L. and Kellner, H. (1981) Sociology Reinterpreted. Middlesex, England: Penguin Books. Beyer, P. (1994) Religion and Globalization. London: Sage. Bougle, G. (1974) “Preface to the Original Edition,” in E. Durkheim, Sociology and Philosophy. New York: Free Press. Bourdieu, P. and Wacquant, L.J.D. (1992) An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Carlton, E. (1995) Values and the Social Sciences. London: Duckworth. Claus, J. and Curtis O. (eds.) (1999) Service Learning for Youth Empowerment and Social Change. New York: Peter Lang. Delanty, G. (1999) Social Theory in a Changing World. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Dodd, N. (1999) Social Theory and Modernity. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Dunn, R.G. (1998) Identity Crises: A Social Critique of Postmodernity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Durkheim, E. (1933[1893]). The Division of Labor in Society. Trans. George Simpson. New York: Macmillan. ——. (1957) Professional Ethics and Civic Morals. Trans. C. Brookfield. London: Routledge. ——. (1974) Sociology and Philosophy. New York: The Free Press. ——. (1982[1895]) “The Rules of the Sociological Method” in S. Lukes (ed.) Durkheim: The Rules of Sociological Method and Selected Texts on Sociology and Its Method. New York: Free Press. Etzioni, A. (1993) The Spirit of Community: Rights, Responsibilities and the Communitarian Agenda. London: Fontana Press. Etzioni, A. (ed.) (1995) Rights and the Common Good: The Communitarian Perspective. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Fletcher, R. (1971) The Making of Sociology. Vol. 2. London: Michael Joseph. Fukuyama, F. (1992) The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Free Press. ——. (1999) The Great Disruption. London: Profile Books. Geiger, T. (1969) On Social Order and Mass Society. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Giddens, A. (1990) The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. ——. (1991) Modernity and Self-Identity. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. ——. (1994) Beyond Left and Right. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Gisbert, P. (1959) “Social Facts and Durkheim’s System.” Anthropos 54:353–69. Gouldner, A. (1960) “The Norm of Reciprocity: A Preliminary Statement.” American Sociological Review 25:171. ——. (1971) The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology. New York: Avon Books. Habermas, J. (1990) Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Hall, J.R. and Neitz, M.J. (1993) Culture: Sociological Perspectives. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Hall, R. (1993) “Introduction” in E. Durkheim, Ethics and Sociology of Morals. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books. Inglehart, R. (1997) Modernization and Postmodernization. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Jonas, H. (1974) Philosophical Essays: From Ancient Creed to Technological Man. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Kant, I. (1964[1785]) Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Trans. H.J. Paton. New York: Harper & Row. Kohlberg, L. (1971) “From Is to Ought,” in T. Mischel, Cognitive Development and Epistemology. New York: Academic Press. Lamont, N. (1992) Money, Morals, & Manners. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Lasch, Ch. (1978) The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations. New York: Norton.
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Lisman, C.D. (1998) Toward a Civil Society: Civic Literacy and Service Learning. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. Lockwood, D. (1992) Solidarity and Schism. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. Lowith, K. (1993) Max Weber and Karl Marx. London: Routledge. Luhmann, N. (1995) Social Systems. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ——. (1996) “The Sociology of the Moral and Ethics.” International Sociology 11(1):27 36. Lukes, S. (1973) Emile Durkheim: His Life and Work. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Mead, G. (1981) Selected Writings, A.J. Reck (ed.) Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mestrovic, S.G. (1998) Anthony Giddens. London: Routledge. Mill, J.S. (1968[1865]) Auguste Comte and Positivism. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Miller, W.W. (1988) “Durkheim and Individualism.” The Sociological Review 36(4): 647–673. Misztal, B.A. (1996) Trust in Modern Societies. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Parsons, T. (1937) The Structure of Social Action Volume II. New York: Free Press. ——. (1966) Societies: Evolutionary and Comparative Perspective. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. ——. (1978) Action Theory and the Human Condition. New York: Free Press. Piaget, J. (1965[1932]). The Moral Judgement of the Child, trans. Marjorie Gabain. New York: Free Press. Raz, J. (1994) “Moral Change and Social Relativism.” Social Philosophy & Policy 11(1):139–158. Remmling, G.W. (1975) The Sociology of Karl Mannheim: with a bibliographical guide to the sociology of knowledge, ideological analysis, and social planning. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Rhoads, R.A. (1997) Community Service and Higher Learning. Albany, NY: State University of New York. Riesman, D. (1980) “Egocentrism” Character 1(5):3–9. Schofthaler, T. (1984) “The Social Foundations of Morality: Durkheimian Problems and the Vicissitudes of Niklas Luhmann’s Systems Theories of Religion, Morality and Personality.” Social Compass 31(2–3):185–197. Selznick, P. (1992) The Moral Commonwealth. Berkeley: University of California Press. Shilling, C. and P.A. Mellor (1998) “Durkheim, Morality and Modernity: Collective Effervescence, Homo Duplex and the Sources of Moral Action.” The British Journal of Sociology 49(2):193–209. Smith, D. (1999) Zygmunt Bauman. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Thompson, K. (1998) Moral Panics. London and New York: Routledge. Tiryakian, E.A. (1978) “Emile Durkheim,” in T. Bottomore and R. Nisbet (eds.) A History of Sociological Analysis. New York: Basic Books. Tocqueville, de A. (1968) Democracy in America. Trans. G. Lawrence. London: Collins, The Fontana Library. Tönnies, F. (1988) Community and Society. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books. Waters, M. (1993) Globalization. London: Routledge. Wolfe, A. (1989) Whose Keepers? Social Science and Moral Obligation. Berkeley: University of California Press. Yankelovich, D. (1994) “How Changes in the Economy Are Reshaping American Values,” in J.A. Horny, T.E. Mann and T. Taylor (eds.) Values and Public Policy. Zube, M.J. (1972) “Changing Concepts of Morality: 1948–69.” Social Forces 50(3):385–393.
THE MORAL FABRIC IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETIES: SOME REMARKS ON THE PARADIGM SHIFT IN SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY Graûyna Sk[pska It may happen ( just may) That in the same way as modernity went down in history as the age of ethics, the coming post-modern era will come to be recorded as the age of morality . . . (Zygmunt Bauman 1993:37).
Only a few years ago, though still in the previous century, when asked about the topic of my lecture at the Wissenschaftszentrum zu Berlin, my proposal to speak of the moral aspects of postcommunist transformation was met with skepticism, if not to say (mercifully unspoken) criticism. To be clear, the object of skepticism was not the transformation, but my plan to speak about its moral aspects.1 However, the lecture topic proved to be interesting to its audience, and it appeared that the moral aspects of social change, moral or axiological foundations of social life, not to mention social hopes to live in a good, or a decent society—or to live in truth, as Vaclav Havel would prefer—still hold the attention of social scientists. Moreover, such notions as morality and ethics seem to be undergoing a revival in our field: sociology, social psychology, political science, social anthropology, and also in economics. Firstly, as was emphasized in the Preface to this book, one must forget about a “(happy) end of history.” Not only and obviously does history have no end, but it also continues to develop in the most threatening and dangerous directions of growing inequalities, injustice, and prejudice, and of ethnic, religious or even tribal hatred resulting in terrorism and genocide. As we currently realize, it would be very difficult to blame impersonal, systemic forces for these dramatically dangerous phenomena and processes, because they are much more 1 This reminds one of the observation by Polish sociologist Maria Ossowska, who remarked that she felt entirely isolated in her studies on the sociology of morality, and was under the impression that she was seen as a representative of the Salvation Army rather than of the social sciences (Ossowska 1969:17).
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due to corrupted minds. They are associated with arrogance, imperial ambitions, economic and political greed, and, often, the conscious destruction of civility and civil societies by powerful vested interests. Secondly, our interests in the moral aspects of social life grow because of the ever more threatening technological context in which contemporary societies exist. Here, the links between uncontrolled power and technology which challenges the very existence of whole societies, and the entirely unpredictable consequences of scientific development in such domains as genetics, the cultivation of human organs from fetal cells, and, ultimately, the consequences of human cloning present the most characteristic features. Thirdly, these interests are stimulated by our own growing consciousness of society and its members not as an object of social theory and research, but first and foremost as subjects of social processes of which we, as scientists, are also a part. All participate in the pursuit of the social projects of a “good society.” Therefore, our sensitivity toward different lifestyles or ways of life that decide about the quality of “the social” also grows. This results in our own efforts to find such theoretical concepts and develop such theories which would encompass experiences and worldviews, values and norms, and leading ideas valued by, but not imposed upon particular societies. Fourthly, we began to consider again whether a society—its institutions, structures, organizations—is possible without some moral legitimization or justification, without some deeply rooted norms and values that enable differentiation between the “good” (i.e., desirable), and the unacceptable, or even unbearable forms of social order and organization. Last but not least, morality and ethics return to scientific discourse because we are not happy with the current role of the social sciences in society. We certainly would not like to stay in our “ivory towers” and produce sophisticated theories of no relevance, nor be great “legislators,” nor social engineers used by those in power to manipulate society, but certainly we would like to find sound explanations and solutions to social problems, to help resolve conflict, and to reduce risks. All of these, and certainly many more reasons, lead to an argument that the sign of a paradigm shift may currently be traced in the social sciences. In place of systemic determinism, or culture-less and history-less theorizing, or the end-of-the-century pessimistic postmodernism or deconstructivism, or the reduction of the social to a series of simulations whereby everything is representation of a rep-
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resentation of a representation, one observes a growing interest in the concept of the good society as a foundation of sociological theory and research. The shift is particularly visible in the topics dealing with the most serious questions concerning atrocious social arrangements—how could Auschwitz and the Gulag happen, what were the social factors that made possible their highly sophisticated organization. These questions are important also because mass scale atrocities are still committed, and highly organized genocide is still present. Renewed interests in the moral fabric are to be traced in the popularity of such morally sensitive topics as trust, trauma, hope, pride, guilt and shame; in research on hunger, social divisions, and corruption; in the emergence of such theoretical concepts as multiple modernities, civil society, citizenship and civility; in the growing interest in human agency and social life-worlds, personal and group memories and biographies as an important aspect of individual and collective identity, and social life quality; in sociologists’ concern with human rights; and, finally, in the preoccupation of social theory with the cultural dimensions of society—i.e., with values, symbols, norms, and beliefs. Considering the possibility of a paradigm shift, the remainder of this paper will be focused on some theoretical and empirical aspects of these new sociological interests in the moral fabric of societies, with particular attention paid to theoretical questions they lead to, and empirical interests they promote. 1. T R N S T In companions and handbooks devoted to social theory, especially those dealing also with the philosophical problems of late modernity, the classic question regarding a model of the social sciences, and sociological theory returns. Currently, however, the notorious debate on the supremacy of a natural sciences oriented or a hermeneutical model of sociological theory takes a new turn and goes in new directions. The turn is marked by a tacit or more vocal reintroduction of normativity to social theory, and to the theoretical model of society. Such a turn was already initiated by critical theory in all its versions: from those inspired by Marxism, through all the generations of the Frankfurt School, to the Western Marxism of Merleau-Ponty, his predecessors and followers, and to the contemporary representatives of feminist and anti-racist theories. For these authors, the necessary
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normativity of the social sciences was closely linked with emancipatory potential, with the social enlightenment whose concept was based on the classic, European ideas of the Enlightenment as bringing reason, emancipation and equality to social arrangements. However, as it turned out, the promoted Marxist conceptualizations of the Enlightenment did not lead to emancipation, but rather to a collapse of its very ”progressive” projects, and, further, to a visible compromise of “grand emancipating theories” together with the “legislating” role of sociologists or social-philosophers. This resulted in widespread bad press for normative theories among sociologists, and in a certain backlash. Social scientists wanted to avoid being denounced as the self-appointed moralizing legislators who tell others—the less enlightened—what to do, how to arrange their affairs and construct their institutions, how to cure their social malaise in order to reach the next level of social progress, or how to approach some “good society” scholarly ideal. Even more importantly in this context, were the contents and structure of emancipating social theory. Successive generations of social theoreticians reiterated the classic debate on the natural sciences versus humanities-oriented model of social theory, and looked with great suspicion at anybody who spoke about morality, moral fabric, or good society projects as strictly normative and therefore not scientific. The current development of social theory is initiated precisely by the renewed interests in the normative components of theory itself, and by the question whether a society is at all possible without a moral fabric composed of values and norms, social ideals, and visions and missions that bind social actors and inspire their actions. Recent sociological theories, openly or not, reintroduce these issues to sociological theorizing and research, either as part of their reasoning, or as an important component of their ideas on “the social”—the model of society they accept. It should be immediately added that these theories have an ever broader reference because the ever broader empirical society they refer to is often a global one. The important inspiration of the renewed interests in moral issues as an object of social theory is marked by opinions on the decline of sociological theory itself (Turner 1996:6). Such opinions are supported by corresponding arguments on the “end of the social” (Baudrillard 1983). In light of the latter arguments, social theory is no longer able to distinguish its subject matter since the “social” has ceased to exist. This argument is logically supplemented by another, rather dramatic one that proclaims the “death of society.”
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Opinions regarding these questions are motivated by observation of the collapse of norms and values which bind society together, decide about social solidarity, or foster a deep cultural engagement and mutual understanding as the bases for communicative communities. The heralded “end of the social” or alleged “death of society” result then from pessimistic perspectives on the collapse of social axiology, or social normativity, as a foundation of “the social” within modern societies. Thus, authors who proclaim its end indirectly acknowledge the impossibility of society without a morality, but also demonstrate a certain helplessness on the part of sociologists who do not possess the theoretical tools that would make possible the investigation of this moral fabric or moral sensitivity in the new, post- or late-modern world. In order to avoid undoubtedly brilliant, but rather esoteric arguments on the end of society, and to form a sound and realistic social theory, sociologists link their theoretical investigations with other, adjacent disciplines—economics on the one hand, and the broadly understood humanities, or cultural sciences, on the other—as important for the further development of social theory. Both directions— the economy oriented and culture oriented—represent the current crucial paradigms in sociological theorizing. As I am going to demonstrate briefly, both lead to the reintroduction of normative, and even moral issues to social theory, in a direct and open, or an indirect and tacit way. However, this return of normativity resulting from the substitution of sociological reasoning by that which is informed by economics, or by a radically understood cultural anthropology, is not unproblematic. Still, there are other important developments in social theory, and sociological and socio-psychological research which strongly support the argument regarding a paradigm shift. 2. E O S T: M I R C T Authors who follow the first trend try to find an analytically sound way of testing clear theoretical statements comprising the causal explanations of social phenomena with regard to the content of human behavior and its consequences. The most important explanatory tools are provided by rational choice and public choice theories. Their authors take modern neoclassical institutionalism as a model of scientific analysis, based on an assumption that a condition of social development is rational institutions, and these in turn are the
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products, or consequences of rational choices (Coleman 1990; Abell 1991). Moreover, rational choice theory invites us to understand individual actors (which in specified circumstances may be collectivities, as is the case of Mancur Olson’s seminal The Logic of Collective Action) as acting, or more likely interacting, in a manner such that they can be deemed to be doing the best they can for themselves, given their objectives, resources and circumstances as they see them (Olson 1965; Abell 1996:252). Founded on such a definition, rational and public choice theories, and related game theories seem to be of an entirely technical nature, and present a precise, value-less and formally coherent set of explanatory statements on human behavior and social institutions as more or less rational and to be tested by their consequences. However, as admitted by one of their prominent representatives, these theoretical perspectives are also founded on strongly normative, although unspoken assumptions. They are grounded in the Enlightenment precepts of rational conduct, and are further informed by the just as strongly normative utilitarianism and, allegedly, also by Marxism (Abell 1996:254–255; on links between rational choice theories and Marxism, cf. Elster 1985). Therefore, they are subjected to criticism not because they produce clear, powerful and elegant explanations, but because of the model of society and social actors tacitly accepted as their fundamental, undisputed assumptions. There are two types of critique applied to the rational choice perspective in social theory. One of them is aimed at noncritical acceptance of economic theory as a model for the social sciences. This line of thinking was formulated many years ago by Talcott Parsons (1937). The other will be briefly sketched here. In his famous critique of economic theory, consistently recalled by Bryan S. Turner in his companion on contemporary social theory, Parsons argued that the fundamental assumption of utilitarian rationalism on which economic theory was based could neither provide a coherent and satisfactory theory of society, nor of social action, because it misses the genuine dimensions of social action, social order, and social systems—social values and norms other than purely strategically pursued, selfish interests (Turner 1996:4, 5). The most important point of this critique presents, as we all know, the concept of the social actor and social action as purely egoistic, economically or instrumentally rational, and social order and social institutions as resulting from competition between social actors so understood. Hence, according to Parson’s example, fraud and force are perfectly ratio-
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nal forms of economic behavior. However, as this author points out, these two are incompatible with social order (Parsons 1937). It is also stressed that economic theory does not stand its own test: to be norm- and value-free. As Parsons remarked, classical economic theory (e.g., that of Adam Smith), referred to residual categories, sentiments and moral values as foundations of the market, as well as of the political and social order.2 We can add that similar statements on the importance of a moral fabric, public good-oriented individual habits and ethical rules (e.g., those of civil service), are formulated by the most prominent contemporary representatives of neoclassical economy, such as Milton Friedman (1982). Therefore, even if one links sociological with economic theory, one should accept the par excellence sociological assumption on the importance of values and norms as guiding social action. The most renowned classic authors and their followers have been more than appreciative of this. My arguments regard these hidden, but nevertheless strong normative assumptions of contemporary rational choice or public choice theories, and the implicit ideology they promote, even if they claim to be value-free. First and foremost, these theories are based on assumptions about social action defined as the strategic action of a person driven by his/her egoistic motives, “acting alone” even if entangled in interdependencies with others. Whether depending on the actions of others, or acting collectively, he/she is faced with the prisoner’s dilemma or the dilemmas of collective action. With regard to the first, trust and solidarity in social relations are considered pure derivatives of instrumental rationality, as the consequences of the do ut des principle and not of pride, self-esteem, shame or guilt. The collective action dilemma is based on the assumption of opportunism, or even cowardice, and the lack of civil courage characteristic of anonymous members of masses or crowds and not of civil society. Thus, from the model on which their generalizations are based, these theories exclude such “residual categories”, or extrarational factors whose sources are social norms, and social or personal values other than marginal utility. Social norms can be substituted by the rules of the game if one is faced by the prisoner’s dilemma and treats social bonds and social solidarity as a set of “entanglements.”
2 See excerpts of Smith’s theory on moral sentiments in Raphael 1969, and its analysis in Campbell 1971, 1981.
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Instead of a value- and norm-free, we obtain a value- and normladen theory of social subject, society, and social order: the first as an individual whose actions are evaluated purely with regard to their measurable consequences, the second as a set of entanglements with others which one should consider in one’s own strategy, and the third as skillfully applied rules of the game tested with regard to their marginal utility. The ultimate value which justifies such a social order is its effectivity in the fulfillment of purely strategic aims. The crucial argument for a hidden but strong normativity, characteristic of rational choice theory and its possible variations, is based on the already mentioned relationship to the utilitarian rationalism adopted as its philosophical foundation, and the source of its theoretical assumptions. On the one hand, this theory presents a powerful source of arguments for practically oriented social sciences. Moreover, its undisputed contribution to the investigation of the moral fabric consists in its model of the social actor as a rational being who can repeat the Cartesian “I think, therefore I am”, and evaluate the consequences of his or her actions. Such a social actor is not an empty entity, a puppet driven by external forces he or she is unable to control or not even aware of. These would be systemic rules, or the “objective rules of historical development,” or, on the contrary, the hidden, dark instincts, the non-volitional and non-rational influences of the unconscious mind within an individual, or illusions disguised as values and norms, or, in light of Michel Foucault’s vision, illusions produced by power relations. On the other hand, the debated theory accepts only one part of the theoretical and moral legacy of the Enlightenment—that which is linked with utilitarian rationalism, but above all with the concept of strategic reason and science as ultimate justifications of social order. This is not the Enlightenment concerned with freedoms and liberties as foundations or sources of social development, nor the Enlightenment that provided social theory with assumptions concerning social action and social institutions as resulting from a myriad of events. Social action and institutions stemmed, too, from suprarational motives such as the value of freedom, from the desires of social actors, the norms they follow, and the values they think worth achieving in a reasonable way, and in accordance with the richer concepts of rationality. Apart from the instrumental and strategic, associated with the values and social bonds that emerge because of communication—i.e.,
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the concepts of rationality as formulated by Max Weber, and currently by Juergen Habermas —typical are observations on links between utilitarian rationalism and Marxism. Indeed, as one who experienced the implementation of Marxist theory into social reality, I can fully support such an observation: utilitarian rationalism was a dominant part of Marxist ideology in the former communist countries where values were considered a “false consciousness,” or an illusion—a point made also by Durkheim or Freud. Here the economic utility meant rationality substituted for any other possible motives of social action; social institutions resulted from allegedly strategic choices connected with economic planning and social progress, and social actors were considered to be producers firstly and foremostly.3 That system collapsed, and the crucial question about the concept of rationality as legitimization or justification of social order reappeared. This question generally concerns the modern editions of utilitarian rationalism, and the validity of its rationality claim. This becomes especially pertinent if Reason as a higher—even natural source of institutional arrangement legitimization—is reduced to marginal utility, and calculations of costs and benefits constitute the final test (a justification of social order and its “supreme court”), instead of principles and rules on the protection of freedoms and liberties that were once seen as the outcomes of Reason (Sk[pska 2003:64).4 3. T M F I C O S T Authors who follow the second tendency identify the social with the cultural, and give priority in sociological theorizing to cultural phenomena and cultural relations. This turn in sociological theory reflects, as observed, a deep uncertainty about the development of modern society (Turner 1996:5). Firstly, one speaks about the “aesthetization of the social,” visible in the prominence in sociological research of cultural consumption and lifestyles, in a preoccupation with McDonaldization, or in extensive research on tourism. However, the aesthetization 3 Discussions on the rational individual as opposed to the one driven by forces upon which he/she has no influence are noted in the theories of Durkheim and Freud, and summarized by Nisbet in Boudon 2000:27. 4 The close relationship between rationalistic utilitarianism and Marxism are best illustrated in the Russian dissident work on the cultural philosophy underlying Marxism as understood right after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia (Sinjavskij 1991).
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proposition contributes to postmodern chaos and uncertainty, since anything could be sold as aesthetic, and any possible object could be advertised as an object of art, if only skillfully promoted. Even more important for the subject of this paper—i.e., reintroduction of normativity, and even morality, into social theory—is the theoretical program proposed by the current cultural anthropology, especially by its more radical representatives. The crucial assumption as well as normative standpoint of these approaches consists in their primary proposals that only the local has meaning and only local actors can fully grasp it. In consequence, social theory could be nothing more than merely the description of the (local) actors’ interpretations of their own practices, or, for social anthropologists, this would consist of localized and contextualized accounts of the significance and meaning of social actions and social institutions for indigenous communities. Such a view of social theory finds important support in the issues of great moral concern, such as difference, social justice, oppression, violence and terror raised by the postmodernist authors, Derrida or Lyotard, and the issues of postmodern morality debated by Bauman (1993). However, in place of a sensitivity toward local contexts and the local aspects of injustice, terror, violence or oppression as important aspects of a broader, more comprehensive social theory, the radical version of cultural anthropology limits itself to description of their local meanings, with no pretense of generalizations and comparisons. As a consequence of the stress on local accounts, and of the efforts to avoid subordination of local experiences to scientific concepts and categories imported from outside or from above or forcefully imposed on the local social reality, or marginalizing and alienating those which do not fit such concepts, social theory assumes the form of stories about local cultures based on their descriptions in minutiae. As observed, “it is a short step from this position to suggesting that theory is in fact a form of fictional writing which imaginatively reconstructs meaning in forms of carefully constructed prose” (Turner 1996:8, see also Bourdieu 1990). Another important step is taken by authors who, following the postmodern philosophical program of Jacques Derrida, argue for deconstruction of such imposed meanings and concepts especially if they have already been adopted in local interpretive practices. The crucial result of radical versions of modern cultural anthropology concerns, too, the more complex issues raised by represen-
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tatives of postmodernism and multiculturalism in social sciences. This is the implicit cultural and moral relativism which, in turn, leads to the fragmentation of sociological theory and discourse, and the above mentioned impossibility of launching comparative research. Thus, in consequence of the radical approach concentrated on difference and local interpretive practices, and the avoidance of any generalization, one applies many classic value-laden concepts with a long tradition in social theory, and with established normative meanings. These include the concepts of civil society, citizenship, or the concepts of rights applied to social settings hardly compatible with the assumed model of society upon which they were founded. As a result of an opposition to imposed Western concepts, that of civil society or, for instance, of citizenship could be applied to any kind of indigenous society, even if its key institutions consist of exclusion and oppression. If “anything goes” then there is no need to protect the normative meaning of classic concepts, or bother with the uncivil aspects of indigenous stratification or customary law. Without a positive metatheoretical program, such a cultural and moral relativism results in serious barriers to theoretical communication, and contributes to the uncertainty and chaos of modern social theory. These also deepen because of the even greater axiological relativism grounded in Nietzschean beliefs widely spread in the social sciences that to answer a question about what is good or bad entails purely subjective considerations, and that values are matters of entirely individual decisions. As noted, this purely subjectivist, theoretical conceptualization of value judgments in fact legitimizes modern relativism, and therefore, is also responsible for it (Boudon 2000:26). 4. B R A: I, I P D M F However, one can indicate such theoretical perspectives in the contemporary social sciences which avoid the reductionism of marginal utility as the ultimate moral justification of social order, as well as that of complete relativism. As it was rightly noticed by Raymond Boudon, the Nietzschean postmodernist interpretation that any value judgment is purely subjective is contrary to observable facts. As this author emphasizes, most people agree on many things: that democracy is better than despotism, that liquidating apartheid was a good thing, that
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corruption is a bad thing. This is, in turn, corroborated by public opinion polls which show that the opinions of people are highly structured on many subjects and not randomly distributed (Boudon 2000: 25). My argument against both dead-ends of the purely subjectivist, and purely utilitarian theories on the moral fabric in contemporary societies is based on considerations that refer to the three dimensions of social functioning: the individual, intersubjective and public. The author quoted above indicates that the classic rationalist theories which refer to such categories as volition, will, individual consciousness and individual reasoning, as well as individual ability to differentiate between right and wrong, find strong support in contemporary naturalistic theories, i.e., theories on human nature. The argument on the moral dimension of the individual personality gains further support in socio-psychological theories on moral development. Thus, one goes back to the classic Aristotelian notion of human nature as a core self—and not wholly the product of culture, and not uniquely an individualistic, selfish monad—in order to investigate individual moral feelings and show that they are the product of biological evolution. Such a core self has three features that indicate the existence of a moral sensibility common to all human beings: the presence of sympathy, a sense of fairness and of self-control (see Wilson 1993:11 as cited in Boudon 2000:29). It should be added that especially a sense of fairness as a common feature and aspect of individual moral feelings has a strong basis in socio-psychological theory and research. As Tyler has commented, the legitimization of social norms and, more generally, of the social order depends considerably on such factors as representation or “voice,” i.e., participation in the decision-making process, or the opportunity to present one’s own case; on consistency, i.e., the similarity of treatment across persons and rules; on the impartiality, or neutrality of the authorities and the accuracy of procedure; and on correctability and ethicality, i.e., treatment with respect and dignity, defined also as the recognition of standing or status (Tyler 1990; Tyler and Lind 1992). The idea of a core self—of some common aspects of personality— is supplemented in an important way by developmental social psychology, first and foremost by the concept of the moral as a parallel to cognitive development. Founded in the earlier research of Jean Piaget on the cognitive development of children, and informed by symbolic interactionism, this theory differentiates between several
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stages of personality formation, from the purely opportunistic, based on subordination and fear of punishment; through the conventional, i.e., directed by an obedience to norms as the commonly accepted conventions that order social life; to the post-conventional phase, when the individual is able to formulate moral judgments and critically evaluate social order (Kolhberg, Levine and Hewer 1983). All of the above-mentioned socio-psychological theories, but especially those which presume the existence of moral aspects in human nature, gain important support from those social theories which investigate social life-worlds, institution-building and socialization processes as a social counterpart to individual moral and ethical development, emphasizing its social and institutional frameworks. The theories which stress some solid and natural, core elements of human nature are supplemented by sociological theories which emphasize everyday life, the importance for individuals of well-known meanings, existing customs, and shared traditions because of the special kind of comfort they give. One speaks about a solidity and facticity of everyday life as an important context for the formation of intersubjective meanings as well as of individual personalities and personal identities, and as a context for the institution-building process, and as a counterpart to naturalistic conceptualizations of the human being, and counterpart to a core self (Berger and Luckmann 1967). So the proposition regarding a core self could be supplemented by another one of “natural settings”: sources of institutional development of shared values, norms and meanings, as well as the formation of individual identity, individual abilities and characteristic features decisive in the micro-rationalities of individual actors, in the formation of the three characteristic features mentioned as natural to every human being, and in the characteristic forms in which a core self reveals itself in society, at a given time, under the given circumstances. However, contemporary social theory travels in a different direction in its efforts to find the sources of the ethical, or even the moral aspects of “the social.” An important theoretical tool is presented by the concept of society as communicative community. “To speak to someone,” writes Max Horkheimer, “basically means recognizing him as a possible member of the future association of free human beings. Speech establishes a shared relation towards the truth, and is therefore the innermost affirmation of another existence, indeed of all forms of existence, according to their capacities” (as cited in Wiggershaus 1994:505). That sentence from a letter by Max Horkheimer is used
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as the starting point for a concise outline of another important contribution to the study of the moral fabric in contemporary societies, i.e., the study of intersubjectivity in social communication. Horkheimer’s remark on a shared relation toward the truth, on the other hand, indicates the ethical foundations of the communicative community. The intersubjectivity of social communication, the ethical foundations of this communication, as well as its outcomes, are the subjects of the communicative action theory developed by Juergen Habermas, the most prominent contemporary representative of critical theory. Here, the communicative action is defined as a social action par excellence, a genuine social action whose outcomes contribute to the formation and existence of the “social.” The validity of a communicative action—i.e., its potential contribution to social order formation based on fairness, and simultaneously more comprehensively encompassing different life-worlds, different experiences, different interpretations, and different historical trajectories—rests upon fulfillment of communicative rationality conditions. These are given in the form of the ideal of unimpeded communication. Briefly, the ideal of unimpeded communication assumes that speakers speak not only the truth, but truthfully, without manipulative intent. Fulfillment of such conditions of a genuine social communication is decisive in the communicative rationality of the emerging social order, and its potential openness to different truths which could be further debated in order to be accepted by all participants. There are two references to the theory of communicative action. The first comprise the already mentioned life-worlds, communication in everyday life as an important aspect of individual personality and identity, as well as the formation of primary, intersubjectively shared meanings. The second is the public sphere where the different lifeworld truths are openly debated in order to establish a common, shared truth. Aimed at reconstruction of the universal conditions of rational communication, the theory of communicative action focuses above all on the genuinely political discourse taking place in the public sphere in the form of a public debate. The public sphere is also understood as a source of institution-building processes, and public debate evaluated as a crucial aspect in “good society” formation. Here, the shaping of the social order is subjected to the communicative rationality test, the communicative rationality of the speech acts themselves (Habermas 1982, 1993). However, as stressed above, for the formation of the social order,
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but firstly and foremostly of social personalities and the forms in which the core self reveals itself in given societies at a given time, as well as for the potential moral development of individual persons and the formation of their communicative competencies—their abilities to speak the truth in a truthful way, and their readiness and openness to discuss different truths and different meanings—equally important are the first, relatively solid and comfort-giving social settings in which primary, shared meanings and individual identities are formed. Therefore, in order to be more encompassing, to cross the borders of public debate, to explain barriers and impediments in the processes of liberalization and democratization, the theory of communicative action and communicative rationality needs an important supplement in the form of an equally deep and encompassing theory of life-worlds and personhood, in the form of some deliberative but still solidly grounded conceptualization. In this way, social theory will be able to incorporate local meanings and interpretations, local concepts, values and ideals into a more encompassing project of the “good society.” 5. C As I have been trying to argue and demonstrate briefly, there are visible signs of a paradigm shift in contemporary social theory. Marked by new conceptualizations of the social personality, of social lifeworlds, and of the public sphere and public debate, these new theories concentrate on the moral aspects of “the social” and try to overcome the dead ends in social theory development that, on the one hand, result from the limits imposed by the narrow, instrumental concepts of rationality, and, on the other, from the fragmentation of social theorizing resulting from the philosophical and ideological presuppositions which stress the fundamental subjectivity of values, and the impossibility of their intersubjective legitimization in the modern world. The new theories, concerned with intersubjectivity and with the possibility of situating the moral foundations of the “social” in opposition to these two visions of modern society: the one based on the concept of a global village composed of disconnected small groups, or of clashing civilizations, and the other according to which contemporary social bonds are reduced to pure encounters of tourists vagabonds, or disentangled individuals who accidentally meet in the
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time and space of global society. Both visions are contradicted by empirical evidence given by important and prominent social movements—such as Greenpeace, Amnesty International, or Human Rights Watch, to name just a few—whose membership and activity reach across the lines of religious, cultural and other basic differences, as well as across geographical and political borders. These new, important approaches are based on conceptualizations of society as a communicative community. Therefore they go beyond the political or geographical boundaries which have traditionally delineated the studies of the “social.” Communicative community could exist on any scale and is limited only by the wish to participate in the debate. The important task to be fulfilled is to supplement a public sphere oriented theory of communicative action (as the paradigmatic theory of the intersubjective public sphere) with the theory of life-worlds and their moral fabric in the contemporary world. BIBLIOGRAPHY Abell, P. (1991) Rational Choice Theory. Aldershot: Elgar. ——. (1996) “Sociological Theory and Rational Choice Theory” in B.S. Turner (ed.) The Blackwell Companion to Social Theory. Oxford: Blackwell. Bauman, Z. (1993) Postmodern Ethics. Cambridge: Polity Press. ——. (1987) Legislators or Interpreters. Cambridge: Polity Press. Baudrillard, J. (1983) In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities. New York: Semiotext. Berger, P. and Luckmann, T. (1967) The Social Construction of Reality. London: Allen Lane. Boudon, R. (2000) “Values in a Polytheistic World” in E.K. Scheuch, and D. Sciulli (eds.): The Annals of the International Institute of Sociology, Vol. 7, Leiden: Brill. Bourdieu, P. (1990) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Campbell, T. (1971) Adam Smith’s Science of Morals. London: Allen and Unwin. ——. (1981) Seven Theories of Human Society. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Coleman, J. (1990) Foundations of Social Theory. Cambridge: Belknap. Elster, J. (1985) Making Sense of Marx. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Friedman, M. (1982) Free to Choose. Boston: Harvard University Press. Foucault, M. (1976) Il faut défendre la société. Cours au Collège de France Paris: Seuil/ Gallimard. Habermas, J. (1982) Theory of Communicative Action. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. ——. (1993) Faktizitaet und Geltung. Frankfurt am Main: Sukhrkamp. Kohlberg, L., Levine, C.H. and Hewer, A. (1983) Moral Stages: A Current Formulation and Response to Critics. Basel: Karger. Olson, M. (1965) The Logic of Collective Action. Boston: Harvard University Press. Ossowska, M. (1969) Socjologia moralnosci. Warszawa: PWN. Parsons, T. (1937) The Structure of Social Action. New York: McGraw-Hill. ——. (1951) The Social System. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Raphael, D. (ed.) (1969) The British Moralists, Vol. II. London: Oxford University Press.
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Sinjavskij, A. (1991) Soviet Civilization: A Cultural History. New York: Arcade Publishing. Sk[pska, G. (forthcoming, 2003) Between Civil Society and Europe: Constitutionalism after Communism. Krakow: Universitas. Turner, B.S. (1996) “Introduction” in The Blackwell Companion to Social Theory. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Tyler, T.R. (1990) Why People Obey the Law. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. —— and Lind, E.A. (1992) “A relational model of authority in groups” in M. Zanna (ed.) Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, (Vol. 25, pp. 115–191). New York: Academic Press. Wiggershaus, R. (1994) The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories and Political Significance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
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SECTION TWO
TRUST IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETIES
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TRUST: A CULTURAL RESOURCE Piotr Sztompka 1. T C T M S The roots of the concept of trust are to be found in philosophy, theology, sociopolitical thought and ethics (cf. Silver 1985; Misztal 1996). In this article the discussion will be limited to the domain of sociology in which during the last two decades of the twentieth century a new wave of theoretical concern with trust has emerged. In 1979 Niklas Luhmann related the phenomenon of trust to the growing complexity, uncertainty and risk characterizing contemporary society. For the first time, a suggestion appeared that trust is not an obsolete resource typical of traditional society, but just the reverse, it gains in importance with the development of modernity. In 1983 Bernard Barber reviewed the manifestations of trust in various institutional and professional settings, introducing the insightful category of “fiduciary trust.” In 1984 Shmuel Eisenstadt and Louis Roniger identified trust as a core ingredient in patron-client relations, as they appear in various guises from antiquity to modernity. In 1988 Diego Gambetta brought together a number of authors looking at trust and distrust in various domains from various perspectives, and later presented his own analysis of trust in closed, exclusive communities, like the mafia (1993). In 1990 James Coleman provided an exemplary exegesis, shifting trust out as a purely rational transaction, within the framework of rational-choice theory. This avenue was followed in a number of contributions in the nineties by Russell Hardin (1991, 1993). From a macro-sociological perspective Anthony Giddens approached trust as a characteristic feature of late modernity, elaborating on Luhmannian themes of complexity, uncertainty and risk. In 1995 Francis Fukuyama provided a comprehensive exposition of trust as an indispensable ingredient of viable economic systems, basing his argument on the experience of China, Japan and other Southeast Asian societies. In 1997 Adam Seligman presented an interpretation of trust as a specifically modern phenomenon linked to the division of labor, differentiation and pluralization of roles, and the consequent
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indeterminancy and negotiability of role expectations. Twenty years after Luhmann’s observation, Piotr Sztompka offered a synthetic treatment of trust as a cultural resource necessary for the viable functioning of society, illustrating his argument with the vicissitudes of trust in the post-communist societies of Eastern Europe. The importance of trust derives from some fundamental qualities of human action. Interacting with others we must constantly articulate expectations about their future actions. Most often we lack the possibility of precise and accurate prediction or efficient control. Facing other people we remain in a condition of uncertainty, bafflement and surprise. And yet, most often we cannot refrain from acting—to satisfy our needs, to realize our goals. Then and therefore we have to face risks that others can turn against us. Trusting becomes the crucial strategy in dealing with an uncertain, unpredictable and uncontrollable future. Trust consists of two main components: beliefs and commitment. Placing their trust, people behave “as-if ” they know the ways in which other people will act. But trust is more than just contemplative anticipation. People must also face the future actively by committing themselves to action with at least partly uncertain and unpredictable consequences. Thus people gamble, making bets about the future actions and reactions of partners. To sum up, trust is a bet about the future contingent actions of others. 2. T T We vest trust in various objects. First, there is trust in the members of our family, pervaded with the strongest intimacy and closeness. Then comes the trust toward people we know personally, whom we recognize by name, and with whom we interact in face-to-face manner (our friends, neighbors, coworkers, business partners, etc.). Here trust still involves a considerable degree of intimacy and closeness. The wider circle embraces other members of our community, known at most indirectly, by sight, and directly only through some individual representatives (inhabitants of our village, employees of our firm, professors at our university, members of our political party). The widest circle includes large categories of people with whom we believe we have something in common, but who are mostly “absent others,” not directly encountered, and constructed as a real collectivity only
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in our imagination (the “imagined communities” of our compatriots, members of our ethnic group, church, race, gender, age cohort, generation, profession, etc.). Here trust in concrete persons shades off imperceptibly into trust in more abstract social categories. The next target of trust are social roles. Independent of the concrete incumbents, some roles evoke prima facie trust. Mother, friend, doctor of medicine, university professor, priest, judge, notary public—are just some examples of the trusted personal roles, or offices of “public trust.” A more abstract case is the trust directed at institutions and organizations. The school, university, army, church, courts, police, banks, stock-exchange, or the parliament are typical targets of this type of trust. An interesting variant of trust in institutions may be called procedural trust. It is trust vested in institutionalized practices or procedures. A good example is trust in science as the best method for reaching the truth, or trust in democratic procedures (elections, representation, majority vote, etc.) as the best ways of achieving a reasonable compromise among conflicting particular interests. The next important category of objects endowed with trust are technological systems (“expert systems,” “abstract systems”; cf. Giddens 1990). In modern society people live surrounded by them: by telecommunications, water and power systems, transportation systems, airtraffic control systems, military command networks, computer networks, financial markets, etc. The principles and mechanisms of their operation are opaque and cryptic for the average user. People usually take them for granted, and do not even notice their pervasive presence. And everybody has learned to rely on them, to such an extent that system failure produces a major crisis. Finally, the most abstract objects of trust are the overall qualities of the social system, social order, or regime. Trust in these engenders feelings of existential security, continuity, and stability. The various types of trust reviewed above operate according to the same logic. Most importantly, behind all of them looms the primordial form of trust—in people and their actions. Appearances notwithstanding, all of the above objects of trust, even the most abstract, are reducible to human actions. We ultimately trust human actions, and only derivatively their conglomerates, effects, or products.
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3. T S G T
Trusting expectations can be arranged along a sort of scale: from the least to most demanding, and, respectively, from the weakest, least risky to the strongest, most risky bets of trust. First, we may expect only some instrumental qualities of actions taken by others: (a) regularity (orderliness, consistency, coherence, continuity, persistence), (b) reasonableness (providing grounds, good justification for actions, accepting arguments), and (c) efficiency (competence, consistency, discipline, proper performance, effectiveness). The second class of expectations is more demanding. We may expect some moral qualities in actions performed by others: (a) we expect them to be morally responsible (i.e., engaging in principled, honest, honorable conduct, following some moral rules, showing integrity), (b) we expect them to be kind, and gentle toward ourselves, treating us in human fashion, (c) we expect them to be truthful, authentic, and straightforward, and (d) we expect others to be fair and just (applying universalistic criteria, equal standards, due process, meritocratic justice). Generally speaking, betting on the moral virtues of others is more risky than believing merely in their basic rationality. We may also make a strong bet, expecting from others what Bernard Barber called “fiduciary” conduct and defined as “duties in certain situations to place others’ interests before our own” (1983:9). This category is exemplified by: (a) disinterestedness (i.e., acting without consideration for one’s own interests or even against them), (b) representative actions (acting on behalf of others, displaying concern for the welfare of others, serving their interests; cf. Dahrendorf 1979), and (c) benevolence and generosity (caring, helping, protecting, expressing sympathy, sensitive to the sufferings of others). This is the strongest, most risky bet because the probability that most people would be unselfish is low, and that they would undertake representative duties and engage in altruistic help is even lower. There are three grounds on which decisions to trust (to “place a bet”) may be based: reflected trustworthiness, personal trustfulness and trust culture. Insofar as trust is a relationship with others, granting trust is based on an estimate of their trustworthiness. Trust in this case may be considered as the “reflected trustworthiness” of partners: our perception of their reputation, performance or appearance. The probability of well-placed trust rises with the amount and variety of verifiable information about the trustee. Without such
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knowledge trust is blind and the chances of its breach are high. But trust is not only a calculating relationship, but also a psychological impulse (Wilson 1993). Innate trustfulness may push people to trust quite independently of any estimate of trustworthiness. This has nothing to do with knowledge about the partners of future engagements. Rather the impulse derives from a past history of diverse relationships pervaded with trust, primarily in the family and later in other groups, associations, or organizations. People may also be encouraged to trust by the surrounding cultural rules. Normative rules may push toward trusting, defining this as proper. If the rules demanding trust are shared by a community, and perceived as an external given by each member, then they exert strong constraining pressure on actual trust-granting acts. They may significantly modify the rational estimates of trust, as well as inherent trusting impulses. 4. T C Trust culture is a system of such rules—norms and values—as regulate trust granting as well as trust reciprocating. There are the normative obligations to trust and there are the normative obligations to be trustworthy, credible, and reliable. One locus of both types of obligations are social roles. There are social roles which refer to trusters and include a normative imperative to trust others. This is true of “helping professions”: the doctor of medicine, defense counsel, social worker, priest, etc. There are other social roles which refer to trustees and place strong emphasis on trustworthiness (the demand for reciprocating trust, i.e., acting reliably, morally, caringly). For example, university professors are expected to be truthful and responsible for their words, judges—to be fair and just in their verdicts, football referees—to be impartial. The more general rule of noblesse oblige demands exemplary conduct from those who have attained elevated positions in social hierarchy endowed with high esteem. All these are role-specific rules of trust. But there are also more diffuse expectations of trust pervasive in some societies, in some periods of time. Francis Fukuyama (1995) makes a distinction between “high-trust cultures” in which he includes several countries of the Far East, and “low-trust cultures” in which he includes some countries of the West. Robert Putnam (1995a, 1995b) and Richard Stivers (1994)
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complain about the demise of the high-trust American culture of the nineteenth century, and the emergence of the “culture of cynicism” in our time. There are also culturally diffuse rules demanding and enforcing general trustworthiness. Mediaeval guilds, firms with a long tradition, famous corporations, gold and diamond dealers, elite newspapers and journals, established publishing houses, etc. put great emphasis on fulfilling the obligations and meeting the trust of their clients. The “professional pride”, or the “honor of the firm” become general normative guidelines embracing various sorts of activities. Once the trust culture emerges and becomes strongly rooted in the normative system of a society, it becomes a powerful factor influencing decisions to trust, as well as to reciprocate trust. It may become a strong stabilizing force guaranteeing the persistence and continuity of trust. 5. T E T C Several macrosocietal circumstances may be hypothetically postulated as conducive to the emergence of trust culture. The first is normative coherence, in contrast to normative chaos or anomie. The norms— of law, morality, or custom—provide the solid skeleton of social life, and their effective enforcement assures their binding nature. This makes social life more unproblematic, secure, orderly, and predictable as there are fixed scenarios indicating what people should and will do. Such a normative ordering of social life raises the likelihood that other people will meet our expectations. The resulting feeling of existential security and certainty encourages the bets of trust. But apart from that there are enforceable norms more immediately relevant for trust, demanding honesty, loyalty and reciprocity. Their presence raises the likelihood of such conduct and assures us that our partners will fulfill obligations and extend mutual trust. The second structural condition is the stability of the social order, as opposed to radical change. If the network of groups, associations, institutions, organizations, or regimes is long lasting, persistent and continuous, it provides firm reference points for social life, a feeling of security, support and comfort. Repeated routines which people follow allow prediction of their conduct. Similarly, meeting obligations and reciprocating trust becomes not so much a matter of duty,
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but rather an unproblematic, habitual response (“second nature”). People simply do not entertain the possibility that one could act otherwise. Trust may therefore be more easily offered as the chances that it will be met, repaid or mutually extended are high. By implication, social change is compatible with trust only if it proceeds gradually, regularly, and predictably in a slow rhythm and consistent direction. The third contextual, macro-societal factor relevant for the propensity to trust is the transparency of a social organization, as opposed to pervasive secrecy. The easy availability of information about the functioning, efficiency, and levels of achievement, as well as failures and pathologies of groups, associations, institutions, organizations, and regimes provides a feeling of security and predictability. People are apt to relate to them with trust because of an assurance about what to expect. The fourth factor is the familiarity, or its opposite, the strangeness of the environment in which people operate. By the environment we mean the immediate and surrounding “life-world,” the natural, technological and civilizational millieu. It includes various components: landscapes and topography, architecture, interiors, designs, colors, tastes, smells, images, etc. This factor, like the earlier one, has to do with customary routines. The experience of familiarity provides one with a sense of security, certainty, predictability, and comfort. In effect, it produces a trust-generating atmosphere in which it is easier to believe that trusting predictions will be borne out, that entrusted values will be cared for and returned, and that others will reciprocate with mutual trust. The fifth condition is the accountability of other people and institutions, as opposed to arbitrariness and irresponsibility. If there is a rich, accessible and properly functioning set of institutions, setting standards and providing checks and controls of conduct, the danger of abuse is diminished, and the regularity of procedures safeguarded. If people can resort to such institutions when their rights are not recognized, or the obligations of others toward them are not respected, then they acquire a kind of insurance, a backup option, and therefore feel more safe. Everybody is confident that standards will be observed, departures from them prevented, and that even if abuse occurs it will be corrected by recourse to litigation, arbitration, restitution, etc.
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6. F S T
Trust bears generally beneficial consequences for partners in social relationships, the groups to which they belong, as well as for the peaceful, harmonious and cohesive quality of broader social life. We may suspect that when trust is missing the resulting vacuum will be filled with some alternative arrangements performing similar functions and meeting universal cravings for certainty, predictability and order. These will be the functional substitutes for trust. The typical and widespread ways of coping with deficiencies of trust may acquire a normative sanction, turn into cultural rules prescribing certain conduct, or even into complex institutions. The danger is that some of these practices, strategies, and institutions may be clearly pathological. Manifesting themselves as functional substitutes to correct for the unfulfilled functions of trust, they can produce dysfunctional consequences for the wider society. The first adaptive reaction is providentialism: the invocation of supernatural or metaphysical forces—God, destiny, fate—as anchors of some spurious certainty. These are thought to be overseeing a situation about which nothing seemingly can be done. This compensation may bring some psychological consolation, but at the social level it produces disastrous effects—apathy, passivism and stagnation. The second, quite perverse substitute for trust is corruption. Spreading in a society it provides some misleading sense of orderliness and predictability, some feeling of control over a chaotic environment, some way of forcing others to do what we want them to do. The sane tissue of social bonds is replaced by a network of reciprocal favors and “connections” in a cynical world of mutual manipulation and exploitation. The third mechanism is an overgrowth of vigilance—taking into private hands the direct supervision and control of others whose competence or integrity is put into doubt, or whose accountability is seen as weak—due to the inefficiency or lax standards of enforcing agencies. Private security forces, walled communities with sentries, private possession of weapons, burglar alarms in cars and apartments, private agencies for debt collection—all these are clear indicators that trust has collapsed. The fourth mechanism is excessive litigatiousness. If trust is missing, the handshake will no longer do. People will try to safeguard all relationships formally: draw meticulous contracts, insist on col-
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lateral and bank guarantees, employ witnesses and notaries public, and resort to litigation in any, even miniscule, event of trust breaching by their partners. The fifth mechanism may be called ghettoization, i.e., closing in, building impenetrable boundaries around a group in an alien and threatening environment. Diffuse distrust in the wider society is compensated by strong loyalty to local tribal, ethnic or familial groups, matched by xenophobia and hostility toward foreigners. People lock themselves up in ghettos of limited and intimate relationships, isolated and strictly separated from other groups, organizations and institutions. By cutting the external world off, they reduce some of its complexity and uncertainty. The sixth reaction may be called paternalization. When trust is missing, people seek protection in a fatherlike figure, a strong autocratic leader, a charismatic personality who would restore, if necessary by force, a semblance of order, predictability and continuity in social life. When such a leader emerges, he easily becomes a focus of blind, substitute trust. A similar craving for abdication of responsibility is also satisfied by other institutions: spreading cults, sects, “voracious communities,” demanding full loyalty, and total undivided commitment. They become quasi-families, with a strong substitute father taking full care of its members. The seventh reaction may be called externalization of trust. In a climate of distrust against local politicians, institutions, products etc., people turn to foreign societies, and deposit their trust in their leaders, organizations or goods. Such external targets of trust are often blindly idealized which tendency is facilitated by the distance, selective bias of the media, and lack of direct contrary evidence. 7. O T D: T C P S To demonstrate the possibility of studying trust cultures and distrust syndromes empirically, I take as a case the marked decay of trust immediately following the “revolutionary euphoria” of 1989. The collapse of the communist system, greeted with enthusiasm by large masses of people, soon afterwards produced an acute distrust syndrome which persisted until the middle of the nineties. It was only around 1994–95 that the curves of deepening distrust turned and a slow
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recuperation of trust began. My empirical evidence will cover only that initial period of transformation accompanied by the emergence of a distrust syndrome. The data will come from only one country in the region, namely Poland. These limitations are justified by the purpose I have set in this paragraph, namely to illustrate the variety of possible empirical indicators of trust and distrust. Empirical evidence for trust or distrust at the cultural level can be sought in three directions. First we may examine inferential indicators. If our theoretical assumptions about the functional substitutes for trust are correct, its decay will be marked by the spreading of such phenomena as providentialism, corruption, vigilantism, paternalism, and/or externalization of trust. Second, we may look at some behavioral indicators: what people actually do or seem ready to do. More precisely, we seek typical modes of actual or intended conduct which would signify a lack of trust. Third, we may examine verbal indicators: straightforward declarations, or evaluations of various aspects of social life, elicited by surveys and opinion polls in which various types of distrust are more directly articulated. Thus, we must see how postcommunist people adapt to the new conditions, what they do and think in the period immediately following the change of the regime, and from amongst this evidence, unravel what might be signs of deep distrust. Several functional substitutes, indicating a deficiency of trust, could be observed. First, a retreat from the discourse of agency (which was at its peak in 1980–81 and then at the end of the eighties) back toward discourse of fate was perceivable in survey results. In 1994, 68.3% of the respondents from the city of Warsaw believed that “planning the future is impossible because too much depends on chance”; 74.2% complained that “most people do not realize how their lives are guided by chance” and 62.8% claimed that “most of us are victims of forces which we can neither understand nor control” (Marody 1996:216). The behavioral symptom was the eruption of gambling. The popularity of games of chance (lotto and others), emergence of casinos, bingo establishments, as well TV programs providing a virtual experience of winning (e.g., by watching the Wheel of Fortune or similar entertainment) may be telling. In 1990, one fourth of a nationwide sample (26%) declared that they had purchased some sort of lottery ticket (CBOS Bulletin, 8/1998:8). Second, people were clearly aware of spreading corruption, nepotism, and favoritism. In a nationwide poll conducted in 1992, 86% of the respondents defined corruption as a very grave social prob-
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lem, and 54% claimed that bribery was the only effective way of dealing with the administration, even in simple and uncontroversial cases (CBOS Bulletin, April 1992:40–42). As for the domains of life in which corruption was most pervasive, the respondents indicated the public and governmental sphere: the administration and public institutions (44%), the courts and judiciary (41%), the police (39%) (CBOS Bulletin, 5/1994:113). Third, distrust in the social order and public safety was visible in the spread of all sorts of self-defensive and protective measures. Vigilance developed as a functional substitute for trust. The sales of guns, gas, or personal alarms, the installation of hardened doors, specialized locks and other anti-theft devices in homes and cars, the training of guard dogs, and building of walled and heavily-guarded residences and condominiums have grown into a flourishing business. There has been a real eruption of private institutions and organizations making up for the undependable operation of state agencies: private security guards, detective agencies, debt collectors, etc. We have also observed the development of voluntary associations aimed at defending citizens against abuse: consumer groups, tenant associations, creditor groups, taxpayer defense organizations and the like. Fourth, the externalization of trust became visible in expectations of foreign aid from governments as well as international agencies, dependence on foreign investments, and high support for joining NATO or the European Union. More than 49% of the people were already aware of European integration treaties, and 48% declared a positive view of the EU and its policies. As high as 80% wanted Poland to join the European Union, and 43% opted for doing this immediately (Gallup Eurobarometer, 3, Feb. 1993). Support for joining NATO was even stronger as the result of pervasive external distrust toward Russia and other post-Soviet republics. But this substitution of external for internal trust also manifested itself in consumer behavior. People consistently preferred foreign over local products, even of comparable quality, and even if local prices were lower. This referred equally to agricultural products, food, clothing, technical equipment, all the way to automobiles. Positive stereotypes of foreign nations and firms, as producers of the best goods, were common and uncritically accepted: German precision, Japanese innovativeness, French comfort, Italian style, and, more concretely, Mercedes as a synonym for the best car, IBM—the best computers, Sony—the best audio-visual equipment, etc.
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Another sign of externalized trust was to be found in saving decisions. Among those who did save then, foreign currency was still considered more dependable by a large segment of the population, despite much lower interest rates compared to local currency. Approximately 36% of all savings were put in foreign currency, most of that in US dollars and Deutsche Marks (GW, April 3, 1994), and 25% of the Poles believed that saving in dollars was the best defence against inflation (CBOS Bulletin, January 1994). Fifth, the craving for paternalist care—a strong ruler and simple solutions for economic problems—opened the doors to all kinds of populists and demagogues. There was still a persistent expectation, typical of the old regime “that the state is responsible for all aspects of economic and social life and, therefore, should solve all problems” (Ekiert and Kubik 1997:26). This attitude explains perhaps why, assuming that wages were equal, 65% of the people would choose to work in a state-owned enterprise, and only 15% in a private one (CBOS Bulletin, 4/1995:98). The case of Stanis∑aw Tymi…ski, the businessman from Canada who was able to draw almost one fifth of the electorate in the 1990 presidential elections through empty promises of immediate prosperity, seems a telling indicator of a populist-claimant orientation. Let us turn now to behavioral indicators: the typical forms of conduct manifested by a member of society. Perhaps the strongest sign of generalized distrust in the viability of one’s own society is the decision to emigrate. This is the clearest form of the “exit option” (Hirschman 1970) which people take when life conditions become unbearable and no improvement is in sight. The stream of refugees fleeing East Germany in 1989 via Budapest, “boat people” escaping Haiti, Cambodia, Vietnam, or Cuba, or Mexicans slipping over the American border are strong indications that people have lost any “internal trust” in the political or economic system of their own society. At the same time, a functional substitute of “external trust” develops: either in the vague, diffuse notion of the “free world,” “the West,” etc., or in the more specific idea of an intended, most attractive country of immigration. Now we may look at the Polish case. Long after 1989, when all previous political motivations were no longer present, a considerable stream of emigrants has been flowing out of Poland, especially from among higher educated groups and professionals (doctors of medicine, engineers, artists, musicians, athletes, etc.). The ranking of the preferred directions of emigration has generally been as follows: the
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US, Germany, France, Switzerland, Canada, Italy, Australia, Austria, Sweden, Greece, etc. (Slany 1997:94). In the years 1991–95, 112,716 emigrants left Poland permanently (Rocznik Demograficzny, 1997:312). In the American “visa lottery” Poles have consistently been assigned high quotas which indicates that the number of applicants is among the largest. A very telling, special case is the so-called resettlement of Polish citizens claiming German origin. According to estimates by the German Red Cross, in 1980 there were at most 100,000 ethnic Germans living in Poland. And yet, after that date until 1991, 790,000 “repatriates” came to Germany (Okolski 1996:33). This shows the scale of the “exit” drive and the aspiration to get rid of Polish citizenship by sometimes faking foreign descent. This is supported by survey data which showed that 29%, i.e., approximately one in three, seriously considered emigrating (Central and Eastern Eurobarometer, March 1993), and around 59% declared a readiness to go abroad temporarily for work (CBOS Bulletin, 8/1992:46). In fact, in 1995, more than 900,000 Poles travelled abroad, a considerable percentage of those seeking temporary employment (Rocznik Statystyczny, 1997:112). A phenomenon akin to emigration, another variant of the “exit” option, is withdrawal from participation in public life (an internal exile). Despite the new democratic regime, “the ‘us-versus-them’ conceptualization of politics, in which the ‘state’ is seen as the main antagonist of the ‘society’, was regaining its popularity after a short decline in 1989” (Ekiert and Kubik 1997:26). Let us mention just two symptoms of this. One is electoral abstentions. In the first democratic presidential elections in Poland, almost 50% chose to abstain, and in later municipal elections overall participation was around 34%, falling down to 20% in the cities. In the parliamentary elections of 1991, only 43% participated, and 57% abstained (Miszalska 1996:172–188). Another aspect of the same is a continuing reluctance to support the state in the economic domain. In a relatively poor country, it is quite amazing how enormous an amount of money can be raised in philanthropic campaigns, as long as they are defined as spontaneous and private and not run by the government. The same people who donate huge sums for the “Great Orchestra of Festive Help” (a nationwide telethon to raise money for sick children) will strain their wits on how to evade taxes. Pervasive distrust may alternatively be manifested by “voice” rather than “exit” option. Those who do not want to emigrate or choose
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passiveness, take to collective protest. The number of “protest events” is a good sign of public distrust. Of course, this must be accompanied by some level of trust in the contesting groups or movements and their potential efficacy. Distrust in official politics is substituted by trust in grassroots “alternative politics.” The life of postcommunist society is quite rich in protest events. In the case of Poland, we observe repeated waves of strikes, street manifestations, protest rallies, marches, road blockades, or hunger strikes, expressing generalized distrust in government or more specific distrust in concrete policies. As Ekiert and Kubik claim on the basis of a thorough analysis “Poland of the early 1990s would rank among the most contentious nations in the world” (Ekiert and Kubik 1997:17). Their count of “protest events” shows 306 for the year 1990, 292 for 1991, 314 for 1992 and 250 for 1993 (ibid.:19). The numbers of workers on strike doubled between 1990 and 1991, from 115,687 to 221,547 (ibid.:21). During the year from 1992 to 1993, the number of those who believed that nothing could be attained without strikes rose from 20% to 40% (CBOS Bulletin, 5/1993:115). Distrust may be spotted when we examine forms of behavior directed toward the more distant future in which some optimistic vision must be present. If that image is unclear or negative, we will observe a presentist orientation—concern with the immediate moment—to the neglect of any deeper temporal horizon. In this respect some authors refer to contemporary Poland as a “waiting society,” showing “reluctance to plan and think of the future in a long time perspective” (Tarkowska 1994:64–66). Generalized distrust in the future has been reflected in many ways. One example is found in individual educational decisions which, in many cases, are not correlated with tendencies in the labor market, nor motivated by long-range life-plans, but rather seem aimed at prolonging an unproblematic youth by spending several years in an enjoyable academic milieu and postponing serious occupational decisions as long as possible. How else could one explain the top popularity of such university departments as archeology (and particularly Mediterranean archeology), art history, religion studies, philosophy, psychology, etc. (recruitment statistics for the Jagiellonian University 1992, 1993 and 1994). Other evidence of similar attitudes is found when we turn to some prevailing types of economic behavior. One of them is conspicuous spending on consumer goods, to the neglect of investing or saving: 59% of the people declared that saving is entirely unreasonable (GW,
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October 18, 1994). Most people were still reluctant to invest in private business; only 14% considered it seriously, and only 7% were ready to invest in stocks (GW, April 30, 1994) But even among those who decided to invest, a characteristic pattern appeared. It was striking that most investments still went into trade, services, and financial operations rather than production or construction (Bossak 1994:125). This reflected an uncertainty about legal regulations, terms of trade, and consistency of economic policies. An attempt to make immediate profits, instead of waiting for larger but deferred ones, would be the rational response to such anxieties. Similarly, it was typical that the institution of life-insurance was long in its budding phase, and attracted only a marginal group of clients. Institutional distrust in the economic arena may be indicated by the typical behavior of investors in the stock exchange, a new institution in the Polish economy at that time. Most of the investors completely disregarded “fundamental analysis” based on objective indicators of performance reported by firms, using at best the “technical analysis” of price curves, according to some trendy and magic recipes (“Elliott Waves” were particularly en vogue). Investors seemed to rely on the wildest rumors, and exhibited pervasive suspicion of all official pronouncements, statistical data, or economic prognoses. They were pushed and pulled by blind imitation of others and a herd instinct which resulted in alternating waves of enthusiasm and despair. In the area of services, the distrust in public institutions was glaring. If a choice was available, people most often elected private over public services. When socialized, state-run medicine lost its monopoly, a large number of patients switched immediately to private doctors and their clinics, in spite of high expenses. More and more private schools at elementary and secondary level have been draining students from public education, in spite of excessive tuition. This has slowly extended up to the level of higher education where even highly prestigious state universities are abandoned by some students in favor of new private establishments. The assumption seems to reign that the only dependable guarantee of good services is money. Let us move now to direct opinions, evaluations, and projections in which people verbally exhibit some measure of distrust (verbal indicators). At the most general level, the best indicator of trust is the appraisal of systemic reforms, their success heretofore, and their future prospects. In 1991, only 13.6% of the respondents in the working class center of „ódz´ considered the direction of change as right and proper (Miszalska 1997:50). In 1993, only 29% of a nationwide
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sample unconditionally approved reforms, while 56% declared distrust (Eurobarometer, February 1993). In another poll 58% of the respondents appraised the current political and economic situation as deteriorating (GW, February 22, 1994). In yet another, 69% felt that nobody was currently controlling the development of events in the country (CBOS Bulletin, 1/1992:8). When asked about more specific dimensions of reforms, only 32% declared democracy a good thing, while 55% were dissatisfied with its institutions (Eurobarometer, February 1993). When relating it more concretely to our Polish democracy, people have been even more critical: in 1993, 39% still described the political system as non-democratic, with only 22% seeing it as close to true democracy (CBOS Bulletin, 5/1993:18). Two years later, 43% believed that democracy was functioning badly, and only 1% said that it operated well (CBOS Bulletin, 1/1995:62). Trust in Parliament continues to visibly fall. Similarly, only 29% believed that privatization has brought “changes for the better” (GW, April 17, 1994). And asked about who benefits from it, in 1992, 46% indicated wealthy people, 55%—conmen and tricksters, 20%—the old communist nomenklatura, and only 4%—the common people (CBOS Bulletin, 9/1996:102). As for who loses, here 66% responded that it was “the common people” (ibid.: 103). In 1991, 59% predicted the deterioration of their personal economic situation (CBOS Bulletin, 1/1992:9). In July 1993 the negative evaluation of the economic situation reached its peak with 70% of a nationwide sample perceiving it as bad, and only 5% as good (CBOS Bulletin, 2/1994:6). For the whole year of 1993 the Polish standard of living was assessed as bad by 71–82% of the respondents (CBOS Bulletin, 2/1994:7). When pressed about the concrete changes which, after all, had taken place, the respondents showed a strikingly negative bias, perceiving mostly the dark side of reforms. As crucial changes, 93% indicated the growth of crime, 89%—the appearance of economic rackets, 87%—socioeconomic distances and growing polarization into rich and poor, 57%—decreased social security and care for the needy, and 62%—weakened mutual sympathy and helping attitudes among the people (GW, June 17, 1994). Another indicator of generalized distrust has been the comparison of the present socioeconomic situation with the past. Asked about their own, personal condition five years into the changes, 53% felt that they were living worse than before (GW, June 17, 1994). In the industrial city of „ódz´ the percentage was even higher—75% (Miszalska 1996:68). During the whole of 1993, only around 12–13%
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defined their living conditions as good (CBOS Bulletin, 1/1994:7). Appraising the situation of others, around half of the respondents believed that people were generally more satisfied under real socialism. This surprising result was confirmed by three independent polls, estimating the percentages at 52%, 48%, and 54% (GW, June 28, 1994). When thinking about their society in the future, people were even more pessimistic. Only 20% trusted that the situation would improve, 32% expected a turn for the worse, and 36% hoped that it would at least remain unchanged (GW, April 17, 1994). Another poll shows as many as 64% pessimists versus just 20% optimists (CBOS Bulletin, 1/1994:5). More concretely, referring to the overall economic situation, 62% believed that it would not improve (Eurobarometer, February 1993), and 55% expected costs of living to rise (CBOS Bulletin, January 1994). A confirmation of distrust in the future was found in the list of problems that people worried about: 73% indicated a lack of prospects for their children as something that worried them the most (CBOS Bulletin, January 1993). More concrete institutional and positional distrust has taken many forms. Trust in governmental institutions has been consistently decreasing. Even the Catholic Church, traditionally one of the most tenable institutions (with the declared trust of 82.7% of a nationwide sample in 1990; See Marody 1996:252) seemed to be affected by the climate of distrust, especially when it usurped a more political role. Especially, 54% disapproved of such an extension of the Church’s functions, and 70% wanted the Church to limit its activities to the religious arena (GW, May 10, 1994). The mass media, even though much more independent and not linked directly to the state, has not fared much better. Apparently they have not yet regained trust, devastated by their instrumental role under real-socialism: 48% of the people did not believe TV, and 40% distrusted the newspapers (Eurobarometer, February 1993). The institutions of public accountability have done little better. Internal revenue offices were believed to be helpless against tax fraud by 62% of the respondents, and only 14% considered them effective in tax collection (CBOS Bulletin, 8/1993:26). Some 72% disapproved of the operations of the police, and 52% of the courts (CBOS Bulletin, 7/1994:72). The only exception has been the army which has held onto its relatively high level of trustworthiness with 75–80% expressing consistent approval then. But it has been the politicians who have been treated with the greatest suspicion: 87% of a nationwide sample claimed that they only take care of their own interests and careers and neglect the public
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good (GW, July 11, 1994); 77% also believed that they use their offices for private gain (CBOS Bulletin, October 1995:1), and 87% that they exclusively care for their own careers (GW, 159/1994). If anything went wrong in society, 93% of the people declared that “the politicians and bureaucrats are guilty” (Koralewicz and Ziótkowski 1990:62); 48% saw public administration as overrun by corruption, though only 8% perceived this in private businesses (GW, March 19, 1994). The veracity of high offices has also been doubted: 49% of citizens would not believe information given by ministers (GW, March 25, 1994), and 60% were convinced that data on levels of inflation, or GNP growth released by the state statistical office were false (CBOS Bulletin, January 1994). Not much trust has been attached to the fiduciary re-sponsibility of the government or administration. A decade ago 70% believed that public bureaucracy is entirely insensitive to human suffering and grievances (Giza-Poleszczuk 1991:76). Fairness and justice were found to be absent in public institutions: 71% felt that in state enterprises “good work is not a means for enrichment” (Koralewicz and Ziótkowski 1990:55), and 72% believed that people advance not because of success in work, but due to “connections” (Giza-Poleszczuk 1991:86). This extended to courts of law: 79% claimed that verdicts would not be the same for persons of different social status (Giza-Poleszczuk 1991:88). The police had been long viewed with a traditional lack of confidence, and hence public security has been evaluated very low. Some 56% avoided going out after dark (Polityka, May 14, 1994), and 36% did not feel safe on the streets at all, day or night (CBOS Bulletin, November 1993). To the question—“Is Poland an internally safe country?”—67% responded in the negative, and only 26% felt secure (GW, March 21, 1994). Any contact with politics has seemed polluting. Taking public office would not add to one’s popularity, but rather the reverse. Distrust of active politicians has been striking. In a prestige ranking of the most popular persons, the top three places were held by persons visible on the political stage, but not linked directly to any political office: the oppositional intellectual Jacek Kuron, Cardinal Joseph Glemp, and the famous heart-surgeon Zbigniew Religa (GW, June 18, 1994). When the question was asked in reverse—“Who has brought shame to Poland?”—three Polish presidents (Bierut, Jaruzelski and Wa∑esa) rose to the top, together indicated by 49.7% of the respondents (Polityka, June 25, 1994). The case of Lech Wa∑êsa has been particularly telling
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as we observed the dramatic fall of his popularity once he took presidential office: 24% declared that he had brought shame to Poland in his handling of the presidency, as opposed to his earlier status of charismatic and heroic leader (Polityka, June 25, 1994). Finally, if we look at everyday interpersonal trust of the early 1990s, people also perceived its decay. In one survey, 56% estimated that mutual sympathy and assistance have markedly deteriorated (OBOP Bulletin, 10/1996:2). According to the Polish General Social Survey, a tendency of declining interpersonal trust persisted until 1994. A belief that “most people can be trusted” was expressed by 10.1% of a nationwide sample in 1992, 8.9% in 1993 and 8.3% in 1994. And the opposite view that “one is never careful enough in dealing with other people” was supported by 87.8% in 1992, 89.5% in 1993 and 90.3% in 1994 (Marody 1996:224). This portrait of Polish society, even if somewhat sketchy and incomplete, has been strikingly persistent. Trust appears to be the most rare of social resources; a “culture of distrust” seems to be deeply embedded. Once the decay of trust reaches this cultural level, distrust becomes contagious and self-enhancing. From now on it will be a “normal,” accepted reaction to be distrustful, and most displays of trust will be considered signs of credulity, naivete, or simple-mindedness, and be met with ridicule, mockery, and other negative sanctions. Sadly and paradoxically, cynicism has been raised to a virtue. As indicated earlier, this dismal situation began to improve as of the middle of the nineties, leading to a slow, but persistent recuperation of trust in some areas. The process of healing is clearly underway. Nonetheless, I will not discuss recent trends as the main purpose of this empirical illustration was simply to show that trust and distrust cultures may be diagnosed at the macro level of culture by applying the normal tools of the sociological trade. BIBLIOGRAPHY Barber, B. (1983) The Logic and Limits of Trust. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Bossak, J. (ed.) (1994) Poland: International Economic Report 1993/1994. Warsaw: Warsaw School of Economics. Coleman, J.C. (1990) Foundations of Social Theory. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Dahrendorf, R. (1979) Life Chances: Approaches to Social and Political Theory. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Eisenstadt, S.N. and Roniger, L. (1984) Patrons, Clients and Friends. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Ekiert, G. and Kubik, J. (1997) “Collective protest and democratic consolidation in Poland, 1989–93,” in A. Seleny and E. Suleiman (eds.) New Papers on Central Eastern European Reforms and Regionalism, no. 3, Princeton, NJ: Center of International Studies, Princeton University. Fukuyama, F. (1995) Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity. New York: Free Press. Gambetta, D. (ed.) (1988) Trust: Making and Breaking Cooperative Relations. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. ——. (1993) The Sicilian Mafia. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Giddens, A. (1990) The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Giza-Poleszczuk, A. (1991) “Stosunki mie˛dzyludzkie i ûycie zbiorowe,” in M. Marody (ed.) Co nam zosta∑o z tych lat. London: Aneks, pp. 69–105. Hardin, R. (1991) “Trusting Persons, Trusting Institutions”, in R.J. Zeckhauser (ed.) Strategy and Choice. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, pp. 185–209. ——. (1993) “The street-level epistemology of trust”, in Politics and Society, vol. 21, no. 4, pp. 505–529. Hirschman, A.O. (1970) Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Koralewicz, J. and Zió∑kowski, M. (1990) Mentalno≤Æ Polaków. Pozna…: Nakom. Luhmann, N. (1979) Trust and Power. New York: John Wiley. Marody, M. (ed.) (1996) Oswajanie rzeczywisto≤ci. Warsaw: Instytut Studiów Spo∑ecznych. Miszalska, A. (1996) Reakcje spo∑eczne na przemiany ustrojowe. „ódz´: „ódz´ University Press Misztal, B.A. (1996) Trust in Modern Societies. Cambridge: Polity Press. Okólski, M. (1996) “Przemiany ludzno≤ciowe w Polsce w XX wieku,” in M. Marody and E. Gucwa-Le≤ny (eds.) Podstawy ûycia spo∑ecznego w Polsce. Warsaw: Instytut Studiów Spo∑ecznych, pp. 17–38. Putnam, R.D. (1995a) Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ——. (1995b) “Bowling alone: America’s declining social capital”, in Journal of Democracy, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 65–78. Seligman, A. (1997) The Problem of Trust. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Silver, A. (1985) “ ‘Trust’ in social and political theory”, in G.D. Suttles and M.N. Zald (eds.) The Challenge of Social Control. Norwood: Ablex Publishers. Slany, K. (ed.) (1997) Orientacje emigracyjne Polaków. Kraków: Jagiellonian University Press. Stivers, R. (1994) The Culture of Cynicism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Sztompka, P. (1999) Trust: A Sociological Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tarkowska, E. (1994) “A Waiting Society: The Temporal Dimension of Transformation in Poland,” in A. Flis and P. Seel (eds.) Social Time and Temporality. Kraków: Goethe Institute, pp. 57–71. Wilson, J.Q. (1993) The Moral Sense. New York: Free Press. CBOS Bulletin = periodical of the Center for the Study of Social Opinions, Warsaw. Eurobarometer = Central and Eastern Eurobarometer, periodical of the Commission of European Communities, Brussels. GW = Gazeta Wyborcza, leading nationwide Polish daily newspaper. OBOP = Center for Public Opinion Research, Warsaw. Polityka = leading Polish weekly magazine. Rocznik Demograficzny = Demographic Yearbook, Warsaw: GUS. Rocznik Statystyczny = Statistical Yearbook, Warsaw: GUS.
SOME OBSERVATIONS ON PROBLEMS OF TRUST IN MODERN SOCIETIES: CONSTRUCTION OF TRUST, COLLECTIVE IDENTITY AND THE FRAGILITY AND CONTINUITY OF DEMOCRATIC REGIMES S.N. Eisenstadt T I B: T P G T I The purpose of this paper is to explore some problems in the constitution of trust in modern societies, with special emphasis on the relations between the construction of trust and collective identity. The place of trust in the processes of institution building and institutional dynamics has, of course, been the basic thrust of Durkheim’s emphasis on the importance of precontractual elements for the fulfillment of contracts seemingly dealing with purely “utilitarian” considerations.1 But this crucial and problematic insight has not been systematically followed up in the social science literature. Only lately it has been again taken up—initially, perhaps paradoxically—from within various rational choice approaches which have come to recognize that the continuity of patterns of social interaction and of institutional frameworks cannot be explained by purely rational-utilitarian considerations.2 At the same time the more recent analyses have also pointed to some of the complexities, paradoxes and problems of the construction of trust in social interaction and institution building.
1 T. Fukuda review of E. Durkheim, “Die gesellschaftliche und wirtschaftliche Entwicklung in Japan,” L’annee sociologique, 5, (1900–1901): 342–47. 2 V. Braithwaite and M. Levi, (eds.), Trust and Governance, New York, Russell Sage Foundation, 1998; R. Kramer and T. Tyler, Trust in Organizations: Frontiers of Theory and Research, London, Sage Publications, 1993.
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The most basic of these paradoxes is that while trust does indeed constitute a precondition for the continuity of any long-range social interactions, at the same time it is not naturally given but continually constructed and reconstructed—and hence also potentially fragile. By trust I mean, following Claus Offe: . . . Trust is the belief that others will do certain things or refrain from doing certain things. The truster knows that the action of the trusted others will have consequences for his own welfare, and that for this reason there is a risk involved in trusting. Trust is a reflectively fallible ex ante guess. It follows the logic: ‘I know it can happen, yet I believe it won’t happen,’ with ‘it’ being some undesired event caused by the trusted. The dynamics of trust-building can be represented on the time axis. Trust, once its necessary and sufficient conditions are met, is a steady state capable of reproducing itself. What is associated with this steady state is a perception of predictability, consistency, robustness concerning the behavior of relevant others. . . . He should always remain faithful to shared beliefs and values and performed competently will continue to do so in the future—at least in the absence of irritating events and perceptions that lead the actor to reconsider whom to trust, to what extent to trust, and in what respects. In the absence of such irritating events, a trust relation is self-enforcing . . .3
But trust is inherently fragile. It is fragile first of all because it entails a strong element of uncertainty, of risk. This risk results, to cite Margaret Levi, from the fact that the truster is unable to make sure or know for certain that the other person(s) will actually act in the way preferred by the truster. The means by which he might be able to make this sure— coercive power, economic resources to be employed as incentives, and certain knowledge derived from direct observation or tested causal theories—are not at the disposal of the truster.4
III The fragility of trust is exacerbated in any broader institutional setting by the fact that the conditions that make for maintenance of 3 C. Offe, “Trust and Knowledge, Rules and Decisions: Exploring a Difficult Conceptual Terrain,” draft paper prepared for the “Democracy and Trust,” Conference Georgetown University, Washington DC. November 7–9, 1996, pp. 3–4. 4 Ibid., p. 3.
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trust are seemingly best met in relatively limited ranges of social activities or interaction, such as in family, kinship, or small territorial groups in which social interaction is regulated according to primordial and/or particularistic criteria. Such limited ranges of interaction seem to constitute the necessary minimal conditions for the initial development of trust, even if they may not be enough to guarantee its continuity even in such settings. At the same time, however, these very conditions may be inimical to the development of resources and activities needed for the development and institutionalization of broader institutional complexes. The very processes that generate resources necessary for the construction of such broader, institutional settings also tend to undermine the potential trust as it tends to develop within the family, kinship groups or in small communities— but at the same time such construction cannot be effective without strong components of trust being built into it. The institutionalization of such broader institutional complexes is, on the one hand, dependent on the availability of “free” resources5 which are not embedded in relatively closed and limited ascriptive settings. But unless the use of such resources is regulated in some way, their very development may create a situation of anarchy or of irregulated conflict—almost the original Hobbesian state of nature. Such regulation may, of course, be in principle effected by purely coercive means. But even if coercive elements constitute a crucial component in all such regulation—the effectiveness of purely coercive regulation for broader creative institution building is rather limited. Continual institution building, the crystallization and continuity and transformability of broader institutional complexes is to no small extent dependent on the interweaving of purely utilitarian considerations and coercive components with the establishment of broader frameworks of trust—i.e., on the effective extension of the range of trust, its symbols and the normative obligations they imply beyond the narrow minimal scope of primordial units. Such extension is found, for example, in the depiction of rulers as “fathers” of their countries. . . .6 Such extension entails the generalizability of trust beyond different “narrow,” particularistic settings. But such generalizability, connected as it is with the interweaving of trust in broader institutional settings 5
S.N. Eisenstadt, Political Systems of Empires, New Brunswick, Transaction Publishers, 1993. 6 S.N. Eisenstadt, Power, Trust and Meaning, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1995.
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with utilitarian considerations and with coercive components of regulation, necessarily generates contradictions and tensions with regard to the criteria of social interaction and of allocation of resources. Such contradictions and tensions arise first between criteria rooted in relatively small and particularistic settings and those derived from broader ones, and, second, between the criteria derived from such different—for instance, religious or political collectivities—broader settings, each of which is borne by different social actors, especially by different elites and influentials and coalitions thereof. P G T A C IV Such problems of the extension of trust and its generalizability exist in all societies. They become especially visible in more complex or differentiated societies—in all of which there develop special social mechanisms which attempt to cope—albeit with different degrees of success—with these problems. But the nature of these problems and mechanisms differs greatly between different societies or types thereof. Thus, for instance, in the Axial civilizations,7 in which there emerged autonomous elites which were crucial in the crystallization of distinct types of institutional formations which were not embedded in various ascriptive—family, kinship, and narrow territorial—settings, such as distinct civilizational or religious collectivities, as well as different types of autonomous centers distinct from their peripheries which were constructed according to some broad universalistic principles and the permeation by the center of the family units (and of the periphery in general), was at least to some extent legitimized in terms of universalistic principles. There developed a break in the transition from the various particularistic—family, local and the like— settings towards the broader ones, and potential confrontation between trust defined in various particularistic terms and the claims of various universalistic principles. The problem of how to interweave the primordial-particularistic orientations with universalistic ones constituted in all these civilizations a potential point of contention. The Confucian controversy over the relative priority of filial piety as 7 See S.N. Eisenstadt, The Origins and Diversity of Axial Civilizations, Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1992.
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against loyalty to one’s lord is but one illustration of such potential confrontations which developed in all Axial civilizations. At the same time in all these societies there could also develop strong contestations between the bearers of different broader, especially universalistic principles—political, religious, and other cultural ones. Such tensions involved in the extension of trust from the various relatively narrow to broader settings has been exacerbated in modern societies characterized by their great structural differentiation, of autonomous differentiated institutional systems and the core characteristics of the political process in modern societies—above all their openness. In all these societies and indeed, above all, in the modern ones there developed different regulative frameworks—such as legal and bureaucratic ones, as well as voluntary associations and public spheres not embedded in closed particularistic settings, structured according to some formal and rational universalistic principles, which attempted, with different degrees of success, to regulate or mediate between such contesting claims and which could uphold the continual construction of the generalization of trust and of its flow. The efficacy of such regulation is to no small extent dependent on these frameworks being legitimized not only in terms of their own internal formal rational criteria but also in the broader symbols of collective identity and solidarity, and the core symbols of the respective societies. It is only insofar as such legitimation is effected that trust rooted in various narrow, usual particularistic settings is successfully generalized and extended beyond them; the rupture of the transition to broader settings, and to the institutional frameworks organized according to universalistic principles, is mitigated, and the flow of such generalized trust between different sectors of society and between them and the broader frameworks and central institutions of their respective societies is effected. T G T M S O C P P M V Such legitimation is not, however, naturally given or assured in any society. This problematic of trust has been exacerbated in modern societies first by the combination of their structural characteristics—
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i.e. by the development within them of great structural differentiation, of autonomous differentiated institutional systems—with the basic tensions in the political program of modernity. Second, the problematic of trust has been exacerbated in modern societies by the fact that the construction of the major dimension of social order—i.e., of the production and distribution of economic resources, the regulation of power; and of construction of collective identities—has been continually borne by different, autonomous carriers carrying different visions or representatives of different groups and interests, the relations between whom, and between them and the central institutions, were not “given” and cannot be taken for granted, even less so in the Axial civilizations. Third, these problems have been continually exacerbated by the openness of the modern political process—an openness which is of special importance from the point of view of the viability and the potential fragility of modern democracies, an openness which is rooted in the ideological and institutional history of modern political formations, as well as in the cultural and political program of modernity. This program entailed a very distinct shift in the conception of human agency, of its autonomy, and of its place in the flow of time as these crystallized in the cultural project of modernity. The modern project, the cultural program of modernity—as it developed first in the West (in Western and Central Europe), entailing a very distinct shift in the conception of human agency, of its autonomy, and of its place in the flow of time—exacerbated the tensions between the constructive and destructive potentialities of the construction of social orders, highlighting the challenge of human autonomy and self-regulation and of consciousness thereof.8 The program entailed a conception of the future in which various possibilities which can be realized by autonomous human agency, or by the march of history are opened. The core of the political program of modernity was the breakdown of the traditional legitimation of the political order, and the concomitant opening up of different possibilities in the construction of such order and of contestation about the ways in which political order 8 The analyses of the cultural program of modernity and of the different historical experience of modernity, especially European societies, are based on S.N. Eisenstadt, Paradoxes of Democracy: Fragility, Continuity and Change, Baltimore, Maryland, The Woodrow Wilson Center Press and the Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999; and idem, Fundamentalism, Sectarianism and Revolutions: The Jacobin Dimension of Modernity, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999, where full bibliographical references are given.
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was be constructed. It combined orientations of rebellion, protest, and intellectual antinomianism, together with strong orientations to centerformation and institution-building, giving rise to social movements or movements of protest as a continual component of the political process.9 It entailed the combination of the charismatization of the center or centers with the incorporation into them of themes and symbols of protest which became constituted in components of the modern transcendental visions as basic and legitimate components of the premises of these centers. Themes and symbols of protest—equality and freedom, justice and autonomy, solidarity and identity—became central components in the modern project of emancipation of man. It was indeed the incorporation of such themes of protest into the center which heralded the radical transformation of various sectarian utopian visions into central components of the political and cultural program.10 Parallelly, the construction of the boundaries of modern collectivities and collective identities was continually problematized in reflexive ways.11 Collective identities and boundaries were not taken as given or as preordained by some transcendental vision and authority, or by perennial customs. They constituted foci not only of reflexivity but also of contestations and struggles, often couched in highly ideological terms, promulgated above all by different—above all national or nationalist—movements. Such contestations focused first on the relative importance of the basic components of collective identities— the civil, primordial and universalistic and transcendental “sacred” ones—and around the modes of their institutionalization. Second, such contestation focused on the extent of the connection between the construction of political boundaries defined more and more in territorial terms and those of the cultural collectivities, and third, on the relations between the territorial and/or particularistic components of these collectivities and broader, potential universalistic ones. Out of the combination of the transformation of the conceptions and practice of accountability of rulers, of the incorporation of symbols 9
See S.N. Eisenstadt, Paradoxes of Democracy, op. cit. E. Voegelin, Enlightenment and Revolution, edited by J.H. Hallowell, Durham N.C., Duke University Press, 1975; A. Seligman (ed.), Order and Transcendence, Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1989; and S.N. Eisenstadt, Fundamentalism, Sectarianism and Revolution, op. cit. 11 See E. Shils, “Primordial, Personal, Sacred and Civil Ties,” in idem, (ed.), Center and Periphery: Essays in Macrosociology, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1975, pp. 111–126; see also S.N. Eisenstadt and B. Giesen, “The Construction of Collective Identity,” European Journal of Sociology, 36(1): 1995, pp. 72–102. 10
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and demands of protest into the central symbolic repertoire of society, and of the reconfirmation of the legitimacy of multiple interests, the continuous restructuring of center-periphery relations has become a central focus of political process and dynamics in modern societies. The various processes of structural change and dislocation which continually took place in modern societies—as a result of economic changes, urbanization, changes in the process of communication, the development of capitalism, and the new political formations—have led in modern societies not only to the promulgation by different groups of various concrete grievances and demands, but also to a growing quest for participation in the broader social and political order and in the central arenas thereof, and for the incorporation of the peripheries in the centers of their respective societies. T C I P: T N-Z-S G C P S T M S VI The basic tensions inherent in the political program of modernity, the openness of the political process that develops in modern societies, the generally high level of politicization of many problems and the demands of various sectors of a society for incorporation into its major frameworks and of conflicts between them, and, above all, the continual attempts at the redefinition of the realm of the political— as borne especially by social movements as they are combined with other political actors, especially with political parties—attest both to the inherent fragility of modern regimes as well as to their potential transformability. The potential fragility of modern regimes is rooted first in the possibility that these regimes will not be able to recruit a political class— political leaders who will be able to combine some efficiency in coping with the numerous problems inherent in these regimes with trustful acceptance by the different sectors of society. Second, such fragility is rooted—as pointed out by Adam Przeworski with respect to democratic regimes—in the fact that, because of the nature of the political struggle in these regimes, there exists within them an uncertainty about the outcome of any single political contest, of any single election or dispute about the implementation of different policies.
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No political actor can be sure of the outcome of the political contest. In the best case he or she can only be sure of being given a second chance at the next stage of the political process or “game.” Such uncertainty is enhanced by the fact that many such contests are focused on the demands of political actors for the incorporation of their symbols and demands into the central frameworks of their respective regimes and the concomitant demands for the reconstruction of the realm of the political in them—a reconstitution which necessarily entails changes in the relative strength of the different groups or sectors of the society. Accordingly such demands exacerbate the possibility that those in positions of relative power will not be willing to give up their positions. And yet, paradoxically enough, the possibility of the acceptance, by the powerholders of demands of different social movements is given in the very openness of the political process in these societies, in the very existence of a multiplicity of political actors and in the tendency toward continuously changing boundaries of the realm of the political. While such openness, and the concomitant existence of the multiplicity and changeability of political goals gives rise to the potential instability or fragility of these regimes, it may also, paradoxically, under appropriate conditions, generate the possibility of their continuity and transformability. Such possibility can develop only insofar as there develop within these societies non-zero-sum conceptions of the political struggle or game. In most types of political regimes in the history of mankind, the political game has been usually perceived as being in the nature of a zero-sum game. The gain of any one contender or group of contenders denoted at any given movement of time the loss by other ones with only narrow margins of survival in this game. As against this, in modern societies—exactly indeed because of the very openness of the political process which is characteristic of these regimes—there arises the possibility of the development of non zero-sum conceptions of the political game. In the modern, especially but not only, constitutional democratic regimes, the range of potential political games and struggles has been continuously—even if certainly not endlessly— expanding. Possibly the point has been reached in which the very nature of the game has changed; it may no longer be a zero-sum game and may be perceived as not being such. Thus, while the possibility of the breakdown of linkages of trust between different sectors of society and between them and the central institutions thereof is endemic in modern societies, exactly for
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these same reasons there could also develop in modern societies greater flexibility and openness towards new possibilities of linkages between various sectors of the society and between them and the broader institutional arenas—a possibility that is reinforced, in a continual feedback relation, by the development of a non-zero-sum conception of politics. It is the development of such a conception of politics that may give rise to the readiness among major political actors to give up some of the positions of power they hold according to the constitutional rules of the game. Such readiness is contingent on the belief that such loss of positions is only temporary, that some of these positions, or other seemingly equivalent ones may be regained later through this very political process. It is accordingly the development and prevalence among the major political actors of an open-ended, nonzero-sum conception of politics with its strong open future orientation that generates the possibility of incorporation of demands and symbols of protest, thus increasing the potential transformability of modern regimes. The possibility that such a conception of the political game will indeed develop and become prevalent in society is contingent on the development and continuity of very strong relations of trust between different members of a society and sectors thereof. It is the possibility of successful extensions and a generalization of trust and of a continual reconstruction against the breakdown of linkages of trust between different sectors of society, and between them and the centers thereof, that constitutes the focus of continuity and transformability or of breakdowns of modern, especially constitutionaldemocratic regimes. VII This problematics of trust becomes even more fully exacerbated in constitutional-democratic regimes. As Mark Warren has put it (private correspondence): . . . The paradox here is that the relationship between democracy and trust is complex: conflicts indicate that trust is absent and probably inappropriate, and yet any non-zero-sum way of addressing the conflict requires that (a) the conflict be contained by other relationships (and institutions) that include trust; and (b) the process of conflict resolution itself generates trust. In the absence of these possibilities, democracy is at best fragile.
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Such linkages of trust are not, however, in any society—but above all indeed in modern especially democratic societies—naturally “given,” “static,” or, as it were, automatically reproduced. They are continually challenged by the very constitution of the modern societies analyzed above, and by their continual changeability, and it is the extent to which such linkages of trust are continually reconstructed, or broken down, which constitute the specific points of sensitivity, of potential breakdown or the transformability of these regimes. It is the continual development of such linkages and of a nonzero-sum conception of politics that may assure, or at least facilitate the transformability of these regimes, i.e., the relatively continual and smooth reconstitution of the realm of the political within the respective modern, especially democratic regimes. Or, in other words, it is the development of such linkages of trust that enhances the chances that the redefinition of the realm of the political and the extension of access of various social sectors into the centers and major frameworks of their respective societies, and their incorporation of the demands of protest movements and of different sectors of the society will take place in relatively smooth ways. It is the successful confrontation with these problems and the concomitant incorporation—through the continual reconstruction of the linkages of trust in society—of such demands and themes of protest and of wider sectors of the society into the central frameworks of their respective societies which could—and did—become a test of the viability of these regimes, not automatically assured by the establishment of modern, even of constitutional democratic regimes. T, C S C I VIII The development and continuity of the conception of politics as a non-zero-sum game and the concomitant possibilities of reconstituted of linkages of trust incorporating protest are not automatically assured by the establishment of constitutional-democratic regimes and the promulgation of constitutions. It is dependent on the development of specific conditions, some of which have been indeed abundantly analyzed in the rich research literature devoted to the analysis of the conditions or preconditions of democracy. Special emphasis has
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been placed in this literature on (1) the distribution of resources and power in society, especially the continual possibility of different actors having enough resources with which to enter the political game and continue in it; (2) the relation between the major centers of social and economic power and the central political institutions and arenas; and (3) the closely related construction and “reproduction” of autonomous public spheres. The importance of these conditions for institutional arrangements facilitating the continuity of constitutional-democratic regimes has indeed been analyzed in great detail, but their relation to the development and continuity of non-zero-sum conceptions of politics, and hence also the conditions under which these arrangements develop and do not break down, has not been systematically investigated. The missing link here is indeed the analysis of the continual reconstruction of the networks of solidarity and trust between various sectors of the society (and between them and the broader institutional arenas) as symbolized in its centers and institutions; this is of crucial importance in this context. It is such reconstruction of networks that can assure the continual generalizability of trust in societies and the legitimation of the frameworks regulating such generalizability. Such possibilities of reconstitution of networks of trust are, in turn, dependent on several conditions among which of special importance are the mutual openness of elites, their relations to broader social strata, and the modes of construction of collective identities in modern societies. We shall focus our analysis here on the last dimension, one which has not been, however, systematically explored in the literature, namely the construction of collective identities in modern societies—first of all in Europe—especially in its relation to the continuity of democratic regimes. Of special importance in this connection in Europe has been the extent to which the primordial, the civil, and the sacred—religious or secular—universalistic dimensions or components of collective identity have become interwoven in different societies, and especially the extent to which none of these dimensions has been totally absolutized or set up by their respective carriers against the other dimensions. Thus the most important aspect of the construction of collective boundaries and identities from the point of view of the continuity or breakdown of constitutional regimes in modern European societies has been the mode in which the modern universalistic or civic components of collective identity were combined not only with the older religious ones, but also with primordial ones as they became
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redefined and reconstituted in conjunction with processes of modernization in terms of nationality and/or ethnicity. The various modes of constructing the boundaries of collectivities and the interrelation between different components of collective identity were, in Europe, closely related, as Lipset and Rokkan have shown, to the way in which the great religious cleavages and battles of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation and the relations among the national, civilizational, and religious collectivities were resolved. IX The construction of different modes of collective identity has indeed been connected in Europe—and beyond Europe—with specific institutional conditions mentioned above, mainly with the flexibility of the centers, the mutual openness of elites, and their relations to broader social strata. There developed in Europe, and later in other societies, a close elective affinity between the absolutizing types of collective identity and various types of absolutist regimes and rigid centers, and between the multifaceted pattern of collective identity in which the primordial, civil, and sacred components were continually interwoven with the development of relatively open and flexible centers and of mutual openings between various strata. It was the concomitant development of relatively strong but flexible and open centers, multifaceted modes of collective identity, and autonomous access of major strata to the center that provided the framework for the development and continuity of a distinct type of civil society. This was mainly a society to a large extent autonomous from the state but at the same time autonomous in the state, and had autonomous access to the state; it participated in formulating the rules of the political game and in the political arena. It was within this type that there could take place a continual reconstruction of networks of trust which facilitated the transformability or breakdown of modern, especially constitutional, later constitutional-democratic regimes. Such civil society facilitated the continual reconstruction of the network of solidarity and trust generated between various sectors of the society and between them and the broader institutional arenas, as symbolized in its centers and institutions, and in turn was reinforced by such continual reconstruction. It is such continual reconstruction of such networks that can assure the continual extension and generalizability of trust in societies and the legitimation of the frameworks which regulate such extension.
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Some recent analyses of the breakdown of the Weimar republic are of great importance from the point of view of the difference in the mode of extension of trust and construction of civil society between those societies in which constitutional-democratic regimes broke down and those in which they did not. The major upshot of these new analyses of the breakdown of the Weimar republic (as against the older theories which stressed the depolitization and pauperization of the middle classes and consequent development of a shapeless masssociety) has been that it was not necessarily the absence of civil society or just a weak development thereof, but rather the dissociation between different organized sectors, and between them and the center, their basic attitudes to the center and the lack of mutual trust between them, the weakness of the interlinking arenas and between them and the center, which have been of crucial importance. X It is thus the concomitant development of and continual feedback between “open” or multifaceted modes of collective identity, relatively strong but flexible centers, and of autonomous access of major strata to the center that have been crucial in the successful extension and generalizability of trust in modern societies and of its continual flow between sectors of society and between the centers thereof. It is the assurance of such a flow that is important for the development and continuity of the distribution of resources and power in society, especially the continual possibility of different actors having enough resources with which to enter the political game and continue in it. Key, too, are the autonomous relation between the major centers of social and economic power and the central political institutions and arenas, and the concomitant construction and “reproduction” of autonomous public spheres. It is also such continual feedback between these conditions that assures the continual development and continuity of specific types of relations between “state” and society, of some distinct components of civil society, and especially of the development of relatively independent centers of power and sectors of social life. These potentially lie beyond the reach of the political (whether absolutist, republican or revolutionary communitarian) powers, but at the same time have potential access to these centers—even if the structure of such a sphere or spheres differs in different societies, and is also continually changing in any single society. Concomitantly, it is the prevalence of such public arenas and of
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a continual process of open flow of communication and information within and between them, and between them and the centers—above all through the combination of associational and political activities— which are crucially important in facilitating the autonomous access of major social sectors to the political arena, their engaged continual participation and their ability to call for some accountability of the rulers. It is also these conditions which reinforced the internal solidarity of the major elites and their commitment to the political institutions—thus assuring (at least) some degree of their efficiency; in this way there tended to develop in the political arena of the combination of efficiency and legitimacy—a combination which has been so often stressed in the literature as important for the continuity of constitutional-democratic regimes. Second, it is the continual interweaving of these conditions that influence the extent to which there develop in such regimes chances that, at any junction of intensive social change, there will emerge a possibility of some recombination of the components of collective identity and of different bases of legitimation of the political regime (without total confrontation between different sectors), and that some basic orientations to common collective identity or consciousness of a common “text” referred to by different sectors of the population will continually develop. It is such a combination of these broad sets of conditions and the feed-back between them—especially the crystallization of a common “text” and the continual crystallization and reconstruction of public spheres and political organizations, together with the continual dispersion of centers of power and the decoupling of power, wealth and prestige—that enhance the possibility of continual reinterpretation and reinforcement of the legitimation of the rules of the game in terms of some combination or interweaving of primordial and cultural or civil orientation without attempts to impose ideological homogeneity on all sectors of the society. It will also thus facilitate of the continual reproduction of the meta-legitimation of the rules of the game of constitutional democratic regimes. The continual reconstruction of trust, the concomitant development of non-zero-sum conceptions of the political game, and the consequent transformability of the constitutional-democratic regimes have been influenced in all societies by the combination of the various conditions referred to above, the concrete modes of such interweaving and the concomitant pattern of development of generalized trust differ greatly in different societies.
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SECTION THREE
PROMISES AND DISAPPOINTMENTS: EASTERN EUROPE AFTER COMMUNISM SEEN FROM WITHOUT AND WITHIN
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PARABLES OF HOPE AND DISAPPOINTMENT Martin Krygier When asked to join this plenary session, I wondered what would be most appropriate to offer. Given the moral concerns of this conference and its location, the religious center of Poland, I sought Biblical inspiration. What follows are ten parables. The number is, of course, arbitrary. There could be more or less—in any case, no one remembers how many parables there were in the Bible. Still, once I had passed three it seemed inappropriate to stop at nine or go on to eleven. Like three, after all, ten has Biblical resonance. My parables begin with hopes rather than promises, because my memories of 1989 are more of the former than the latter. One quickly forgets the nervousness (and widespread pessimism) of 1989, too easily imagining retrospectively that everyone thought the future would be rosy or easy. That is not what I recall. Still, hopes were high. It is common to think of disappointment as the natural and direct response to distressing developments, and then go on to ask what about these developments led to the disappointment. To seek the sources of disappointment in later results, in other words, rather than in earlier anticipations. And, of course, a lot has happened in the region—especially in its southern and eastern parts—which must disappoint anyone, whatever their hopes. Others will doubtless speak about that. However, I am intrigued with the other end: the hopes themselves. Some disappointments follow from, indeed sometimes flow inevitably from, the nature of the originating hope. Some hopes are inherently unrealizable, and my first parable has to do with them. However, there are other sorts of hopes which spawn disappointment precisely when they are realized, and the rest of my discussion will be concerned with hopes of that sort. This is not the whole of the story, and in some countries it is only a small part of it. By emphasizing this aspect I do not mean to diminish or trivialize more profound problems, of which there have been plenty, which would distress anyone who had to endure them. Yet, since memories are short and local pastures so easily can seem brown, it is perhaps worth recalling that not everything that disappoints us flows from what it has brought us to. Some comes from what we ourselves bring to it.
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The signficance of disappointment-spawning hopes varies, as does the increasingly diverse range of post communist experiences. I know Poland best, and there I think the character of originating hopes plays an important part in subsequent disappointments, a part which is often overlooked. It is not insignificant in some other countries as well. Parables are usually identified by name—the parable of the Good Samaritan or the parable of the Prodigal Son, for example—and are often recalled by those names, even when people have forgotten all else. In keeping with that tradition I will name each parable and then explain it. 1. I D Adam Michnik once distinguished two sorts of former dissidents: those who hated communism because they didn’t like dictatorship and those who hated it because it didn’t recognize they were greater than Homer. Some of the former, like Michnik himself, are pleased with post communism since they are now free. The latter generally are not, since they’re still ranked behind Homer. There are parallels to this sort of frustration in many domains of post communist life. Some people hoped that once communism was removed, their own or their country’s rise would be simply unstoppable. Disappointment followed, like night after day. And this might have been predicted. If fervent hopes can’t be realized, they are likely to lead to disappointment. If the hopes are sufficiently grandiose, disappointment will be not only inevitable but great. Any attempt to satisfy them is bound to disappoint. 2. T I Q In 1066 and all that,1 that wonderful introduction to the whole of English history from its beginning as ‘top Nation’ until its Fukuyamaesque end (when America became ‘clearly top nation, and History came to a .’), it was explained that nineteenth century British Prime Minister, Gladstone, ‘spent his declining years trying to guess the 1 More precisely, 1066 and all that: a memorable history of England/comprising all the parts you can remember including one hundred and three good things, five bad kings, and two genuine dates, by W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman. Illus. by J. Reynolds, tenth edition, Methuen, London, 1931.
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answer to the Irish Question; unfortunately, whenever he was getting warm, the Irish secretly changed the Question.’ Questions in this region, too, have also changed over time. In the first years after the collapse, many novelties—the end of communist despotism, the first free elections, politicians who left when they were voted out of office, court decisions which were obediently followed by powerholders—were seen as remarkable achievements in those countries where they occurred. As indeed they were. Now, these things are taken for granted in countries like Hungary and Poland and some other countries, too. Sights have been set higher. Different questions are being put, and many people won’t be satisfied until they receive satisfactory answers. When they do they will ask further questions. 3. T W Z E Those who imagined that, after the collapse of communism, it could be easy and quick to establish democracy, rule of law, prosperity and equality—together and at once—were doomed to disappointment. Twelve years is a short time in the development of the institutions of any social order, unless they collapse quickly. Recall Zhou Enlai’s response when asked to assess the results of the French Revolution: ‘it’s too soon to tell.’ 4. S Q, S A Many post communist initiatives are rightly regarded with disappointment, and not only because they fail to satisfy bizarre or shifting or premature expectations. For some answers (good or bad doesn’t really matter) are bound to frustrate, since they respond to bad questions or questions that are badly posed. Here the problem is not that the expectations are unfulfillable or that they change. Rather it is that fulfilling them—however successfully—is often the wrong thing to try to do. That problem will occur whenever the question is foolish in principle, or, as a poor translation of a sensible question, becomes foolish in context. Certain questions of this second sort have been common among legal missionaries from self-confident metropoles, and their eager converts. The sensible, but difficult, question often asked is: what can be done about what works badly here? That is often translated—particularly
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by Western missionaries and advisers in the region—as: what works well at home, or in ‘normal’ countries, or in the West? When the first question becomes the second without further thought, or indeed whenever it is answered without answers to deeper questions about conditions and possibilities of institutional transplantation, about what is left behind in transportation and what is likely to be met on arrival, about how to mesh with (and yet transform) local institutions, expectations, social interests, history, they will often lead to answers which look foolish, and might well be. But a deeper truth is that any answer will be foolish, however clever it is, so long as it is the answer to a silly question. This sort of disappointment will attend many local imitations of the acquis communautaire, for example. 5. T S Y I Some people get exactly what they wanted when they marry, but they find, after some time, that it doesn’t satisfy them. This phenomenon is known in English as the 7-year itch. Similarly, some hopes have issued in disappointment in the region, even though they were fully realized. Communism collapsed, freedom of speech ensued, capital flowed in (to some countries), queues disappeared, and a variety of goods appeared on shelves. And still they are disappointed. You find such disappointment expressed for example in aphorisms like, ‘We wanted justice, we got the rule of law’, or ‘we wanted civil society, we got NGOs’ (even though the rule of law and NGOs once seemed unattainable jewels of the ‘normal’ West to many in the abnormal East). People who had to bribe shop assistants to keep aside toilet paper, or who had, plastic bag in hand, to engage in hunting expeditions for the same precious commodity, or to latch onto queues for who knows what, just in case there was something worth getting at the other end, now are unsatisfied by the arid impersonality, predictability, and speed of their visits to the supermarket. 6. T A C There is a story about an aria competition in which the second contestant was awarded the prize as soon as the first stopped singing. The judges presumed that whoever followed the first competitor could not be worse. People often thought that way about communism. Thus it was common (and right) to attribute many of the worst
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problems of communism to its monopolistic and inescapable state. Many drew from this accurate diagnosis the prescription that the state’s power should be drastically diminished. The more the better. Unfortunately, in some of the most miserable post communist societies, that is precisely what happened. For example freedom from fear of the state was succeeded by fear of real and imagined criminality. People on fixed incomes or state subsidies and salaries had to face the decline, sometimes collapse of state budgets. Then there is the price to everyone of a state that cannot pay its officials, enforce its judgements, collect taxes, and so on.2 Not to mention the gobbling up of state assets, on the cheap, by ‘oligarchs’, ‘tycoons’, ‘biznesmeni’, etc. Here the failure of social and political theory was a failure to realize that the opposite of a bad thing is not necessarily a good thing. One might rather hope for an altogether different thing, such as a state which is strong in a way different from that which is familiar, not despotically, for example, but infrastructurally.3 Again, an example particularly evident in Poland is the reaction to the fulfilled hope that politicians, or the ‘political class’ as it is called there, would be different from what went before. The ideal type of the former leadership was of a disciplined single Party, committed to Marxist ideology, and devoted to the achievement of communism—more realistically by the end, to the maintenance of pervasive Party control. The government in power when these remarks were first made ( July 2001) faithfully fulfilled the dream of a change to all that by being chaotic, undisciplined, publicly committed to no ideology or to too many, and devoted to capitalism. Indeed it was so keen to promote it by personal example, such as corrupt openness to bribes and lobbying, that it was hard to find word of anything else in contemporary Polish newspapers, apart from advertisements. And still some ingrates were unsatisfied, so unsatisfied indeed that they recently and not for the first time voted in the successor party to that of the former communists, filled though it is with faces familiar to anyone with a long memory. A contrasting dream fulfilled in Poland and several other countries was for a ‘rule of law revolution’ which eschewed the brutality of communist and other revolutions. One of the emblems of this new alternative was the lack of vengefulness against the former agents 2
See Stephen Holmes, ‘What Russia Teaches Us Now: How Weak States Threaten Freedom’ ( July–August 1997) 33 Prospect 30–34. 3 See my ‘Virtuous Circles: Antipodean Reflections on Power, Institutions, and Civil Society’ (Winter 1997) 11,1 Eastern European Politics and Societies, 36–88.
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of the Communist state. That has been so well achieved that a major disappointment expressed publicly today flows from the successful enrichment of former apparatchiks, managers, secret police, and nomenklatura generally, who trade off little-disturbed networks of connections, information, and thus power. The most tragic examples of prizes awarded too soon are connected with one of the great and realized hopes of late communism: national independence. In Poland, Hungary and other countries with few or small national minorities, it was a hope not merely realized but largely salutary in its consequences. In the former Yugoslavia it was a source of overwhelming calamity. Such calamity, indeed, that in some circumstances, though certainly not all, it appears that the second competitor might even be worse than the first, to which it was not unrelated. 7. N S T F L Some people believed that everything they hoped for could be costfree, but many costs of transformation were inevitable. If that were not taken into account, disappointment was bound to follow. Many costs occurred which surprised everyone, and some of these have been very painful. Partly this was a failure of social theory behind the original hopes, so the realization of them is more painful than anyone expected. Some of these were inevitable transformation costs, such as inequalities attendant upon capitalism, social, psychic and economic dislocation, political, legal and other inexperience and many other things that make life hard in the new post communist world. Some were not inevitable, but predictable, such as the time it all takes, or the continuities in power of those who exploited the last system and are well placed to do so in its successor; some of the worst, such as the efflorescence of predatory nationalism in some but by no means all parts of the region, were predicted by no one. Many of these costs are very hard to bear. 8. B S B R A It is easy, however, to misattribute costs. Some hoped that when communism collapsed, it would be replaced like night by day. Instead, much
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of it has stayed around, including many structures and processes which pollute the atmosphere literally and metaphorically, and many costs still being paid. These are arguably better attributed to what went before than to what is done now, but commonly are not. The point has been well made by Andrzej Rychard who has observed that the costs of transformation: are often spoken about without any reference to the conceivable costs of no transformation at all. One may say that the fall of communism was an indirect proof that the functioning costs of the previous system were too high. What is more, from the very beginning of the changes, one of the ways to mobilize political capital preferred by politicians of certain orientations was to treat the costs which persisted beyond the life of the former system and were connected with its “fall” as transformation costs. After all, it was also a matter of argument whether those were costs of the changes or, perhaps, costs inherited from communism. And the argument could never be unequivocally brought to a conclusion since, inter alia, the functioning costs of the former system are difficult to calculate. Undoubtedly, it is one of the paradoxical gains of the transformation that the market order which is being introduced allows for the calculation of costs and generally presents the problem of costs much more clearly. If, therefore, the chance to assess the costs of the transformation is a good, the impression that the costs are high is partly a consequence of the fact that they were never calculated before.4
9. T A H, MD’ P Isaiah Berlin liked to quote an American philosopher’s aphorism that ‘we have no reason for supposing that the truth, when it is discovered, will necessarily prove interesting.’ Similarly we had no reason for supposing that post communist democracy, rule of law, and market economy, if attained, would prove enchanting. Particularly when memories of the alternative had worn away. But many people imagined otherwise, and are therefore distressed to find even the most successful post communist orders so tacky. They bemoan the booming of McDonald’s just as they do supermarkets, sometimes nostalgically recalling, sometimes frivolously forgetting, that communism was rich in neither.
4 “Beyond Gains and Losses: In Search of ‘Winning Losers’ ”, (Summer 1996) 63, 2 Social Research 469.
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10. T M H; P D Another insight of Berlin’s, on which he insisted even more often than he quoted the above aphorism, was that not everything we want is going to be compatible with everything else we want. The post communist experience, even in its most successful versions, confirms that in spades. Many initial hopes were monistic, in Berlin’s sense: the end of communism would deliver what we want, and not what we did not want. Instead it has at times delivered both. It is a pity, perhaps, but if Berlin is right, it can’t be escaped since it is a truth, not just of post communism, but of the human condition, and that, the Bible tells us, is hard to avoid in this life.
EVERYDAY DEMOCRACY IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC: DISAPPOINTMENTS OR NEW MORALS IN A TIME OF NEO-NORMALIZATION Jiˆrina ”iklová What can be the basis or foundation of morality in the Czech Republic or the former Czechoslovakia, if not human rights? All previous notions of morality derived from various canons and ideologies have failed us; they have not withstood the onslaught of reality. Christian idealism prevented neither WWI nor WWII. The materialistic concept of morality derived from Marxism and socialism has badly compromised itself. In this region, we placed our hopes in human rights about which we had only heard during the era of ‘real’ (the only existing) socialism. Since the Declaration of Human Rights was forbidden in the former Soviet satellites (in any case, it was certainly banned in the Czecho-Slovak Socialist Republic), many of us believed that human rights could well serve as an appropriate foundation for morality. Unfortunately, I must admit that the Declaration of Human Rights issued on a manual typewriter was so much more attractive for us than it is today when it is routinely available in printed form. Then many people read it in secret, based their appeals on its thoughts, and used it to justify their actions. For dissidents here, the Declaration of Human Rights had been, in fact, the stick which they could use against the former regime. Yet even then, ninety percent of the citizenry had not read or studied the Declaration. Of course, on the one hand, they could not be expected to have studied it or accepted its principles. After November 1989, on the other hand, they ‘did not have time’ or an interest in it. And the same applies to our politicians. Having overcome the most pressing problems of the national economy, and having passed the basic laws and constitution while still in a state of anesthesia derived from the general euphoria that was to last until 1993, Czech society has emerged from a period of great excitement over ‘self-liberation’ from its own collaboration with the communist regime, and entered a ‘calm state of building capitalism,’ that is, normalcy. Or should we call this normalization, or rather new normalization, or, better still, neo-normalization?
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As Sir Rolf Dahrendorf would say, in the ‘short hour of lawyers,’ a ‘democracy for bad weather’1 was created, sanctioned by the constitution and laws which we are still rewriting. The era of unlimited faith in saviors is over—no matter whether they be Václav Klaus and his free market economy and voucher privatization, or Václav Havel and his declaration of moral principles. To use Rolf Dahrendorf ’s words again, the ‘hour of politicians’ arrived. Its main goal was, as Petr Matîju° put it, to reconcile the inequalities caused by the emerging market in a democratic system. The leading role has been recently assumed by politicians who—as Václav Bîlohradskÿ wrote a short time ago—now arrogantly belittle the significance of public opinion and civic initiatives such as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).2 Our political leaders ‘have colonized the public space and reduced politics to behind-the-scenes bargaining.’ Many of our politicians show a blatant contempt for the laws which they themselves have recently adopted; they support ‘tunneling’ (i.e., embezzling funds) of companies and banks privatized a short time ago (paradoxically, under the supervision of the Social Democratic government). This is also called ‘privatization Czech style.’3 At present, the demeanor of politicians in the Czech Republic often imitates the only role models they could have known—that is, the communist pseudo-politicians from before November 1989. This includes that illegal ‘merging’ of the state and private spheres, coupled with a cynicism that allows them to profess a sudden loss of memory with regards to those who gave their political parties millions of crowns in exchange for advantageous ‘purchases’ or privatization of nationalized property. Critics of the present government claim that the voucher privatization constitutes the greatest robbery in Czech history since the battle of White Mountain in 1620. To put it less expressively, it was a ‘form of accumulation of capital.’ When large fortunes were amassed in Spain a long time ago, the methods utilized by the early laissezfaire capitalists or Spanish conquistadors were also not altogether ‘clean.’ However, that took place during a stable monarchical regime, 1 P. Matîju° , “Demokracie do nepohody—Boj o ’T vypovídá o charakteru tr˘etí fáze transformace”, Respekt, No. 2, 14 January 2001, p. 18. 2 V. Bîlohradsky´, “’eská cesta k zavr˘ené spole‘nosti,” Právo (literary supplement Salón), 14 September 2000. 3 A. Kramer, “’eskou ekonomiku zdevastovala ‘eská cesta privatizace” (interview with Václav Klaus), Právo, 2 September 2000.
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not under the supervision of democratic institutions and a free press. Even though Czech citizens loudly grumble about the present state of politics, and refer to politicians only as They, I must admit that democratic institutions are functioning in the Czech Republic, there is freedom of speech and the press, and the standard democratic political system is the foundation and norm. To describe this situation I apply the concept, or label of ‘neo-normalization.’ What I see as neo-normalization—including its negative political connotation (so characteristic of our country)—is the fact that our political system is based on the hegemony of big political parties where civic society has practically no political influence whatsoever. NGOs do not deal with politics. In the early 1990s, people apparently assumed that they had done enough for the building of democracy by having elected big parties. The influence of politicians has also been strengthened by banks which were not to be privatized until 1998. People are disgusted by what is happening on the political scene and by various scandals. The prestige of politicians has sunk significantly and, since we have the freedom not to vote, people do not participate in elections. Nevertheless, they are still, fortunately, interested in politics, even though they deem it ‘immoral.’ Former dissidents are gradually growing old and have withdrawn (or have been pushed out) from public life a long time ago and, except for several negligible exceptions, have no bearing on political life. Economic power is being acquired by the middle generation which grew up under the last regime. According to them, ‘everything can be bought,’ including politicians. These new, successful entrepreneurs also grumble about politicians, but, in general, they are—perhaps surprisingly—more bothered by Václav Havel than by Václav Klaus. They are the children of parents who knew how to use the weaknesses of the ‘normalization era’—i.e., real socialism—to their own advantage and benefit. Now their descendants—who often, along with money, also ‘inherited’ social connections or social capital—have learned quite well how to conduct business, close deals, and ‘tunnel’ state enterprises and banks. According to Martin J. Stránsky´ 4 we do not live in a democratic state but ‘only in a postcommunist country that has democratic institutions which do not always function in
4
M. Stránsky´, “’e“i nechtîjí demokracii”, Millenium Publishing, Chomutov 2000.
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a democratic fashion.’ The morality or moral fabric in business and enterprise is not included in the human rights and our new enterprisers are learning by doing, directly from Western businessmen. Today much is said and written about the theft of former public property and fraud in the privatization process. Without being censored, writers describe the use of public offices and trust for personal and political gain. The tunneling of banks proved an excellent example. To criticize the regime and the political system is, nonetheless, something new for us. Previously this was not allowed and so it attracts the attention of readers, spectators as well as voters. We have even adopted the American practice of publicizing, in excruciating detail, the failings of our public personages. We have not, however, appropriated the West European and American habit of taking personal responsibility for ourselves. New democracy is connected with political scandals and corruption. Both existed under the former communist regime though, of course, the majority of the population was not informed about this. Puritanism is considered laughable. All the failings and amoral behavior of politicians are presented as an earmark of freedom and democracy. For the common man these two notions converge, and he believes that this type of behavior is, in fact, part and parcel of democracy, freedom, postmodernism, and the so-called American lifestyle. The former maxim—‘he who does not steal, robs his own family’—has only been replaced by a new one: ‘he who is not a con man will himself be conned.’ However, from the point of view of standards of living in other postcommunist states, we still maintain a rather decent economic level. Unfortunately, many problems which can also be found in ‘regular’ Western democracies exist in our country in their pathologically ‘hypertrophied’ form. In spite of that, the state and political system function, and hence it is ‘normal’ to get used to it. Or should one start to push against it? Start once again with dissent? Not just with civil disobedience? That way one surely cannot expect a collapse which would quickly change the situation.5 For that reason alone, the contemporary postcommunist stage of the development of society will last longer than we originally anticipated. 5 P. Matîju° and K. Vlachová, “Nerovnost, spravedlnost, politika”. In Studie, vol. 21, Prague 2000, Sociologické nakladatelství.
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Twelve years after the fall of communism, I, personally, would call this stage a period of ‘new normalization’ or neo-normalization, including that hidden, negative Czechoslovak connotation with which this term is identified. As political scientists know, the term ‘normalization’ has its clear definition in Czechoslovakia: it was used by those who took power after the 1968 occupation—by Gustáv Husák, Vasil Bil’ak, and others. By the word ‘normalization’ they wanted to suggest that the 1968 Prague Spring was a deviance or anomie. Therefore, it was necessary to return to that which had existed before and been considered ‘normal’—that is, to socialism. Today we find ourselves at an interim stage. We are returning to or reconstructing institutions of democracy and the free market economy which were interrupted in this country in 1948—interrupted for more than forty years. ‘Normalization’ had meant the process ensuing after the 1968 invasion when, in the years to come (approximately since 1971), at first individuals, then groups, and finally, the majority of society began to accept the newly established socialist system as normal, and, in the end, the only possible alternative. Hence ‘normalization’ meant also the state of reconciliation with the then existing reality. Without trying to denigrate our present circumstances, I would call the present reality ‘neo-normalization.’ The original ‘normalization’—i.e., the petrification of power held by the communists after the 1968 invasion—began roughly in 1970. However, already seven years afterwards its opponents—so-called ‘pretenders’ and ‘imperialist hirelings’, or the Charter 77 dissidents in a civil parlance—made their presence felt. It was impossible at the time to form political parties, so they practiced non-political politics (for which Václav Havel is currently being reproached by many politicians of the postcommunist era, as if he has committed a deadly sin!). Understandably, in a democratic country—which the Czech Republic undoubtedly is—critics of new ‘normalization,’ which is maintained through the opposition-cum-coalition agreement, have emerged sooner than after seven years of its duration. The first group of its critics who wanted to address the public, and hence to point to the approaching ‘neo-normalization,’ began to crystallize in 1999. The voice of these intellectuals6 was difficult to hear as it dissolved in the cacophony 6 J. ”iklová, “Cherche intellectuels désespérément”, La Nouvelle Lettre, Fall 1999, No. 1, pp. 58–61.
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of criticism and voices singing praise to the achievements of the present epoch. This way of thinking is convenient for people in the postcommunist Czech Republic, for it is congruent with the deeply rooted and internalized morality, or more correctly immorality, of the socialist era. Again the guilty one is sought; he is the one who is responsible. Under the ‘Bolshevik,’ that is, under socialism, the communist Party, the Soviet Union, and the socialist system were always responsible, certainly not the individual citizen. These attitudes have their historical roots. Czech citizens under the Austro-Hungarian Empire considered the state their enemy. It was something ‘foreign’ and forced upon them. The state was the domain of the powers-that-be (erar in Czech) which it was considered moral to deceive; it was said that the erar did not bleed. During WWII, the Czechs felt the same way when under the protectorate of Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Again the populace adopted this self-same position vis-à-vis the socialist state. And into this loosely woven morality was introduced that of the free market after l989. The politicians of the right espoused the concept of a ‘market without qualifiers’ and proclaimed that there was no such thing as ‘dirty money.’ Presently this style of thinking continues. The politicians and the political parties are responsible. Should they alternate in office, we expect that changes in morality will automatically come with the political changes. Morality is an issue which should be resolved by Them, by the politicians. To the great displeasure of politicians, the civic sector has, as of late, also become interested in politics and economics. This started in the spring of 1999 with the so-called Appeal of Dˆreví‘, in which truly independent economists were drawing attention to the danger stemming from the influence of the state over banks and the coupling of big political parties with economic power. Simultaneously, a group (unaffiliated with any political party) of independent journalists, lawyers, and well-known personalities from the cultural sphere came together and introduced themselves in the summer of 1999 as Impulse 99.7 Impulse 99 still exists, but they have made the mistakes typical of all intellectuals. They wanted to initiate things and stir public interest, but the everyday, mundane political work did not interest them. Hence followers of Impulse 99 have not succeeded in creating a critical 7
See the “Impulse 77” Manifesto.
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movement with broad impact. They disappointed many people as they did not want to transform themselves into a political party; they only wanted to remain a group that would give impulses to others and write expert analyses of the current situation. Their advent was followed by a wave of sharp aversion from professional politicians. ‘If you want to do politics, you have to start a political party. You have to pass through the fires of political fights,’ cried the established and institutionalized politicians (thereby rendering Impulse 99 the same invaluable service of indirect advertisement as with Charter 77 a long time ago). Despite all efforts, Impulse 99 succeeded in addressing citizens only for a short while and its impact was rather academic. The third attempt to torpedo ‘neo-normalization’ was the unexpected movement organized by former students who, on the tenth anniversary of the ‘Velvet Revolution’ (November 1999), came out against politicians and their politicking with an appeal titled: ‘Thank You, Now Leave.’8 Above all they asked Václav Klaus and Milo“ Zeman to retire from political life. Their slogan was simple and was met with wide response. For the first time since the November 1989 Revolution, tens of thousands of people gathered at Wenceslas Square and, within a few weeks, 140,000 people had signed the appeal. Although the ‘Thank You, Now Leave’ manifesto could bring many people to city squares, it could not become a program for a political party. However, it was a signal to the representatives that their position was not as stable as they had hitherto thought. The fourth attempt to bring to the attention of our politicians the fact that this new normalization was bothersome to people were the gatherings in connection with the crisis over Czech Television during Christmas 2000 and January 2001.9 There were repeated protests in support of Czech Television’s employees working in the news, and against the last Council for Czech Television, the composition of which was in accordance with agreements made by the political parties. It is impossible to explain here the background of the issues at stake, but it suffices as an example of the fact that criticism aimed against our neo-normalization politicians is again on rise in the Czech Republic. Thousands of people continually gathered in front of the 8 9
“Dîkujeme Odejdîte” Manifesto Articles describing the crisis situation in Czech TV.
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News Department building of Czech Television, in which the socalled ‘rebels’ were bivouacking. Wenceslas Square was filled twice with up to ninety thousand people who came there to support the TV journalists (somewhat of a paradox since the crowds were in protesting in favor of the government-run, state television). Paralleling meetings in Prague, thousands of citizens gathered at city squares in fourteen other cities. Yet another attempt to bring attention to morality was the socalled Brandy’s Agreement. Once again, a civic initiative—this time for support of environmental questions—entered the political sphere from below. I realize that to talk of neo-normalization arouses pejorative meanings due to its historical connotations in the Czech Republic. The fact that I am using it to describe the situation in the Czech Repulic at the end of the 90s and the turn of the millennium is not because I wish to create an impression of a return to the past, communist regime. Quite the opposite, the existence of the new civic disobedience testifies to the stability of the new post-l989 establishment which, after ten or eleven years in the Czech Republic, has put down roots and become entrenched. All further changes within our society will take place increasingly more slowly than heretofore. They will also require more daily, detailed work, and more patience on the part of the politicians as well as on that of the citizens. This has begun now. If it is possible to accept this petrification or neo-normalization, as an existing, real state, then, at the same time, it is also ‘normal’ to protest against it and to start with the slow creation of new moral principles, contrasting with those of our ‘new normality.’ Despite the fact that the Czech Republic is a democratic system, I do not see it as fitting to label as dissidents those people who disagree. It is more appropriate to talk of civic opposition. It may be that, in the long run, civic initiatives created from below may carry greater influence and may comprise a basis for a new morality. People understand that to ‘march onto the streets,’ to demonstrate, to strike, or generally to express their civic disobedience is, in a democratic state, ‘normal.’ Neo-normalization has awoken, or even ‘given birth’ to a civic opposition against itself. This, too, is normal. Human rights are a man-made fabric; this is their great advantage as well as disadvantage. It is not enough to believe in them.
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They must be observed and implemented. Today human rights are taught in school which, of course, makes them less attractive to many young people; politicians preach about them without adhering to their precepts. Even in the admired West, human rights are not always respected. Again, human rights are something given to us from above, and for that reason it is difficult to base our sense of morality upon them. Morality is not law and it cannot be enforced, but morality may grow out of a criticism of our ‘new-normalization.’ I believe that this process has begun.
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THE GENEALOGICAL SEARCH INITIATIVE AND ITS SOVIET LEGACY Elena Zdravomyslova The decay of the Soviet political system and destruction of Soviet social structures, as well as the opportunities brought about by pervasive institutional reforms, have all resulted in what sociologists call an identity crisis ( Jadov 2000; Ionin 2000). Public discussions of individual and collective identities can be conceptualized as discourses of self-interpretation or identity search. Discourses of self-interpretation are meaningful for the actors that develop their strategies and make conscious choices under the conditions of structural instability. Contemporary public discourse is saturated with self-interpretations and identity searches. Self-interpretation contains self-ascription of certain properties and characteristics to the agent, as well as construction of corresponding symbolic forms. An identity search implies collective and individual biographical work, or development of interpretative schemes of oneself, based on life stories and autobiographies (Fischer-Rosenthal 1995, 2000). In fact, we are witnessing a biographical boom in contemporary Russian public discourse. Biographies and autobiographies of celebrities have flooded bookshops. Society is preoccupied with searches of national and family genealogy which would legitimize and explain ‘everything’— past, present and future. The attempts to reinvent the concept of Russia by political society is an illustration of this process. Different versions of this idea, explaining the dependency of its path on the Russian transformation, have been applied and grounded in scholarly evidence. There are two basic versions of the Russian idea that are still vocal, though in innovative forms, in the Russian political discourse of the neo-Westernizers (the liberal paradigm) and of the neoSlavophiles (the civilizational paradigm). These versions of the idea of Russia are politically charged—they divide right from left in the political spectrum, liberals from the neo-traditional conservatives. However, the focus of this paper is not the political, but the privatized biographical work. Biographical work in contemporary Russian
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society—or the biographical discursive condition—is part and parcel of the individualization process universal for different types of modern societies. Its specific features are, nonetheless, framed by the cultural legacy of the Soviet period and the breakdown of previous social structures, along with their corresponding symbolic codes. Societal biographical work is another name for the search for legitimate new identities. Genealogical searches are part and parcel of this biographical work. The purpose of this short essay is to describe the discursive biographical trend and to analyze its consequences for contemporary Russian society. I will concentrate on one of the aspects of biographical work which is the genealogical search—the search for historical roots by individuals and families. Then I will attempt, if not to elaborate, then to articulate the question of the possible political and cultural consequences of the biographical work and genealogical search. T B C C R D The transformation in Russia includes changes in the discursive situation. New topics, new categories, and new modalities emerge in public discourse, together with corresponding linguistic changes which are broad-spectrum and visible. In spite of power and market pressures, Russian public discourse at present is comparatively open, flexible and innovative. It is still far from entering a consolidation phase with fixed rules of ideological correctness. In the meanwhile, current discursive liberation (volnost) compensates for the discursive deficits of the Soviet period when many forms of self-reflection in society were hardly imaginable. The biographical discursive condition, as understood here, embraces discursive practices of life storytelling which are widespread today in Russian society. Every biographical condition can be characterized in terms of historicity and temporality. Different patterns of life stories and accepted forms of biographical work are considered legitimate in different political and cultural contexts. Sometimes these patterns are named cultural biographical paradigms. Moreover, the biographical impulse is not a universal condition. Society as a whole and individuals in particular are not always driven by such an impulse.
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It come and goes; it is embedded in temporality and is of a cyclical nature. The Russian researcher Golofast points out that, “The sociologist should take into account that the biographical impulse is not constantly present in the everyday life of an individual . . . In fact, the biographical impulse presumes openness, trust, sincerity, and liberation of moral inhibitions. These conditions are not always present in common everyday interactions” (Golofast 1995:73, 77). Rapid social changes and a crisis of social structures, accompanied by a relevant breakdown of identities, accentuates the societal biographical impulse. The essence of societal biographical work is a self-search on the basis of a constructed synopsis of one’s lived experiences. Biographical work aims at interpretation of identity—interpretation of the self of the Agent as capable of certain strategies within a given (however unstable) institutional context. Biographical work is an important aspect of social action, necessary for individual social integration (see Fischer-Rosenthal 2000). Some historical epochs witness life stories filling the pages of personal diaries and remaining the intimate issue of a person, or of a private epistolary among related members of the privileged, educated classes. There are times when keeping journals is not a common practice and people do not keep private notes for fear of lustration and persecution, and there are times when biographical impulse is a mass phenomenon. During such periods, personal testimony and biographical or autobiographical narratives do attract the mass attention of the writing and reading public. These are the cycles of the so-called periods of mass psychoanalysis of a society. It is precisely during such times of an activization of biographical work or a biographical boom that we observe changes in identity construction— changes of the individual and collective Self. In different discursive situations, different themes are tabooed and silenced in life stories. However, there are always certain spheres which remain unspoken and secretive. Individual and collective memory as a means of biographical work is always selective. Any presentation of one’s lived experience is always submitted to conscious and nonconscious censorship. Reasons for omissions and silencing vary along social-cultural, political, class, generational, and individual lines. In fact, my question here is about the content and meaning of the current biographical discursive situation in Russia. The answer to this question is important for understanding the changes in the post-Soviet
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political culture, and for conceptualizing the changes in the moral order of post-Soviet society. In constructing their autobiographies and working on them individuals identify themselves according to the perception of their place in society. They can thus define the range of possible strategies and claim certain rights as well as obligations. The idea of a biographization of society was developed by Anthony Giddens in his Modernity and Self-Identity. Giddens suggests that modernization may be described as the process of biographization of society when individuals become agents or actors who construct their Selves and their life trajectories within structural limitations that provide both barriers and opportunities for action. Changes in biographical opportunities from a micro-social perspective can be specified for various cultural and social contexts. Addressing the specificity of the biographical discursive condition in the contemporary Russian public sphere, I would like to identify three aspects: first, the legacy of the Soviet biographical situation; second, the revival of the biographical work initiative in the context of the Russian transformation; and third, the micro-political meaning of the biographical work initiative. Let us consider each of them at length. T S L B S The Soviet rules of the game still influence our everyday lives, attitudes, and expectations. Soviet practices are being reproduced within new institutional frameworks both consciously and unconsciously. Though the middle-aged and older generations are active bearers of Soviet practices, these are being transferred to the younger generation as well. New institutions are not incapable of expeditiously removing the older rules of the game and this is the essence of the pathdependency argument explaining the transformation process. The new rules of the game and new practices are often introduced in opposition to old ones. Hence, discussions on the contemporary biographical condition must take into account the Soviet legacy of biography construction. The biographical situation of the late Soviet period had a dualistic nature. On the one hand, the Soviet regime had blocked biographical work initiative. On the other hand, it offered its own bureaucratic biographical formulas or guidance for politically correct, institutionalized Soviet biographies. Many lived experiences were erased from
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individual and family memory or had been silenced. Family stories— both collective and personal—were (re)written with personal and family security in mind. Silencing of family secrets was structurally conditioned. It was often unsafe to publicly recollect ‘inappropriate’ social origin or ethnicity (e.g., gentry, kulak, Cossack, or Jewish roots). Inappropriate (from the point of view of official ideology) family experiences were erased memory not just as shameful or painful (as with traumatized persons), but above all as threatening the safety and security of the individual and his or her family and preventing the efficiency of his or her life-strategies. Extreme cases of such purposeful distortion of family biography manifested themselves in the destruction of family archives and genealogies. This phenomenon from the Soviet past is often mentioned by autobiographers whose ancestors were from the privileged classes of Old Russian society. Complete suppression of family stories is another example of the same nature. This silencing, omitting, and tabooing self-censorship in life stories is typical of the Soviet biographical situation which can be described as a virtual orphanage. Thus Soviet individuals—as autodidacts—constructed their identities and made up their life strategies through their own efforts within the given institutional grid. Not many could afford to go against the wind and to resist collective and individual social amnesia and the standardization of ideologically corrected history and biography. Samizdat underground publications issued by the Soviet dissidents of the 1970s/1980s most insistently raised the issue of collective memory. Thus, one of the famous underground Soviet human rights editions was called “Memory.” It was a voluminous 600 page almanac of memoirs regularly published since 1976 (publisher V. Aloy). The preface stated that “The editors believe that the collection and publication of historic testimonies . . . introducing them into the scholarly and public discourse is the first and foremost purpose of this almanac” (Alekseeva 1992:264). Emphatically they claimed: ‘Distortion of memory invites all possible ills and evils. Those without a past have no future (ibid.: 265).’ Under the circumstances of the Soviet biographical purges, which were most severe in Stalinist times though still continuing until the collapse of the communist system, the most entrepreneurial among its citizens actively constructed their biographies using legal and shadow means in correspondence with the Soviet moral code. People changed their names, concealed ethnic records, changed places of residence, or married in order to alter their social origin, manipulating
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official documents whenever possible. This adaptation to the structural requirements of normative biographies effectively produced a dual (or even multiple) biography, relevant for different and specific contexts—official and private. Thus the silencing in public of crucial segments in individual and family life histories was rational and strategic. There was no mass search for social roots, and authentic family stories were not communicated to younger generations in order to avoid complicating their life choices and consciousness. Family secrets and biographical gaps were typical for Soviet citizens. In the Russian oral culture this phenomenon of distorted and dual biography is often presented in cynical jokes. Here let us try to give you a taste of this. One famous episode in the Russian working class movement of the early twentieth century—and referred to in every school textbook on Soviet history—is that of the Krasnaya Presnya massacre of striking workers by Cossacks in Moscow in 1905. So the joke goes: At a family dinner, the grandson asks his grandpa about Krasnaya Presnya, expecting to hear about the heroic involvement of his grandfather in the workers’ movement. The old grandfather, who can hardly follow the official story line, gives the authentic version of his participation in the events as a member of the Cossack police: ‘Yes, I will give you all the real and true details. When we saw the workers advancing toward us, the officer shouted out, “Fire at will!”—and so we did.’
The point of the joke is the confusion of private and official biographies in intergenerational communication. Security concerns dictated certain demands on personal and family biography. It was more convenient to present the personal biography of the self-made person, one without any particular family story—the biography of the Soviet orphan or the so-called mankurt, as the writer Chingiz Aitmatov named this phenomenon. The mankurt position was among the most secure or safe. Such features of the Soviet legacy are reflected in art and fiction literature, as well as in sociological reflections about the dual public sphere in late Soviet society—the double-thinking or schizophrenia of Soviet social arrangements. The image of the orphan—‘Ivan who does not remember his kin,’ as the Russian saying went—is recognizable by our contemporaries and this is one side of the Soviet biographical legacy. The other side of the same coin is the creation of official, institutionalized biography in the course of state bureaucratic biographic work. Soviet bureaucracy developed official biographical formulas considered
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sufficient in accounting for all parameters of its citizens. These formulas stratified the society; they contained ascribed and acquired status characteristics. In accordance with these formulas, the bureaucracy identified individuals along a number of criteria dealing with the public and private lives of the Soviet population. Such formulas were employed in all Soviet public institutions when one applied for a job, traveled abroad, sought medical expertise, etc. They covered the tiniest details of one’s life: the number of marriages and children and information about them, data about parents and distant relatives, their professions, education, social origin, ethnic background (the so-called fifth article of the Soviet passport), the number and destinations of trips abroad, as well as information on the residence of relatives abroad, membership in Soviet political and leisure organizations, place of registered residence, and what not. People filled out extremely detailed and lengthy biographical forms on every official occasion. These personal registers alienated each person from his or her own life. Soviet citizens presented themselves in the public sphere according to these official biographies. All these papers were called, in bureaucratic language, ‘personal files’ which were kept in the human resources departments of Soviet institutions under surveillance by the KGB for state security reasons (quite different from those of high concern nowadays). The career opportunities of Soviet citizens depended upon these files. These official formulas served as guidelines for the construction of what I would call an obligatory life story which Soviet citizens presented in the official situations of public life. An imposed biography was part of the dual identity and double thinking of the Soviet personality which made the Soviet individual so shrewd and resourceful in survival strategies. Soviet biographical work was part of the mechanism of social control and surveillance of inner and outer censorship (Voronkov and Chikadze 1997). Mass omissions or ignorance of family roots and genealogy influenced the cultural paradigm of biographical narrative—in other words, the accepted ways of life storytelling (Rasumova 2001). Fear of public exposure of one’s family background is still alive and taboos continue to exist and function. Many things remain and will remain unmentionable or kept deep in paramount personal secrecy. On the other hand, there is a demand for liberation of collective and individual memory from these Soviet prohibitions. There are discrepancies, too, between the official version of Soviet history as presented in secondary school textbooks and the revived
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family knowledge about the lives of ancestors and what had been kept confidential. People expect to discover even more divergences between official discourse and their family ancestral history. A demand for the truth is a challenge to the Soviet legacy since lack of faith in the Soviet ‘truths’ is commonplace for the postcommunist discourse. Thus lack of trust in the institutional version of Soviet history is an example of the Soviet legacy of dual biography and dual—official and private—identity. Biographical research in contemporary Russian sociology is negatively affected by the Soviet biographical legacy. It casts a shadow of a doubt on the authenticity of the life stories collected by researchers. Soviet sociology, as a representative of the official structures, earned a low level of faith among the Soviet people. This now inhibits biographical studies in the Russian social sciences. R B W I One of the aspects of the breakdown of Soviet structures is that orthodox Soviet identity frameworks have become inefficient and unrewarding. In the course of the transformation, the identification design of the Soviet stratification system deteriorated. Ideological pillars ceased to be supported by state and ideological control mechanisms. This brought on the condition of an identity crisis in which many individuals felt a need to answer the question, ‘who am I and what is my standing in this innovating society,’ and an answer was difficult to find at hand. Self-identification has become vitally important because it implies coping life strategies in a situation characterized by biographical ruptures and a high level of uncertainty in the rules of the game in different social fields. The transformation became a time of life choices, of a self-identification spirit. In the terms used in this essay, this can also be conceptualized as a time of a mass initiative towards biographical work during which individuals reformat their life-histories and life-stories. Reconstruction of biographies in the middle aged and older generations who had lived under the Soviet experience is provoked by a demand to gain a non-contradictory, integral narrative of one’s life in which ends meet. Such a newly constructed identity has to be perceived by its bearer as the authentic image of Self, appropriate for presentation under the new social conditions. This can provide
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the individual with the symbolic capital of trust and dignity. The focus of biographical work, in other words, is in finding one’s place in a historical context, and in determining one’s life choices as well. I believe that socio-political changes have produced dramatic reflexive work in Russian society. Symbolic searches for biography and identity— old and new, or old as well as forgotten new—is symptomatic of the present times. The purpose of the biographical work initiative is resurrection of old identification codes which were stored in dusted and locked memory chests as a set of tools which could come in handy. It is time to open the memory chest with all available identity codes—class and estate origin, ethnicity, gender, ancestry, spatial and other frames of identification design. This initiative becomes existentially crucial because, while constructing new scripts for individual lives and new autobiographical narratives, social actors create the social reality in which they act according to their self-understanding. Genealogical research can thus be conceptualized as a pivot for their coping strategies in situations of high instability. There are multiple indications of this biographical initiative, stemming from the bottom up and not sponsored by the state. Social movements during the Perestroika period, back at the end of the 1980s, launched a campaign aimed at reverting to the original names of city sites. As a result of this campaign, for example, Leningrad became St. Petersburg again. Everyone is concerned with reflective symbolic work. It is interesting enough that not only elderly people are keen on biographical work, wrapping up their lives, but also people of the middle and younger generations. This is a new phenomenon in post-Soviet Russian society. Thus, for example, since the 1990s, the book market has been flooded by biographical and memoir literature on the past generations as well as by autobiographies of our contemporaries. (I am Forty by Maria Arbatova, Double Bottom—The Notes of a Scandalist by Viktor Toporov, Notes of the Non-Sober Person by Alexander Volodin, and others). These are biographies of public opinion leaders and representatives of the cultural, political and economic elite. However, ordinary Russians are obsessed with genealogical searches no less than the elites. The most resourceful of them are reconstructing their genealogical trees. Heraldic and genealogical societies have been established. The fairly new profession of genealogist has become quite marketable recently. Another example of biographical research is the collection of
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life-stories initiated by historians and sociologists. The testimonies from the lived experiences of different milieus are being archived and analyzed in order to reconstruct the life strategies of ordinary people. Sociologists initiate competitions for the life-stories of the homeless and unemployed, of people of different generations and professions, as well as intimate life-stories. Archives of oral histories are being collected. Biographical searches are becoming an integral part of the activities of different voluntary associations—ethnic societies, memorial centers, etc. Thus, for example, the human rights organization ‘Memorial’ stimulates the genealogical, biographical work initiative by organizing competitions for biographies among schoolchildren, compiling oral history archives of Soviet human rights prisoners, organizing museums, commemorating the sufferings of the victims of the Soviet regime. New sections of local museums exhibit biographical evidence of everyday Soviet and pre-Soviet life. Such a turn to individual and collective testimonies and memories challenges the official versions of the institutionalized, Soviet biographies. Social researchers in Russia try to conceptualize this cultural movement (see, e.g., Jadov 2000, Ionin 2000). Sociologists and ethnologists representing the quite influential Russian structuralist school explore the cultural paradigm of autobiographical narratives reproduced in the context of the current biographical work initiative. Investigating oral history materials, they come to the conclusion that, in constructing their autobiographical narratives, individuals choose self-presentation of the most worthy segments of family and kin memory. Presentations of family members in the life stories bear extremely colorful, traditionally accentuated features. The patriarch of the family necessarily embodies one of the masculinity stereotypes, and the ethnic characteristics of family members are also accentuated as examples of national stereotypes. Age and gender also play their role—an elderly grandma in a life-story becomes the personification of all the virtues, traditionally ascribed to proper femininity such as beauty, patience, modesty, self-sacrifice, care, etc. (see Rasumova 2001). Thus autobiography is constructed both as a narrative of honor and ideology. It contains the retrospective evaluation of lived experiences and a prospective part aiming at a certain cluster of available strategies. Looking for genealogical roots and summing up one’s life is an intellectual endeavor which is necessary for the moral justification of one’s conduct. When society stimulates this kind of
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existential task and ambitious identity search for itself, this is an indicator that it is redefining its moral grounds. The mass search for genealogy can be also conceptualized as a protest against the atomization of society—as one of the aspects of structuration, constructing a subjectivity which accounts for reflexive action. This widespread initiative symbolically reflects disagreement with the statements that ‘the single man and single woman are the ideal types of modern societies’ or that the Soviet collective is the main frame of reference for the Soviet individual’s identification. Genealogical research is a search for self-identity, for virtual social belonging, for a shield as moral protection against those who would dare to challenge one’s Self image acquired in the harsh reflective work. In our opinion, the far-reaching biographical work is evidence of a profound cultural transformation in Russian society. First of all, this cultural movement gains fruitful instrumental results, improving the life-chances of the constructed social group. Owing to appropriate biographical work, individuals and their family members can get a green light for emigration (e.g., Russian Jews, Russian Germans), and chances for the social support of ethnic communities as well as job opportunities in ethnic business networks. Apart from the quite obvious instrumental outcomes, the genealogical search undermines the basis of publicly represented collective memory and prevents the dissemination of the official ideological version of Soviet history still presented in post-Soviet volumes. The third—and most powerful—corollary of the genealogical, biographical work initiative is legitimization of the private sphere. The core of the private sphere is in placing oneself in the long-range family history, which is presented as historical drama, and as a matter of individual pride and honor. In my view such rewarding family ‘memorizing’ becomes the cultural basis for civil society morale and self-esteem. Therefore, I consider the genealogical search as a moral foundation for the inalienable right to privacy. Genealogical research makes for the establishment of at least virtual solidarity groups of old and new formation. The former gentry, new Jews, and various groups of people sharing a common fate and collective memory affinities—all these social constructions stemmed from the biographical work initiative and actualize existing and virtual social networks. However, the current movement for revival of traditional identification schemata, typical of the non-liberal estate society, can be seen
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as a threat to the individualistic bases for civil society formation. Genealogical biographical work as a neo-traditionalist turn can result in new versions of symbolic estate stratification. The question is whether such a genealogical search could lead, in the course of time, to demands for restitution and usurpation of privileges, corresponding to certain newly ascribed statuses. In my view, mass scale symbolic revenge, based on status claims acquired in the course of biographical work is hardly possible for it is still limited by the private and non-political symbolic domain. T M-P G S I The genealogical search initiative has an impact upon and shapes the political culture. It works as a mechanism for the emergence of a new type of personality and the mechanism of a virtual socialization through solidarity with the ‘imagined community’ of dear ones. Nowadays, the biographical search initiative is replacing the Soviet strategies of individual and family memory blocking which was that of the oppressed who could hardly dare voice publicly their authentic life-stories. The contemporary context of the public voicing of acquired identity, even if imagined, implies a dose of uncertainty and openness. This openness presumes two types of strategic chances. The first type is quite instrumental. These can be interpreted as opportunities for micro-political work by which actors do their best to find new allies and to mobilize them, aiming at bettering their life chances. The second type of strategic chances created by the genealogical work is the opportunity to consolidate the symbolic capital of individuals by rooting their identity in the past and thus legitimating their ambitions in the present. Genealogical biographical work encompasses not only the retrospective dimension of memorizing, but also the projective dimension, i.e., family ‘memorizing’ is meant to legitimize the future individual and family strategies. Such self-imposed projects become the primary moral grounds for action, justification for individual and family claims and strategies. The genealogical search is now a means of marketing behavior, a fashion and a cultural need. We consider this cultural movement to be essential in the longterm civil society formation in the post-Soviet society. It entails the emergence of a specific feature in the post-Soviet personality—homo commemorans (memorizing
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human being). The claim to be able to acquire identity through genealogical and biographical search is a claim for civic rights and for the means to protect them. BIBLIOGRAPHY Alekseeva, L. (1992) Instorija inakomyslija v SSSR. Vilnjus, Moskau. Beck, U. (2000) Obshchestvo riska. Na puti k drugomu modernu. Moskau. Bertaux D. (1981) Biography and Society: The Life History Approach in the Social Science. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Bourdieu P. (1986) “L’illusion biographique,” Actes de la recherche en science sociale, Juin 62/63. 69–72. ——. (1995) “The Problems with Identity: Biography as Solution to Some (Post)modernist Dilemmas” Cornelius, 3:250–266. Fischer-Rosenthal, W. (2000) “Address Lost: How to Fix Lives. Biographical Structuring in the European Modern Age,” Biographies and the Division of Europe, in R. Breckner, D. Kalekin-Fishman and I. Mither (eds.) Oplanden, Leske+Budrich: 55–75. Giddens, A. (1991) Modernity and Self-Identity. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press. Golofast, V. (1995) “Mnogoobrazie biograpfitcheskikh povestvovanij” Sotsiologitcheskij Zhurnal, 1:250–266. Ionin, L. (2000) Sotciolologija kultury: put’ v novoe tysyacheletie. Moskva: Logos. Rasumova, I. (2001) “Folklornaja traditsia semejno-rodstvennyka grupp,” Etnografitcheskoe obozrenie, 1:112–142. Semenova, V., Fotteva, E. (eds.) (1996) Sudby ljudej. Rossija. XX vek. Moskva. Toporova, A. (1998) Fiktivnyj brak kak mekhanism sotsialnoj mobilnosti v sovetskoi i postSovetskoi Rossii. Diploma thesis, St. Petersburg: Academy of Culture. Voronkov V., Chikadze, E. (1997) “Leningrad Jews: Ethnicity and Context,” in V. Voronkov and E. Zdravomyslova (eds.) (1997) Biographical Perspectives on PostSocialist Societies, CISR Working papers, 5, St. Petersburg: 187–191. Yadov, V. (2000) “Rossija kak tranformirujushcheesja obshchestvo: resume mnogoletnej diskussii sociologov”, in T. Zaslavskaja (ed.) Kuda idet Rossija. Moskva. 383–390.
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SECTION FOUR
DIVIDED WORLD—FACES OF INEQUALITIES
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DIMENSIONS AND PROCESSES OF GLOBAL INEQUALITIES Göran Therborn T C W I In the new century, global inequality—along with its concomitants of misery, humiliation, and despair—has become a central social, cultural, and political issue. The inequalities of this world are posing three major challenges to sociology, current and future: (1) to our social relevance, i.e., our meaningfulness to socially concerned citizens of the world, as ideologically independent scholars; (2) to our capacity in transcending the horizons of yesterday’s sociology, the universalism of our classics, and the nationalism of our institutional founders into a globalism, aware of and interested in global variations and global connections; and, finally, (3) to our disciplinary imagination in bringing the rich variety of sociological perspectives and research into a common, multi-dimensional analytical focus. T I I shall here touch briefly upon two theoretical problems of inequality— one of conceptualization, the other of explanation. What differences create inequality? Each of us here is different from the other. In some sense, then, none of us is equal to others. On the other hand, in some other sense, I am pretty sure most of us consider us all as basically equal. So, what differences create inequality? It seems that behind a perception of inequality there is a notion of justice. The conception of justice underlying empirical sociological studies of inequality is rarely, if ever, reflected upon and discussed. Time and space limitations here allow me no elaborate reasoning, hence I am simply going to assert that there are at least three kinds of differences in human life which comprise the fundamental dimensions of inequality.
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Most basically, there is a differential exposure to the fatal risk of death or disease. We may call this vital inequality, and it can be measured by life expectancy (if possible corrected for disability), by mortality and/or morbidity rates. Secondly, there is the allocation of freedom and unfreedom in the pursuits of life-projects, or the allocation of rights, and of effective chances to act. Here we are dealing with existential inequality. This has been studied from several different angles—often unaware of or uninterested in each other—such as patriarchy, racism, caste, or intergenerational immobility. Thirdly, actors face variable material constraints which may be summed up as resource inequality. For many purposes, a study of the distribution of income—given its easy measurability and its wideranging convertibility—will provide the most pertinent picture of resource inequality, but it may also include, say, education, social networks or power. Bourdieu spoke of possession and accumulation of economic and cultural capital. In terms of rights, we are here dealing with rights to claims. This list is not meant to be exhaustive nor exclusive. The kinds of inequality highlight the irreducible multidimensionality of inequality. They can vary independently of each other, and they can be driven by different social forces. World inequality is not only household income or national income per capita. Social development is not identical with economic growth and distribution. To emphasize and to investigate the plurality of inequalities should be a crucial task of sociology. Implied in the above is a notion of justice bearing a universal minimization of exposure to avoidable death and morbidity, the broadest possible allocation of rights to act, and a narrowly differentiated resource distribution as the three most important aspects of a just, egalitarian organization of social life. How Is Inequality Produced? Mechanisms of Inequality Concerning the issue of how to explain inequalities, I shall here say a few words about two aspects: the basic social mechanisms generating inequality, and how to approach the task of explaining global inequalities. In searching for a handle on the mechanisms of inequality, I have
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been guided by two criteria. First, what we need is a set of such generality that it can cover all kinds of inequality in which social citizens and social scientists are interested. Second, the set should be both morally and sociologically relevant, i.e., bearing upon considerations of justice or injustice, non-idiosyncratically, and pertaining to sociological analysis. The outcome of this search is a list of four elementary mechanisms characterized by their modes of social interaction. Each mode of interaction may be investigated from a perspective of system dynamics as well as actor agency only. Table 1. Inequality Mechanisms and Their Interactive Dynamics Mechanism
Dynamics Direct Agency Only Systemic Dynamics
Distanciation
Running ahead
Exclusion Hierarchization
Closure Vertical interaction e.g. systemic centre and periphery or social gender hierarchy Abuse
Exploitation
Reward Structuration, e.g., “Winner takes all”, “Matthew effect”, Returns to scale Opportunity Structuration Social Generalization/Delimitation
Socio-Cultural Dichotomization, e.g., master/servant, empire/its possessions
These four form both a scale of interaction and a staircase into the hell of inequality. In distanciation the only interaction required is perception—one of someone running away from, and distancing herself from others. This is the individualist conception of inequality, whether applied to national growth or to individual careers. In many conceptions of justice, inequality by distanciation has a basic legitimacy, as something deserved due to talent or effort. From a systemic view of distanciation, however, structural questions of reward scales and of systemic tendencies—like increasing returns to scale, so-called Matthew effects, or “winner-takes-all” societies—may be raised. And in other moral worldviews distanciation may be criticized as unsolidaristic or as socially destabilizing.
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Exclusion is here meant as both relative (e.g., including placing hurdles, stumbling blocks, or, more generally, other difficulties before outsiders), and absolute (e.g., categorical boundaries and closures). Exclusion involves a hoarding of opportunities, although Charles Tilly (1998:91), for not quite convincing reasons, reserved that notion for special, non-elite cases. In any case there is an active, though often minimal or only liminal interaction between the excluder and the excluded. Moral judgment of the justice of exclusion tends to be polarized across borderlines. Most people seem to accept some lines of exclusion, at least between family members and non-members, and between citizens and non-citizens. However, within any perceived community, exclusive practices are usually held illegitimate, violating norms of equality of consideration or of opportunity. Systemically, practices of exclusion depend upon, as well as produce, opportunity structures, including the timing and spacing of opportunities. Hierarchization requires an elaborate institutionalization of interaction into patterns of superordination and subordination. This may again assume different forms of importance: (1) a hierarchy of incumbents of functions; (2) a hierarchy of the characteristics of actors (their gender, age, race, or caste); or (3), at a world-systemic level, a sustained pattern of core and periphery, or between colonizers and the colonized. Historically the first two have, of course, been intertwined. Moral evaluation has, above all, been changing recently. In the second half of the twentieth century hierarchies of actors have become morally suspect. Even hierarchies of incumbents have come to be morally and socially questioned, and networks lionized instead while, in fact, sotto voce, remuneration of rank has increased after a period of secular decline. Exploitation, finally, is a concept which had better not be sociologically diluted and devalued after the fall of the labor theory value. Because it has such strong moral connotations, one may deny exploitation, but hardly defend it. Exploitation rests on a particular form of hierarchical interaction, where the inequality of A over B is sustained by A’s extraction of effort or resources from B. In the world of inequality the four mechanisms relate to each other asymmetrically. Exclusion involves distanciation, and hierarchization presupposes exclusion as well as distance, while exploitation means distanciation, exclusion, and hierarchization, as well as exploitation. The relative importance of these mechanisms is at the center of scholarly as well as political controversies about world development,
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although the mechanisms are usually implied in area-specific notions. Did world inequality rise mainly because of distanciation at the time of the Industrial Revolution, with the North Atlantic economies running ahead and away? Or was it also related to hindering exclusive practices, like the crowding out of Indian manufacturers by the British rulers, the violent “opening” of China, the hierarchization of the whole world into a “civilized” colonizing part and an “uncivilized” colonized part? To what extent has Western European prosperity been built upon colonial exploitation? Is the recent widening of income differentials in the US and elsewhere due to technological change and ensuing demand shifts, or is it more significantly an effect of the excluding processes of socially and politically disorganizing the popular classes? What Causes Global Outcomes?—Global and National Processes With regard to contemporary world inequality, these elementary mechanisms of inequality constitute a research agenda as there is no scholarly consensus of their relative importance. But global inequality also raises another kind of explanatory question, more substantially concrete. What forces and processes should we look into? Whatever their deeper causes, global distributive outcomes—given the way the world is currently organized, i.e., into nation-states— follow from three defining processes: (1)
Relative national performance, e.g., economic growth, institutional change, health and safety investments, etc.; (2) National distributive patterns of existential rights, of mortality or morbidity risks, of income; and (3) Relative national population developments—larger population, bigger impact on the world distribution; smaller population, smaller impact. Herewith we have said nothing about the weight of national, as compared to transnational determinations. At one pole, nation-states might be taken as no more than counting units, delimited by the operational area bureaus of statistics or an extension of the sampling frame of representative surveys, with nation-state area characteristics fully shaped by transnational processes. At the other, global outcomes may be seen as no more than comparing the relative distances of national achievements. In between lie all the plausible, difficult, and fascinating combinations of national and global forces.
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To argue for a post-national, global sociology does not necessarily mean to make any a priori claims of preponderant global determination. In my opinion it should only mean an awareness of a global, instead of national or cross-national, horizon of investigation. In order to get a handle on so-called globalization we had better specify a set of global, or at least transnational processes. All current nation-states and national economies and societies have been populated, cultured, bounded, and located in the world by extra-national forces and processes. Global history is a major global process. Past transnational interactions have placed today’s nationstates in a world system, and have provided them with a layered cultural and institutional legacy. In their current functioning in the world, nations are affected by two ongoing sets of global processes. Most straightforward are global, or at least transnational flows of goods and services, of capital, of people, and also, not to be forgotten, of information and ideas. Another current global process may be called global entanglement, referring to the imbrication of institutions, the intertwining of different sets of actors—national and global, local and global. The most tangible form of this entanglement is the emergence of resourceful global organizations affecting and interacting with national and local governments, politicians, and movements. We may lay out the production of global inequality—and of the equality that there is in the world—in a simple model. Figure 1. Global and Sub-Global Determinants of Global Inequalities GLOBAL FLOWS: Trade, Capital, People, Information
GLOBAL HISTORY Past Interactions: Systemic Location Cultural & Institutional Legacy
NATIONAL PROCESSES Performance Population Distribution
GLOBAL INEQUALITIES
TRANSNATIONAL ENTANGLEMENTS: of the National and the Global of the National and the Regional
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I I I W? The complexity, the contradictions of social life have always baffled the best minds of social analysis. To Alexis de Tocqueville (1986[1835]:41), “The gradual development of equality of conditions is a providential fact . . .: it is universal, it is durable, it escapes every day human power.” On the other hand, to the somewhat younger Karl Marx and Engels (1972[1848]:473), the mid-nineteenth century was, above all, a polarization of wealth and poverty, “and pauperization is developing faster than population and wealth.” With the privilege of hindsight we may say that both were right, and both were wrong. But their respective relative rightness or wrongness remains controversial to this day. The Main Pictures . . . Is world inequality increasing? Adopting a long historical perspective, the best brief empirical answer is no. While keeping in mind a wonderful warning by the controversial contemporary German novelist Martin Walser that “What is, is not likely to become what has been,” it now looks as if the second half of the twentieth century— in some, but far from all respects—brought a historical turn in the direction of less, rather than more inequality. When we are deeply concerned with a problem, as egalitarians are with inequality, we all tend to see the problem as increasing. However, one of the challenging tasks of committed scholarship is to be able to view the world from many different sides while preserving one’s values. The historical turn is discernible with regard to all three basic kinds of inequality. Most clearly and least controversially is this the case with what arguably is the most important dimension of inequality: vital inequality. Historical life-tables are missing for most countries of the world outside Europe, but, from about 1900, there is a significant number of infant mortality series which are very good indicators of relative life expectancy. For one major extra-European country, India, a relatively reliable demographic history has been established (Mari Bhat 1989). Matching Indian and English (later British) census data yields a picture conveying the main features of vital inequality in the world in the course of the twentieth century. The historical Chinese data (Lee and Wang 1999:55–56) may have a wider margin of error, but the tendencies are clear enough to be robust. While a catching up in relative terms could be seen in IndianEnglish life chances before 1950, only after was there an approximation in absolute terms, and then a dramatic one at that.
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Figure 2. Vital Inequality 1901–1999 Life Expectancy at Birth 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0
India UK China
1901– 1911– 1921– 1941– 1951– 1970 1999 31 1911 21 50 61 Sources: England and Wales: Fitzpatrick and Chandola (2000: table 3.1.) India: Mari Bhat (1989: table 6); China: Lee and Wang (1999: tables 4.1 and 4.2); 1999 UK, India, and China: World Bank (2002: table 1).
Of the two most important worldwide manifestations of existential inequality, racism is the one most difficult to measure. Generally speaking, however, I see great difficulties in denying the occurrence of a major turn after World War II. With the complete defeat of Nazi Germany and imperialist Japan, racism fell onto defensive and retreat in most of the world, without disappearing though. The 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights tolled the bell for official, institutional racism, although it took until about 1970 before US Blacks got a real right to vote, and until the early 1990s before apartheid imploded in South Africa. Patriarchy, the rule of fathers and husbands over the lives of children and wives, is also slippery and nebulous to capture on a comparative macroscopic scale. Working on the major family systems of the world and their legal and social institutionalization, I am putting forward a preliminary version of a crude additive index of patriarchy, which in the summary form below can vary between zero and six. It is based on an assessment of the value of nine different indicators, of parent-child and of husband-wife relations, and, thirdly, of specific gender sacrifices in family patterns, such as female infan-
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Figure 3. Existential Inequality 1900–2000. The Strength of Family Patriarchy 6
5
China South Asia
4
W Asia/N Afr. Africa East. Europe
3 Japan SE Asia 2 W Eur/N. Am
1
0
1900 2000 Source: Therborn (forthcoming, preliminary summary, using a large number of sources, social and legal). Note: The diagrams do not convey the substantial variation within the large family areas, variations which in tabular form may be expressed as a range of values. The diagrams provide the upper limit of the internal variation.
ticide, cliterodectomy, or seclusion. While the diagram cannot convey the range of internal variation in the world’s family systems, it does show a decline of patriarchy over the century. The trajectory of income inequality has been more controversial, and, until recently, a good deal of scholarly (Pritchett 1997; UNDP 1999), as well as egalitarian civic opinion held that income inequality in the world was accelerating. Here there has been a dramatic shift of expert, if not public opinion in the last few years (Bourguignon and Morrison 2002; Firebaugh 1999; Melchior et al. 2000; Sala-i-Martin
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2002; Schultz 1998). The main reason is a general recognition (cf. UNDP 2001) of new methods, in particular the development of purchasing power parities instead of official exchange rates as the basis of comparison, but also of population-weighted measures. Estimations of world economic inequality, and of its historical development, still require heroic, daring, and never quite reliable approximations. But the convergence of several skillful historical explorations seems to yield one major result. After a secular trend of global income divergence, since the early nineteenth century at least, the second half of the twentieth century has brought a leveling off. Later we shall look into what has happened recently on this high plateau of economic resource inequality, but this much seems clear: the second half of the twentieth century ended a historical trend of rising global economic inequality. A similar picture was drawn by the great economic historian Paul Bairoch (1997:1037), comparing a group of the most developed countries with the whole of the Third World. It illustrates a widening gap until 1950, and basic stability thereafter, with a slight decreasing tendency. . . . and Their Qualifications First things come first, but they are not alone. Before searching for explanations, we should look at the qualifications of the Historical Turning Point. Figure 4. Income Inequality A Stylized Trajectory 1820–2000 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0
Global Gini 1820–2000
Global Gini Coefficient
1820 1870 1910 1929 1950 1970 2000 Sources: Bourguignon and Morrison (2002) and Sala-i-Martin (2002: figure 7).
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Two major, and two more idiosyncratic factors significantly qualify the asymptotic convergence of human life expectancy rates. AIDS in Africa—under conditions of poverty, inadequate health services, and expensive, patented medications for its curbing—has broken the upward-bending life curve. In the late 1980s, this rising trend fractured. In the Great Lakes African region and in southern Black Africa, the life expectancy around the year 2000 is lower than 25–30 years before (UNDP 2001:table 8). For Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole it was lower in 1999 than in 1980, and the gap between it and the high income countries has increased from 26 to 31 years. In South Africa the fall of the life expectancy of children born between 1980 and 1999 was nine years, in Zimbabwe fifteen (World Bank 2001a. The second vital disaster has been the collapse of Communism in the former Soviet Union. Stagnation in vital improvement, set already in the late 1960s, was then precipitated by the turn to capitalism. By the end of the twentieth century, capitalist Russia offered its citizens a four years shorter life expectancy at birth than communist Russia 25–30 years earlier (UNDP 2001:table 8). In spite of heroic efforts by several religious fundamentalisms, patriarchy has had little of an effective comeback. Afghanistan in the 1990s was hardly a major success. But, as the diagram above showed, it remains strong in South Asia, West Asia-cum North Africa, and, in different forms, in Sub-Saharan Africa. New migration streams have increased ethnic friction, particularly in Europe. The 11th of September 2001 gave rise to what is probably the first racist bestseller in Europe after 1945: the Italian, New York-based journalist Oriana Fallaci’s (2001) “Rage and Pride.” But, on the whole, existential human inequality remains without public legitimacy in most parts of the world, and certainly in Europe. Beneath the overall postwar income stability a number of international and interregional shifts have occurred in relative per capita GDP. The table shows, above all, two things. First, there is no post-World War II tendency towards an increased polarization between countries or regions. The maximum spreads have not increased, and the poor pole of 2000 (sub-Saharan Africa) is only about eleven percent of the world population, whereas in 1950 (in the form of China) it comprised a fifth of the then-population of the Earth; this indicates a de-polarization. Secondly, a similar overall distributive pattern covers, in fact, dramatic regional or national changes: the postwar
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Table 2. Per Capita GDP in Major Parts of the World 1950–1998 (in Purchasing Power Parities; World Average for each year = 100)
Africa (a) China India Latin Amer. CE Europe (Ex-)USSR W. Europe Japan USA
1950
1960
1970
1980
1990
1998
40 21 29 121 103 134 217 91 452
37 24 27 114 111 141 249 143 407
35 21 23 107 115 149 275 259 401
33 24 21 120 128 142 293 297 411
27 36 25 99 105 133 310 365 450
24 55 31 102 96 68 314 358 479
Maximum Spreads: 1950, USA: China = 22:1; 1960 USA: China = 17:1; 1970: USA: China = 19:1; 1980 USA: India = 20:1; 1990: USA: India = 18:1; 1998 USA: Africa = 20:1; 2000: USA: Sub-Saharan Africa = 23:1. Note (a): Africa includes both North and Sub-Saharan Africa. Sources: Calculations from the World Bank (2002), on 2000; the rest calculated from Maddison (2001:tables 1-c, 2-c, 3-c, 5-c)
acceleration of Japan and Western Europe, the recent surge of China, and the drastic fall of the successors to the Soviet Union. In absolute terms, in relation to the global average, these abrupt shifts dwarf the steady but gradual decline of Africa, the jagged downward slope of Latin America, or the inverted U-curve of Eastern Europe from Poland to Bulgaria. Among the most important of the richest countries, the G7 group, the 1990s saw the USA outgrowing all the others. The distance to the US level has widened, not only in absolute terms but also, in relative growth terms for several large countries of the poor world. For Nigeria, the annual growth rate difference to the US in the 1990s was –2.6 percent, for South Africa –2.2, for Brazil –0.8, and for Mexico and Pakistan –0.7. For Russia it was –6.8. The catchup was modest for others: on the average, +0.3 percent a year for Indonesia, +0.4 for Egypt, +0.7 percent for Bangladesh, and +1.9 percent for India (World Bank 2001b). If the differential growth rates of the 1990s were to continue, India would catch up with the US after 144–145 years. Should China’s extraordinary annual growth of 9.2 percent continue, parallel to the respectable US one of 2.2, it would take a good 32 more years for the Chinese to come up alongside the Americans. Yet, except for the so far successful Chinese bid
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for a return to the world center, the world is rather growing apart than together. T I D W I I The end to the increasing economic inequality of the world has been primarily driven by China, a poor and huge country with a spectacular economic growth, counterbalancing opposite tendencies. Regressing 1997 economic growth on 1962 per capita GDP reveals no general catching-up tendency, nor polarization for that matter (Philipson and Soares 2001; cf. Barro and Sala-i-Martin 1995). What has driven world income inequality in the twentieth century is internation economic differentials. Exactly how large the proportion appears depends upon the kind of income estimates made and the kind of measuring instrument used, but research results concur in that interstate inequality weighs significantly more heavily than the sum of intrastate ones (Bourguignon and Morrison 2002; Milanovic 2002; Salai-Martin 2002). There is, though, a recent tendency towards a rising secondary importance of intranation inequality (Goesling 2001). Different population developments have also been important. For instance, if the African population had grown since 1960 at the same pace as the Chinese, the African per capita GDP would have been forty percent higher in 1998 than it actually was. The Indian per capita income would have been twenty percent higher with a Chinese family system and Chinese postwar demography (calculations from Maddison 2001:tables C3-a–c). One of the most striking things in comparing national and transnational processes is how similar some countries are to the world as a whole. These countries produce and reproduce almost as much inequality among their citizens as the whole world does among its inhabitants. Several estimates of income inequality among the populations of the world—going beyond the previously practically necessary assumption that all citizens of nation-states have the same income, corresponding to the national income per capita—have converged in their conclusion about the size of world inequality. This relative consensus is remarkable given the use of different approaches of estimation. Measured in the Gini index, world inequality in the 1990s should be of the order of 65, with a couple of points as a
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margin of error (Milanovic 2002, and oral communication June 2002; Bourguignon and Morrison 2002; Sala-i-Martin 2002). This figure is remarkable because there are nation-states with a Gini of about 60, while the most egalitarian ones have an index value of around twenty. These include Brazil, South Africa (in 1993–94), several other Central and South American countries, and some African ones (World Bank 2002:table 2; Székely and Hilgert 2000:table 1). In 1993 the poorest ten percent of the world’s households received less than 1 percent of the world income—0.8 percent according to Branko Milanovic’s (2002:table 17) estimate—while the richest ten percent absorbed half of all the income in the world. For Brazil the corresponding figures in 1997 were 1 and 47 percent, respectively (World Bank 2002:table 2). The quintile ratios between the richest and the poorest fifths were 36 in the world and 24 in Brazil (UNDP 2001:table 12; Milanovic 2002:figure 4). The massive fact of huge gaps among national income per capita should not be interpreted as implying that national distribution patterns are of negligible interest. Their importance is manifested by the large interstate variations of intrastate inequality, with Gini coefficients ranging from about 20 to about 60, even intraregionally by 13 Gini points between Costa Rica and Guatemala (Székely and Hilgert 2000), or between Denmark and Portugal (Eurostat 1998:176), or 21 points in the cases of Taiwan and Thailand (Székely and Hilgert 2000). National distributive policies are very important. The Gini coefficient for disposable income in Scandinavia is only about half of the coefficient for the distribution of earnings; in the USA it is about a Figure 5. Global and National Inequality 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0
Gini Share of Richest Ten Percent
World Brazil
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quarter lower. In many countries of Latin America, by contrast, income remains as unequal after taxes and transfers as before (Székely and Hilgert 2000). If Brazil, for instance, had at least the modest British redistribution from market income to disposable income after 18 years of Thatcherism, the Brazilian Gini coefficient would have been 41 instead of 59 (calculated from Atkinson 1999:figure 5, and from Székely and Hilgert 2000:tables 1 and 2). Historically, Latin American economic inequality was largely based on an unequal distribution of land; in recent times this has been increasingly overtaken by a bifurcated elitist educational system (Morley 2001). And underlying both is a global history of coloniality and its inequalities of existence (Quijano 2000). Internally, most countries of the world are currently either widening their income differentials or, in very unequal countries, reproducing them. This is in clear contrast to the widespread tendency towards equalization of the 1960s and 1970s, or early 80s in Asia (Cornia 1999; Stewart and Berry 1999:table 6.6). Relative poverty among children has increased in Western Europe recently (LIS 2001a). With regard to explanations, the picture is blurred by some noteworthy exceptions: Canada in North America, France in Western Europe, and Taiwan in East Asia (LIS 2001b). Increasing internal inequality appears more an option than a fate. T I G P While the variety of national development paths, population trajectories, and distributive patterns shows that a global social science which neglects nation-states would be lost, we have yet to make even a first assessment of the impact of global, or at least transnational processes upon current nations and upon world inequality. Global History Past transnational interactions and their legacy, I think, are by far the most important global processes in determining current inequalities. There are, on the one hand, the distant past still weighing upon us and, on the other, a fairly recent event, the effects of which are increasingly unfolding.
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Current world rankings go far back. For instance, the correlation between the national income of twelve major countries1 and of the African continent in 1820 and in 1998 is 0.77. Latin America is currently the world’s most unequal continent (Londoño 2001:table 1); in fact, already in the early nineteenth century, a shrewd German observer, the explorer-scholar Alexander von Humboldt, a contemporary of Tocqueville père, was struck by the inequality of New Spain, today’s Mexico. Between an Indian priest and an archbishop he found an income ratio of 1:1300, and a spread among bishops of 22:1 (Humboldt 1972[1808]:83). With regard to life expectancy the correlation among the same units in 1900 and in 1999 is r = 0.84. The patriarchality of the world’s family systems has seen a couple of important relative changes— with equality making larger strides in Eastern Europe and in East Asia—but a significant part of the relative differences among family systems go back to the first wave of globalization, the establishment of world religions 12 to 17 centuries ago. The crucial, recent contingent event is the outcome of World War II. The communist regimes in Eastern Europe and East Asia dealt decisive blows to patriarchy, as did the US occupation of Japan. However, the decisive consequence of WWII was the beginning of de-colonization. I would venture the hypothesis that de-colonization, and the retrenchment of European imperialism is a major reason for the postwar flattening out of the curve of global inequality. Evidence is gathering that nationally specific institutions (Rodrik 2001) and regional contexts (Milanovic 2002) are crucial for economic growth. They could only appear after independence but then only as a possibility—just one sign of economic independence. In 1913 China and India, both weak and underdeveloping, were among the most open economies of the world after Britain. By the end of the 1990s, these two countries were among the very few in the world which had significantly higher tariffs than in 1913 (O’Rourke 2001). In the first half of the twentieth century, per capita GDP stayed flat, though bending downwards, in China, India, and Indonesia, then moved upwards in the second half (Maddison 2001:table 2–2b). Three basic problems of post-colonialism had to be mastered, though, before achieving any catch-up with North Atlantic economies. 1 These countries are France, Germany, the UK, Spain, Russia, the USA, Mexico, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and Japan vis-à-vis the continent of Africa.
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The potential population explosion following colonial medicine’s reduction of mortality had to be accompanied by de-patriachialization and birth control. The colonial elitist abyss between state and society had to be overcome. The anti-elitist revolt had to be prevented from falling into plebeian predation. Large parts of Africa have so far failed to resolve any of these issues. South Asia has, for a long time, been burdened with state elitism (even in the case of democratic India), but opportunities are opening. East and Southeast Asia were economically lucky with both their communist and their anti-communist post-colonial rulers, although both authoritarianisms have taken their heavy human toll. Global Entanglements The entanglement of nation-states and transnational movements and organizations has borne significantly upon inequality, with effects going in opposite directions. The international movement for family planning gradually gathered momentum after World War II. Its first breakthrough at the nation-state level occurred in the 1960s, in the countries later known as the East Asian Tigers—Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore (Bartlett 1995; Finkle and McIntosh 1994; Berelson 1966). The UN Population Conference in 1984 signaled a global political victory; birth control in poor countries has a strong equalizing effect on income inequality. The erosion of patriarchy owes very much to transnational political entanglements. The social modernism of the international communist movement made the abolition of patriarchal family institutions a central feature of all its revolutions and regimes. A liberal variant of the same modernism made the American occupants push for radical family reform in Japan. The UN soon came to play a key role in rallying feminists and women’s movements all over the world in their challenging of male supremacy. The UN Women’s Conferences from Mexico in 1975 to Beijing in 1995, the Women’s Development Decade 1975–85, and the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Discrimination Against Women in effect since 1981 have all forced crucial constitutional and legal changes, as well as provided foci for a worldwide social movement. By contrast, the states which have had to, or have chosen to link up with the IMF have taken an anti-egalitarian direction. Domestically, the IMF programs have meant a massive redistribution from labor to capital, and interstate-wise it appears that these programs have
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also had a negative effect on growth. The difficult selection problems in evaluating crisis interventions such as those of the IMF seem to have been mastered in recent research (Przeworski and Vreeland 2000; Vreeland 2002). The entanglement operation of the IMF, which should be seen as a muscular corporation of neoliberal economists, was summed up in exclusion terms by Paul Volcker, former Chair of the US Federal Reserve System, the US equivalent to a central bank: “When the IMF consults with a poor and weak country, the country gets in line. When it consults with a big and strong country, the IMF gets in line. When big countries are in conflict, the IMF gets out of line” (as cited in Oxfam 2002:28). Transnational entanglements, regional as well as global, have become increasingly important, but their distributive effect depends on the type of transnational institution or movement. Global Flows Global flows—of trade, capital, people, and information—are what most of the globalization debate are about. However, their effects are all ambiguous or contradictory. The complex, largely inconclusive empirical evidence does not support any clear-cut ideological position. Nor, for that matter, do the consequences vindicate the classic theorems of economics, of convergence through free flows. People A hundred years ago, migration was a major equalizer among the Atlantic societies, with the masses of the poor people of Europe moving to the land-abundant, labor-scarce New Worlds (O’Rourke and Williamson 1999). Today’s intercontinental migration is smaller, and its distributive effects still have to be sorted out. Where we have to start is the fact that the swell of the Mexican, Caribbean, and Central American emigration into the United States in the last decades of the twentieth century has not (yet) been followed by any decrease of inequality or poverty in this region; on the contrary, they have increased (Székely and Hilget 2000; Boltvinik 2001). For Mexico and most of the other countries, the interstate national income gap between them and the USA has actually widened in the 1990s (UNDP 2001:table 11). These correlations are, of course, no evidence against the equalizing effects of migration, only that, so far, such outcomes are overwhelmed by other forces at work. In rich countries with weak
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unions, like the US, low-skilled immigration tends to depress low wages further, thus increasing national inequality, but the size of the effect is minor even in this case (Cooper 2001:121–22). Capital Capital flows from capital-rich to capital-poor countries work to reduce interstate inequality and were important as such a century ago (O’Rourke and Williamson 1999). Today this effect is smaller, because capital flows have become less global and more concentrated among the rich countries themselves—more a process of “diversification finance” than “development finance” (Obstfeld and Taylor 2002; O’Rourke 2001). Clearly, the spectacular Chinese catch-up has been significantly fuelled by a massive influx of external capital, but there is no robust growth effect of capital account liberalization in evidence (Eichengreen 2000, reviewing a number of studies). There are also perverse capital movements. Using international trade and finance statistics, it has been estimated that the capital moved out of 25 poor, heavily indebted African countries in 1970–1996 exceeds their stock of foreign debt (Boyce and Ndikumana 2001). Opening up to transnational capital movements entails risk of exposure to severe shocks from the volatility of short-term capital. East Asian countries from Thailand to Korea were hit heavily by such a shock in 1997, with increasing poverty as a result (Stiglitz 2002:ch. 4). People’s economic insecurity in Latin America is largely driven by the magnifying effects of volatile capital flows (Rodrik 2001). Opening a nation’s capital account is usually associated with power shifts in favor of capital (taxes, labor rights), and often followed by mounting white to blue-collar differentials. Transnational capital flows therefore tend to increase intrastate inequality, although not intrinsically (Behrman et al. 2000; Morley 2001). Trade In spite of their strong free trade instincts, mainstream economists are increasingly recognizing the ambiguous effects of trade. Theoretically, there is now “no systematic link” between foreign trade and economic growth (Cooper 2001:114). Nor is there any clear empirical relationship between foreign trade and economic growth. Furthermore, the successful East Asian export-oriented growth after World War II was, for a long time, undertaken from very protected home-bases, whether in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan or, most recently, China
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(Rodriguez and Rodrik 2000). A hundred years ago, the countries most open to foreign manufacturing trade, apart from leading Britain, were the dependent, underdeveloping nations of China, India, Siam, Iran, and the Ottoman empire (O’Rourke 2001:table 1). Recent trade theory ( Jones 2000), leaving behind the parsimonious but oversimplified theorems of Heckscher-Ohlin and StolperSamuelson, is indeterminate with regard to internal distribution effects of foreign trade. Empirical investigations show no strong net effects in either direction (Behrman et al. 2000; Morley 2001), alternatively demonstrated effects appear very sensitive to sampling and model specification (O’Rourke 2001; Cooper 2001). What is coming out of these fairly intense economic debates might be termed a sociological insight that trade liberalization as well as protectionism have both losers and winners, and that who is who does not follow from stylized assumptions of factor endowments, but depends on the countryspecific institutions of the trade regime. Looked at more critically, the current global trade system is also a manifest example of hierarchization and exclusion. It is a hierarchy in the sense that the rich and powerful countries are imposing a trade rule which more or less closes their domestic markets to products in which poor countries traditionally have had a chance to compete, in food and in textiles (Oxfam 2002:ch. 4). Information Flows of information may have strong distributive effects. In what direction depends on the kind of information. Vital inequality in the world has undoubtedly decreased through the diffusion of medical and hygienic information. The Afro-Asian spread of the French Instituts Pasteur, committed to bacteriological research, to vaccination and serum therapy, was a remarkable example of imperial medicine. It started in Saigon in 1891, opened up in Tunis in 1893, and in Dakar in 1896 (Dedet 2000). The quantitative effects of the Pasteur institutes are difficult to measure. More visible in that sense is the arrival of penicillin and of spraying against malaria mosquitoes in Ceylon right after World War II, halving the death rate in less than ten years (Mitchell 1998:table A6). Increased inequality, on the other hand, followed from the flow of neoliberalism in the 1980s, institutionally fortified in the Washington Consensus among the US Treasury, the World Bank, and the IMF, and carried by graduates of American economics departments into
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most corners of the world. While the effects of pure information/ideology flows and of institutional strong-arm methods by the IMF and the World Bank are difficult to sort out, Giovanni Andrea Cornia’s (1999) argument of a global ideological force behind the turn to more inequality in most countries is plausible. In Summary Summing up so far, national institutions and processes are crucial for global distribution. So is global history. Exploitation and hierarchization weigh upon the world from the past, but currently exclusion and distanciation seem to be the most powerful inequality mechanisms. Intranation economic inequality is rising in importance, though still secondary to internation inequality. The effects of global flows are contradictory and exceedingly complex. The flow of medical information has clearly been very important in reducing vital inequality. Global institutional and organizational entanglements have had different effects depending upon the global organization or movement involved. Nevertheless, the most effective has been the antipatriarchal, feminist entanglement through UN initiatives; they have increased existential equality all over the world. E The complex issues of world inequalities, their complicated patterns, their intriguing interrelations, which I have not at all touched upon here, their convoluted causal configurations, and the necessity of very differentiated policy responses, constitute a fascinating challenge for a multi-faceted, undisciplined discipline like sociology. Ahead of us is an enormous worldwide research agenda. BIBLIOGRAPHY Atkinson, A. (1999) ‘Is Rising Inequality Inevitable? A Critique of the Transatlantic Consensus’, WIDER Annual Lectures 3, Helsinki: WIDER. Bairoch, P. (1997) Victoires et déboires vol. III. Paris: Gallimard folio. Barro, R. and Sala-i-Martin, X. (1995) Economic Growth. New York: McGraw-Hill. Bartlett, D. (1995) Reproducing Persons as A Global Concern: The Making of An Institution. Stanford University PhD. Ann Arbor Michigan: UMI Dissertation Services. Behrman, J., Birdsall, N. and Székely, M. (2000) Economic Reform and Wage Differentials in Latin America. Washington: InterAmerican Development Bank, Working Paper.
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Berelson, B. (1966) (ed.) Family Planning and Population Programs. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Berkovitch, N. (1999) From Motherhood to Citizenship. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Binational Study on Migration (1998) The Migration between Mexico and the United States. Washington DC. Boltvinik, J. (2001) ‘Welfare, Inequality and Poverty in Mexico, 1970–2000’, paper presented at the 35th Congress of the International Institute of Sociology, Kraków, Poland. Bourguignon, F. and Morrison, C. (2002) ‘Inequality among World Citizens: 1820– 1992’, World Bank Working Paper, American Economic Review. Boyce, J. and Ndikumana, L. (2001) ‘Is Africa a Net Creditor? Estimates of Capital Flight From Severely Indebted Sub-Saharan African Countries, 1970–96’, Journal of Development Studies 38:27–56. Castles, S. (2000) ‘Migration as a Factor in Social Transformation in East Asia’, paper Presented to Princeton University Conference on Migration and Development. Cooper, R. (2001) ‘Growth and Inequality: The Role of Foreign Trade and Investment’, in B. Pleskovic and N. Stern (eds.) Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics 2001/2002. Washington: World Bank, 107–37. Cornia, G.A. (1999) ‘Liberalization, Globalization, and Income Distribution’, WIDER Working Papers 15, Helsinki: UN University. —— (2001) ‘Trends in Income Distribution in the Post War Period: Evidence and Interpretation’, Helsinki: UNU/WIDER. —— and Panicciá, R. (eds.) (2000) The Mortality Crisis in Transitional Economies. Oxford: OUP. Dedet, J.-P. (2000) Les Instituts Pasteur d’outre-mer. Paris: L’Harmattan. Easterly, W. (2001) ‘The Effect of IMF and World Bank programs on poverty’, Working Paper. Helsinki: UNU/WIDER. Eichengreen, B. (2000) ‘Capital Account Liberalization: What Do Cross-Country Studies Tell Us?’ The World Bank Economic Review 15:341–65. Edwards, L. and Roces, M. (2000) (eds.) Women in Asia. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Eekelaar, J. and Nhlapo, T. (1998) (eds.) The Changing Family. Oxford: Hart. Eurostat (1998) Social Portait of Europe. Luxemburg. Fallaci, O. (2001) La Rabbia e l’Orgoglio. Milano: Rizzoli. Finkle, J. and McIntosh, A. (1994) (eds.) The New Politics of Population: Conflict and Consensus in Family Planning. New York and Oxford: OUP. Firebaugh, G. (1999) ‘Empirics of World Income Inequality’, American Journal of Sociology 104:1597–1630. Fitzpatrick, R., and Chandola, T. (2000) ‘Health’, in A.H. Halsey and J. Webb (eds.) Twentieth Century British Social Trends. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Goesling, B. (2001) ‘Changing Income Inequalities within and between Nations: New Evidence’, American Sociological Review 66:74–61. Gustafsson, B. and Johansson, M. (1999) ‘In Search of Smoking Guns: What Makes Income Inequality Vary Over Time in Different Countries?’, American Sociological Review 64:585–605. Guzmán, V. (2001) La institucionalidad de género en el estado: Nuevas perapectivas de análisis. Santiago de Chile: CEPAL. Humboldt, A.v. (1972[1808]) Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. International Organization for Migration (2000) World Migration Report. Geneva: IOM. Jones, R. (2000) ‘Globalization and the Distribution of Income’, paper presented at Workshop on Global Processes of Inequality, Stockholm. Lee, J. and Wang F. (1999) One Quarter of Humanity. Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press.
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LIS (2001a) ‘Inequality’, Luxemburg Income Study http://www.lis.ceps.lu. —— (2001b) ‘Poverty’, Luxemburg Income Study http://www.lis.ceps.lu. Londoño, J.-L., (2001) ‘Comment on “Globalization and Inequality: Historical Trends” by Kevin H. O’Rourke, and “Fear of Globalization: The Human Capital Nexus” by Daniel Cohen’, in B. Pleskovic and N. Stern (eds.) Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics 2001/2002. Washington: World Bank, 94–105. Maddison, A. (2001) The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective. Paris: OECD. McKee, M. (2001) ‘The health consequences of the collapse of the Soviet Union’, in D. Leon and G. Wat (eds.), Poverty Inequality and Health. Oxford: OUP. Mari Bhat, P.N. (1989) ‘Mortality and Fertility in India, 1881–1961: a Reassessment’, in T. Dyson (ed.) India’s Historical Demography. London: Curzon. Marx, K. and Engels, F. (1972[1848]) ‘Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei’, in Marx-Engels Werke vol. 4. (East) Berlin: Dietz. Melchior, A., Telle, K. and Wiig, H. (2000) Globalisering og ulikhet. Oslo: Utrikesdepartementet. Milanovic, B. (2002) ‘True world income distribution, 1988 and l993: First calculations based on household surveys alone’, The Economic Journal, 112:51–92. Mitchell, B.R. (1998) International Historical Statistics: Africa, Asia & Oceania 1750–1993. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Morley, S. (2001) The Inome Distribution Problem in Latin America and the Caribbean. Santiago de Chile: CEPAL. Obstfeld, M. and Taylor, A. (2002) ‘Globalization and Capital Markets’, Washington DC: National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper. O’Rourke, K. (2001) ‘Globalization and Inequality; Historical Trends’ in B. Pleskovic and N. Stern (eds.) Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics 2001/2002. Washington: World Bank. —— and Williamson, J. (1999) Globalization and History. Cambridge Mass:, MIT Press. —— (2001) ‘Globalization and Inequality: Historical Trends’, in B. Pleskovic and N. Stern (eds.) Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics 2001/2002. Washington: World Bank. Oxfam (2002) Rigged Rules and Double Standards: Trade, globalization, and the fight against poverty. Oxford: Oxfam. Philipson, T. and Soares, R. (2001) ‘World Inequality and the Rise in Longevity’, in B. Pleskovic and N. Stern (eds.) Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics 2001/2002, Washington: World Bank. Pritchett, L. (1997) ‘Divergence Big Time’, Journal of Economic Perspectives 11:317. Przeworski, A. and Vreeland, J. (2000) ‘The Effect of IMF Programs on Economic Growth’, Journal of Development Economics 62:385–421. Quijano, A. (2000) ‘Coloniality of Power and Eurocentrism in Latin America’, International Sociology 15:215–32. Rodríguez, F. and Rodrik, D. (2000) ‘Trade Policy and Economic Growth: A Skeptic’s Guide to the Cross-National Evidence’, Dept of Economics, University of Maryland, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Rodrik, D. (2001) ‘Why is there so much economic insecurity in Latin America?’, CEPAL Review 73:7–30. Sala-I-Martín, X. (2002) ‘The Disturbing ”Rise” of Global Economic Inequality’, Working Paper. Washington: National Bureau of Economic Research. Schultz, P. (1998) ‘Inequality and the Distribution of Income in the World: How Is is Changing and Why?’, Journal of Population Economics 11:307–44. Sen, G., Germain, A. and Chen, L. (1994) Population Policies Reconsidered. Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press. Skeldon, R. (1997) Migration and development: A global perspective. London: Longman Stewart, F. and Berry, A. (1999) ‘Globalization, Liberalization, and Inequality: Expectations and Experience’, in A. Hurrell and N. Wood (eds.) Inequality, Globalization, and World Politics. Oxford: OUP.
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Stiglitz, J. (2002) Globalization and Its Discontents. London: Allen Lowe/Penguin. Székely, M. and Hilgert, M. (2000) What Drives Differences in Inequality across Countries? Working Paper. Washington: InterAmerican Development Bank. Therborn, G. (forthcoming) Between Sex and Power: The Family in the World of the Twentieth Century. London: Routledge. Tilly, C. (1998) Durable Inequality. Berkeley: University of California Press. Tocqueville, A. de (1986[1835]) De la démocratie en Amérique. Vol. I, Paris: Gallimard folio. UNDP (1999) Human Development Report 1999. Geneva: UN. —— (2001) Human Development Report 2001. Geneva: UN. Vreeland. J.R. (2002) ‘The Effect of IMF Programs on Labor’, Word Development 30: 121–39. Wade, R. (2001) ‘Global Inequality Winners and Losers’, The Economist April 28: 79–82. World Bank (2001a) World Development Indicators. Washington: World Bank. —— (2001b) A Country at a Glance, Washington: World Bank. —— (2002) World Development Report 2002. New York: OUP.
POSTSOCIALIST TRANSFORMATIONS AND VARIOUS FACES OF INEQUALITIES IN THE DIVIDED WORLD Pavel Machonin S I “M F” The issue of social inequalities has much to do with the main topic of this congress—The Moral Fabric in Contemporary Societies. It is not only a technical problem deserving the attention of “structural functionalists” from the point of view of empirical description, the subsequent analyses of data and, finally, interpretations and generalizations in terms of objectively existing social structures. Even an objective, general analysis of this phenomenon in and of itself—not to mention the varying faces of inequalities under various, historical and countryspecific conditions; or especially their highly frequent dramatic metamorphoses, directly caused and influenced by the attitudes and actions of people; and the, thus far, ambiguous shapes of those inequalities— deserves serious study which takes into account subjective reasons as well as the impact on actors of all kinds. All this includes, of course, a specific stress laid on the moral motivations, evaluations and consequences of the contemporary dynamics of social inequalities. Even such a classic “structural functional” topic as social inequality cannot be analyzed nowadays outside the “subjective” conceptual framework encompassing the problems of attitudes, actions and values—including moral ones. One could demonstrate this on the basis of the social context of one of the “moral” issues discussed in the course of the congress, to which the question of “trust,” “limited trust” and “distrust,” mentioned here by Piotr Sztompka (cf. 1999), indisputably belongs. These categories and the actually existing interrelationships between people are simply inseparable from many other phenomena and concepts— like a degree of satisfaction, achieved consensus, “social contract,” “volonté générale,” social cohesion, openness of society, social justice, equity of chances and solidarity, human dignity, self-realization and freedom, social security, pluralist democracy, civic society, hopeful expectations for the future, faith in institutions, etc.—many of
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which have already been discussed here. All these various aspects of societal life and consciousness are, to a large extent, connected with the creation, existence, and changes of various faces of inequalities, of both their objective and subjective aspects. Especially close to the problem of social inequalities seems to be the principle and perception of social justice. The so-called feeling of justice is, in my opinion, in no way only a subjective phenomenon as was stated in the opening plenary session. Under given historical and cultural conditions, one can, when circumstances are known, define with a relatively high probability the phenomena which could be considered as just or unjust by various social groupings. The assumed subjective feelings are, in most cases, quite clearly derived from the historical experience of a given society with its cultural background, and from the real, present day needs and interests of the groups in question as compared with the observed social positions, behavior and declared needs and interests of other groups. In the first phase of postsocialist transformations, lower, and in many cases even medium social strata developed precisely such feelings and condemned the careers of many of the so-called “winners” of the social differentiation processes as unjust or even dishonest. On the other hand, those in the top positions have often presupposed that poor people cause their own failures through inability or even laziness as many surveys concerning such attitudes show. These subjective evaluations are, of course, not quite exact or correct, but their close relation to the experiences of actual daily life is doubtless. Starting from objective analyses, one can also predict which of the clear and present phenomena are able to mobilize people towards societal improvements and which will evoke dissatisfaction or even resistance. Every educated person today knows that nothing like “absolute equality” exists and that the most favorable solution of this issue for the majority is to seek such a face of inequality which, under the given conditions, could be evaluated as relatively just, i.e., approaching the kind of social differentiation which can be considered functional and acceptable by prevailing public opinion. On the basis of our empirical surveys we cannot state that people evaluate the existing inequalities exclusively from the point of view of their selfish, individual and/or group interests. For instance, despite what has been said here about the negative perception of many upwardly mobile careers under postsocialism, social status achieved by educa-
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tion, skill and honest endeavor (“hard work”) is usually perceived in these societies as socially justified by most. At the same time, people dislike wealth and power achieved by mostly ascriptive factors and/or by dirty, i.e., illegal and immoral means. I would even state that feelings of social justice, based on the above-mentioned criteria, belong to the most important sources of what is called social morality. And thus here we are: these are the grounds upon which the theme of social inequality does belong to the broader topic of “the moral fabric of contemporary societies.” F S I T “S O” My considerations presented here are based on long-term observations of research into, and studies about medium-modernized and medium-wealthy Central European state socialist and postsocialist societies such as the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, taking also into account the East German lands, Slovenia and some of the former Soviet republics, with a natural stress on the Czech experience (see, e.g., Machonin et al. 1969; Machonin 1970; Machonin and Tu‘ek 1996; Adamski, Bun‘ák, Machonin and Martin 1999; Adamski, Machonin and Zapf 2001). Though we have a large amount of relatively fresh data (e.g., from a representative survey on the “Decade of Transformation” from the end of 1999 in Machonin, Gatnar and Tu‘ek), I would like to present here—rather than empirical analyses—considerations based upon middle-level theorizing as more adequate to the nature of the discussion at hand. In my opinion, the changes in this region during the last twelve years have contributed substantially to some shifts in scholarly perceptions of social inequalities throughout the world. Intentionally or not, most sociologists have, for decades or years, gotten used to understanding social inequalities in the standardized framework of similarities and/or dissimilarities among the still functioning three types of social and economic formations (when following Marx), or “spontaneous” (liberal) and “artificial” or “constructed” social orders (when following rather conservative neo-liberal thought inspired, for instance, by von Hayek). These are the pre-capitalist (present in various historically developed forms), the capitalist, and
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the state-socialist (let us not forget that the last of these still exists outside Europe, above all, in such a huge and prosperous country as China). Some a priori social inequalities, assumed to be typical of these models (e.g., antagonistic classes or strata based on meritocratic principles under capitalism, and totalitarian “new class” or “non-antagonistic” classes under state socialism depending on the point of view of the analyst), became the subject of either criticism or apology—sometimes of limited criticism accompanied by reform proposals—from many sociologists. In most cases, the contents of these evaluations were based on their authors’ ideological and political sympathies and antipathies rather than on serious studies—both empirical and theoretical—of actually existing societies. In spite of the heavy blow which this kind of approach suffered at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s with the collapse of state socialism in Europe, and in spite of the disappearance of the bi-polar division of the world, many of us still instinctively continue to think within this framework. I dare not analyze the certainly not negligible changes in the faces of inequalities found in the so-called “late capitalist,” “postcapitalist,” “welfare state” or “third way” countries, or other modifications of advanced Western and Asian countries (especially of postwar Japan). Neither am I going to generalize the experience of the so-called developing countries, some of which have undoubtedly, many years ago, overstepped the threshold separating them from capitalist countries in the process of modernization, though combined with many historically and culturally given specificities. My focus is, as mentioned earlier, on the medium-developed state socialist and postsocialist European countries, which, though mostly belonging to the OECD, are still lagging behind the distinctly characterized group of approximately twenty countries with the highest GDP and other indices of modernization, including those concerning human development (see Human Development Reports series). T E S S In the first half of the 1960s, the then-younger generation of Polish, Hungarian, Yugoslavian, Slovak, Czech and some Russian sociologists (W. Wesolowski, S. Ferge, M. Jani‘ijevi‘, P. Machonin, R. Ro“ko, O. Shkaratan and others) began theoretical, methodological and empirical preparations for subsequent, serious representative surveys
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on social inequalities. The necessary information they had already gathered about the situation in their countries, based on systematic observations and preliminary analyses of the initial research activities and statistical data, could not be explained in terms of the Marxian theory of social and economic formations, particularly not in terms of its caricature as presented in the Stalinist ideological scheme of antagonistic and non-antagonistic classes. On the other hand, neither partial generalizations based predominantly on secondhand information, mostly on interviews with Soviet Union émigrés (Inkeles and Rossi), nor mere political science analyses of totalitarian systems and sociological theories based on one-sided conflictualism of either right- or left-wing orientation, were sufficient for this purpose. Our countries were going through some reform changes at that time, the results of which differed from the conclusions of the then-prevailing sociological literature. That is why we sought inspiration among the emerging tendencies towards a “convergence theory” (R. Aron, P. Sorokin, T. Parsons); this enabled understanding the possibilities of changes oriented towards application of more modern societal models than the nearly obsolete state socialist system. Moreover, some new ideas, provoked by stratification and mobility research, were used—e.g., the possibility of applying to the state socialist societies the meritocratic principle of vertical social differentiation (M. Young), and the concept of status inconsistency (G. Lenski) applied by Wesolowski (1968). These innovations were complemented by some new operationalizations introduced by, in our case, Czech and Slovak sociology. This entailed a new kind of class-classification, preceding the currently used EGP scheme, and an original means of “measuring” power positions and “operationalizing” the complexity of work and lifestyle as status dimensions. Thus space was created for unbiased study of social inequalities as they existed in reality. Of key significance was, however, the application of methodological instruments based on Weber’s theory of “ideal types,” instead of the stubborn theory of “social and economic formations” determined by natural-historical laws and inherited from Marxist thought. Thus, in the book ’eskoslovenská spole‘nost (Czechoslovak Society: An Analysis of Social Stratification, Machonin et al. 1969), we found several ideal types (in the Weberian sense) of social relationships present in data collected over the course of a large representative sociological survey on vertical social differentiation and mobility. This
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instrument enabled us to formulate hypotheses stating the possibilities of future developments of the following types of tendencies in social inequalities emerging from the then-existing historical crossroads: (a)
a return to the legacy of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” system; (b) stagnation at the level of the then-prevailing totalitarian-bureaucratic and, at the same time, an egalitarian system attended by many status inconsistencies; (c) re-emergence of capitalist class-type relationships, surviving rather in mentality and behavioral customs; (d) technocratic and, eventually, culturocratic relationships demonstrating a tendency of increasing influence; and (e) relationships based on democratic and meritocratic principles which we considered then to be close to the original socialist ideals (in many aspects contradictory to the prevailing “real socialism”), and present in the intentions of the reform forces (depending on some already existing ways of behavior of both institutions and people). The situation was relatively similar in all the societies in question. That means that in the Central Europe of the second half of the 1960s there were ambiguously-shaped, hybrid societies, offering various alternatives and variants for further developments, of which the most significant seemed to us to be—under then present international and mainly internal conditions—the possibilities (b) and (e) noted above. From the point of view of the reigning Stalinist ideology of class relationships this was a heresy called revisionism which had to be and actually was suppressed by a long-lasting Berufsverbot for its authors after the defeat of the Prague Spring. Unfortunately enough, the international conditions on both sides of the “Iron Curtain” were not yet favorable for an otherwise possible peaceful change in the spirit of alternative (e), with some elements of variant (c) in the sense of convergence theory. The intervention of foreign military forces gave victory to the counter-reform forces and a further twenty years was wasted by the continuation of the Cold War. Alternative (b) was put into effect with some elements of regress towards variant (a). In Czechoslovakia this was known as “normalization” while in other state socialist countries in Europe it meant stagnation and the maturation of further crises leading to similar consequences.
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T E P The subsequent, highly unpleasant two decades of regression and stagnation throughout the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, though caused by very similar reasons, were influenced by relatively different historical events and situations in the individual cases. Thus, for instance, the so-called “second society” (Hankiss, Szelényi, Kolosi) took on in Hungary a more economic tone, in Poland a rather trade unionist and political one, while in Czechoslovakia the cultural and informal nature of the opposition movement at the level of families and other small groups prevailed (Mo≥nÿ 1991). Concurrently with these internal processes, the sharpening Cold War led to a change in the balance of forces on a global scale and the well-known events of the turn of the 1980s and 1990s occurred. Though differing from country to country in their timing, concrete situations, and forms of resolution, they were realized as socalled “Velvet Revolutions” in all of the societies of the Central European type. Not all political scientists and sociologists recognized and adequately evaluated the innovative nature and sense of these events. Some scholars even thought that this did not represent anything new and only imitated earlier democratic revolutions in the West. However, the very significance of the Velvet Revolutions consisted in the fact that, under the both internationally and internally altered conditions (and after many decades of other kinds of experience with social change), a historically new type of social and political shift in the system of inequalities had finally begun to operate. This entailed a peaceful and democratic exchange of what was called social and economic formations or social orders in the gradual transformation of old social structures into new ones. This change occurred in a relatively short time period, but with a large complexity. It was something differing substantially from the Western longterm and mostly bloody “great revolutions” and not less longterm developments of economic growth, modernization and democratization. In a way, this type of change represented the realization of the main sense of convergence theory and strategy which Henryk Doma…ski (1996) quite correctly identified later in a work concerning changes in social stratification in Central Eastern Europe at the beginning of the 1990s called “On the Threshold of Convergence.” This course of events was an unexpected surprise for many of those who had gotten used to the bi-polar world and to the long
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coexistence of capitalism and state socialism. The reaction of some sociologists was once again somewhat ideologically biased. On the one hand, there are still people who explain the substantial change brought on by the Velvet Revolutions exclusively as the result of “globalization pressure” and the defeat of socialism in the “class struggle” in the form of the Cold War. This kind of approach has even been presented during discussions at this congress. On the other hand, many social scientists also reacted peremptorily, though from quite opposite points of view: if state socialism exists no more, then the only other imaginable end to further developments must be a transition towards democracy (which, obviously, did happen in most cases) and the free market, understood and interpreted as a mere synonym of capitalism (what is, at least, a premature and simplified generalization of the factual state). From these biased positions, supported, as they were, by influential international, financial and political institutions, one can derive subsequent other ideas of political scientists, economists and sociologists trying to explain the processes attending the historical metamorphoses of the state socialist societies in the first twelve years of their postsocialist existence: (a) mistrust of the innovative potential of the societal actors in the changes (which is, in fact, in no way reducible to the activities of new elites following “blueprints” mostly taken from abroad); (b) an endeavor to prescribe for the postsocialist societies what they should do in order to become like the Western (see the polemic with this point of view by Claus Offe 1992); (c) neglect of the fact that, in most cases, the amount of economic assistance in the transformation processes on the part of advanced countries is still low compared to the amount of help given some countries defeated in World War II or to new members of NATO and the EU during the second phase of the Cold War; (d) the stimulation of “shock therapies” invented to work under quite different conditions, typical mainly for Latin America and other developing countries (and not too successfully even there); these recommendations, quite willingly accepted by the first historical generation of ruling elites, brought sudden and profound decreases in standards of living in many countries and forced their citizens to really go through the “valley of tears” (Sachs 1991); and (e) subsequent disappointments within relatively broad strata of the population, provoking increasing dissatisfaction and corresponding changes in attitudes, moods and behavior.
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However, the ensuing historical changes in the democratized postsocialist societies clearly demonstrated already in the first half of the 1990s the impossibility of successful and functional realization of sudden and abrupt, normatively predicted, “transitorial” complex social changes. Such transformations occur mainly in the political sphere where the process of taking power and making basic constitutional changes cannot be prolonged. On the other hand, the tendency to carry out privatization and liberalization processes too hastily has not been too successful, at least in the cases of the Czech Lands and Slovakia. It probably complicated, to some degree, the situation at the beginning of the Polish and Hungarian economic reforms, not to mention the consequences of drastic reforms in Russia, some Balkan countries, and other former Soviet republics like the Ukraine. All this has led to the present-day situation in the postsocialist countries, analyzed at the international symposium in Prague in May 2001 devoted to the topic of “Structural Changes in Central European Postsocialist Countries and the Actual Challenges of Modernization”— with the active participation of sociologists not only from the Visegrád countries, but from Germany and many other European and other countries as well (Adamski, Machonin and Zapf 2001). At this symposium we stated that, after more than forty years since the appearance of the book about Czechoslovak society mentioned earlier, once again (though in a profoundly changed historical situation with many shifts accomplished in the system of inequalities), the ambiguous, hybrid nature of the contemporary face of inequalities has emerged in many Central Eastern European countries. The present situation is once more marked by the coexistence and interpenetration of at least three types of vertical social differentiations: (a) Still vivid egalitarian relationships, accompanied by, among other things, status inconsistencies among the greater part of employees dependent directly or indirectly on the state budget (e.g., teachers, scholars, some physicians, all nurses, social and cultural workers, some professionals in the state administration, etc.), nearly all of whom play important roles in the modernization process. Their relatively high educational degrees and qualification levels, plus work complexity (correlated with social prestige) plus cultural level of lifestyle do not correspond to appropriate positions in management, income and other material rewards. (b) Emerging meritocratic differentiation, typical of people with a
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university education working in more profitable branches or belonging to more successful professions of the economy. (c) Increasing class-like social polarization between two groups: (1) successful new entrepreneurs, some other self-employed, managers and higher professionals in successful and/or privileged branches and broad sections of such professions as, e.g., bankers, lawyers, politicians, people in information technology, mass media, entertainment, sports, motor-car production, energy, etc.; (2) an increasing number of those either poor or endangered by poverty and nearly powerless in their daily work and life. To these strata belong the unemployed, semi-skilled and unskilled workers mainly in unsuccessful branches and groups of occupations (like agriculture, several branches of light or heavy industry, etc.), single parent families and/or those with more children, young people unable to find their own housing, some pensioners and working females and, finally, people living in small communities and economically less developed districts or regions (in the Czech case, primarily in both northern Bohemia and Moravia). So we have in our countries, once again, a hybrid system of inequalities, interpenetrating, as is clear from the concrete characteristics of these social groups, many other demographic, territorial, social and political cleavages and potential conflicts. This means, in other words, no more socialism, but the rational impact of its legacy; not yet capitalism, but a strong tendency towards its development, supported from abroad mainly by the relatively successful progress of foreign investments; not yet a meritocratic order, but its not negligible embryo. Such hybrid societies are open to various alternatives and variants of further developments, highly dependent upon the results of democratic elections—influenced, as they are, by autonomous shifts in the ideological and political spheres. The optimal society would probably be one aiming for a well-developed democratic and market society using available industrial resources in attaining the postindustrial stage, ensuring improvements in the quality of life among as broad parts of society as possible. However, such a solution, though supported in principle by the trend of joining the EU, is thus far not yet certain of being realized completely. Its pre-condition is the shifting of (to use Higley’s terms) a rather fragmentized ruling elite
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towards a consensually unified one (Machonin and Tu‘ek 2000) and significant successes in strengthening social cohesion on the basis of a pro-modern strategy corresponding to the civilizational and cultural conditions of the societies in question. *
*
*
One could say that in the contemporary, rapidly changing world, despite obvious globalization pressures aiming at more homogeneity, many hybrid tendencies, as in the postsocialist countries, are rather a rule than exception. This does not mean that I am either denying or corroborating the increasing inequality around the world. The arguments of Göran Therborn presented in this volume—illustrating the increasing inequalities especially among various countries, regions, subcontinents and continents—are highly persuasive. Yet neither do I fully support the skepticism of those who think that the cosmopolitan “symbolic analysts” and other groups of professionals and capital owners connected with the informatization and globalization processes are developing a new international class with untouchable super-high positions (see, e.g., R. Reich or A. and H. Toffler), or others supporting the left-wing oriented critics of modernization and globalization. These generalizations appear a little bit premature. My approach is to state that the concrete faces of inequalities are changing in various ways, from country to country, region to region, continent or subcontinent to others, from one historical situation to another. In any case, faith in the existence of a rationally arguable, limited number of clear-cut models of inequalities, explaining nearly everything in the manifold human lifestyles and valid for all societies over the world seems, to me, to be no longer as unshakable as it was towards the end of the 1980s. The formerly dominant persuasions that there are either inevitable social economic formations born according to natural, historical laws (Marx 1867, 1873), or spontaneous social orders, sometimes violated and distorted by the “fatal errors” of those trying to impose principles of social justice by totalitarian means (Hayek 1973, 1990), are somewhat losing their preeminent position. In their stead, Max Weber’s “ideal types” (1904) as an instrument for concrete historical analyses of the increasingly more frequently emerging hybrid societies seem to be more influential than ever before.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adamski, W.W., Bun‘ák, J., Machonin, P. and Martin, D. (eds.) (1999) System Change and Modernization. East—West in Comparative Perspective. Warsaw: IFiS Publishers. ——. P. Machonin and Zapf, W. (eds.) (2001) “Structural Change and Modernization in Postsocialist Societies,” Sisyphus, Social Studies XV, Special issue. Doma…ski, H. (1996) Na progu konvergencji. Warszawa: IFiS PAN. Hayek, F.A. von (1973) Law, Legislation and Liberty. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. ——. (1990) The Fatal Conceit. The Errors of Socialism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Machonin, P. et al. (1969) ’eskoslovenská spole‘nost. Sociologická analÿza sociální stratifikace. Bratislava: Epocha. Machonin, P. (1970) “Social Stratification in Contemporary Czechoslovakia,” American Journal of Sociology 75:725–741. Machonin, P. and Tu‘ek, M. (eds.) (1996) ’eská spole‘nost v transformaci. Praha: SLON. ——. (2000) “New Elites and Social Change,” in J. Higley and G. Lengyel 2000. Elites after State Socialism. Theories and Analysis. Lanham, Boulder, New York, Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Machonin, P., Gatnar, L. and Tu‘ek, M. (2000) Vÿvoj sociální struktury ‘eské spole‘nosti 1988–1999. Sociological Papers 00:06. Marx, K. (1867) “Pr˘edmluva k prvnímu vydání,” in Kapitál I. Praha: SNPL 1953. ——. (1873) “Doslov k druhému vydání,” in Kapitál I. Praha: SNPL 1953. Mo≥nÿ, I. (1991) Pro‘ tak snadno . . . Nîkteré rodinné du°vody sametové revoluce. Praha: SLON. Offe, C. (1992) “Postcommunist Hungary: After ‘Ironical’ Freedom, Another ‘Immune Reaction’?” Contemporary Sociology 21:304–306. Sachs, J.D. (1991) “Crossing the Valley of Tears in East European Reform.” Challenge, September–October. Sztompka, P. (1999) Trust. A Sociological Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Weber, M. (1904) “Die Objektivität sozialwissenschftlicher und sozialpolitischer Erkenntniss,” in M. Weber, (1968) Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck) 146–214. Wesolowski, W. (1968) Tr˘ ídy, vrstvy a moc. Praha: Svoboda.
SECTION FIVE
COPING WITH CORRUPTION
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IS A SOCIOLOGY OF CORRUPTION POSSIBLE? Jacek Kurczewski The actual question is not so much “is it” but rather “how.” Still, substantial rational arguments against such a sociology are raised. First, the subject is not well defined. Second, the nature of the phenomenon is such that it cannot be well defined. Third, a value judgment is intrinsically involved. Fourth, the “thing” in question cannot be measured. Fifth is that the term covers unrelated events—irritating for some sometimes but not linked systematically enough to produce a consistent subject of intellectual inquiry. Sixth, it is universal across the social structure, and seventh, across time. So what may be said specifically about “corruption” that it would deserve a place as a concept in sociology? Corruption is abuse of public trust, mostly by the upper class and elites and therefore most difficult to combat via traditional measures of criminal law. The practices it involves change in time as the patterns of public life and governance change; accordingly, the actual application of the concept must be adjusted through an evolution of the moral sense of public opinion. The dynamic, intangible, and value-based nature of the concept makes a closed, static, and official approach inappropriate. Sociologists must look at corruption as an element of the actual social reality and not as sentimental residuum; they must try to understand the broader structure of social institutions within which corruption plays an important social function. Assuming that corruption is fundamentally linked with politics, I began with a reconnaissance amongst politicians themselves (Kurczewski 2000). The methodology was simple: a survey of 100 (out of 460) randomly selected deputies in the lower house of the Polish Parliament—the Sejm. The survey was conducted on members of parliament of the third post-1989 term (1997–2001), on behalf of the independent and private Institute of Public Affairs. Interviews were done in Fall 1998, including nine closed and nine open-ended questions; the group of interviewers had already gained experience in surveying parliamentarians during the previous research study by the present author. Dr. „aciak was in managerial charge of both projects.
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The survey was not meant as an epidemiological study of corruption amongst Polish politicians, but as a study of the climate amidst the political elite of the country. It matters less, therefore, what the actual frequency of corruption is, than the imagined level of its occurrence. This opinion is reconstructed with the help of questions of a deliberately subjective nature—is corruption frequent or rare among politicians in the country? Combining the “very frequent” and “frequent,” versus, on the other side, the “rare” and “very rare” categories together, one arrives at a distribution which points toward the prevalence of answers pointing to a rarity of the phenomenon in question: 18 are of the opinion that it is frequent, and 32 that it is rare. However, an intermediary category was inserted in between these two—“corruption is at a middle level”; this category was the most popular and attracted 40 legislators. All of us here know the interpretive risks associated with various ways of question construction and these need not be repeated here. Nevertheless, even an assessment of low corruption frequency need not be positive because, as one of our interviewed deputies observed, “the [costs] might be very high even though corruption amongst the top officials was numerically low.” Table 1. Is there corruption among politicians in Poland? (in % of sampled deputies) very frequent or frequent
at the middle level
rare or very rare
do not know
Total
18
40
32
10
100% = 101
Delving deeper into the way of thinking of Polish parliamentarians about corruption, seven popular theories of corruption were presented: Table 2. Theory of corruption according to parliamentarians (in %, 100% = 101 deputies) Do you agree with the following statements? People like talking about corruption of power because this absolves them of their own irregularities Corruption is tied to the fact that socialism did not develop within society the proper ethos of government as public service
Frequency of YES answers 70 49
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Table 2 (cont.) Do you agree with the following statements? Corruption is less likely the wealthier are those exposed to it Only severe penalties and rigorous implementation of rules can prevent corruption Corruption is inevitable in every developing country Elimination of corruption would lead to great savings in the state budget and would increase our economic performance Society is getting wealthier and one should allow people to get rich even if they sometimes bypass the law
Frequency of YES answers 46 43 42 42 2
Though this time the question did not refer directly to politicians, almost unanimous is rejection of the “enrichment chance” legitimation as opposed to absolute majority acceptance of an explanation of public interest in scandals as a neutralization technique. Such a configuration is best understood in light of thinking that these theories are applied to corruption of the political elite. Apart from these two extreme theories, the five remaining ones are each accepted by 42 to 49 percent of the sample. What then becomes interesting is the structure of the answers. Widespread notions of an inevitability and of marginal importance are independent of each other. However, most rare (20%) is the case when parliamentarians think both that corruption is expensive and that it can be avoided. This seems to limit the interest of politicians to issues of preventing or controlling corruption. After all, if corruption is either inevitable or insignificant why bother at all? Interestingly, those who take corruption as a serious issue for both reasons are more likely to perceive it as frequent amongst politicians; such answers are also more frequent among the parliamentary newcomers, reinforcing an interpretation of parliamentary experience as a political cynicism learning process. The above-mentioned overall attitude of cynicism and marginalization in reference to corruption which seems to prevail among Polish parliamentarians needs to be placed in the wider context of his or her concept of representation as reported in the earlier study (Kurczewski 1999). The constitutional concept of representation has undergone revolutionary change since 1989. Before, though a facade,
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the deputy was held directly responsible before his or her constituency; since 1989, the deputy has been liberated and become a representative of the nation, unbound by the instructions of the electorate. Parliamentarians, as a whole, are totally heterogeneous in their concept of whom they ought to represent and as to their relationship with the electorate and constituency (if this notion is appropriate under the circumstances). The research also documented a high level of egocentricity revealed when the self-identity test was applied. Taking into account the flexibility of party affiliation, a feeling of parliamentary sovereignty only this year limited by the Constitutional Tribunal, and other factors, one comes to the conclusion that attitudes toward corruption are part of a general sense of pompous irresponsibility experienced by the first generation of democratically elected politicians. But is this just the Polish experience? Are postcommunist transition experiences with corruption of a unique nature? To discuss “corruption” is difficult as its very existence is a matter of political controversy. Though no known national leader has ever boasted about its size, a historical and cultural proof of its universality helps in its legitimization. At an international meeting, an Oriental stateswoman approached me behind the scenes, expressing her condemnation of an imposition of unrealistic expectations upon people for whom ingratiation is a traditional way of proper behavior; at another, a Western expert advised Poles to be “realistic” about the struggle against corruption. Finally, the media bring us daily scandals from the Transparency International “cleared” countries. Under such circumstances one is prone to think that the concept is expressive and not cognitive and, thus, far from being a possible sociological concept at all. To answer these doubts one needs to go back to the sociology of crime. There one finds that some crime is “popular,” “lower,” while some is “upper.” To rob is a lower class crime for which one was hung in the old days, while to make money out of public office is, by definition, an upper class crime. In general, crimes of violence are more “popular” as this is the last resort which the poorer and less influential people have at their disposal, while information, connections, and opportunities are sufficient at the core of the political society. English writers of the 18th century already observed that what one does on the highway, another is doing in the Parliament, though the risk is different. For “uppers” have long reserved for themselves the right to call each other “swine” in Parliament, and this—like the
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legitimate use of coercion against highway people—is a legitimized verbal chastisement for crimes of the “upper” sort. Bribery is borderline, though those who represent the upper class interests, especially lawyers and law professors in debates on corruption, stress that it is bribery which is the only tangible referent of “corruption.” Bribery seems to be rare if one looks into the crime statistics, especially in the most corrupt countries as this is the most democratic form of corruption. Any public agent may be the “subject” of bribery by an interested client—a postal clerk, immigration officer, court janitor, or cleaning lady in a public hospital. Bribery can thus be treated as a paradigm for corruption which acts as a convenient defence for the elites since it detracts attention from the upper echelons and keeps the focus on singular public service agents. In Poland the traffic police serves this purpose and one may spend a lot of energy discussing the reasons for their corruption, leaving aside the fact that it is needed more likely by the rich and powerful than by the poor who would not have the means to pay a bribe. As one judge I interviewed told me: “I am surprised that the people whom I sentence to suspension or loss of their driving license are almost always poor, unemployed, and retired as if the rich would not trespass the speed limit regulations.” Presidents, however, are rarely bribed though they rather exchange their friendly offers for general sympathy towards the common interest; state dinners do not encompass the whole of the social atmosphere which is needed, especially if one is interested in a good public profile. Nurturing proper relations is the game in which all participants in elite life are engaged and it is not done for free; even a golf or tennis game are not for free although bribery in the legal sense is not involved. Corruption crimes proper are almost never called a “crime.” For “upper” class misdeeds, other, less repressive terms are used such as “unethical” or “inappropriate” conduct. It is symptomatic how this para-ethical discourse is developed. Parliaments abound in ethics committees and rules of conduct and this is repeated in local government if it gets stronger, as well as in the civil service and other areas. Though the debates are—as we know too well—continuous, the period since the 1960s (after the accelerated post-WWII economic reconstruction) brought remorse to the fore and the ethical enterprise started to flourish. The latest is the British Prime Minister’s code of conduct, which helps him or her control
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the growing band of ministers who have not grown up together and who come from various cultural, ethical backgrounds. It provides advice on a wide spectrum of issues from punctuality to honesty before the public. Such ethical codes serve, of course, the same disciplining function as penal codes for the general public, but the “ethical discourse” makes it possible to go beyond the traditional rigidity of implemented “normal” law and justice, as well as to escape it. The paradigmatic case of corruption is, nevertheless, not so much the bribe taken by the traffic police but by the members of the Athenian Boule. And it is not that democracy is more prone to corruption but that in a democracy the corruption is more obvious. The officials are chosen to act for the public good and any deviation from that road is a corruption of power. The problem is that the public good is not a tangible thing and there is rarely consensus on the ways it should be achieved. This brings us close to the concept of representation again. The procedural definition of the public good would be that a concern for this in particular was the only rationale for the decisions taken by those who make up the polity—in short, the Parliament. Rousseau as well as Burke rejected electoral instructions in order to free the deputies to arrive at the common good. So constitutions like the Polish one of 1997 (or of 1921) have rejected the instructions and proclaimed a free mandate. This is in order to make the deputy independent of the will of the electorate. But it is not forbidden to follow its interest and it is up to the deputy to decide whether the “common good” is not at cross purposes with the local good. It is not assumed, for instance, that the deputy is corrupt if he or she votes for allocation of a public investment in his or her electoral district even if an interest in winning the next election is obvious. So it seems that the majority does not consider simply prioritizing of a particular interest as corruption. Does this mean that corruption involves only those cases in which no other interest than that of the politician may explain his or her conduct? But what about the case in which the public representative is paid a large sum, via a hidden account, by the large company whose interest he or she is promoting? The company will defend itself by demonstrating its public utility in the number of jobs offered and its share in the GNP; still the public taste will remain spoiled due to the politician’s demonstrated “greed.” But in some democracies this is considered all right as long as the politicians have registered
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the special interests they will represent and officially recorded the money earned. So either the issue is not as clear as we think or the matter is undergoing an evolution. I have already used the term “evolution” and this was done on purpose as I still consider very telling the title of a brief column written at the time of the Dreyfus affair (1898) by the Polish geographer and social scientist, Wac∑aw Na∑kowski. The whole theory is in the title—“Scandals as a Factor of Evolution”—and it would be perhaps a waste of time to read the paper. The nineteenth century was full of scandals; the French Republics and the Empire provided quite a lot, but were followed by other more and more open republics and monarchies. British anti-corruption legislation emerged in reaction to scandals involving public procurements during the Crimean War; in the late twentieth century the Watergate affair was a case that opened up to public scrutiny the relationship between party politics, the national executive, and special services. The new wave of “ethical codification” in British politics came after a series of scandals that involved individual ministers in all major parties; the European code came after the European Commission staff was scrutinized. The theory of scandals as an evolutionary factor in law, morality, and public opinion holds. Aside from the details, the main thing is that a scandal arises if someone is shocked by someone else’s conduct and provoked to an outburst crossing over the customary line of tolerant silence. But only some scandals “succeed” in provoking a majority consensus in public opinion. If this happens, it means that a new moral consensus has been reached and a transgression tolerated until then is now openly defined as a public evil. Despite all attempts, sexual play with actively consenting interns seems to have failed such a test of public moral consensus, while secret monitoring of political competition has passed successfully. Recently, the use of ministerial seats on airplanes to take pleasure trips has been restricted in Germany after the love scandals of a dismissed Defense Minister; in Poland, though, ministerial privileges of that sort seem to be tolerated. At least this was the case when the Finance Minister, in order to buy a house, needed to borrow (on a non-interest basis) a sum of about 50,000 euros from a law professor friend who is said to be doing business with a notorious crime boss—all outside the interest of criminal justice. The scandals, their failures and successes determine the line of admissible conduct. This
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line is undergoing evolution—not necessarily a unilinear one—though, in general, it seems that the civilizing process—to refer to Norbert Elias’ theory—in this area continues. The latest step forward in the process is something beyond the imagination of the liberal—the extension of the concept of corruption into the private business sphere. It had already been controversial to blame a businessman for bribing his minister colleague, now the bribing of the manager of a private company by its competitor became a crime. This has stressed the core of an ethical concern with corruption which is trust. New formulations of corruption preventing codes, like the Seoul Declaration of Interpol point to the public trust as harmed by this evil. Corruption is subversion of the public trust in institutions. This trust is based on the assumption that institutions serve their publicly defined purposes. Parliament is to debate the public good and not to provide easy money for parliamentarians; ministers are up there to perform a publicly useful job and not for notoriety and fun; presidents are to arbitrage in conflicts and not to prepare for a well-paid job on supervisory boards. When one of the Polish foreign affairs ministers explained candidly that he must stay on such boards after his nomination because he has two sons to provide with houses, his personal charm was not ruined, but he certainly contributed to an already rising distrust of democratic institutions. This explains why even keeping up appearances is so necessary, why declarations of conflict of interest should be made, why segregation from some possible friends should be maintained and immediate jumps from one sector to another forbidden despite all good intents. If appearances are tainted, even the otherwise healthy bank will lose its trust among clients and may go bankrupt; if trust is withdrawn from a democracy, people may make it bankrupt as well by not coming to vote one election day. BIBLIOGRAPHY Kurczewski, J. (1999) Pos∑owie i opinia publiczna. Warsaw: ISNS UW. —— (2000) “Korupcja w opinii parlamentarnej reprezentacji spo∑ecze…stwa polskiego” in J. Kurczewski and B. „aciak (eds.), Korupcja w ûyciu spo∑ecznym. Warsaw: ISP. Na∑kowski, W. (1898) “Skandale jako czynnik ewolucyj,” Przegl[d Tygodniowy, reprinted in W. Na∑kowski (1951) Pisma spo∑eczne. Warsaw: PIW, p. 149.
THE PATHS OF ITALIAN CORRUPTION Vincenzo Ferrari 1. P The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a general discussion about corruption by referring to a historical-empirical case—that of my country in the last two decades—providing some form of explanation and establishing some correlation between corruption and other phenomena in the realm of politics, economy and, obviously, the law—although the role played by the law in this field seems to me to have been merely symbolic, not to say marginal, at least in the case under scrutiny.1 For this purpose, my definition of corruption is very broad: the achievement of personal or group advantages by means of paid or unpaid acquiescence on the part of civil servants. In such a wide sense, corruption is not restricted to bribery alone, although this is one of its most recurrent forms, but also includes other kinds of behavior. For example, any use of perverse methods in law enforcement is also—or may turn out to be—a kind of corruption. I should perhaps invest a few words in explaining that my own definition does not correspond to the legal-dogmatic concept of corruption, which in the continental European tradition is much narrower and distinct from neighboring concepts. One peculiar example, which I take from Italian law, is the distinction between corruzione (offering advantages to civil servants or procuring such from them in exchange for favors, either in compliance with or in contravention of the law) and concussione (a kind of “specific” form of extortion perpetrated by a civil servant who blackmails somebody else in
1 The case dealt with in this article has been widely discussed on both the scholarly and the political level in the past ten years. The author of this paper has also given a detailed account of the events, providing a kind of general explanation, in some of his writings. See, most recently, “Sistemas judiciales en permanente crisis. Reflexiones sobre el caso italiano”, Revista Derecho del Estado, Universidad Externado de Colombia, número 7, diciembre 1999, pp. 3–19.
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order to procure advantages in exchange for favors). I take this example because it is highly relevant, in sociolegal terms, to an understanding of how Italy has coped with corruption, in the broad sense I have adopted here. The two abstract figures of crime are conceptually very distinct (the key question turns on who it is that takes the initiative, whether the private person or the civil servant) and also occasion very distinct treatment in terms of penal sanctions. In practice, the borderline between the two is exceedingly narrow, almost invisible in many cases, which means that public prosecutors enjoy a large amount of discretion in dealing with cases and proposing more or less legal forms of bargaining. It must be remembered that the person who pays a civil servant in order to procure favor is classed as jointly accused in cases of corruzione, whereas that same person will be treated as the main victim in cases of concussione, complete with full entitlement to take action also in the penal proceedings and to seek compensation for both material and moral damages, in accordance with the principles of the law of torts. One final premise is a theoretical assumption that is widely shared in criminology and sociology of law: a certain measure of corruption (in the broad sense) is endemic in all societies, both democratic and (especially so) undemocratic, as a fast lane for achieving goals—and even meeting needs—at the point of intersection between different champs d’action, as Bourdieu would say, or kommunikative Systeme, as Luhmann would put it—no matter which formulation may be preferable. These are goals and needs, I should stress, that may be perceived socially to be either fair or unfair, legitimate or illegitimate, and that are often barred by legal rules addressed implicitly by the law-givers for the precise purpose of enhancing corruption (with reference to such fields as tax law, real estate and property development, etc.). My question, then, disregarding totalitarian systems for the sake of brevity, is when and under which conditions does corruption become socially visible in democratic societies? In this respect, the Italian case of the eighties and nineties is, to my mind, particularly telling. 2. T I cannot indulge here in a historical analysis of cases of corruption in my country. Suffice to say that:
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(a) scandals were recurrent in post-war Italy, culminating in 1978, when a couple of ministers went on trial and one of them was convicted (it should come as no surprise that this minister was an exponent of a minor government party) for the system of bribery established by Lockheed, which also caused upheavals in other countries, such as the Netherlands; (b) despite such occurrences, the prevailing situation for at least three decades was that of an entente cordiale between the two great protagonists of the continuing struggle for control of law and legal matters, i.e., the politicians and the judiciary (which in Italy is a corporate body of high-ranking civil servants, including both judges and public prosecutors, which are neither elected nor appointed, but chosen by means of public national examinations); (c) a break in this entente cordiale, which ultimately led to increasingly heated warfare, took place in 1983, when the public prosecutors of the Ligurian city of Savona took what many accused of being excessively discretionary judicial action against the grandees of the local political system, including the President of the Region, all of whom were charged with corruzione and concussione, aggravated by their (allegedly) having made use of Mafialike methods of blackmail; (d) from that period until the end of the eighties, the party of the politicians reacted vigorously—in 1987 even launching a referendum campaign that was concerned formally with the limits to magistrates’ civil liability for their professional shortcomings, although on a symbolic level it was aimed at curbing their powers and reducing their social status: when put to the vote, the referendum attracted a substantial majority against the judiciary; (e) towards the end of the eighties, in a period when the country was enjoying apparent economic prosperity, coupled with an apparent clipping of the judiciary’s wings, the wave of political corruption reached a climax, especially in the field of public expenditure: it was subsequently discovered that virtually all public works were subject to a system whereby the costs involved, and thus the bribes that accompanied them, could be increased by up to 1,000%, to the advantage of both entrepreneurs and political parties, as well as, in many cases, of individual politicians active at various levels; (f ) at that time, the political élite was still confident that it enjoyed
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perpetual power, in a system that stemmed from the end of the Second World War, and was quite insensitive to the consequences of that system, which were both economic, i.e., such a drastic increase in the nation’s budget deficit as to be practically catastrophic, culminating in the official devaluation of the lira in 1993, and social, i.e., the élites which had access to the economic privileges stemming from corruption were growing increasingly restricted, while continuous increases in taxation tended to generate more social protest; it was indeed a sort of pre-1789 situation, with a “court” of political leaders entirely closed in their own elegant palaces, unaware of what was going on beyond the ramparts; (g) the 1992 national elections witnessed the rise of the Lega Nord (Northern League), which set itself up as a self-proclaimed moral monitor of Roma ladrona (thieving Rome), a policy that, quite surprisingly, won it a number of seats in Parliament and inaugurated an unexpected period of troubles for the traditional majority; (h) the majority reacted to these troubles by collapsing into complete disarray, a Hobbesian bellum omnium contra omnes which saw all the most powerful political leaders fall like ninepins, one after another. At this point, the judiciary entered the fray to savor its “revenge” for the defeat suffered five years earlier with the referendum campaign and started acting in a political vacuum against the whole of the political élite, at every level, both national and local, although its actions were quite obviously more successful and more visible when they were directed against government than against opposition parties. This is where we reach the juridical technicality I was referring to earlier. The tactic used (and in many cases abused) was as follows:2
2 Single prosecutors, or prosecutors’ offices, might choose different strategies, centred either on corruzione or on concussione, depending not so much on the facets of single cases, but rather on general decisions taken about how to behave in the field of political corruption. A thoughtful thesis, recently discussed at Milan University Law Faculty, offered a more detailed insight into such strategic and tactical decisions (M.P. Di Leo, L’uso del patteggiamento. Osservazioni sociologiche sulla vicenda di “Mani Pulite”, tesi di laurea, Facoltà di Giurisprudenza, Università degli Studi di Milano, anno accademico 2000–2001).
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(i)
a politician and an entrepreneur were arrested or submitted to investigation on a first charge of illicitly financing a political party; (ii) the employer was then “persuaded” to confess that he had paid bribes and (a) was either transformed into the victim of a case of concussione, or (b) was subjected to bargaining to obtain a reduced penalty for corruzione and then set free; (iii) the arrested politician was then “persuaded” to accept the carrot of a lighter penalty for corruzione or concussione (in the latter case, and quite paradoxically, under the threat of the stick of a much more severe penalty for the, less serious, crime of corruzione if the case went to trial) at all events in exchange for naming names and testifying against other members of his own party, who were then in turn charged and tried. This tactic was pursued successfully with people who were jailed for charges that did not entail preventive custody as a mandatory measure, in other words with people who were therefore, to put it euphemistically, inclined to accept the prosecutors’ proposals in order to be released. In brief, whether this behavior may be defined as “correct” or “corrupt” (although it was legal in formal terms) is an open question. To the mind of a rule-of-law supporter it was, at least, highly debatable, thus somewhat destroying the premise of “clean hands,” which was the official label by which the entire strategy of prosecutorial and judicial strategy was termed icastically. It is at this stage that the political system reacted again, undergoing a remarkably rapid realignment of sorts, actually a very peculiar one indeed, since, while the traditional party system collapsed in very short order, a new conservative political front was set up within the space of a few months, including both the strongest moralizers, who openly supported the judicial and prosecutorial action, such as the Lega Nord and Alleanza Nazionale (National Alliance: the postfascist grouping) and a substantial part of the old régime that was strongly opposed to the same action, comprising a group that pulled out of the once-dominant and then about-to-die Christian Democratic party and, above all, the newly formed and immediately powerful Forza Italia, led by Silvio Berlusconi, a close friend and partner of Bettino Craxi, a former prime minister who had become virtually the most symbolic “victim” of judicial action and was forced to go into exile in order to escape prison.
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In practice, this coalition, which won the 1994 general election and brought Berlusconi to power as Prime Minister, was nothing but an anti-left alliance that started out by paying lip service to the judiciary (Berlusconi even offered the post of Home Secretary to his archenemy Adriano Di Pietro, at the time a public prosecutor who had been the symbol of the “clean hands” strategy and who refused the invitation), but was in fact—and by necessity—highly ambiguous in its attitudes toward judicial action and cases of corruption. It therefore came as no surprise that it was on this very field that the unstable government coalition fell apart by the end of 1994, when it was abandoned by the Lega Nord, which started attacking Forza Italia in general, and Berlusconi personally, accusing him of being personally corrupt and a representative of the country’s widely extended system of corruption. A long period of “armed” peace between the political system and the judicial system followed during the five years when power was held by the center-left coalition, whose attitude toward the judicial action was actually also ambiguous. On the one hand, Berlusconi, as the leader of an increasingly strong opposition, might have been an obvious target of the governing majority, in that he was involved personally in a number of investigations and one trial. On the other hand, the rules of the political game prevailed to the point of convincing the left-wing leadership that it stood to gain more by currying Berlusconi’s support, though not openly, than by trying to destroy him with problems of justice and judicial action. As these were the prevailing conditions, the political system gained in force increasingly vis-à-vis its historical counterpart, the judiciary, for two main reasons: (i) the nation’s economy recovered (whether really or symbolically is still an open question), culminating in the country’s admission to the Euro zone in 1998; (ii) an all-out propaganda attack was launched against the methods adopted by the judiciary, which were described as surreptitiously “political” and one-sided, i.e., with a left-wing bias, through the private TV channels, monopolized personally by the leader of the opposition. A fundamental change was then observed, sociologically, to come about in public opinion. While in 1993–94 a large majority of the people was reported to be in favor of judicial action for cases of
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corruption, by the end of the nineties, a majority (a slight one, but still a majority) was reported to be against it and convinced of the “political” nature and left-wing bias of such action. It was in just such a social atmosphere that a stronger right-wing alliance was established and gradually strengthened over the years, an alliance that included much the same groupings as in 1994 ( joined meanwhile by another splinter of the defunct Christian Democratic Party), although they now gradually also came together in their attitude of opposition to judicial action. It should come as no surprise that the old arch-moralizers, such as Alleanza Nazionale and the Lega Nord, turned into—perhaps—the severest critics of the “politically biased” judicial methods for coping with corruption (“we learned how to live” is the explanation attributed to the League’s leader, Umberto Bossi). At this point, to accelerate my argument, I shall take advantage of Nils Christie’s brilliant lecture during a plenary session3 and refer to his taxonomy of “answers to atrocities,” although we are fortunately not talking about atrocities here, but actually about one the most recurrent political games in human history. Italy is currently making collective use of all such “answers.” I shall list them here. (i)
Amnesia has two facets, formal and informal. Formal amnesia is obtained by exploiting Italy’s exceedingly lengthy duration of criminal (and civil) proceedings, so that corruption cases may run up against the Statute of Limitations (Di Pietro recently commented that Berlusconi is “the most ‘statutory-limited’ person in the country”, maybe as a bitter psychological reaction to his own defeat in the last general election). Informal amnesia is produced by what would have been familiar to the Romans as a panem et circenses strategy, i.e., giving the people a surfeit of TV shows, American movies, soap operas and football games and by these means wiping their minds clean of the memory of political corruption. It should not be forgotten that the Prime Minister himself now controls about 95% of TV broadcasting, either directly or indirectly.
3
N. Christie, Answers to Atrocities, this volume, pp. 335–353.
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(ii)
Silence is quite obviously achieved by increasing the control over the sources of communication, a task that is facilitated by the natural self-restraint exercised by the majority of journalists, most of whom have already jumped on the bandwagon or are about to do so. (iii) Truth-seeking may be turned back against the judiciary: Parliament will be invited by the majority to pass a resolution aimed at appointing an ad hoc commission—which will of course be controlled by the majority—for the purpose of investigating “what happened” during the “Clean Hands” period. (iv) Punishment is, and will continue to be, inflicted on both sides. On the one hand, some politicians were incapable of escaping it or of using the Statute of Limitations: these are currently acting as scapegoats. This was the case of the late Bettino Craxi and of a few others, including a former Health Minister who is now in jail. On the other hand, the government’s plans may include restraints on public prosecutors and judges who had the temerity to challenge the establishment. (v) Amnesty may also raise its head. Although this has traditionally been a successful way of sweeping cases of corruption out of the courts in Italy, it is now barred by a constitutional amendment which renders the use of amnesties much more difficult. However, its functional equivalent, the Statute of Limitations, has proved to be extremely versatile: in fact, the government has just announced a bill aimed at a drastic reduction in the time spans needed before the Statute of Limitations cuts into white collar crimes. Nevertheless, one high-ranking representative of the majority has already made an unofficial proposal to pass an amnesty act restricted (it would be the first time in the country’s history) to cases of corruption and similar offences (it should not be forgotten that one of the promises with which the right wing coalition won the recent general election was for a “law and order” policy, in fact addressed at petty criminals and foreign migrants). 3. C As a brief conclusion, I shall try to make some general (and tentative) correlations as well as some final forecasts.
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Here are my correlations: (a)
Corruption becomes institutionally visible in democratic societies when its advantages are concentrated within narrower social groups. (b) Corruption becomes institutionally visible in democratic societies in periods of economic crisis, and less visible, if not invisible, in periods of economic welfare. (c) Corruption becomes institutionally visible in democratic societies if political majorities are unstable (I should stress that they were absolutely stable in Italy for about 45 years after the Second World War, despite the innumerable cabinet crises). (d) Corruption is the field of action in which two categories of socio-legal actors fight preferably for the control of law-giving and law enforcement (reference to theoretical remarks ranging from Savigny down to Bourdieu, via Jhering, Holmes and Pound). (e) Both parties to a struggle may use corruption (in the broad sense of the term) to combat corruption. (f ) In this game, which is perpetually self-reproducing, law shows perhaps its most symbolic face. It can be used either against corrupt politicians and those who bribe them, or for their own sake, with no change whatever in its formulae; as Giovanni Giolitti, a durable, powerful liberal Prime Minister at the beginning of the twentieth century, used to say: “law is enforced against political adversaries, whereas it is interpreted for political friends”. I shall end up by going back to a couple of forecasts that I made in my contribution to the Liber Amicorum dedicated to my good friend Elías Díaz on his sixtieth anniversary.4 One was at the conclusion of my essay, which was written at the end of 1993, whereas the other one was added to the original text as an updating appendix, about one year later when the book was about to go to press. In 1993, I said that there would soon be a quiet return to the invisibility of corruption in Italy. One year later, while acknowledging that somebody might arise and try to become “the representative 4 V. Ferrari, “El moralismo e Italia en peligro de muerte”, Doxa, 15–16, 1994, pp. 407. A part of this essay was made available in English under the title “Moralism and Mortally Threatened Italy”, in V. Gessner, A. Höland and C. Varga (eds.), European Legal Cultures, Dartmouth, Aldershot, 1996, pp. 353–355.
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hero of the [Italians’] aspiration to rest”, as Piero Gobetti, a liberal thinker, said in the early twenties,5 I wondered whether my compatriots would react against the media propaganda, bring about a sort of liberal revolution and start reasoning with their own minds. It is now up to this audience, and to my readers, to say which of my forecasts was better grounded.
5
P. Gobetti, La rivoluzione liberale, Saggio sulla lotta politica in Italia [1924], Einaudi, Torino, 1964, p. 188.
TRUST-MISTRUST IN EUROPEAN DEMOCRACIES Mattei Dogan A massive majority of Europeans are deeply attached to democracy as the only acceptable political system. According to many surveys most European citizens do not realistically conceive an alternative system of government for their own country. Such a massive attachment is a new phenomenon in Europe—before the war the picture was very different. At the same time, a comparable wealth of data indicates that in most countries a large proportion of people are dissatisfied with the real functioning of the system, that they mistrust basic institutions and social organizations and that they have lost confidence in the “political class.” Does this deficit of trust challenge the legitimacy of the current regime? The problem of trust-mistrust is primarily a political issue but overflows into the civil society, because many non-political institutions (churches, unions, large corporations, the army, the police) are also mistrusted by a significant part of the citizenry. Mistrust is spreading also to many professions from lawyers to real-estate agents. This analysis focuses on West European democracies, and nine institutions and organizations. In spite of the diversity of countries, institutions and variables, I shall refrain from engaging in a sophisticated statistical exercise, because the available data does not support more than simple cross-tabulations. In effect, for most countries the sample is about one thousand interviewed individuals. The most trusted institution is the family, in spite of the fact that in Europe and the United States one out of every three marriages ends today in a divorce. The family may serve nevertheless as point of reference. Comparing the countries, some common traits clearly appear across nations, but also a significant diversity in many domains, resulting in large part from national histories. In order to allow some comparative perspectives in Tables 1 and 2 a number of countries which do not belong to Western Europe are precluded.
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M M I
The mistrust of institutions has to be interpreted in the context of a high level of distrust in large sectors of the society. A deep distrust toward others, except members of one’s own family, was observed in the south of Italy in the 1950s by Edward Banfield, who called this “amoral familism” (Banfield 1958). For a long time, this mutual distrust was considered a particular phenomenon limited to the Mezzogiorno and explained by ancestral collective memory in this part of Italy. However, later, the same phenomenon was observed in Greece, Portugal, Spain and to a lesser degree in other European countries. In 1963 Almond and Verba suggested in their Civic Culture a typology where they contrasted the political culture of Americans and Italians. Verba also suggested that distrust of other people and of politics went hand in hand (Verba 1972). One generation later, a series of surveys attested to a generalized distrust of others in almost all European countries and in the United States. In fact, in 17 out of 22 countries, more that half of the people interviewed in 1981 responded that “they did not trust most people” and “one can never be careful enough.” In only five countries (three Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands and Canada) was the proportion of distrustful people less than half of the population. In France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland between two-thirds and three-quarters of the citizens were distrustful. According to the results of the third wave of the European Values Study in 1999–2000, a large majority of European adults replied that “one can’t be too careful in dealing with people”, except in Denmark, Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands, where only a minority admitted to being mistrustful (Halman 2001:44). In the United States the proportion reached 60 percent in 1981 (Halman 1995). Two hypotheses can be formulated. The first is fragile: in a relatively short period of time distrust has diffused. But in this case what remains of the concept of culture which implies a certain stability? According to the second hypothesis, the phenomenon of mistrust is older than previously supposed. It is the internationalization of research in values that has brought it to light. Such an interpretation would challenge certain old theories based on insufficient empirical evidence. Meanwhile, the American political culture seems to have come closer to the political culture of the Mezzogiorno.
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E C I The erosion of confidence has four characteristics. First, it is not a temporary phenomenon tied to a particular situation. It is a persistent phenomenon attested to by surveys conducted over the last two decades in some countries, and for a longer period in other countries. The disenchantment and discontent tends to become chronic. The absence of confidence is general. It is manifested in almost all advanced democracies. The lack of confidence in not only chronic and general, it is also structural in the sense that it concerns most of the important institutions. It is casting its shadow over institutions, sapping their respectability and reducing governmental authority. Finally, mistrust seems to have a rational tonality. For most interviewed people, such mistrust is not of an ideological nature, but rather pragmatic. In effect, the attitudes of trust-mistrust vary little on the left-right axis or on that of liberalism-socialism (Ashford and Timms 1992). Persistent, structural, and rational, the erosion of confidence has worsened in the surveys of 1999–2000 in parallel with the economic difficulties in some countries, particularly structural unemployment in Europe (see Table 1). Table 1 shows the proportion of people who expressed a negative opinion (“little or no confidence”) on nine institutions or organizations in 1999–2000. Among these nine institutions, six represent the state and the political regime: the parliament, the army, the police, the public administration, the courts and social security. Three institutions without being a direct part of the political system contribute to its functioning: unions, big business and churches. For some people interviewed, the reason for a lack of confidence is the inefficiency of institutions, while for others it is the abuse of power, favoritism, patronage, and in several countries, corruption. The level of confidence in institutions should not be confused with the proportion of people who approve or disapprove of the manner in which governments resolve problems like housing, unemployment, schooling, taxes, social security, pensions, etc. Opinions about these problems may be volatile and tied to ideologies. Opinions may vary with changes in partisan power. The majority of people may be dissatisfied with the way in which the government leads the country, but such opinions may indicate only an absence of confidence
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in the people who hold power. When a majority says that they disapprove of the manner in which the government treats the unemployment problem, they do not express a distrust of the political regime itself but of some political decision makers. Other public opinion surveys conducted at the same moment do not leave any doubt about the legitimacy of the regime. Such a distinction between judgment of particular problems, and the belief in the validity of the regime is needed for all European democracies. One remains perplexed when one notes that in twenty-three out of twenty-five countries considered in Table 1, the majority of the public has no confidence in parliament. The two exceptions, Belgium and the Netherlands are consociative democracies. The lack of credibility in this founding institution of democracy—which for a long time was the center of gravity of democratic regimes—corresponds to its real decline in the functioning of representative democracies. In almost all countries only a minority stated that it was confident in parliament. Other surveys confirmed that a significant minority of citizens, were judging the behavior of parliamentarians severely and had no confidence in parliament, even though they believed that it should play a more important role. The level of mistrust has increased during the last decade. In most democracies, the majority of people have a critical attitude regarding the “necessary evil” of public administration. In twentytwo among the twenty-six, an absolute majority express “no confidence at all” or “not very much” (Table 1 ). Differences in appreciation which we observe among countries correspond to the perceptions that specialists have of the efficiency of public administration. The structure of the state—federal or centralized—does not seem to have an impact on the perception of the performance of public administration. The recent and older military history of several European countries is rich in events which do not inspire full confidence in the army (Dogan 1994). This absence of confidence is not a new phenomenon. The novelty comes from the freedom to express oneself without fear and to show it empirically. Such a state of mind requires many commentaries. The image of the police depends on several factors, first of all on its integrity and its recruitment methods. On the whole, the police, among the institutions considered in Table 1, is the one which inspires the lowest mistrust.
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The surveys measured attitudes about the church as an institution and not religion as a belief. But there is, naturally, a significant relation between the confidence in churches as organized religion and the level of beliefs and religious practices in Catholic as well as Protestant countries (Dogan 1995). Such a correspondence has its logic, but it is likely that the people interviewed have attached different meanings to the word “church.” For some, it concerned the position of the ecclesiastic hierarchy on issues such as birth control, abortion, divorce and eroticism. Other respondents reacted according to their anti-clericalism or agnosticism. True believers may show opposition to the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and some agnostics or nonbelievers may sympathize with the church because of their own conservative attitudes in other domains. However, in most countries, the absolute majority of adults say they have “little” or “no” confidence in ecclesiastical institutions. This finding is, no doubt, one of the most astonishing in these international surveys on values. It raises an embarrassing question: Who is the church’s real audience in Western Europe today? The Netherlands merits special attention because, after having been partitioned for a long time into denominational communities, it has become one of the most agnostic countries in Europe, where today people are trying to throw off the ecclesiastical framework. Similar rapid transformations have been observed in other countries. It is not astonishing that the church benefits from the greatest amount of confidence in the Catholic countries. Another surprising finding is the discredit of unions in most democracies. The decline of unions is a well-known trend, carefully studied by social scientists. What is surprising is its magnitude. Huge majorities in postindustrial societies—whose development is characterized by social reforms achieved through union action—do not trust the “main organizations of workers.” This change shows that a page of history has been turned. In Sweden where a “neo-corporatism” has been forged based on the strength of unions, three out of every five citizens said in 1990 that they did not have confidence in unions, and about the same number in the survey of 1999–2000. One could explain the poor position of unions in British public opinion by their impact on the performance of business, and by the consequences of frequent strikes. In surveys conducted by the Gallup Institute, onethird of the British indicated in the 1980s that the unions were “the greatest threat to individual freedom.” It is true that the strength of
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the unions has been considerably reduced in recent times. There are people who say that they have “no confidence in unions,” but who admit at the same time that they belong to a union, willingly or not. How do we explain the current weakness of one of the greatest social institutions of the early part of the last century? Oligarchical trends continued to develop after the formulation of the “iron law of oligarchy” by Roberto Michels at the beginning of the century. Big business—not included in the survey of 1999—has always been criticized, rightly or wrongly. It never inspired a large degree of confidence among industrial workers. In recent years a high proportion of workers who have admitted that jobs are created by big business and not by the state bureaucracy have changed their attitudes toward big business. For France, the surprise is great: the patronat is perceived in favorable terms to such a degree that, with the exception of social security, it is the institution that enjoys the largest amount of trust, in spite of decades of ideological criticism of big business. A similar phenomenon was evident in Italy (Table 1). After a half-century of nationalization of large companies in Britain, France, Italy and elsewhere, after the rich experience of state capitalism in Western Europe and the lessons learned from the socialist experience in Eastern Europe, the grand patronat today reflects a better image in the mirror of public opinion. For this category there is not an erosion of confidence but a rehabilitation in the eyes of the broad public. The principle of social security is widely accepted. What varies from one country to another is the practical functioning. Detailed studies have shown in the last ten years that its efficiency is more frequently perceived in France, Germany and Belgium than in Italy and Britain. Social security is not, strictly speaking, a political institution, but it is, nonetheless, the one which today gives rise to the hottest political debates in many European countries. The ideological “left-right” dimension appears strikingly in this debate because the essential function of social security is the redistribution of income in advanced welfare states. This problem of redistribution is increasingly becoming one of the main sources of conflict, and consequently, of frustration and calculated mistrust. Today, social security is the Gordian knot of liberty-equality in all advanced democracies, but this issue had not been included in the survey of 1999. Among the institutions considered in these tables, the school system is the most trusted, except in Greece.
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In six institutions (parliament, public administration, judicial courts, church, trade unions and media) the absolute majority of citizens have expressed “no confidence at all” or “not very much” in the majority of countries. There are nevertheless significant differences between West and East European countries. The level of mistrust is higher in the East. The nine European countries manifesting the highest mistrust of parliament are in the Eastern side. The same is true for the ten countries expressing the highest mistrust in the police (Table 1). Four Eastern European countries merit special attention: the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Greece and Lithuania. The Czech Republic has the highest proportion of people mistrusting the church (and according to other surveys, of non-believers from agnostic to atheist). It is also the most anti-militarist country in Europe, and one of the most critical concerning the functioning of the parliament, of the public administration, of the police, and of the trade unions. In Greece and Bulgaria more than 70 percent of the citizens mistrust the public administration, the judicial institutions, parliament and trade unions. These two countries differ nevertheless in their attitude concerning the church (Table 1). Lithuania is on the top of the list of mistrust concerning the parliament, the public administration, the judicial system and the police, while at the bottom concerning the role of the church. The lowest proportion of mistrust concerning the church is found in the Netherlands which is also the country with one of the highest proportions of anti-clericals. This country had been four decades ago one of the most religiously oriented countries in Europe. It is an exemplar of accelerated change in values in many domains in the last decade. D P C P P Mistrust of whom? We can distinguish several levels. Mistrust, first of all, can be of the politicians who hold power at a particular moment. But if such mistrust persists in spite of the alternation of parties in power, it becomes a chronic attitude. What surveys constantly show is the negative attitude of a large part of the public toward the political elite in general, whatever their political bent.
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Careful research has shown that many voters do not vote for a party. They chose to vote against the candidates that they dislike the most. In international surveys of professional ethics concerning the honesty of some twenty-four professions, politicians appear, in many countries, as “the least worthy of confidence,” at the same rank as “used car salesmen” and “real estate agents,” while doctors, pharmacists, school teachers and bankers inspire a lot of confidence. Such an absence of confidence in parliamentarians seems incompatible with the fact that many of them succeed in being re-elected. Curiously, one values “one’s own representative” but not representatives in general. The popularity curves of the principal political figures, particularly prime ministers, rise and fall, and this implies that the erosion of confidence is only partially rooted in ideology, that the curves respond to government decisions and to the performance of political actors. In several countries people have been invited to formulate judgements periodically on the following issues: Do you have confidence in the government making good decisions? Do you think the people in power waste the taxpayers’ money? Do you think that leaders are knowledgeable people who know what they are doing or that many of them do not know? Do you think that politicians are honest, and, if so, many or a few of them? The responses to these questions— asked every two years in the United States since 1952 by the Institute of Social Research at the University of Michigan and reproduced in many European countries in 1980, 1990 and 1995–2000—attest to an increase in negative attitudes toward political rulers. Loss of popularity is a sociological given. With rare exceptions, presidents and prime ministers lose during the exercise of their functions a significant part of their political capital which permitted them to rise to power initially. This loss may be gradual or abrupt, slow or rapid. There is, in the archives of surveys in many countries, a rich documentation of these sociological trends. The trajectory of leaders in public opinion depends first of all on their own actions, their choices or their lack of action. The trajectory also depends on factors that are outside their control. The loss of popularity can mostly be explained by the difficulty or the impossibility of keeping electoral promises. Such criticism appears in numerous surveys. Whether sincere promises or deliberate lies, sooner or later these commitments appear as imprudent or cynical. Unpopularity is largely engendered by the “hypocrisy of those who govern us.” The “small screen” is a detector of hypocrisy, acting as
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a magnifying mirror. One needs to be a good actor to be able to dissimulate cynicism on television. The former French prime minister R. Barre admitted that “political life is fundamentally hypocritical.” He said this (in a television broadcast on 2 May 1993) as if it were the formulation of a medical diagnosis. Hypocrisy, which may be inevitable in the art of politics, produces mistrust. It is for this reason that politicians who frequently appear on television lose, after a certain time, their credibility. In various countries, and in particular in presidential regimes and in prime ministerial systems, presidents and prime ministers have most of the time governed without the support of the majority of the public. Elected according to constitutional rules, most of them lose the support of the majority shortly after their election. Only retrospectively can historians claim that some of the leaders, in spite of their unpopularity, nevertheless made wise decisions. It is a sociological fact today that in most democracies leaders behave as if they represent the majority of the population, while in reality they are supported only by a minority. This is one of the sources of political mistrust. In France, the majority thought, according to several surveys, that politicians did not listen to what the people had to say. In 1996, large majorities believed that they were not represented by any political party (67 percent), nor by a union (77 percent), nor a political leader (68 percent). Many believed that most politicians were “corrupt.” How high can the level of unpopularity of a president or a prime minister go without undermining the legitimacy of the regime? The level of positive public opinion dropped to less than 20 percent for leaders as diverse as Major and Juppé, and the level of negative opinion reached more than 70 percent. Nonetheless, such unpopularity did not challenge the legitimacy of their functions. But if the gap between support and rejection persists, in spite of the alternation of parties and teams in power, does not legitimacy itself suffer? The experience of the last half century demonstrates that democracy can accommodate itself to limited, partial and fluctuating confidence, even if the feeling of mistrust becomes chronic and massive. Only rarely does the regime lose its legitimacy, as, for example, in France on the eve of the fall of the Fourth Republic or in Italy in the 1980s. It is a difficult task to determine when a regime passes furtively from discredit of the political class to the discredit of the institutions themselves.
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Political leaders themselves feel and admit this attitude of mistrust: “our country is missing confidence and self-respect” ( John Major, 3 March 1993); “The function of politicians should be rehabilitated and we should fight against the discredit which burdens the entire political class” ( J. Chirac, 6 November 1994); “François Mitterrand has not been an honest man” (Michel Rocard, Revue de Droit Public, November 1998). The former president Valery Giscard d’Estaing, in an interview in June 1994, commenting about the mockery and the satirical treating of politicians in the written and electronic media, said: “Corruption does exist. It must be extirpated, otherwise the political class will be eliminated.” The erosion of confidence is particularly noticeable regarding political parties, whose image has been degraded in almost all Western democracies during last two decades, except in the Scandinavian countries. The number of party members has declined everywhere. The mass parties of yesterday have become parties of militants. Notorious examples are the social democratic parties. The most spectacular case is obviously the fall of the partitocrazia in Italy. “Parties are only interested in peoples’ votes, not in their opinions or aspirations.” Such a statement submitted periodically to citizens in survey research was approved by strong majorities in many countries. Even in Sweden, where parties have been strong for a long time, the proportion of those who did not have confidence in parties rose from 36 percent in 1968 to 68 percent in 1992. The decline of parties is related to many factors. The electoral volatility (not to be confused with longterm trends) often reflects the disappointment of a significant part of the electorate. The decrease in the number of active members and supporters has been the object of many well-known studies. All of them conclude that the main reasons are the disappointment with parties as organizations. The oligarchy of parties is not a new phenomenon, but has recently become more visible through the mass media, and consequently has generated more dissatisfaction. The weakening of parties could also be explained by the decline of ideologies (Calise 1994; Listhang and Wiberg 1995; Schedler 1996; Schmitt and Holberg 1995).
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M G C R M M In the European political forums, corruption is today more visible than in the past. A careful observation of the phenomenon of corruption during the last three decades in some countries, particularly Italy, France and Spain, tends to indicate that in the recent period there was at the same time an increase of corruption involving politicians, and an increasing control and reporting of graft. The better disclosure results from the joint action of magistrates and journalists. The actions and rhetoric of politicians are today, more than ever in the past, under the spotlight of a counter-power, the mass media. For the print or electronic media, bad news are “better” than good news. But the media do not engender this bad news, they only spread it. The media are vehicles, not political decision makers, even if the power of some journalists, through the influence they exercise, is greater than that of many politicians. Investigative journalists, by alerting the courts, play the role of prosecutor. But it is the official judge who condemns or pardons. Behavior of governments and decision-making processes are, today, under the scrutiny of the media, which not only inform but monitor. Governments are controlled by voters only on election day, this is to say, only once in a while. But they are constantly supervised by the civil society, represented by the media. In fact, governments are perceived in the mirror of public opinion as they are portrayed by the journalist’s pen. It is impossible to conceive of a truly democratic regime without powerful and independent journalists. Today, we may have democracy without powerful parties, but not without strong printed and electronic mass media. The relation between democracy and scandal is fallacious. It is such a correlation, grounded in the independence of the judiciary and the freedom of the press, that has so often blinded enemies of democracy in France, Italy, in the Weimar Republic, the Austrian Republic, Belgium and Spain. In reality, a scandal is a redemptive act. It is because of a scandal that Captain Dreyfus was rehabilitated. Scandal in democracy, if it is not too frequent, is a symptom of good democratic health. In some exceptional cases a scandal may appear as proof of democratic functioning and of the legitimacy of the system. In few countries
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is democracy solid enough to correct political error against the will of the army, or to require a chief of state to resign, as was the case with three Japanese prime ministers, the Italian President Leone and the American President Nixon. It is time to revise the conceptions that moralists have spread about scandals. For scandals to blow up, two conditions are necessary, and these are found only in democracies: freedom of the press and independence of the courts. Scandals are symptoms of democratic vigor. The impact of media can be demonstrated by content analysis of daily newspapers and weekly magazine. For instance, in the United States in the spring of 1989 (April–June), three newspapers with circulation of millions of copies (the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times) reported almost daily court cases concerning wrong-doing and acts of corruption at the federal, state and large municipality levels. Hundreds of pages have been written about corruption at the highest level of society in several European countries. Many politicians have been implicated in scandals and have been obliged to resign from their official functions. It is worthwhile mentioning that the Scandinavian democracies do not suffer from corruption as much as some other European countries. In the domain of public corruption, some observers estimate that we see just the tip of the iceberg. When it becomes very frequent, citizens lose confidence in institutions. One cannot emphasize strongly enough the corrosive effects of corrupt behavior on the loss of confidence in institutions. M C: F I C C These two countries are quasi-experimental cases for the study of the relation between mistrust and corruption, because of the sudden intervention of the judicial authorities in the public forum. In both countries, for the first time in their history, magistrates played a crucial role by denouncing and prosecuting corruption at the highest level of the state hierarchy. One of the main reasons of this quasipolitical role assumed by magistrates is related to the change in the social recruitment of a new generation of judges. Another important reason is the connection, the cooperation between magistrates and journalists, the building of a functional tandem between these two
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relatively independent actors in the highly advanced democracies. They understood that they need each other: journalists without magistrates are blind; magistrates without journalists are mute. In Italy “the revolution of magistrates” started by accident, in 1992. This “revolution” has been the object of dozens of books and of the whole Italian print and electronic media. In France, the awakening of magistrates occurred a few years later. A distinction is needed between petty corruption at the lower and middle level of the society, and crafty corruption at the elite level. The first is interpreted by many social scientists as “functional”, particularly in the developing countries. The second appears where money and political power converge. We are here interested in elitist corruption. Another distinction is needed, between personal enrichment through corrupt practices, and illegal partisan financing. Personal enrichment is unanimously condemned morally, politically and judicially. The second is the object of an open debate between ethic interpretation and pragmatic tolerance. Usually the debate about what is moral and what is immoral takes place in academic circles. But the debate about public corruption took place in these two countries in the print and electronic media. In Italy the trial of the most prominent leaders of the partitocrazia was televised in front of a large part of the population, an audience of millions of citizens. The protagonists were, on the one side, the magistrates, on the other, many of the most notorious Italian politicians over more than two decades. In a few years the proportion of people who expressed a negative judgement about the dignity and honesty of political rulers rose from 33% to 70% between 1967 and 1974; the dissatisfaction concerning the functioning of the state and of the public administration went from 35% to 83%, and the negative opinion of the competence and loyalty of political rulers went from 22% to 66%. A similar trend has been observed in France, but over a longer period of time. The chronology of survey results has an important sociological meaning. When the magistrates started their action in Italy in 1992 and in France in 1995 public opinion was already ripe, and ready to applaud the prosecutors. In France, political life has been, since 1996, largely a judicial chronicle as testified by a content analysis that I have done of the most prestigious French newspaper, Le Monde, which is read by almost the entire French political class, by all higher civil servants,
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and the industrial and financial elites. This newspaper published, during the five years between June 1996 and June 2001, 1500 issues of the journal (300 issues per year). The readers of this privileged observer of the top of the French society have found articles and reports on public corruption and political-financial scandals in 1300 of these 1500 days. In the majority of cases the articles concerning political-judicial affairs occupied long columns or even entire pages. In about 300 issues, that is in average one of every five, politicalfinancial affairs were presented on the front page. If a content analysis would be done for other newspapers, similar findings would be obtained. Television networks have also reported assiduously on the prosecution of political personalities. By concocting a list of the most important actors in French politics during the decade 1990–2001, say the 500 most visible and renowned politicians, having occupied prestigious positions (presidents, prime ministers, cabinet ministers, leaders of political parties), the most important of the 1000 parliamentarians (deputies and senators), mayors of the largest cities, and executives of regional councils, I have found that about 160 of these 500 politicians have been investigated officially by the judges (the exact figure depends on definitions and criteria). Among the personalities directly mises en examen by the French judicial authorities or mentioned by the media as being under investigation are the following: the current President of the Republic; the entourage and members of the family of the previous deceased president; a former president of the National Assembly; the president of the Constitutional Council who was obliged to resign; several former prime ministers (one was obliged to resign); thirty of the cabinet ministers during the period 1995–2001; many leaders of the main political parties; many mayors of the largest cities; many executives of regional councils. In a book sponsored by the National Assembly on the relationships between “politics and money” one can read that “the confidence of citizens in their representatives is shaken,” that “the basis of republican legitimacy is “undermined,” and that “elected representatives are “victims of rumors, insinuations and calumnies.” Survey research conducted in recent years shows that two of every three French citizens believe that “most politicians are not honest.” In 1990 and again in 1998, the National Assembly has decided on an amnesty of acts of illegal financing of political parties. But these amnesties have been condemned by a large majority of the French
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adult population, with such a severity that a new proposition of amnesty formulated in Spring 2000 had been considered “harmful,” “insupportable” by the general public, as “a provocation which risks to generated demonstrations in streets.” The project of a third amnesty is no longer on the agenda. In Italy, in 1994, 6059 persons were under judicial investigation. Among them were 335 deputies, 100 senators, 331 regional councillors, 122 provincial councillors, 1525 communal councillors, 973 entrepreneurs and businessmen, 1373 civil servants (Allum 1994:166). In the middle of them were the five party leaders of the penta-partito coalition, and four former prime ministers. The 435 deputies and senators represented almost half of the elected parliamentarians. During the years 1992 to 1994, the Italian newspapers have daily reported on entire pages the vicissitudes of the prosecutions for corruption. Never in the history of European democracies had a political class been more humiliated than the Italian during these 30 months. It would not be enough to say that the Italian political class had been decimated—which would imply that only a tenth of the politicians were excluded from the forum. It was clearly decapitated. More than half of the Italian politicians at the top of the political pyramid were eliminated during the following legislative elections. According to data published by the prosecutors of Milan in February 1995, in this city alone about 2500 persons were investigated during the previous three years, of whom 718 were preventively incarcerated. About 210 of these 2500 persons were condemned at the first trial, but most have appealed to a higher judicial court. Only one person had been condemned definitively. How to explain how few dozen judges were able to decapitate the powerful political class of the partitocrazia? It is generally admitted that one of the main reasons is the status of the magistracy, its independence and freedom of action but this explanation applies more to Italy than to France (Azzariti 1994; Pizzorno 1998). Another reason valid for both countries, is the already mentioned judiciarymedia nexus. A prosecution becomes a political event only from the moment when journalists report and comment on it. Revealing, interpreting, investigating by the media is a continuation of the work of the courts. The so-called “secret of judicial instruction” is too often a pretext to hide political-financial scandals (Montebourg 2000). In democratic regimes, the alliance between magistrates and journalists is the most efficient counterpower. Even in France, where many
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judges are placed under the control of the threatened politicians and their partisans, the journalists are the best protectors of the magistrates who, in turn, help the journalists to play their role as informants of the public, as opinion-guides. For a variety of reasons, most politicians who were under judicial investigation had not been formally condemned, and those who were condemned, are not in jail. Many have benefited from amnesties. Many have escaped condemnation because of prescription of their acts. Corrupted practices take time to be discovered, and, often, when the affairs come to light, it is too late. Prescription forbids further prosecution. In addition, any judicial decision can be the object of an appeal at a higher level of the judicial hierarchy. Judicial proceedings are proverbially very slow. Relatively few of the investigated politicians were effectively arrested. Until the final condemnation they are protected by the principle of “presumption of innocence.” In France, but not in Italy, a vicious circle is perceived by millions of citizens. Powerful politicians appoint the prosecutors, who, too often, protect their godfathers. Finally, a small proportion of guilty politicians are in jail. Nonetheless, most of those who were amnestied, or have benefited from prescription or who have succeeded in delaying a formal and final condemnation are politically wounded. From the very first day when their name appeared in the media for corrupt behavior, their political credit and influence were abruptly diminished. A scandal is a redemptive act. Even if someone is not formally condemned, even if he is not in jail—by the simple fact of being under investigation, he is severely wounded, and condemned to “civil death” or at least to a political temporary exclusion. A judicial prosecution or journalistic information is a sanction by itself, damaging the prestige and authority of the politician, even if subsequently, the suspected cabinet minister, or mayor is found “not guilty.” In France, a non-written ethics rule and jurisprudence oblige the incriminated holder of an important political position to resign immediately. Such an exclusion from the political forum is a kind of civil death. Politicians are very vulnerable. Most cases of political corruption arrive in the ear of magistrates and journalists by denunciations formulated by political enemies, by associated-rivals, by partners-inconnivance and by accomplices-in-pacts. Among political enemies the fight is open according to democratic rules, but enemies do not share
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secrets. They know how to protect themselves from frontal attacks. On the contrary, associated-rivals are in normal times rivals as much as allies—for instance as fractional leaders within the same party. In some circumstances associated-rivals may become dangerous enemies because they can hurt each other by revealing some secrets, notably in matters of corruption. Partners-in-connivance establish transversal alliances; they protect each other, as was recently in France. But the French media have denounced such connivance at the summit of the state. This led an important politician, leader of a party and candidate in the presidential election of May 2002 to recall to the audiences in September 2001 that “the fish becomes rotten from the head down”. Accomplices-inpact creates another type of vulnerability. When a member of a chain becomes a loser, there is a high risk of scandal for the entire chain. These four types of vulnerability appear only in democratic regimes. In dictatorships corrupt politicians are not vulnerable, at least most of the time. Ironically, the mushrooming of a political-financial scandal is, for a democratic regime, a positive act. L D Given such an erosion of confidence in institutions—in particular concerning the parliament as a central institution—a phenomenon has persisted for two decades in some democracies and longer in others. One wonders if there is in the old democracies a risk of challenging the legitimacy of the political regime. The reply to such a question should not be speculative. It should be based on empirical data. There is not a single country in the world where all the people perceive the regime as totally legitimate. Legitimacy comes in degrees. Ranking a regime on a scale from minimum to maximum legitimacy is a valid approach for comparative analysis of political systems. Many scholars have felt the need for such ranking: “Legitimacy runs the scale from complete acclaim to complete rejection . . . ranging all the way from support, consent, compliance through decline, erosion and loss. In case of conscious rejection we may speak of illegitimacy” (Hertz 1978:320). As Juan Linz stresses, “no political regime is legitimate for 100 percent of the population, nor in all its commands, nor forever, and probably very few are totally illegitimate based only on coercion” (Linz 1988:66).
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Legitimacy never reaches unanimity. All groups and all individuals do not evaluate equally the authority of political power. There are apathetic strata and rebellious subcultures, pacific opponents and armed terrorists, and between these extremes the majority is only partially convinced of the government’s pretension to legitimacy. For David Easton frequent violation of the law and dissident movements are an indication of the degree of legitimacy. But in empirical research it is difficult to identify and to measure this phenomenon. There is often confusion between legitimacy and legality. In a democracy, governments change periodically. It is considered legitimate precisely because there are rules concerning the replacement of the holders of political power. Hostility toward the party in power is compatible with belief in the wisdom of the regime. Occasional violations of constitutional rules do not undermine the legitimacy of the political regime. What is lost in such a situation is confidence in a particular institution and in its leaders. A distinction between the legitimacy of the regime and the confidence in certain institutions or rulers is necessary because no institution can totally escape the criticism of some people. Unanimity is a ridiculous pretension of totalitarian regimes. The available documentation does not permit stating that democratic legitimacy has been contested. The majority of citizens favor improving political regimes by reforms according to democratic rules (cf. Eurobarometer), but between conventional reforms and revolutionary agitation there are many forms of action and pressure. Another question raised by Eurobarometer was whether a high proportion of citizens were satisfied with the functioning of democracy (in December 1995). In all of Western Europe, one out of every two citizens declared that he or she was dissatisfied with the way in which democracy was functioning in his own country. In most cases this signifies a desire for improvement. The dissatisfaction regarding the functioning of institutions does not challenge the legitimacy of the regime. A pertinent question has been asked many times in various countries, inviting people to choose from three propositions concerning the issue of legitimacy: 1) accept overall the existing law, our present system of government and our society; 2) see many shortcomings in our present system, but believe in a gradual improvement within the existing system of government; or 3) completely reject the existing law, our present system of government and our society, the only solution is complete social change.
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The first proposition implies a belief in the legitimacy of the regime; the second bears witness to the conviction that, in spite of all insufficiencies, the exiting regime is the best conceivable and that, in addition, it is improvable. The third indicates that the existing regime is perceived as illegitimate. In most countries, the proportion of people who chose the third option has been small. In some countries the proportion was relatively significant (more than ten percent) particularly in France and Italy. How far can the level of confidence fall before it disrupts the legitimacy of democracy? Italy can serve here as test. Between 1991 and 1994, this country experienced an implosion which eliminated important political parties from the political arena, brought about a change of ideology and of the names of parties, and provoked a hecatomb of the political class following a large number of scandals of corruption. The corrosive effect of corruption on the regime’s legitimacy appeared clearly. Nevertheless, democracy has not collapsed, it has spontaneously reconstructed itself. Even in this extreme case, democracy proved itself ineradicable. Today most citizens cannot conceive of an alternative solution to a democratic regime. The available documentation does not allow us to conclude regarding a rejection of the basic civic culture. The only exception that comes to mind is Russia, but this is an exception that confirms the rule: today, Russia is a democracy in gestation, it is not yet an advanced democracy. In their book, The Confidence Gap, S.M. Lipset and W. Schneider arrived at the same diagnosis. They asked if there was a crisis of legitimacy in the United States. Their interpretation is that “people lose confidence in their leadership much easier than in the system” and that “the public has become more and more critical about the performance of the major institutions.” Their conclusion is that “the loss of confidence has positive and negative aspects. It is real because the Americans are extremely dissatisfied with the performance of their institutions. It is in some sense superficial because Americans have not yet reached the rejection point of these institutions” (Lipset and Schneider 1983:378–9). Substantial empirical evidence covering Western democracies oblige us to make a clear distinction between the legitimacy of the regime, confidence in institutions, and popularity of governments. In a democratic country, even if the number of dissatisfied people is high for a long period of time, the legitimacy of the regime is not challenged,
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except in cases of economic, military or political disaster (Dogan and Higley 1998). The democratic regime did not collapse because the majority of citizens believed that there is no better alternative than to reform democracy in a democratic way. The virtue of democracy is that it offers the possibility of change according to the rules of the political game. It is easier to avoid errors when one can anticipate the actions of others. This is what Carl Friedrich calls the “rules of anticipated reaction.” Such a quasi-medical precept is particularly useful when one analyses the erosion of confidence and seeks a remedy. It is not because we are convinced that democracy is the best system of government that we should refrain from admitting that it is not perfect, that is contains dysfunctions and injustices, that it can, as living organisms, experience pathological trends that engender feelings of alienation. Legitimacy of the democratic regime is not contested in any of the Western postindustrial democracies, but the persistence of low confidence shows that we are in the presence of serious dysfunctions (Heath and Dorren 1991; Gwyn 1980; Kaase and Newton 1995; Lockerbie 1993; Ester, Halman and de Moor 1993; Mori 1991, 1995; Halman 2001). The development of mass communications and the increasing intervention of the state in all domains have created what is called governmental overload. Intermittent voting rites are no longer sufficient. Parliament is no longer a privileged center of power. The old constitutional theory is gradually substituted by a permanent surveillance of institutions and their leaders by frequent recourse to surveys of public opinion. Parliamentary elections take place every four or five years, but surveys can be conducted every month. Parliamentary democracy becomes more and more survey-directed, giving citizens the possibility of expressing themselves on concrete problems. In all countries, politicians are sensitive to the results of surveys. Overloaded with conflicting tasks, governments can not satisfy all aspirations. By its omnipresence, the state engenders doubt and dissatisfaction. In this stateist society, a large part of the GNP is collected and redistributed by the state according to criteria and methods which are contested by certain categories of the population, disadvantaged or privileged. Citizens depend more and more on a government in which they have less and less confidence. The more powerful the state, the less efficient it seems to be. The more generous it is,
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the less impartial it appears. As a result, citizens are manifesting scepticism. Advanced democracy today is in a paradoxical situation. It needs a complex administration. But a free society does not support a too-powerful government. It is for this reason that the arrows of discontent and distrust are directed against the central government and its institutions. What types of citizens do we need in a democracy? Ignorant, naive, deferential, sheep-like, credulous, believers in myths? Or informed citizens, demythologised, who are at the crossroads of multiple influences and cleavages, in brief, rationally distrustful citizens? A good critical scepticism can only consolidate democracy. By crisis of confidence, we must understand rather the collective aspiration to more democracy, and not a loss of faith in its fundamental values. All political philosophers have said and repeated: democracy is the least bad political system. Erosion of confidence is first of all a sign of political maturity. It is not so much that democracy has deteriorated, but rather the critical spirit of most citizens has improved. What has changed during the last decades is the perception we have of the performance of the political system. Pluralist democracy is today becoming less governable—not so much because of government overload, but rather because of the diffusion throughout all strata of society of a mitigated confidence, or in other words, of rational distrust nourished by experience. One of the principal lessons to be drawn is that electoral procedures are no longer sufficient for building confidence in representative democracy. Today citizens’ judgment is no longer expressed only once in a while at election time; it is pronounced weekly or monthly, by survey research. Contrary to classical theories, and to some old, sometimes dusty, constitutional practices (as in Britain), the electoral procedure today—while it is irreplaceable and rightly sanctified— can no longer insure the harmonious operating and full legitimacy of democratic regimes in the most developed and demanding countries. From one electoral rite to another, choices must be made and decisions must be taken for which the vote expresses a vague indication, too often misleading. Deception, frustration and discontent are the inevitable results. Surveys conducted according to the rules of the art under the supervision of a constitutional court could, in some cases, usefully complement universal suffrage. It is not inconceivable that one day such a survey will be institutionalised in certain domains, at least on a consultative basis, without decisionmaking
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power, as participation of large social strata in the great political debates. Since there are too many dysfunctions in the most advanced democracies (and even more in other kinds of regimes), venerable parliamentarianism is called upon to enlarge the political forum. BIBLIOGRAPHY Allum, P. (1997) “From Two into One,” Party Politics, 1, 3, p. 50. Almond, G. and Verba, S. (1963) Civic culture. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press. Ashford, S. and Timms, N. (1992) What Europe thinks, A study of Western European values. Brooksfield, VT: Dartmouth. Azzariti, J. et al. (1994) Il Potere dei Gindici. Roma: Libri Manif. Banfield, E.C. (1958) The Moral Basis of a Backward Society. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Calise, M. (1994), Dopo la Partitocrazio. Torino: Einaudi. Cazzola, F. and Morisi, M. (1995) “Magistrature et Classe Politique,” Politix, 30, pp. 76–90. Di Frederico, G. (1997) “Prosecutorial Independence and the Democratic Requirement of Accountability in Italy,” International Political Science Association, World Congress. Dogan, M. (1994) “The Decline of Nationalisms Within Western Europe,” Comparative Politics, 26, 3:281–306. ——. (1995) “The Decline of Religious Beliefs in Western Europe,” International Social Science Journal, 145 (September): 405–418. ——. (ed.) (1988) Comparing Pluralist Democracies: Strains on Legitimacy. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Dogan, M. and Higley, J. (eds.) (1998) Elites, Crises and the Origins of Regimes. Rowman & Littlefield. Easton, D. (1965) The systems analysis of political life. New York: Wiley. Ester, P., Halman, L., de Moor, R. (1993) The Individualizing Society, Value Change in Europe and North America. Tilburg: Tilburg University Press. Eurobarometer, European Commission, since 1970. European Values Surveys, 1981, 1990, 1998, University of Tilburg. Gwyn, W.B. (1980) “Jeremiahs and Pragmatists: Perceptions of British Decline” in W. Gwyn and R. Rose (eds.) (1–125) Britain: Progress and Decline. London: Macmillan. Halman, L. (1995) “Is there a moral decline? A cross-national inquiry into morality in contemporary society” International Social Science Journal, September 419–440. ——. (2001) The European Values Study: A Third Wave. Tilburg: Tilburg University. Heath, A. and MacMahon, D. (1991) “Consensus and Dissensus,” British Social Attitudes, The 8th Report, pp. 1–21. Hertz, J. (1978) “Legitimacy can we retrieve it?” Comparative Politics, 10:317–43. Kaase, Max and Newton, K. (1995) Beliefs in Government. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Linz, J. (1988) “Legitimacy of democracy and the socioeconomic system.” in M. Dogan (ed.) Comparing Pluralist Democracies: Strains on Legitimacy. Boulder CO: Westview Press. Lipset, S.M. and Schneider, W. (1983) The Confidence Gap. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Listhang, O. and Wiberg, M. (1995) “Confidence in Political and Private Institution.” in H.D. Klingemann and D. Fuchs (eds.) (298–322), Citizens and the State. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lockerbie, B. (1993) “Economic Dissatisfaction and Political Alienation in Western Europe,” European Journal of Political Research, 23:281–293.
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Montebourg, A. (2000) La Machine à Trahir. Paris: Denoël. Mori (Market and Opinion Research International) 1991 and 1995, State of the Nation, Joseph Rountree Reform Trust. Pizzorno, A. (1998) Il Potere dei Giudici. Roma: Laterza. Schedler, A. (1996) “Anti-political establishment parties,” Party Politics, 2, 1 ( January). Schmitt, H. and Holmberg, S. (1995) “Political Parties in Decline?” in H.D. Klingemann and D. Fuchs (eds.) Citizens and the State. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Verba, S. (1972) “Comparative Political Culture” in L.W. Pye and S. Verba (eds.) Political Culture and Political Development. University Press.
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Table 1. “No confidence at all” or “not very much” in 1999–2000 1. Parliament Lithuania Czech Rep. Romania Croatia Slovania Estonia Bulgaria Latvia Greece Ireland Poland Hungary Spain Italy Germany Britain N. Ireland Austria France Finland Sweden Denmark Portugal Belgium Netherlands
2. Public Administration 89 89 81 79 75 73 72 72 71 69 67 66 66 66 64 64 60 59 59 56 51 51 50 48 45
Greece Lithuania Czech Rep. Slovania Bulgaria Romania Croatia Poland Italy Netherlands Germany Slovakia Estonia Spain Finland Austria France Britain Belgium Sweden Latvia Hungary N. Ireland Portugal Denmark Ireland
80 79 78 75 73 73 69 68 67 63 61 61 60 60 59 57 54 54 54 51 51 50 48 46 45 41
3. Courts Judicial Institutions Lithuania Bulgaria Croatia Estonia Czech Rep. Slovakia Italy Belgium Romania Portugal Spain Poland Slovania Hungary France Greece Latvia N. Ireland Netherlands Britain Ireland Sweden Germany Finland Austria Denmark
Source: European Values Study: Third Wave (edited by Loek Halman)
81 72 70 68 67 65 64 64 60 59 58 58 56 55 54 54 53 52 52 51 46 39 39 34 31 22
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Table 1. (cont.) 4. Church Ecclesiastical Hierarchy Czech Rep. Netherlands Britain Slovenia Bulgaria Austria Germany Spain Belgium Estonia Sweden France Hungary Ireland Finland Denmark Croatia Greece N. Ireland Italy Slovakia Poland Lithuania
5. Trade Unions 80 70 66 65 65 61 61 58 57 56 55 54 52 48 42 41 38 36 36 33 31 31 29
Greece Bulgaria Czech Rep. Hungary Romania Spain Britain Italy Austria Slovania Estonia Latvia Poland France Croatia Germany Belgium N. Ireland Lithuania Sweden Slovakia Portugal Ireland Denmark Finland Netherlands
Source: European Values Study: Third Wave
6. The Press Media 88 85 78 76 73 73 72 71 69 69 68 68 66 65 64 62 62 62 60 58 57 53 53 52 46 41
Croatia Britain N. Ireland Bulgaria Greece Hungary Austria Denmark Ireland Italy France Germany Finland Czech Rep. Romania Belgium Estonia Latvia Sweden Poland Slovakia Spain Netherlands Slovania Portugal Lithuania
85 84 82 74 69 69 68 67 65 65 64 64 64 62 62 62 58 55 54 53 51 49 45 39 34 23
200 Table 1. (cont.) 7. Army Czech Rep. Estonia Austria Netherlands Belgium Spain Sweden Hungary Latvia Lithuania Italy Germany N. Ireland Ireland Bulgaria Croatia France Poland Portugal Greece Slovakia Romania Britain Finland
8. Police 75 65 61 61 60 57 56 54 52 50 48 45 44 41 41 38 37 33 29 26 23 17 17 16
Lithuania Estonia Czech Rep. Greece Latvia Slovakia Bulgaria Hungary Romania Slovania Poland Spain Belgium N. Ireland Netherlands Portugal France Italy Britain Sweden Germany Austria Ireland Finland Denmark
Source: European Values Study: Third Wave
9. Courts Judicial Institutions 74 68 67 68 60 56 53 55 55 50 45 45 45 37 36 34 34 33 30 28 26 24 16 10 9
Greece Italy Czech Rep. Bulgaria Croatia Portugal Hungary Britain Lithuania Sweden France Spain Netherlands Latvia Estonia Germany Denmark Slovakia Belgium Romania Slovania Poland Finland N. Ireland Austria Ireland
53 47 45 43 42 40 36 34 33 32 32 32 27 26 26 26 25 24 22 21 20 19 17 17 14 14
SECTION SIX
THE MORAL SENSE OF MODERNIZATION
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THE MORAL DIMENSIONS AND TENSIONS OF MODERNITY S.N. Eisenstadt I The vision of modernity as a distinct civilization implies, not unlike the formation and expansion of the Great Religions, that the core of modernity is the crystallization and development of a mode or modes of interpretation of the world, or—to follow Cornelius Castoriadis’ terminology—of a distinct social “imaginaire,” indeed, of the ontological vision, of a distinct cultural program. This has been combined with the development of a set or sets of new institutional formations—all of which have entailed very strong moral claims and dimensions. Modernity, the modern cultural and political program, developed in one of the Great Axial Civilizations—the Christian-European one.1 It crystallized as the transformation of heterodox visions with strong gnostic components which sought to bring the Kingdom of God to Earth and which were often promulgated in medieval and early modern European Christianity by different heterodox sects. The transformation of these visions—as it took place above all in the Enlightenment and in the Great Revolutions, in the English Civil War and especially the American and French Revolutions and their aftermaths—entailed the transposition of these visions from relatively marginal sectors of society to the central political arena. This civilization, this distinct cultural program with its institutional implications, crystallized first in Western Europe and then expanded to other parts of Europe, to the Americas and later on throughout the world, giving rise to continually changing cultural and institutional patterns which constituted, as it were, different responses to
1
On the Axial Age Civilizations, see S.N. Eisenstadt, “The Axial Age: The Emergence of Transcendental Visions and the Rise of Clerics,” European Journal of Sociology, 23/2, 1982, pp. 294–314; idem, ed., The Origins and Diversity of Axial-Age Civilizations, Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1986.
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the challenges and possibilities inherent in the core characteristics of the distinct civilizational premises of modernity. II The modern project, the cultural and political program of modernity as it developed first in the West, in Western and Central Europe, involved distinct ideological as well as institutional premises. It meant some very distinct shifts in the conception of human agency, of its autonomy, and of its place in the flow of time. It also entailed a conception of the future in which various possibilities which can be realized by autonomous human agency—or by the march of history—are open. The core of this program has been that the premises and legitimation of the social, ontological and political order were no longer taken for granted; there developed a very intensive reflexivity around the basic ontological premises as well as around the bases of the social and political order of authority in society. This was a reflexivity which was shared even by the most radical critics of this program who denied in principle the legitimacy of such reflexivity. The central core of this cultural program has been possibly most successfully formulated by Weber. To follow James D. Faubian’s exposition of Weber’s conception of modernity: “Weber finds the existential threshold of modernity in a certain deconstruction: of what he speaks of as the ‘ethical postulate that the world is a God-ordained, and hence somehow meaningfully and ethically oriented cosmos.’ ” What he asserts—what in any event might be extrapolated from his assertions—is that the threshold of modernity has its epiphany precisely as the legitimacy of the postulate of a divinely preordained and fated cosmos has its decline; that modernity emerges, that one or another modernity can emerge, only as the legitimacy of the postulated cosmos ceases to be taken for granted and as that beyond reproach. Countermoderns reject that reproach, believing in spite of it: . . . One can extract two theses: Whatever else they may be, modernities in all their variety are responses to the same existential problematic. The second: whatever else they may be, modernities in all their variety are precisely those responses that leave the problematic in question intact, that formulate visions of life and practice neither beyond nor in denial of it but rather within it, even in deference to it. . . .2
2 J.D. Faubian, Modern Greek Lessons: A Primer in Historical Constructivism, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1993, pp. 113–115.
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Because of the fact that all such responses leave the problematic intact, the reflexivity which developed in the program of modernity went beyond that which crystallized in the Axial Civilizations. The reflexivity that developed in the modern program focused not only on the possibility of different interpretations of the transcendental visions and basic ontological conceptions prevalent in a society or societies, but came to question the very givenness of such visions and of the institutional patterns related to them. It gave rise to the awareness of the existence of a multiplicity of such visions and patterns and of the possibility that such visions and conceptions can indeed be contested.3 Such awareness was closely connected with two central components of the modern project, emphasized in the early studies of modernization by Dan Lerner and later by Alex Inkeles. The first such component is the recognition, among those becoming and being modernized—as illustrated by the famous story in Lerner’s book about the grocer and the shepherd—of the possibility of undertaking a great variety of roles beyond any fixed or ascriptive ones, and the concomitant receptivity to different communication messages which promulgate such open possibilities and visions. Second, there is the recognition of the possibility of belonging to wider translocal, and possibly also changing, communities.4 Concomitantly, closely related to such awareness and central to this cultural program was the emphasis on the autonomy of man— his (or hers, but in the initial formulation of this program certainly “his”) emancipation from the fetters of traditional political and cultural authority and the continuous expansion of the realm of personal and institutional freedom and activity, and of human ones. Such autonomy entailed several dimensions: first, reflexivity and exploration; and second, active construction, and mastery of nature, possibly including human nature, and of society. Concurrently, this program entailed a very strong emphasis on the autonomous participation of members of society in the constitution of social and political order and its constitution; and on autonomous access, indeed of all members of the society, to these orders and their centers. 3 S.N. Eisenstadt, “The Axial Age: The Emergence of Transcendental Visions and the Rise of Clerics,” op. cit.; idem, ed., The Origins and Diversity of Axial-Age Civilizations. 4 D. Lerner, The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East, Glencoe, Ill., Free Press, 1958; A. Inkeles and D.H. Smith, Becoming Modern: Individual Change in Six Developing Countries, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1974.
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Out of the conjunctions of these conceptions there developed the belief in the possibility of the active formation of society by conscious human activity. Two basic complementary but also potentially contradictory tendencies about the best ways in which such construction could take place developed within this program. The first such tendency was that the program as it crystallized above all in the Great Revolutions gave rise, perhaps for the first time in the history of humanity, to the belief in the possibility of bridging the gap between the transcendental and mundane orders, of realizing through conscious human actions in the mundane orders, in social life, some of the utopian, eschatological visions; the second such tendency was rooted in the growing recognition of the legitimacy of multiple individual and group goals and interests and of multiple interpretations of the common good.5 III The modern program entailed also a radical transformation of the conceptions and premises of the political order, of the constitution of the political arena, and in the characteristics of the political process. The core of the new conceptions was the breakdown of the traditional legitimation of the political order, the concomitant opening up of different possibilities of construction of such order, and the consequent contestation about the ways in which political order was to be constructed by human actors. It combined orientations of rebellion and intellectual antinomianism, together with strong orientations to center-formation and institution-building, giving rise to social movements, movements of protest, as a continual component of the political process.
5
S.N. Eisenstadt, “Frameworks of the Great Revolutions: Culture, Social Structure, History and Human Agency,” International Social Science Journal, Vol. 133, 1992, pp. 385–401; idem, Revolutions and the Transformation of Societies. New York: Free Press, 1978; idem, “Comparative Liminality: Liminality and Dynamics of Civilization,” Religion, Vol. 15, 1985, pp. 315–338; idem, “Cultural Traditions and Political Dynamics,” British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 32, 1981, pp. 155–181; Eric Voegelin, Enlightenment and Revolution, edited by John H. Hallowell, Durham N.C., Duke University Press, 1975; A. Seligman, “The Comparative Studies of Utopias,” “Christian Utopias and Christian Salvation: A General Introduction” and “The Eucharist Sacrifice and the Changing Utopian Moment in Post Reformation Christianity,” in idem (ed.), Order and Transcendence, Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1989, pp. 1–44.
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These conceptions were closely connected with the transformation of the basic characteristics of the modern political arena and processes. The most important of these characteristics was first the openness of this arena and of the political process; and second, a strong emphasis on the, at least potentially active participation of the periphery of “society,” of all its members in the political arena. Third were the strong tendencies towards permeation of the peripheries by the centers and of the impingement of the peripheries on the centers, of the concomitant blurring of the distinctions between center and periphery. Fourth was the combination of the charismatization of the center or centers with the incorporation of themes and symbols of protest which became components of the modern transcendental visions as basic and legitimate components of the premises of these centers. Themes and symbols of protest—equality and freedom, justice and autonomy, solidarity and identity—became central components of the modern project of the emancipation of man. It was indeed the incorporation of such themes of protest into the center which heralded the radical transformation of various sectarian utopian visions into central components of the political and cultural program. IV This program entailed also a very distinctive mode of construction of the boundaries of collectivities and collective identities. There developed new concrete definitions of the basic components of collective identities—the civil, primordial and universalistic and transcendental (sacred) ones—and of the modes of their institutionalization. There developed, first, a strong tendency to their absolutization in ideological terms; second, a growing importance of the civil components thereof; third, a very strong connection between the construction of political boundaries and those of the cultural collectivities; and fourth, a closely related strong emphasis on the territorial boundaries of such collectivities and a continual tension between the territorial and/or particularistic components of these collectivities and broader, potential universalistic ones. At the same time, the most distinct characteristic of the construction of collectivities, very much in line with the general core characteristics of modernity, was that such construction was continually problematized in reflexive ways. In some, even if certainly not total, contrast to the situation in the Axial Civilizations, collective identities were not taken as given or as
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preordained by some transcendental vision and authority, or by perennial customs. They constituted foci of contestations and struggles, often couched in highly ideological terms.6 A very central component in the construction of collective identities was the self-perception of a society as “modern,” as bearer of the distinct cultural and political program, and its relations, from this point of view, to other societies—be it those societies which claim to be, or are seen as, bearers of this program, or various “others.” V The civilization of modernity as it developed first in the West was from its very beginning beset by internal antinomies and contradictions which constituted a radical transformation of those inherent in the Axial civilizations, giving rise to continual critical discourse and contestations which focused on the relations, tensions and contradictions between its premises, and between these premises and the institutional developments in modern societies. It was around these tensions and contradictions that the moral problematique of modernity became most fully established. The tension which was perhaps the most critical, both in ideological and political terms has been that between totalizing and pluralistic visions—between the view which accepts the existence of different values and rationalities as against the view which conflates such different values and above all different rationalities in a totalistic way. This tension developed, above all, with respect to the very conception of reason and its place in the constitution of human society. It was manifest, for instance, as Stephen Toulmin has shown,7 even if in a rather exaggerated way, in the difference between the more pluralistic conceptions of Montaigne or Erasmus, which have also involved the recognition and legitimization of other cultural characteristics of human experience, as against the totalizing vision of reason promulgated by Descartes. Among the most important such conflations of different rationalities has been the one—often identified as the major message of the Enlightenment—of the sovereignty of 6 S.N. Eisenstadt and B. Giesen, “The construction of collective identity,” European Journal of Sociology, Volume 36, No. 1, 1995, pp. 72–102; E. Shils, “Primordial, Personal, Sacred and Civil Ties,” in idem, ed., Center and Periphery: Essays in Macrosociology, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1975, pp. 111–126. 7 S. Toulmin, Cosmopolis, New York, Free Press, 1990.
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reason, which subsumed value-rationality (Wertrationalität) or substantive rationality under instrumental rationality (Zweckrationalität) in its technocratic mode or under a totalizing moralistic utopian vision. In some cases as, for instance, in the Communist ideology, there may develop some combination of both the technocratic and the moralistic utopian visions under one totalistic canopy. Concomitant tension between totalizing and absolutizing as against more pluralistic tendencies developed also in the definition of other dimensions of human experience—especially the emotional ones. Cutting across these tensions, there developed within the cultural and political program of modernity continual—even if changing in their concrete manifestations—contradictions between the basic premises of the cultural and political programs of modernity and the major institutional developments of modern societies. Among these contradictions of special importance have been those so strongly emphasized by Weber: those between the creative dimension inherent in the visions which led to the crystallization of modernity and the flattening of these visions, the “disenchantment” of the world inherent in the growing routinization and bureaucratization; and those between an overreaching vision through which the modern world becomes meaningful and the fragmentation of such meaning generated by the growing autonomous development of the different institutional arenas—the economic, the political and the cultural. Closely related has been the tension between, on the one hand, the emphasis on the autonomy of the human person and, on the other hand, the strongly restrictive control dimensions inherent in the institutional realization of modern life depicted, even if in different ways, among others, by Norbert Elias, Michel Foucault and others—or in other words, to follow Peter Wagner’s formulation between freedom and control.8
8 N. Elias, The Court Society, Oxford, B. Blackwell, 1983; idem, The Civilizing Process, New York, Urizen Books, 1978–1982; M. Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception, New York, Vintage Books, 1973; idem, Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, Amherst, University of Massachussetts Press, 1988; idem, Surveiller et Punir: Naissance de la Prison, Paris, Gallimard, 1975; idem, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, New York, Pantheon Books, 1965. Peter Wagner, A Sociology of Modernity: Liberty and Discipline, London, Routledge, 1994.
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Closely related were the tensions which crystallized within the modern political discourse—the most important among which has been the relation between, on the one hand, the legitimacy of a plurality of discrete individual and group interests and of different conceptions of the common good and of moral order, and, on the other hand, of totalizing ideologies which denied the legitimacy of such pluralities. One form of such totalistic ideology emphasized the primacy of collectivities perceived as distinct ontological entities based on common primordial and/or spiritual attributes—i.e., above all a national collectivity. The other such totalistic ideology has been the Jacobin one—the historical roots of which go back to medieval eschatological sources—the essence of which was the belief in the primacy of politics and in the ability of politics to reconstitute society, and in the possibility of transforming society through totalistic mobilized participatory political action. Whatever the differences between these collectivistic ideologies they all shared deep suspicion of the open political process and institutions, especially the representative and those of public discussion, as well as strong autocratic tendencies. VII Yet another set of themes bearing on the moral problematique of modernity developed in the discourse of modernity and the continual confrontation between more “traditional” sectors of society and the modern centers or sectors that developed within them—between, on the one hand, the culture of modernity, the modern “rational” model of the Enlightenment as promulgated within these centers, which emerged as hegemonic in different periods and places, and, on the other hand, the continually construed more “authentic” cultural traditions of these societies. At the same time there developed, among the bearers of the traditional authenticity and among the more traditional sectors of these societies, continual ambivalence towards these modern centers and their presumed yet also exclusivist premises and symbols. There was a continual oscillation between, on the one hand, denial of these premises and, on the other hand, a strong attraction to them and to the centers in which they were promulgated and efforts to appropriate them and reinterpret them. These themes developed first within Europe and continued, albeit
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already in a different vein, with the expansion to the Americas, especially with the expansion of modernity beyond Europe—to Asian and African countries. The concrete contours of the different cultural and institutional patterns of modernity as they crystallized in different societies were indeed continually changing, due to the combination of the tensions inherent in the cultural and political program of modernity and the continual institutional social, political and economic developments attendant on the development and expansion of modernity. The institutional and cultural contours of modernities were continually changing, first of all because of the internal dynamics of the technological, economic, political and cultural arenas as they developed in different societies and expanded beyond them. Second, they were continually changing in connection with the political struggles and confrontations between different states and between different centers of political and economic power that constituted a continual component, first, of the formation of European modernity, and later, through the continual expansion of the European, then American and Japanese modernity. Such confrontations developed already within Europe with the crystallization of the modern European state system and became further intensified with the crystallization of “world systems” from the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries on. Third, they were continually changing because of the shifting hegemonies in the different international systems that developed in the wake of the continual developments in the economic, political, technological and cultural arenas, and in centers thereof.9 Fourth, they were changing because of the continual confrontations between interpretations promulgated by different centers and the elites and the concrete developments, conflicts and displacements attendant on the institutionalization of these premises. Fifth, they were continually changing because these confrontations activated the consciousness of the contradictions and antinomies inherent in the cultural program of modernity and the potentialities given in its openness and reflexivity. It also gave rise to the continual 9 E. Tiryakian, “The Changing Centers of Modernity,” in E. Cohen, M. Lissak and U. Almagor (eds.), Comparative Social Dynamics: Essays in Honor of S.N. Eisenstadt, Boulder, CO and London: Westview, 1985; idem, “Modernization—Exhumetur in Pace” (Rethinking Macrosociology in the 1990s), International Sociology, Vol. 6, No. 2, June 1991, pp. 165–180; idem, “The New Worlds and Sociology—An Overview,” International Sociology, Vol. 9, No. 2, June 1994, pp. 131–148.
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promulgation—by different social actors and especially the different social movements—of continual reinterpretation of the major themes of this program and of the basic premises of the civilizational visions and on the concomitant grand narratives and myths of modernity. Sixth, they were continually changing because the very expansion of modernity beginning in Europe entailed a confrontation between the concrete premises and institutional formations as they developed in Western and Northern and other parts of Europe—and later beyond Europe—in the Americas and later in Asia, in the Islamic, Hindi, Buddhist, Confucian and Japanese civilizations. VIII Throughout these changes the different tensions and moral dilemmas inherent in modernity became continually articulated and reformulated. In the first, “classical” age of modernity these tensions were focused around the constitution of nation- and revolutionary states which were considered as the epitome of modernity. This situation has greatly, indeed radically changed on the contemporary scene. Above all the ideological and symbolic centrality of the nation and revolutionary state—its perception as the charismatic locus of the major components of the cultural program of modernity and of collective identity—became weakened, and new political and social and civilizational visions and visions of collective identity developed—all of them articulating anew the moral problematiques of modernity. These new visions and identities were promulgated by several types of new social movements. Such “new” social movements which developed in most Western countries, such as the women’s and ecological movements, all closely related to or rooted in the student and anti-Vietnam war movements of the late sixties and seventies, were indicative of a more general shift in many countries in the world, “capitalist” and communist (such as China)—a shift from movements oriented towards the state to more local ones. The fundamentalist movements which developed in Muslim, Protestant and Jewish communities, and the communal religious movements which developed for instance in the Hinduist and Buddhist ones, and the various particularistic “ethnic” movements and identities which constituted deformations of the classical model of nation- or revolutionary states gathered momentum especially in the last two decades of the twentieth century in the former republics of the Soviet Union but also,
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in most terrifying ways, in Africa and in part of the Balkans, especially in the former Yugoslavia. In these, and in many other settings, there crystallized new types of collective identities, often propagated by some of the movements mentioned above, which went beyond the models of the nation-state and which were no longer focused on it. Many of these hitherto seemingly “subdued” identities—ethnic, regional, local and transnational alike—moved albeit naturally in a highly reconstructed way into the centers of their respective societies and also often in the international arena. They contested the hegemony of the older homogenizing programs, claiming their own autonomous places in central institutional arenas—be it in educational programs, in public communications and media—and very often they are also making farreaching claims with respect to the redefinition of citizenship and of the rights and entitlements connected with it. In these settings local dimensions were often brought together in new ways, beyond the model of the classical nation state, with transnational ones such as, for instance, the European Union; or with broad religious identities—many of them rooted in the great religions such as Islam, or Buddhism, or different branches of Christianity, but reformulated in new modern ways. T D W H M—M A M IX All these developments do indeed indicate far-reaching changes or shifts from the model or models of modern nation- and revolutionary state. They do indeed attest to the weakening of the ideological and symbolic centrality of the nation-state, its position as the charismatic locus of the major components of the cultural program of modernity and collective identity. But do they, contrary to many accepted views, all signal the “end of history”? Is this the end of the modern program as epitomized by claims in the development of different “post-modernities,” and, above all, in the retreat, as it were, from modernity to the fundamentalist and the communal religious movements which have been portrayed—and in many ways have also presented themselves—as diametrically opposed to the modern program?
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In fact, they rather all evince a strong preoccupation with modernity as their major reference frameworks,10 and constitute attempts at reinterpretation of modernity and attempts to approach modernity— albeit indeed with all its increasing contradictions—in their own terms. While within these movements there develop similar combinations of different cultural tropes and patterns, they compete among themselves about who presents the proper “answer” to the ambivalences towards processes of cultural globalization. All these movements shared the concern which, as we have seen, has constituted indeed a basic component in the discourse of modernity from its beginning in Europe—about the relations between their identities and the universal themes promulgated by the respective hegemonic programs of modernity, and, above all, concern about the relation between such authentic identities and the presumed hegemony of, on the contemporary scene, especially the American culture. At the same time, in most of these movements, this fear of erosion of local cultures and of the impact of globalization and its centers was also continuously connected with an ambivalence towards these centers giving rise to a continuous oscillation between this cosmopolitanism and various “particularistic” tendencies. Moreover, in all these movements, the tensions between pluralistic and totalistic orientations and programs, between multifaceted versus closed identities, the continual confrontation between particularistic and universalistic identities in the settings of new universalistic hegemonies, and a continual ambivalence towards the major centers of this hegemony that can be identified in almost all of these movements are fully articulated. This attests to the fact that, while going beyond the model of the nation state, these developments have not gone beyond the basic problematics of modernity. They are all deeply reflexive about sharing the awareness that no answer to these tensions is final—even while attempting to provide a conclusive, noncontestable answer to the basic problematics of modernity. They have however reconstituted this problematic in new historical contexts, in new arenas, in new ways. First among these new ways is the worldwide reach and diffusion (especially through the various media) of such movements and of the confrontations they
10 S.N. Eisenstadt, Fundamentalism, Sectarianism and Revolutions. The Jacobin Dimension of Modernity, op. cit.
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entail; second their politicization, their continual interweaving with fierce contestations formulated in highly political ideologies and terms; and third, a crucial component of these reinterpretations and appropriations of modernity is the continual reconstruction of collective identities in reference to the new global context and contestations between them. Such contestations may indeed be couched in “civilizational” terms—but these very terms are already couched in terms of the discourse of modernity, defined in totalistic and absolutizing terms derived from the basic premises of this discourse, even if it can often draw on older religious animosities. When such clashes or contestations are combined with political, military or economic struggles and conflicts they can indeed become very violent. Fourth, the reconstructions of the various political and cultural visions and such collective identities on the contemporary scene entail a very important shift in this discourse with respect to the confrontation between the Western and non-Western civilizations—or religions or societies—and the relations of these confrontations to the Western cultural program of modernity. As against the seeming, even if highly ambivalent, acceptance of these premises, combined with a continual reinterpretation characteristic of the earlier reformist religious and national movements, most of the contemporary religious movements—including the fundamentalist and most communal ones— as well as the more general discourse of modernity which developed within these societies, promulgate a seeming negation of at least some of these premises. They promulgate a markedly confrontational attitude towards the West (to what is conceived as Western) and attempts to appropriate modernity and the global system on their own modern, but non-Western, often anti-Western terms. With them, the confrontation with the West does not take on the form of seeking to become incorporated into the new hegemonic civilization on its own terms, but rather to appropriate the new international global scene and modernity for themselves, for their traditions or “civilizations”— as they have been continually promulgated and reconstructed under the impact of their continual encounter with the West. These movements attempted to completely dissociate Westernization from modernity and they denied the monopoly or hegemony of Western modernity, and the acceptance of the Western cultural program as the epitome of modernity. Significantly enough, many of these themes are espoused also, even if naturally in different idioms, by many of the “postmodern” movements.
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Thus the processes of globalization that have been taking place in the contemporary scene do not thus entail either the “end of history” in the sense of the end of ideological confrontational clashes between different cultural programs of modernity—or of a “clash of civilizations” which seemingly remove themselves from the programs of modernity and deny it. They do not even constitute a—basically impossible—“return” to the problematique of premodern Axial civilizations. Rather, all these developments and trends constitute aspects of the continual reinterpretation, reconstruction of the cultural program of modernity; of the construction of multiple modernities; of attempts by various groups and movements to reappropriate modernity and redefine the discourse of modernity in their own new terms. At the same time they entail a shift of the major arenas of contestations and of a crystallization of multiple modernities from the arenas of the nation state to new areas in which different movements and societies continually interact and cross each other. This emphasis on the essentially modern characteristics of all these movements and collective identities which go beyond the classical model of the territorial, national and/or revolutionary state does not necessarily entail an optimistic view. On the contrary—they emphasize not only the fragility and changeability of different modernities but also the destructive forces which are inherent potentialities in the modern program, most fully manifest in the ideologization of violence, terror and wars. X From its very beginning, the development and expansion of modernity was not—contrary to the optimistic views of modernity as progress—peaceful. It also bore within it very destructive possibilities—which were indeed voiced, and also often propagated, by some of its most radical critics, who saw modernity as a morally destructive force, and emphasized the negative effects of some of its core characteristics. The crystallization of the first and the development of later modernities were continually interwoven with internal conflicts and confrontations, rooted in the contradictions and tensions attendant on the developments of the capitalist systems and, in the political arena, the growing demands for democratization and with international conflicts in the framework of the modern state and imperialist systems. Above all they were closely interwoven with wars
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and genocides—repressions and exclusions constituted continual components thereof. Wars and genocide were not, of course, new in the history of mankind. But they became radically transformed and intensified, generating continuous tendencies to specifically modern barbarism. The most important manifestation of this was the ideologization of violence, terror and war—manifest most vividly first in the French Revolution. Such ideologization emerged out of the interweaving of wars with the basic constitutions of the nation states; with those states becoming the most important agent—and arena—of the constitution of citizenship and symbols of collective identity; with the crystallization of the modern European state system and of European expansion beyond Europe; and with the intensification of the technologies of communication and of war. XI These destructive forces—the “traumas” of modernity which brought into question the great promises of modernity—emerged clearly after the First World War and became even more visible in the Second World War and in the Holocaust, even if they were paradoxically ignored or branched out from the discourse of modernity in the first two or three decades after the Second World War. Lately they have re-emerged again in a most frightening way on the contemporary scene, in the new “ethnic” conflict—in parts of the Balkans, especially in the former Yugoslavia, in many of the former republics of Soviet Russia, in Sri Lanka, and in a most terrible way in African countries, such as Rwanda.11 These are not outbursts of old “traditional” force, but outcomes of modern reconstruction and seemingly “traditional” forces in a modern way—just as the fundamentalist and religious communal movements developed within the framework of the processes of modernity and cannot be fully understood except within this framework. Thus indeed modernity is—to paraphrase Leszek Ko∑akowski’s felicitious and sanguine expression—“on endless trial.”12
11 E. Tiryakian, “The Wild Cards of Modernity,” Daedalus, Vol. 126, No. 2, September 1997, pp. 147–181. 12 L. Ko∑akowski, Modernity on Endless Trial, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1990.
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THE CULTURAL CONSTITUTION OF MODERNITY Björn Wittrock “T M S M”: P N The theme of this section is the moral sense of modernity. In the sequel I shall propose a way to think about the formation of modernity and of modern social science that makes it possible for us to address the question of the moral sense of modernity in a different way than traditional modernization theory has done. In order to approach the theme let us start with some observations first concerning the nature of norms and then concerning the constitution of modernity. Human beings think, speak and perform a range of other actions. When such actions form regularities, we may refer to them as practices. Practices are underpinned by norms that state that under given conditions some actions are permitted, some not, some actions obligatory, some not. In principle norms may be expressed in linguistic form, although they may well be so taken for granted that it is only their violation that brings forth efforts to articulate their meaning whether in a specific context or more generally. Norms also allow for the mobilization and use of resources. It is this capacity that allows for some human practices to extend far beyond an immediately given context and to constitute an institution. Such use may be directed at some further end—entailed, or seen to be so—by a given set of norms, but it may also be directed at the enforcement of a norm that is seen to have been violated in the immediately given context. It is often asserted that norms are primarily constraining and forbid certain actions rather than allow them. Another common view is that there is a deep divide between the constraining and enabling force of norms. I believe that both of these views rest on a misconception. In specific they disregard the fact that whether a norm is described as constraining or enabling, as allowing for certain actions to occur or as forbidding them, this is not a natural property of the norm itself but is a consequence of linguistic use in a particular
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context. It is, in other words, a matter of linguistic convention and convenience of an open-ended nature. In order to see this, let us describe the performance of some action by the notation “Do A”. Let us further use the notations “O (Do A)” to mean that it is obligatory to perform A, “P (Do A)” to mean that it is permissible to perform A, and “F (Do A)” that it is forbidden to perform A. Both of the two views mentioned above postulate a deep divide between the enabling or permitting norm “P (Do A)” and the constraining one “F (Do A)”. However the choice of either of the notations is not a matter of necessity but of linguistic contingency. Thus the “enabling” norm “P (Do A)” obtains if and only if it is the case that “-O (-Do A)”. Similarly, the “constraining” norm “F (Do A)” is equivalent to “-P (Do A)”. This notion is in turn equivalent to “O (-Do A)”. A notion of normative obligation is then the primary. This notion clearly does not presuppose that norms are limited to matters of constraint. Rather obligations may both allow for and exclude the performance of certain actions, whether generally or in some specific contexts. A simple conclusion is that any theorizing about the moral sense of modernity should indeed focus on actions and practices, but it should not rest on a simple dichotomy between the constraining and enabling features of rules and norms. It must also make clear what the relationship is between normative presuppositions and modernity itself. In order to achieve this it is necessary to critically rethink the formation of modernity. M: P N C T If we then turn to the question of the constitution of modernity, traditional theorizing tends to be cast in terms of a fundamental but essentially dual transformation, namely of political and of economic order. Terms such as “the democratic revolution” and “the industrial revolution” are just two examples of this type of conceptualization which seems to range from functionalist ways of theorizing to Weberian and Marxian ones. What they have in common is a disregard for the fact that the formation of modernity also involved a profound change in the nature of discursive practices. These discursive transformations were not mere “ideological” epiphenomena. Rather, deep-seated epistemic and ontological ruptures and redefinitions
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opened up new horizons of expectations and hopes. These shifts made possible or, more literally, conceivable, if only as projects and imaginations, new institutional practices. The conjunction of new epistemic and ontological presuppositions and the range of institutional proposals put forth on the basis of these presuppositions constitute something which—in another context (Wittrock 2000)—I have called “promissory notes”. Such promissory notes form focal points for long-term processes of contestation and interpretation. In the course of such processes, they may travel in time and space far beyond the imaginations and expectations of any of the progenitors of the original shift. They entail a range of possible societal states of affairs that were previously—and literally— not “conceivable” but that can thereafter not be made, as it were, “unthought” (Wittrock 2000; see also Eisenstadt, Schluchter and Wittrock 2000). Discursive and cosmological shifts are not “ideological” reflections; they are necessary, but not sufficient, for the constitution of new institutional practices. The notion of promissory notes also—and as I have argued at some extent in another context (Wittrock 2001a)—provides a way to make sense of what is sometimes called “cultural trauma” (Sztompka 2000; Alexander 2002). This latter notion has been used to interpret experiences of deep violations of human dignity. I believe the simplest way to delineate the concept and to make it analytically meaningful is to limit its use to instances where a fundamental and irreversible breach occurs of promissory notes that have become constitutive of key practices. Such a breach means that conceptually necessary assumptions inherent in the practice itself are violated. In this sense such violations do not merely encroach upon the integrity, or indeed the lives, of human beings, but bereave them of the very means to interpret and articulate their experiences of those violations. If a large group of citizens of a country—as occurred in countless instances in the course of the twentieth century—are suddenly treated by the authorities and by their neighbors not as citizens or compatriots but as enemies whose only redemption is death, then conceptually necessary components of citizenship have simply disappeared. Similar violations may, incidentally, also occur in personto-person relationships. A child, who is molested by her or his own parent, has not just been grossly violated but is bereft of a crucial experiential horizon by the parent taking away irreversibly from the
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child a conceptually necessary component of the relationship between parent and child. If I am right, however, an analysis of cultural traumas presupposes an understanding of institutional practices. It presupposes an understanding of the way in which promissory notes have become constitutive of these practices. In particular, for a theoretically and historically orientated social science, it is urgently necessary to rethink the formation of the key institutions of modernity and to understand the outlines of the cultural constitution of modernity and not to shortcircuit such an analysis by way of going straight to a structuralinstitutional account. Such an account will never be able to reflect critically upon its foundations and will never be able to lend itself to a comparative and historical analysis that is not just a conceptual imposition of the experiences of a particular region of the world. This, I believe, is equally true whether the particular version of such a structuralinstitutional account is Parsonian, or Weberian or, indeed, Marxian. An analysis of the varieties of modernity in the contemporary world must be culturally sensitive and opened up for a dialogue across different historical and civilizational legacies but must also think critically of the history of scholarly practices themselves. This is the task to which I now turn. An understanding of the transformations, which jointly constitute the formation of modernity, is only possible if the social and agential nature not only of political and economic practices but also of technological and discursive practices is recognized. A social theory in terms of a functional-evolutionary account of these events as just a reflection of a uniformly increasing societal differentiation is seriously misleading. R F M In the late eighteenth century natural philosophy gradually gave way to a range of natural science disciplines. Moral philosophy was slowly transformed into a range of separate discourses. In the course of the nineteenth century these discourses came to distinguish themselves both from natural science and from literary discourse and came to label themselves social sciences. In this process of an epistemic sea change, historical reasoning, which had formed a central component
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of moral philosophy, came to form a discursive realm of its own, separate from philosophy and separate from the social sciences.1 The key institutional features, which emerged at the turn of the eighteenth century, involved dramatic ruptures with traditional forms of political and social order. This involved not only the emergence of a general sense of openness and contingency concerning the structural conditions of the political body. The institutional transformations also depended on processes inherent in the deep-seated cultural and cognitive shift that involved, as one manifestation, a passage from political and moral philosophy to a social science. Ever since scholars have called themselves social scientists—with the first recorded uses occurring in France in the 1790s—they have also seen these new forms of knowledge as characterized by an effort to understand the world of modernity. They have tended to describe key features of this new world in terms of processes of industrialization, urbanization, and political upheaval, originating at the northwestern edge of the Eurasian landmass but eventually having repercussions on a worldwide scale. In this period there occurs a fundamental transition from earlier forms of moral and political philosophy into social science. This transition is also linked to an institutional restructuring not only in the forms of political order but also in the forms in which human knowledge is brought forth and in which claims to validity are ascertained. One feature of this institutional transition is the emergence of the public sphere that gradually comes to replace arenas of a more closed nature such as aristocratic literary salons. Another one is the rise of new or reformed public higher education and research institutions that come to replace both the laboratories of wealthy amateurs and the academies under royal patronage and partial control. Thus social science emerged in a period of deep-seated transformations of political and cultural institutions. Social science was, from its very inception, characterized by an inherent duality (cf. Wagner 1994, 1998 and 2001). On the one hand it was a form of knowledge that is premised on a previously unknown openness and contingency of the world. It is a world in which human agency and interventions
1 See e.g., Heilbron 1995, Heilbron et al. 1998 but also Brian 1994, Fox et al. 1995, Lepenies 1988, and Wokler 1987.
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may crucially contribute to a transcendence of the legitimacy of tradition and the familiarity of local experiences and inherited bonds and communal obligations. In this sense the new social science also serves to supply concepts that came to be constitutive of a set of new institutional projects of a specific nature (Wittrock 2000). Thus, institutions emerged that were not just new but came to be vehicles for the enhancement of a continuous process of innovation. On the other hand, these institutional frameworks and the social sciences themselves were to be endowed with a certain degree of stability. One way to achieve this was to demonstrate that the new forms of knowledge, in contrast to the cameral concerns of an older absolutist state, were premised on universalistic rather than on particularistic assumptions about human beings, human agency and human societies. The rise of the social science disciplines must then be cast in terms of the fundamental transformation of European societies that the formation of modernity entailed. One shift in intellectual and cultural transformation in this period pertains precisely to the concepts of society and history and to the new awareness of the structural and constraining nature of societal life. Pierre Manent has put forward the notion that society is a “postrevolutionary discovery” (Manent 1998:51 but see also Manent 1994). True enough, and as is convincingly demonstrated by Keith Baker, the term society undergoes a long conceptual development in the French context in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—with a dramatic increase in the utilization of the term in the mid-eighteenth century. It is also true that, in his critique of Louis Dumont’s analysis of Western individualism and holism, Marcel Gauchet argued that (this is Baker’s elegant summary): Individualism was not simply a symptom of the dissolution of the primacy of the social whole, as that had been understood in traditional religious terms. It was also a necessary condition for what he once again called (following Karl Polanyi) the ‘discovery of society’—its discovery in strictly sociological terms, disengaged from the religious representations in which it had hitherto expressed its existence. Not until the ideological primacy of individual interests was postulated, he argued, could constraints upon these interests be discovered in the operation of an autonomous social order subject to its own laws (Baker 1994:112).
Johan Heilbron has pursued an inquiry into the constitution of individual interests (Heilbron 1995; 1998:77–106). In the course of the
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seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such interests were conceived as amenable to the constraints of various notions of sociability. In particular, given a human condition short of true religious virtue, was there a prospect for a human existence beyond the borders of a Leviathan-like imposition of absolute order that would involve socially acceptable outcomes of the pursuit of the self-interests of human beings? Such inquiries were pursued in various ways in the different parts of Europe throughout the late seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. However, Heilbron and many others today agree that, even if there is a long process of gestation of the modern concept of society, the unique event of revolutionary upheaval requires that discursive controversy and political practice become joined in the formation of a distinctly modern era. Pierre Manent has elaborated a similar argument: “The Revolution offered the original spectacle of a political change of unheard-of scope, yet having no stable political effects, of a political upheaval impossible to settle, of an interminable and indeterminate event” (Manent 1994:82). This description of the Revolution as an irreversible and interminable process of fundamental change was formulated perhaps most clearly by one of the most well-known thinkers of the nineteenth century, Alexis de Tocqueville. In his memoirs, Souvenirs, written in the summer of 1850, he describes the revolution as one long upheaval “that our fathers have seen the beginning of and which, in all likelihood, we shall not see the end of. Everything that remained of the old regime was destroyed forever” (Tocqueville 1964:30). In fact, Reinhart Koselleck’s conception in his early work Critique and Crisis is quite similar. He also links the temporal duration of the process of upheaval to its spatial, and indeed world-wide, extension, as well as to its increasing intensity in terms of modernity as a process that affects all human beings, not just, say, those in central political institutions or certain major cities: The eighteenth century witnessed the unfolding of bourgeois society, which saw itself as the new world, laying intellectual claim to the whole world and simultaneously denying the old. It grew out of the territories of the European states and, in dissolving this link, developed a progressive philosophy in line with the process. The subject of that philosophy was all mankind, to be unified from its European centre and led peacefully towards a better future (Koselleck 1987a:5 f.).
In this process horizons of expectations, to use one of Koselleck’s key notions, opened up that were previously unknown. It is also this
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sense of openness and contingency that serves as a forceful impetus to an examination of the structural conditions of the political body and entails a passage from political and moral philosophy to a social science. E E G C In the course of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries there also occurs a deep shift in European conceptions of the world at large. In parallel to the political extension of European power and to the growth of colonialism, the type of critical historical reflection on the European political experience relative to that of other parts of the world, and in particular that of East Asia and China and which was most closely associated with several of the Enlightenment thinkers, but echoed also in Kant’s critique of European imposition and in his appreciating comments on Chinese society, disappeared. In its stead came first a distinctly Europe-centered conception of world history with Hegel’s lectures on the philosophy of history as an emblematic expression. Later history emerged as an academic discipline with its focus on the European experience of the formation of a range of nation states.2 In its formative stage in the early nineteenth century, in the foundational works of Ranke, the main theme was the shaping of Europe through the confluence of the cultural traditions of Latin and Germanic peoples.3 Later most European historians would narrow their focus further and write narratives about the trajectories of individual nations. Sometimes these studies, as in the majestic works at turn of the nineteenth century by Meinecke and Hintze, had a strong comparative perspective, sometimes their orientation was limited to the achievements of one particular nation. In the late nineteenth century, at a period in time when European global pre-eminence was at its peak, history largely came to be a scholarly exercise that served as a discursive parallel to the formation or reform of European nation states. The new investigations of
2
The argument that the formation of modernity entailed the abandonment of a universalistic commitment inherent in the Enlightenment tradition has, in recent years, been pursued perhaps most vigorously by Robert Wokler (cf. Wokler 1998). 3 A particularly succinct essay on Ranke’s formative role is Gilbert 1990.
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social conditions and the back side of processes of industrialization, urbanization and modernization were to become institutionally embedded, if in a slow and uneven process, in the research-oriented universities and other new higher education institutions.4 They formed an analogous parallel to the efforts of those nation states to cope with “the social question.” Thus the relationship of the new social sciences to a historical conception, other than that which took the life of a given nation state as its starting point, could not be but a tenuous one.5 The notion that the European experience should not be taken as the self-evident yardstick for the achievements of a civilization was even more remote. To some extent this is true also of the intellectual giants of early social science, including Max Weber. Thus even if Weber’s most seminal works, such as his collected essays on the world religions, are masterpieces of global history, they stand in a complex and never quite resolved tension to other parts of his works. In the interpretation of his legacy for future generations of social scientists, as handed down most prominently perhaps by Talcott Parsons, it was these latter parts, emphasizing the unique nature of Western modernity and its historical trajectory, that became the most visible and most frequently cited ones.6 It was not in Europe, however, that a full-blown professional separation occurred of what had previously been a broadly conceived movement of social science into a range of individual social science disciplines. This took place in the United States already at the turn of the nineteenth century. One of its consequences was a more secure professional position for the practitioners of these forms of scholarship. Another one, however, was the emergence of a widening chasm
4
Wittrock and Wagner 1992 and 1996. See also Rothblatt and Wittrock 1993, Geiger 1986 and Jarausch 1983. 5 The argument in this section is largely based on a long-term research program with results published in, among others, Heilbron et al. 1998, Wagner et al. 1990, Wagner et al. 1991, Wagner 1999a and b, Wittrock and Wagner 1992 and 1996, Wittrock 1999. An analogous line of argumentation is pursued in Wallerstein et al. 1996. For a discussion of the role of universities in this process see Rothblatt and Wittrock 1993. 6 This also entailed an alternative, more historical, interpretation—as propounded by, e.g., Reinhard Bendix—coming to play a less prominent role than the dominant Parsonian one. Similarly Bendix’ own magnum opus, Kings or People, cannot be said to have achieved the position of a major classic in modern sociology.
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between, on the one hand, history and, on the other hand, different social science disciplines such as sociology and political science. A corresponding development did not take place in most European countries until well after the Second World War. There can be little doubt that, in the wake of this development, an interest in history, and particularly an interest in global history, came to occupy a less prominent part within the newly differentiated social science disciplines than had previously been the case. In a number of European countries, political and sociological studies had from the mid-nineteenth century onwards remained intimately linked to historical research. However the focus had, as argued above, been on the development of a national polity rather than on global developments. M H: T R R G H It was only the disaster of the First World War which came to shake the conviction of a historically assured pre-eminence of Europe in particular and a more vaguely defined Western world in general. In the wake of the war, a first wave of efforts appeared to write the history not of civilization but of the rise and decline of different civilizations, accounts in which the achievements and predominance of Europe were cast in serious doubt. Often enough, such accounts were written from the perspective of the defeated nations and echoed a generalized conservative cultural pessimism. To some extent this is true of Spengler. A philosophically much more astute and radicalized form it is characteristic of Heidegger’s programatic writings from the late 1920s and early 1930s. In other cases, authors transcended those conventions and tried to reflect upon the cultural foundations of different political and societal orders from the vantage point of a historical scholarship characterized by the highest degrees of critical reflexivity. This is to some extent the case in the philosophical writings of Jaspers. It is even more tangible in the historical writings of such diverse authors as Marc Bloch, Franz Borkenau, and Arnold Toynbee. In their writings one may discern the outlines and the scholarly promise of a social science that brings in a comparative and critical account of world history. However, these potentials were certainly not the ones that became predominant or were realized when social science finally became
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institutionalized across the board in the 1950s and 1960s. Rather this occurred in the particularly non-historical form of social science that had long been predominant in the United States and that became transposed abroad after the Second World War, linked to the notion of the so-called behavioral revolution. These efforts were often promoted within the framework of the new international social sciences associations that had been established with links to UNESCO and other forms of international scientific collaboration, shaped by the United States.7 Thus social science not only became less historical than it had tended to be in most parts of Europe at the turn of the century. It also became shaped by the fact that social science disciplines, and most notably so perhaps political science and sociology, in their theoretical core came to reflect the pre-eminent position of the United States in the post-Second World War world. Thus even if social science, in its own long-standing self-conception, remained a discourse of modernity, these presuppositions tended to entail a social science that was reticent to theorize either world history at large and even those upheavals that came to constitute the particular Western trajectory. Thus the particular Western trajectory to modernity tended to be assumed rather than examined. Furthermore, the relationship of a European trajectory to global historical developments tended to be ignored or simply dismissed. These types of questions, so prominent in earlier and overtaken forms of philosophy of history, were simply irrelevant to the behavioral sciences of modern industrial societies and their increasingly urbanized and differentiated forms of organized social life. Within the discipline of history, a gradual process of disciplinary demarcation led to analogous results. Thus scholars, to whom questions of world history had been a central concern, tended to lose their standing as exemplars and be regarded as falling outside of the bounds of the discipline and rather occupying a role as civilizational critics. As such they might be interesting perhaps but ultimately they were seen as failing to conform to proper standards of modern historical science. Arnold Toynbee is an obvious case in point, and despite his strenuous efforts to argue for the empirical and scholarly basis of his writing of history he was often depicted as a speculative writer. In other cases, such as that of Franz Borkenau, their works 7
For an overview of these developments see Wagner et al. 1990 and Wagner 1999.
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have simply fallen into relative oblivion. These scholars appeared as hopelessly overtaken in methodological terms long before the era of the behavioral revolution of the 1950s and 1960s, an event which further contributed to their neglect, as did in some cases their different political allegiances. It is really only towards the end of the twentieth century that global interactions have become so prominent and immediately visible as to make obvious the existence of distinctly modern, yet clearly different, societies also across the globe.8 It is in this context that there are renewed efforts to understand the different civilizational legacies and to explore various modes of interactions over long periods of time. Within social science this renewed interest has often come under the label of studies of globalization. Paradoxically, globalization studies often seem premised on assumptions close to those of earlier forms of theorizing about convergence and modernization. They describe the global and all but inevitable diffusion and impact of market interactions and capitalist forms of production. Thus present day globalization studies and theories about global networks are, in conceptual terms, strangely reminiscent of modernization theory.9 Notions of structures may be replaced by those of networks, and Eurocentrism by globalism. However the core assumptions of earlier modernization theory in the form of a functional evolutionary account of history and a functional and non-agential account of society is remarkably familiar. In historical research the renewed interest has taken the form of an interest in what is often termed global history. What holds this wide area together is essentially an insistence, from a variety of different perspectives, on the legitimacy and scholarly viability of asking questions about long-term developments that transcend the borders of any given polity, or indeed geographical region. This, indeed, is a process that is now going on among historians on a worldwide scale. In this process, it is clearly the case that historians seek ways of engaging with questions of global history that will not commit them to a representation of the world in terms of the interac-
8 An exemplary introduction to debates on globalization is Held and McGrew 2000. 9 An interesting critical discussion of network models in science and technology studies is that of Knorr Cetina and Bruegger 2002.
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tion of a number of states and polities, nor of cohesive civilizational blocs. Rather there is a search for more sensitive modes of representation that highlights cultural and institutional legacies that are shared across such boundaries. Terms such as “connections,” “encounters,” and “entangled histories” recur frequently (see e.g., Bentley 1993, 1998; also O’Brien 2000). It is difficult, for scholarly and maybe also for normative reasons, not to feel sympathy for these efforts. They seem to hold every promise to yield important insights. However, they do not relieve us of the need to go beyond a mere amassing of interesting insights in the hope that we might eventually be able to discern the contours of global historical developments. This is the point where social theory must confront global history. However, in order to achieve this we must first of all recognize the limitations of social theory, both in historical and theoretical terms. I shall first summarize some of the main arguments in historical terms. In a following section, I shall summarize the argument in theoretical terms. M C: C C I M First then in the previous sections I have outlined an inquiry into the history of modernity and of the social sciences as emblematic discourses of modernity. I have indicated some of the key conditions affecting the early history of social science but also of the social sciences as intimately linked to a deep process of cultural crystallization that also entailed the emergence of the prospect of new types of macro-societal institutions. Thus in the wake of the deep cultural shift at the turn of the 18th century, a distinctively new type of societal order manifested itself in the European context through the emergence of a set of institutional projects that became emblematic of the modern world at large. Pre-eminent among these institutional projects were those of economic organization in the form of a liberal market economy rather than in a regulated mercantilist economy. Similarly political order came to be conceptualized as a modern nation state of compatriots or of a constitutional republic of fellow citizens rather than in the form of an absolutist monarchy with its distinction between ruler and subjects. In the realm of private interactions, new demands
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arose for a legally protected sphere where the State was only allowed to make interventions and undertake sanctions that were clearly specified and foreseeable. The new conception of the nature of the public sphere and political order was thus based on ontological assumptions about human beings of a radically new nature—namely the idea of the principled equal rights of all human beings to participate in the macro-institutions of the public sphere and of the state. In this sense, the formation of modernity in Europe was not just another period reminiscent of the axial age or of the early emergence of a bifurcation between secular and sacred power in 12th and 13th century Europe. In the political sphere, the new institutions involved a conception of political order as constituted and legitimated in terms not only of silent tolerance but some form of active acquiescence and participation. Thus centuries-old ideas of representation in the form of estates and parliaments were complemented with demands for participation and even popular sovereignty. In the Western half of Europe, the wave of demand associated with these ideas, what Parsons referred to as the Democratic Revolution, was a constant feature of political life from the late 18th to the mid 20th century when they were finally victorious across the board. In political terms it had entailed the gradual limitation of constitutional monarchical regimes and their eventual replacement by some form of parliamentary democracy. In the private sphere, there were parallel developments. They basically entailed that age-old demands that princely rulers abstain from acts of arbitrary intervention and violence were superseded by demands that there be a legal-rational basis for all actions of government. Thus official acts are legitimate only if they are based on legal rules that are transparent and allow for consequences of actions to be predictable. Such transparency and predictability can become a reality only if the nature of political order accepts as a basic principle the rule of law rather than the volition of the princely ruler as its basic principle of operation. Such demands not only for legal protection but also for the universal application of legal order had long traditions in some—but by no means all—European countries. At the turn of the 18th century, however, they were voiced with increasing intensity. Furthermore their urgency was reinforced by the demands of new commercial and industrial activities. New public spheres also emerged outside of courts, academies and salons, outside of the control and purview of royal sanction and
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control. Whether in scholarly, political or artistic life, fora are created that are based on the idea that public discourse should not be subject to persecution or censorship but rather be able to express an opinion on all aspects of political and public life. One may say that they were premised on the legitimate articulation of a discourse not only about but addressed to and critical of the official power of the state. In what sense do these different institutional projects constitute a societal form that we may associate with the notion of modernity? Clearly it would be misleading to suggest that these projects became universally realized in the European context at the time of their intellectual conception. Nothing could be further from the truth. Instead the new institutional projects remained embattled and highly controversial in practical affairs in Europe throughout the following century and a half. Even in Western Europe, a modern political order in terms of truly universal suffrage did not become a full institutional reality until the end of the Second World War. Despite these facts, however, it is still possible to speak in a meaningful way of modernity and its institutional projects as a societal reality in a specific sense of the word, namely as a new set of promissory notes. These promissory notes, formulated and promulgated and even partially implemented, if for brief periods of time, at the turn of the 18th century, came to have global relevance. At their core were notions of self-reflexivity, agency and historical consciousness. These institutional projects became the object of continuous discursive and institutional battles. However, they could never again be exorcized from the attention of such battles in the European context. The Vienna Congress and the Holy Alliance was a comprehensive effort to unthink the consequences of the French Revolution and to restore the Old Regime and make Europe safe for tradition. It became almost immediately clear that this program was an unrealizable one. Even the political thought of the pro-resurrection forces in France found it impossible to return to the intellectual landscape of pre-Revolutionary France. The new institutional projects, whether they were adopted or, as was initially often enough the case, rejected, became inevitable reference points on a truly global scale. Rather the history of European dominance and colonialism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is largely the history of gross violations of the promissory notes of the institutional projects of modernity. The twentieth century includes histories of the horrors of war and of not only
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traditionally authoritarian regimes but of state terrorism on a vast scale. These experiences indicate that a purely structural analysis of modernity is insufficient. The institutional structures of modernity were and are interpreted by their own inhabitants—and this is true not only of the victims but also of some of the perpetrators of some of the worst massacres—in terms of normative commitments and entailments and would remain inexplicable if the outside observer refused to pay attention to this fact. It is also this feature that makes it possible to talk about modernity without unduly imposing a rigid and misleading institutional gridlock on an unwieldy and complex historical reality. Thus modernity is not equivalent with universal acclaim of a small set of philosophical principles or the endorsement and implementation of a few crucial institutional projects. This also means that modernity maybe could be best delineated in terms of a conjunction, with global implications, of a set of cultural, institutional and cosmological shifts. In all other periods of cultural crystallization before the formation of modernity, critical reflection has had as its focus not solely the physical limits of personal finite existence but in generalizable form it has also brought out a discourse on ways that might bridge the chasm between the mundane and the transcendental order. Consciousness of the existence of such a chasm was in all cases also linked to consciousness about institutional practices that might serve to transcend that chasm. The discourse about such transcendence might be religious and philosophical as in the axial age or ecclesiastically ecumenical, as in the 12th and 13th centuries in Europe. In the formation of modernity in Europe in the late 18th and early th 19 centuries, philosophical reflection was, however, also explicitly political. The political element consists precisely in the contestations about the constitution of a normative order that is enforceable, in the last instance, by violent means. In this process there were, as already emphasized, wide differences not only between proponents and adversaries of different political reform projects but also of fundamentally different political regimes. However all such contestations now occur within the bounds of the ontological, and cosmological presuppositions of modernity. To my knowledge one of the few philosophically serious efforts in our own time to transcend those boundaries were those by Heidegger in the interwar period. The state structures of Italian Fascism as well as of Soviet Stalinist Marxism-Leninism, may best be described as
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alternative modernities. What Heidegger seemed to have envisaged were practices so fundamentally different in their ontological and cosmological presuppositions that it would have been meaningless to label them an alternative modernity or even an anti-modernity. It seems clear that his philosophical thinking for some years was so directed at enabling the emergence of such a transformation that he led himself to believe this was underway in his home country at the time. In this sense, his involvement with National Socialism may have rested on a misperception of the true nature of that regime but it was intimately related to his basic philosophical project of the times and not a mere contingency or a simple expression of opportunism. Up until now there has been little in today’s various forms of fundamentalism that seems to justify a description of these phenomena as anything but part of modernity (see e.g., Eisenstadt 1999). Maybe, however, part of the attention, not to say, fascination, attached to these phenomena may have to do not just with the violence exercized by them—this seems to be little but another instance of the kind of ruthless violence, performed without any qualms, with which the twentieth century is replete—but rather the inkling of a fundamental challenge to precisely the cultural and cosmological presuppositions of modernity. M C: R S T It is now necessary to turn from the historical argument to some key features of the theoretical argument. First of all, despite decades of criticism, the dominant sociological form of theorizing about global developments remains that of modernization theory. This type of theorizing was explicitly premised on a set of dichotomies between the traditional and the modern, the Western and the non-Western, the stagnant and the dynamic. Implicitly it was also premised on a view of the world that took the experiences of one particular country in one particular historical period, notably the United States in the post-World-War II period, as the yardstick against which the achievements and failures of other countries were measured. Thus one particular trajectory to modernity tended to be assumed rather than examined. Furthermore, long-term relationships between this trajectory and developments in other parts of the world tended to be ignored or simply dismissed.
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In the beginning of the twenty-first century, global interactions have become so prominent and immediately visible as to make obvious the existence of distinctly modern, yet clearly different, societies across the globe. Paradoxically both traditional modernization theory and large parts of contemporary globalization studies remain premised on assumptions of convergence and unilinear modernization. Thus globalization studies might have replaced notions of structures by those of networks. However, they tend to preserve core assumptions of modernization theory in terms of a functional evolutionary account of history and a functional and non-agential account of society. The conventional understanding of modernization suffers from three crucial weaknesses: Firstly, it is conceptually impoverished. Thus it presents, as extensively argued above, an understanding of modernization as consisting in changes in economic-technological practices, “the industrial revolution,” and in political practices, “the democratic revolution,” but it neglects the fact that the formation of modernity was constituted in the wake of a deep-seated shift in cultural and discursive practices. Secondly, it is empirically untenable. The particular institutional practices that modernization theory associates with modernity—be they a liberal market economy or a democratic nation-state—did not materialize in full-blown form anywhere even in the context of Western Europe until the middle of the twentieth century. In a purely structural-institutional perspective, modernity would barely have arrived in time to witness its own funeral. This would make a mockery of debates throughout nineteenth century Europe about the coming of modernity. Furthermore, as already argued, societies across the globe are modern but exhibit deep-seated differences that cannot simply be expected to fade away in favor of a gradual approximation to some implicit North American yardstick. Thirdly, the conventional understanding is normatively closed. It posits a purely instrumentalist understanding of—to use my own terminology (Wittrock 2000)—the promissory notes of modernity. Paradoxically, and as already emphasized, both traditional modernization theory and a number of its poststructuralist critics share this interpretation. They both tend to neglect tensions between expressivist and instrumentalist tendencies in modernity that existed in the articulation of modernity at least from the turn of the eighteenth century onwards (Heilbron, Magnusson, Wittrock 1998; Wagner 1994, 2001). A purely instrumentalist reading of the promissory notes of
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modernity is historically inaccurate, and it is vacuous as a normative theory except in a purely formal sense. In the case of traditional modernization theory, there is simply an uncritical advocacy of a set of instrumental values, an assignment that in a number of poststructuralist accounts has just shifted evaluational contents. Let me then finally just briefly summarize the preceding argument in terms of five points that indicate the need for a rethinking of a social theory of modernity in its global and multiple forms (see also Wittrock 2000, 2001a–f ): Firstly, the cultural constitution of modernity has to be explicitly brought into any theorizing of modernity. It cannot be relegated to a pristine domain of ethnographic research. Secondly, the cultural presuppositions of modernity have always been in tension with each other, discursively embattled and differently interpreted and articulated. Thirdly, virtually every such articulation has occurred against the background of a perceived threat to the practices of a given society, a sense that it is about to be overwhelmed not only by the values of another society but by the sheer power of other societies. This is equally true for what has sometimes been called “defensive modernization” in nineteenth and twentieth century Europe ( Joas 1999a and b, 2000) as it is in the cases of nineteenth and twentieth century Japan or twentieth century China or India. Fourthly, in all parts of the world today, articulations of cultural and institutional assumptions of modernity will occur in virtually all geographic regions and among all parts of the population. Such processes are not reserved for an intellectual elite in supposedly modern settings distinct from an allegedly traditional population in remote areas unaffected by modernity. Thus the very idea of ethnographic accounts that may be kept separate from theorizing about modernity is untenable. Fifthly, the particular institutional projects that were articulated, and sometimes if partially realized in some parts of Europe and North America, came to impinge on the rest of the world. However, this cannot be construed either historically or in the contemporary setting as an encounter between modern and traditional societies. Neither Ching China, nor Mughal India, nor Safavid Persia, nor Tokugawa Japan, nor Ottoman Turkey and the Balkans were in any reasonable sense stagnant, traditional societies. They were all undergoing deep-seated change, had vibrant public spaces, were reinterpreting their own legacies, redefining their collective identities and
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reforming their political orders (Eisenstadt, Schluchter and Wittrock 2001; Eisenstadt 2002). Only a focus on the connected and entangled nature of history (e.g., Subramanyam 1997, 1998) can bring this out. Such a focus defies any notion of a dichotomy between theorizing the modernity of European and North American societies and ethnographically recording the traditional and the given in other settings. Today a first step to make meaningful at all a dialogue about the moral sense of modernity must then be to reconstruct an understanding of how modernity itself has been constituted not by naturalistic processes. In this text I have outlined the conditions that I take to be necessary for this effort to be successful. The history of modernity cannot be understood in terms of just structural-institutional transformations, much less in terms of naturalistic processes (see also Koselleck 1987b). Ultimately it rests on an institutional articulation and interpretation of the human condition, of what it means to conceptualize the finitude of our own existence in a world premised on assumptions of the potentially infinite malleability of the world upon which and into which our actions impinge and what historical existence may mean in such a world. BIBLIOGRAPHY Alexander, J.C. (2002) “On the Social Construction of Moral Universals: The ‘Holocaust’ from War Crime to Trauma Drama”, European Journal of Social Theory. 5(1): 5–85. Baker, K.M. (1994) “Enlightenment and the Institution of Society: Notes for a Conceptual History”, in W. Melching and W. Velema (eds) Main Trends in Cultural History: Ten Essays. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 95–120. Bentley, J.H. (1993) Old World Encounters: Cross-Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in PreModern Time. New York: Oxford University Press. ——. (1998) “Hemispheric Integration, 500–1500 C.E.”, Journal of World History, 9(2): 237–254. Brian, E. (1994) La mesure de l’Etat. Administrateurs et géomètres au XVIII e siècle. Paris: Albin Michel. Eisenstadt, S.N. (1982) “The Axial Age: The Emergence of Transcendental Visions and the Rise of Clerics”, European Journal of Sociology, 23(2): 294–314. ——. (ed.) (1986) The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press. ——. (1999) Fundamentalism, Sectarianism and Revolution: The Jacobin Dimension of Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ——. (ed.) (2002) Multiple Modernities. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Press. Eisenstadt, S.N., Schluchter, W. and Wittrock, B. (eds) (2000) Public Spheres and Collective Identities. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Press. Engelstad, F. and Kalleberg, R. (eds) (1999) Social Time and Social Change: Historical Aspects in the Social Sciences. Oslo: Scandinavian University Press.
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Foucault, M. (1966) Les Mots et Les Choses. Une archéologie des sciences humaines. Paris: Gallimard. Fox, C. Porter, R. and Wokler, R. (eds) (1995) Inventing Human Science: Eighteenth Century Domains. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Geiger, R.L. (1986) To Advance Knowledge: The Growth of American Research Universities, 1900 –1940. New York: Oxford University Press. Gilbert, F. (1990) History, Politics or Culture: Reflections on Ranke and Burckhardt. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Heilbron, J. (1995) The Rise of Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press. ——. (1998) “French Moralists and the Anthropology of the Modern Era: On the Genesis of the Notions of ‘Interest’ and ‘Commercial Society’ ”, in J. Heilbron, L. Magnusson, and B. Wittrock (1998): 77–106. Heilbron, J., Magnusson, L., and Wittrock, B. (eds) (1998) The Rise of the Social Sciences and the Formation of Modernity: Conceptual Change in Context, 1750 –1850. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Held, D. and McGrew, A. (2000) The Global Transformations Reader: An Introduction to the Globalization Debate. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hodgson, M.G.S. (1993) Rethinking World History: Essays on Europe, Islam, and World History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jarausch, K. (1983) Transformations of Higher Learning, 1860–1930. Stuttgart: Klett. Jaspers, K. (1953) The Origin and Goal of History. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. Joas, H. (1999a) “Social Theorizing about War and Peace”, Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, and Conflict, Vol. 3, pp. 329–36. ——. (1999b) “The Modernity of War: Modernization Theory and the Problem of Violence”, International Sociology, 14(4): 457–72. ——. (2000) Kriege und Werte. Studien zur Gewaltgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Weilerswist: Velbrück. Knorr Cetina, K. and Bruegger, U. (2002) “Inhabiting Technology: The Global Lifeform of Financial Markets”, Current Sociology, 50(3): 389–405. Koselleck, R. (1985) Futures Past. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ——. (1987a) Critique and Crisis: Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern Society. Oxford: Berg. ——. (1987b) “Historik und Hermeneutik” in Reinhart Koselleck and Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hermeneutik und Historik. Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften. Heidelberg: Carl WinterUniversitätsverlag. Lepenies, W. (1988) Between Literature and Science: The Rise of Sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Manent, P. (1994) An Intellectual History of Liberalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ——. (1998) The City of Man. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. O’Brien, P.K. (2000) “Is Global History Possible?, Major Theme 1a/Perspectives on Global History: Concepts and Methodology” Proceedings: Reports, Abstracts and Round Table Introductions, 19th International Congress of Historical Sciences. Oslo: University of Oslo. Rothblatt, S. and Wittrock, B. (eds) (1993) The European and American University Since 1800: Historical and Sociological Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Subramanyam, S. (1997) “Connected Histories: Notes towards Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia”, Modern Asian Studies, 31(3): 735–762. ——. (1998) “Hearing Voices: Vignettes of Early Modernity in South Asia, 1400– 1750”, Daedalus, 127(3): 75–104. Sztompka, P. (2000) “Cultural Trauma: The Other Face of Social Change”, European Journal of Social Theory, 3(4): 449–466. Tocqueville, A. de (1964) Oeuvres Complètes, Tome XII, Souvenirs. Paris: Gallimard.
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Wagner, P. (1990) Sozialwissenschaften und Staat. Frankreich, Italien, Deutschland, 1890–1980. Frankfurt/M: Campus. Wagner, P., Weiss, C.H., Wollmann, H. and Wittrock, B. (eds) (1990) Social Sciences and Modern States: Theoretical Crossroads and National Experiences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wagner, P., Wittrock, B. and Whitley, R. (eds) (1991) Discourses on Society: The Shaping of the Social Science Disciplines. In memoriam Norbert Elias. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Wagner, P. (1994) Liberty and Discipline: A Sociology of Modernity. London: Routledge. ——. (1998) “Certainty and Order, Liberty and Contingency: The Birth of Social Science as Empirical Political Philosophy”, in Heilbron, Magnusson, and Wittrock (1998): 241–263. ——. (1999) “The twentieth century—the century of the social sciences?”, in Kazancigil, A. and Makinson, D. (eds) World Social Science Report 1999. Paris: UNESCO/Publishing/Elsevier. ——. (2001) Theorizing Modernity: Inescapability and Attainability in Social Theory. London: Sage. Wallerstein, Immanuel et al (1996) Open the Social Sciences: Report of the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Wittrock, B. and Wagner, P. (1992) “Policy Constitution Through Discourse: Discourse Transformations and the Modern State in Central Europe”, in D.E. Ashford (ed.) History and Context in Comparative Public Policy. Pittsburgh: The University of Pittsburgh Press: 227–246. ——. (1996) “Social Science and the Building of the Early Welfare State: Toward a Comparison of Statist and Non-Statist Western Societies”, in D. Rueschemeyer and T. Skocpol (eds) States, Social Knowledge and the Origins of Modern Social Policies. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 90–113. Wittrock, B. (1998) “Early Modernities: Varieties and Transitions”, Daedalus, 127(3): 19–40. ——. (1999) “Social Theory and Intellectual History: Rethinking the Formation of Modernity”, in F. Engelstad and R. Kalleberg (1999): 187–232. ——. (2000) “Modernity: One, None, or Many? European Origins and Modernity as a Global Condition”, Daedalus, 129(1): 31–60. ——. (2001a) “Rethinking Modernity”, in E. Ben-Rafael and Y. Sternberg (eds) Identity, Culture and Globalization. Leiden: Brill, pp. 49–73. ——. (2001b) “History of Political Thought”, in N. Smelser and P. Baltes (eds) International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2001, Vol. 17, pp. 11706–11712. ——. (2001c) “History of Disciplines in the Social Sciences”, in N. Smelser and P. Baltes (eds) International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Science. Amsterdam: Elsevier, Vol. 6, pp. 3721–3728. ——. (2001d) “Ethnography and Modernity”, Current Anthropology, Vol. 42, No. 5, December. ——. (2001e) “Social Theory and Global History: The Three Cultural Crystallizations”, Thesis Eleven, Number 65, May 2001, pp. 27–50; also published in A. Koj and P. Sztompka (eds) (2001) Images of the World: Science, Humanities, Art. Kraków: The Jagiellonian University (on the occasion of the 600th anniversary of the refoundation of the Jagiellonian University), pp. 123–142. ——. (2001f ) “History, War, and the Transcendence of Modernity”, European Journal of Social Theory, Vol. 4, No. 1, February, pp. 53–72. Wokler, R. (1987) “Saint-Simon and the Passage from Political to Social Science”, in Anthony Pagden (ed.) The Languages of Political Theory in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: pp. 325–338. ——. (1998) “The Revolutionary Birth-Pangs of Modernity”, in Heilbron, Magnusson, and Wittrock (1998): pp. 35–76.
MODERNITY, TRADITION AND THE SHI'ITE REFORMATION IN CONTEMPORARY IRAN Saïd Amir Arjomand One could not ask for a better example of a sense of moral outrage against modernization-as-Westernization than Khomeini’s Islamic revolution in Iran. It dominated the decade of revolution, war and institutionalization of a theocratic government from 1979 to 1989. While Khomeini’s successors presided over an era of economic reconstruction and, unexpectedly, of political development, an entirely different moral sense of modernization emerged in the 1990s, entering the arena of the constitutional politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran since the first election of President Mohammad Khàtami in 1997. M O, N R I Moral indignation against Westernization in Iran predated the outburst of revolution in 1979 by a few decades. It began as a series of nativistic protests, which gradually cohered in the shape of an Islamic ideology. The mythical construction of the West was not exclusively or primarily a religious affair. It was rather a fairly general indigenous response to Western cultural domination in which Islam played a varying and fluctuating role before the revolutionary crescendo of the late 70s and early 80s. The essence of this nativistic cultural response was what Boroujerdi (1996) analyzes as Occidentalism, or, borrowing a phrase from Edward Said’s Syrian critic, Sadiq al-'Azm, as “Orientalism in reverse.”1 Although Khomeini’s own publicistic career has a modest beginning in the 1940s, the indigenous response to Western domination in the two decades after the Second World War came from another group: lay intellectuals
1 Jalal Sadiq al-'Azm, a Syrian philosopher and specialist in Kant, argued that the Middle Easterners were guilty of reifying the West in exactly the same way as the literary critic Edward Said charged the Europeans. As Said (1978) had famously called this reification “Orientalism,” al-'Azm (1981) called its counterpart “Orientalism in reverse.” Boroujerdi uses the term “Occidentalism” in the same sense.
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with a clerical background and upbringing. The most notable members of this group were the neglected Sayyed Fakhr al-Din Shàdman (d. 1967) (Borujerdi 1996:54–63), and the well-known Sayyed Jalàl Àl-e Ahmad (d. 1969). The Islamic ideology as a distinct and moderately coherent nativistic rejoinder gathered momentum as a result of the confluence of discordant attempts at myth-making which were, however, all obsessed with the West and shared the same goal of constructing a new collective identity vis-à-vis the West. This Islamic ideology became increasingly revolutionary and culminated in Khomeini’s theocratic redefinition of Shi'ism. The modernist writer, Àl-e Ahmad, who initiated the process of the reception of this ideology in Iran, set the direction of future development in two steps: first by characterizing the Iranian cultural malaise as “Westoxification” ( gharbzadegi ), and then by turning for a cure (towards the end of his career) to the Islam of his clerical family. His “Westoxification” proved definitive as the diagnosis of the age, and constituted what sociologists call “the definition of the situation” for a whole generation. Àl-e Ahmad was followed by the Sorbonne-educated sociologist, 'Ali Shari'ati (d. 1977), who is the best known of the Islamic ideologues before the revolution. It is interesting to note that Shari'ati, too, came from a clerical family; his father was a former cleric who had become an Islamic publicist. With Shari'ati, the process of the ideologization of Islam gathered full momentum. Both Àl-e Ahmad and Shari'ati were Marxists for a significant period which might indicate the origin of the notion of ideology. Shari'ati, in particular, adopted what was a Western instrument of protest—namely, ideology—as a weapon for combating the pernicious cultural domination of the West. In the end, the pouring of Islam into the ideological framework borrowed from Marxism amounted to a “colossal redefinition of Islam” (Dabashi 1993:406), a colossal redefinition which was, furthermore, revolutionary. For them, “the West” was the projected civilizational other, the point of reference toward which they “painted themselves into a corner of a revolutionary self-definition” (Dabashi 1993:395). The great irony of Àl-e Ahmad’s life, as Dabashi (1993:75) has noted, was that “the Islamic ideology” is “the deepest, most effective form of Westoxification ever.” Shari'ati promoted the notion of Islamic ideology in his search for a reinvigorated collective conscience through the reform of Islam. I have emphasized the collectivist, if not fascist, aspects of his thought
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(Arjomand 1982), which laid the epistemic foundations of the dominant mentality of the first decade of the Islamic Revolution (Vahdat 1999). The clerics, however, did not leave the ideological field to laymen for long. Àl-e Ahmad’s cousin, Ayatollah Sayyed Mahmud Tàleqàni (d. 1979), was closest among the emerging clerical ideologues to the Marxist camp and absorbed its terminology into his Islamic economics. Other clerics, too, notably Ayatollahs Mortazà Motahhari (d. 1979), Mohammad Hosayn Tabàtabà"i (d. 1981), and last but not least, Khomeini, had turned to publicistic activity to combat Western materialism. It is interesting to note that Tabàtabà"i shared Khomeini’s atypical interest in philosophy, while Motahhari had actually studied the subject with him. Motahhari was to become one of Khomeini’s main lieutenants in the revolutionary struggle, alongside Ayatollah Hasan-'Ali Montazeri who had also studied philosophy with Khomeini. These clerics turned ideologues redefined Shi'ism in a revolutionary direction. This redefinition and revolutionary transformation culminated in Khomeini’s construction of an ascetic revolutionary political ethic and, above all, in his new theory of theocratic government. Particularly important for the clericalist modification of Shari'ati’s revolutionary Islamic ideology, and for its subordination to Khomeini’s theory of theocratic government on the basis of velàyat-e faqih (mandate of the religious jurist), was Ayatollah Mohammad Hosayni Beheshti (d. 1981), who had been the Director of the Islamic Center in Hamburg before the revolution and played a major role in incorporating Khomeini’s theory into the 1979 Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran. With the creation of the Islamic revolutionary ideology and its clericalist institutionalization by Beheshti, Shi'ite Jacobinism under Khomeini’s charismatic leadership dominated revolutionary Iran without a serious challenge for a full decade. The obsessive concern of the secular intellectuals with the West was not necessarily shared by Khomeini and his clerical colleagues who led the revolutionary movement against the Shah in order to restore and preserve a Shi'ite tradition threatened by modernization and Westernization. It should be pointed out that the clerical ideologues were not particularly tormented by ambivalence toward the West and were much more securely grounded in the Shi'ite tradition they wanted to save. The Islamic Revolution was undoubtedly a traditionalist revolution (Arjomand 1984). However, the restoration of a tradition in
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practice always entails its transformation. In fact, the traditionalist revolution of 1979 has brought about a revolution in Shi'ism (Arjomand 1988). As early as in December 1984, in an outburst against the recalcitrant traditionalists who considered taxation at variance with the Islamic Sacred Law (shari'a), the Majles (Iranian parliament) Speaker (later President) Hàshemi-Rafsanjàni reminded his opponents that they were sitting in Parliament—something which had no precedent in Islamic history, any more than having a president, cabinet of ministers, prime minister and the like—and affirmed that there was no legal precedent or ruling “in Islam for 80 per cent of the things on which we base Islamic government today” (cited in Arjomand 1989:118). In fact, the Islamic Revolution in Iran resulted in both the traditionalization of a modernizing nation-state and the modernization of the Shi'ite tradition. R I, M P The unexpected, eleventh-hour victory of Sayyed Mohammad Khàtami on a platform of political reform in the presidential elections of May 1997 opened a new phase in the history of post-revolutionary Iran. From a sociological point of view, President Khàtami’s landslide victory in 1997 can be regarded as the tip of an iceberg—the political edge of a deep cultural movement for the Shi'ite reformation that was well underway in the 1990s and received a considerable boost from his election (Rouleau 1999). This movement for the reform of Islam was very much a product of the children of the Islamic revolution, and can be presented as one of its long-term, unintended consequences. The movement’s leading figure since the early 1990s, 'Abdolkarim Sorush, is a philosopher of science who had been trained in pharmacology in London and was appointed a member of the Commission for Cultural Revolution by Khomeini after the closure of the universities in 1980. The most forceful theorist of the religious reform movement since the latter half of the 1990s, Mohammad Mojtahed-Shabestari, is a Shi'ite cleric who had been Ayatollah Beheshti’s colleague at the Islamic Center in Hamburg in the 1970s, and was elected to the first Majles after the revolution in 1980. Mohsen Kadivar, who wrote a detailed work in Shi'ite jurisprudence refuting Khomeini’s theory of theocratic government (Kadivar 1998) and was imprisoned in
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1999, was a student of electrical engineering at the time of the revolution and switched to the seminaries of Qom as an enthusiastic Islamic revolutionary. Last but not least, Khàtami himself had succeeded Beheshti as the Director of the Center in Hamburg when the latter had returned to Iran to take a leading position in the Islamic revolutionary movement in 1978. He was elected to the first Majles with Mojtahed-Shabestari in 1980, and served for a decade as the revolutionary Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance until his forced resignation in July 1992. What these clerical reformists shared with the lay intellectual Sorush was a keen interest in philosophy and rational theology which they have used as a tool for the reconstruction of religious thought. Those of us in Western academic circles who considered the idea of modernization and the tradition-modernity dichotomy passé2 have been intriguingly surprised by the hot debate on modernity and tradition in Iran since the mid-1990s. However, in traveling from nineteenth century European thought and, more immediately, the structural-functionalist sociology of post-World War II to post-revolutionary Iran, the first term of the dichotomy—tradition—has lost the rigid fixedness attributed to it by classic eighteenth-century Enlightenment thought (Oakshott 1991:36), and is seen in a fully dialectical relationship with modernity. Religious intellectuals are the architects of a critical theoretical framework for understanding the dialectic of tradition and modernity. The focus of this critical perspective is the tension between modernity and religion. Modernization had earlier been contrasted to “backwardness” and to “decline.” In a series of books beginning in the late 1980s, Javàd Tabàtabà"i (1988) had written on the irreversible decline of political thought in pre-modern Iran, arguing its epistemic incommensurateness with modernity. In the mid-1990s, the reformist periodical, Kiyàn,3 carried a series of articles on tradition and modernity, including a few by Sorush which will be considered presently. In How We Became What We Are: Search for the Causes of Backwardness in Iran, first 2
I had dealt with the modernity/tradition dichotomy as a graduate student at the University of Chicago under the heading of “an obituary” in my first published paper! (Arjomand 1977). 3 The leading reformist periodical, Kiyàn, was founded in late 1991 and was closed down in 2001. For its background and significance, see Jahanbakhsh 2001: 141–43.
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published in 1995, Zibà-Kalàm ridiculed the attribution, in Islamic revolutionary ideology, of all Iran’s ills to Western imperialism. Iran’s “backwardness, or to use a more polite euphemism, underdevelopment,” is instead traced to a historical trajectory of social formation that sharply diverges from that of the West 4 (Zibà-Kalàm 1999:19). In the current debate, however, tradition and modernity are often contrasted dichotomously, and even Tabàtabà"i, the non-religious modernist who insists on the irrelevance of the postmodern to the predicament of contemporary Iran, in contrast to the centrality of modernity, admits the crucial importance of coming to terms with tradition (Tabàtabà"i 1998). During Khàtami’s election campaign in May 1997, another child of the Islamic revolution and a leading figure in the new breed of reformist journalists, Akbar Ganji, published a series of dialogues with Iranian intellectuals entitled, Tradition (sonnat), Modernity (modernité), Postmodern.5 The “postmodern” has not done too well in Iran, and tends to be identified with a group of so-called Heideggerian (some would say fascist) intellectuals led by Reza Dàvari (1999). The postmodern trend originating in this group was created by Àl-e Ahmad’s mentor, Ahmad Fardid (d. 1994) who elaborated the jargon of Islamic authenticity as a remedy for Westoxification (Boroujerdi 1996:63–76, 159–65), and it can properly be called anti-modern (Tabàtabà"i 1998:18–20). The most perceptive observer of the current intellectual situation in Iran—who considers the discussion of “modernity, pre-modernity and post-modernity the most important discourse ( goftemàn, a key neologism in Persian) in our intellectual space and among all groups”— also states that the “Heideggerian” postmodern trend “never acquired philosophical and theoretical depth, and is today, in my opinion, spent and dead” (Àshuri 1998:20–21). This is not so with the Tradition/Modernity dichotomy which had superseded the antiWestern, anti-imperialist and center/periphery discourse, nor with the sustained effort to unite its two poles by the “religious intellectuals” who dominate the reform movement. In the opinion of the
4
The bulk of the book consists of a simplified sketch of the socio-political history of medieval Iran where three factors, “Oriental despotism,” the tribal social structure and “the extinction of the light of science” are presented as the major obstacles to development. 5 Ordibehesht 1376.
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same observer, “the future of Iran primarily depends on this movement of religious enlightenment (rawshanfekri ) which is capable of bringing about a synthesis between tradition and traditional thought and the heritage of the modern world” (Àshuri 1998:20–21). The same sentiment was echoed in one of President Khàtami’s campaign speeches in 2001 in which he affirmed that the future of Iran lay with the “new religious thinking,” adding that “if we try to impose on a changing society issues which do not belong to our time, we will end up harming religion” (New York Times, 5/26/01). It should be noted that the debate has not been confined to the reformist press and publications. The conservative periodical, Naqd va Nazar, published in the holy city of Qom since 1995, also published a series of articles on the “Sociology of Modernization” by Hosayn Bashiriyyeh, a professor of sociology at the University of Tehran, and devoted a special double issue to Tradition and Modernity in 1999.6 In 1992, Sorush made a radical break with the revolutionary characterization of Islam as an ideology in a critique of 'Ali Shari'ati, arguing that Islam as a world religion is “richer than ( farbahtar) ideology” because it allows for a variety of different interpretations (Matin-asghari 1997:104; Jahanbakhsh 2001:151–53). An ideological society, on the other hand, allows no room for intellectual inquiry, criticism or multiplicity of ideas ( Jahanbakhsh 2001:152). In his contributions to the debate on tradition and modernism in Kiyàn in 1994 and 1995, Sorush offered a devastating critique of Àl-e Ahmad’s Occidentalism. He also deplored the ideologization of knowledge and modern political ideas, pointing out that “Islamic rights” make no more sense than “Islamic water” (Brumberg 2001:210). Sorush, by contrast, sees objective knowledge as the basis of modernism and as a universal ethos which shatters “the wall of civilization,” allowing all contemporary cultures to put their “politics, government, the economy and morality . . . into a new order.” Though it may be the “child of modernity and Western civilization . . . [it] is a child who leaves its mother immediately after birth and casts the shadow of its thesis over all peoples, local and foreign” (cited in Brumberg 2001:204). Sorush’s most important contribution to the debate appeared in another article in Kiyàn in 1995. The West has nurtured “development and modernization” as its child in the course of a tumultuous history.
6
Naqd va Nazar, 5.1–2 (Winter and Spring 1377–78): Sonnat va tajaddod.
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The most fundamental change in values that set modernism loose was the worldly turn of ethics. It was this that made happiness in this rather than the other world the subject of ethics, and it granted recognition to the base and lowly aspects of human nature, thereby legitimizing their harnessing to the task of building a new world. Bentham was the architect of the worldliness of ethics in the form of Utilitarianism, Mandeville of the transvaluation of economic ethics, and Machiavelli of the transvaluation of political ethics. Such transvaluation of values in trade, agriculture and industry “removed the shackles of mankind and prepared it for entry into the realm of development and modernism” (Sorush 1995:5). Furthermore, economic prosperity is the precondition of spiritual growth—indeed of the mystical knowledge of God. One can therefore “consider development one of the stages of the evolution of man and society, and even sanction it ethically” (Sorush 1995:6). The most important of the higher values that emerge in developed societies are the love of liberty and science. Whereas “ideology is the instrument of enslavement of the mind, . . . the democratization of dissemination of knowledge and its popular [as opposed to governmental] control . . . are among the most important causes and signs of democracy” (Sorush 1995:7). Sorush is more brief on the first element of the dichotomy and seeks to subvert it by extending it to include the two distinctively modern and worldly ethics within it: On the path to development, one should take advantage of traditions (sonan). Traditions are, however, both shackles and supports. One should both take refuge with them and seek liberation from them. The ethics of science and the ethics of wealth are two sets of constructive traditions, which we now need more than ever (Sorush 1995:11).
An equally radical break with the twentieth-century apologetic Islamic modernism came with Sorush’s advocacy of religious pluralism at the close of the century. In 1991, Sorush had spoken of cultural pluralism, maintaining that the contemporary Iranian culture was a composite of the (pre-islamic) Persian, Islamic and Western cultures ( Jahanbakhsh 2001:165). A few years later, he proceeded to the advocacy of religious pluralism. In a 1997 article entitled “Straight Paths” (seràthà-ye mostaqim), which significantly pluralizes the key Koranic phrase, Sorush totally disregarded legalistic Islam and drew heavily on the tradition of gnostic mysticism ('irfàn), especially in the poetry of his favorite Rumi (d. 1273) to establish the principle of religious pluralism.
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In “The Expansion and Contraction of the Sacred Law,” a celebrated 1990 article which was later expanded into a book, Sorush (1991) was still relying on the philosophy of science to establish the dependence of the normative validity of Islamic legal norms on the changing scientific world views of different epochs. His argument was, however, flawed because the rules of Shi'ite jurisprudence have, in fact, been largely invariant with respect to changes in the natural sciences. The replacement of the philosophy of science by hermeneutics enabled him to shift the discussion of truth from causal and rational arguments to the level of meaning: “We must not integrate truth [of propositions] with either reasons or causes, but must rather attribute it to meanings and interpretation” (Sorush 1998:116). From this new hermeneutic perspective he could shift the focus of discussion from the religious sciences to religion itself and write of the Expansion of Prophetic Experience (1999:21): “The prophet is a human being and his experience is human, so are his disciples.” Upon this premise, not only the entire corpus of the Sacred Law, but also the very expression of the Islamic revelation in the Arabic language and the culture that grew around it could be consistently established as historically “contingent” rather than “essential” features of religion (Sorush 1999:55, 80). Historically speaking, Sorush’s break with the twentieth-century apologetic Islamic modernism is more fundamental than his break with the political Islam of the 1970s and 1980s through his refutation of the Islamic ideology of Shari'ati. It can be said generally that the advocates of Islamic modernism throughout the twentieth century and the Muslim world maintained that Islam is the most perfect religion and therefore has the best answers to all problems of modern social and political organization, purporting apologetically to deduce democracy, equality of women, principles of social justice and human rights from its sources. To them, Islam was the “Straight Path” and could, as such, generate the perfect, modern social and political system by reexamining its fundamentals. The distinctive mark of the Shi'ite reformation of the 1990s, as formulated by Sorush and Mojtahed-Shabestari, is a critique, explicitly of political Islam but implicitly also of the apologetic Islamic modernism which they, however, do not disown. The movement for the reformation of Islamic thought thus marked the birth of critical theory in modern Shi'ism. It offers a radical critique of contemporary Islamic thought for (a) mistaking the historically contingent forms of Islamic religion for its
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revealed essence, and (b) disregarding religious pluralism as the inevitable result of the reading of revealed texts in specific human languages and socio-historical contexts—as more than one reading is inevitable, so there must be more than one straight path to salvation. Sorush has not been shy in making the political implication of his religious hermeneutics explicit. He began the essay on “Straight Paths” by noting that accepting religious and cultural pluralism necessitates the acceptance of “social pluralism,” and ended it by affirming that “a pluralistic society is a non-ideological society” that is, [a society] without an official interpretation and [official] interpreters—and founded on pluralist reason” (Sorush 1998:1, 49). Sorush (2000a:215) then proceeded to characterize the view of the ruling clerical elite as “the fascist reading of religion,” and spoke of them as the “bearers of religious despotism,” affirming that “the new generation that has now arisen in Iran does not see the jewel of religion in jurisprudence and ideology” (Sorush 2000a:220). Last but not least, in a major departure from his earlier purely instrumental, “managerial” view of democracy as “a successful and scientific method of management (tadbir) in the social arena” (cited in Matin Asghari 1997:111), Sorush (2000a:376–77) now offers a normative definition of democracy as resting on three pillars: rationality, pluralism, and human rights. An equally radical break with the apologetic modernism of the earlier generation and a more rigorous critique of the foundations of theocratic government in legalistic Islam was made by MojtahedShabestari with the publication of Hermeneutics, the Book and Tradition in 1996.7 Mojtahed-Shabestari draws on the mastery of modern hermeneutics he had acquired in his years in Germany to delineate a critical theory for rethinking Islam in the contemporary world. Noting that many observers insist that “the concept of tradition (sonnat) and its derivatives have primarily a religious-doctrinal sense for the Muslims,” Mojtahed-Shabestari considers this idea the cause of “many difficulties and errors in the study of the problems of tradition, modernity and development in Islamic countries.” He argues, by contrast, that the confrontation between tradition and modernity is easier in Islam than in Christianity, where “tradition” is tied up with the idea of the church as the vehicle of sacred history. The 7 The subject was broached in a lecture to the Philosophical Society of Tehran in 1993/1372, if not earlier.
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confrontation of tradition and modernity in Islam can therefore be confined to the “anthropological viewpoint,” and need not assume the form of confrontation between religion and atheism (MojtahedShabestari 1997:100). This may well be wishful thinking, but MojtahedShabestari proceeds to specify the conditions for speaking of faith in the contemporary world and within the limits of modern rationality as set by natural and historical sciences (Mojtahed-Shabestari 1997: ch. 8). In A Critique of the Official Reading of Religion,8 Mojtahed-Shabestari adopts the historical perspective of modernization, a process which began about 150 years ago with the resolution of the Muslims to overcome backwardness by adopting a new style of life, and was at first called “the adoption of modern civilization” and “progress,” and nowadays referred to as “development” (tawse'ah) (Mojtahed-Shabestari 2000:13–15). He then puts the Islamic revolution in this perspective: “When Iran’s Islamic revolution attained victory in 1357 (1979), over a century had passed since the entry of our country into modern life, development and progress” (Mojtahed-Shabestari 2000:21). The process of modernization radically changes the character of Muslim societies and consequently the social functions of Islamic jurisprudence (Mojtahed-Shabestari 2000:ch. 1). Not wanting to dissociate himself and the reform movement from the Islamic revolution, he argues, somewhat tenuously, that, because the Constitution of 1979 was the product of rational law-making rather than traditional jurisprudence, and it included values that were the “fruits of modernity (modernité),” the Islamic revolution was accompanied by a “rationalhumanistic” reading of Islam (Mojtahed-Shabestari 2000:ch. 2). The “official reading of religion” originated in a phenomenon called “jurisprudential Islam” (eslàm-e feqàhati ), which justified totalitarian control of culture by theocratic government, and gradually gained the upper hand after the revolution. The official reading of Islam is now undermined by a crisis of legitimacy for three reasons. It is a reading that advocates non-participation, theorizes violence and lacks scientific validity (MojtahedShabestari 2000:30–34). The last reason, the loss of plausibility and scientific validity of the official reading of religion, is in part due to
8 The title first appeared in an interview with the literary magazine, Rah-e Naw, in August 1998/Shahrivar 1377.
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hermeneutic challenge (Mojtahed-Shabestari 2000:37–46). The use of modern hermeneutics as a critical theoretical tool by the reformists has shaken the belief that there is only one correct interpretation of “the Book and tradition,” and consequently the “absolute theoretical authority” of the religious jurists which prevailed before the revolution and under Khomeini (Mojtahed-Shabestari 2000:194). Furthermore, the official reading of Islam had legitimacy during Khomeini’s lifetime because the majority of the Iranian people accepted his charismatic leadership as a form of “political following” (taqlid-e siyàsi ) of the religious jurist. Now that the majority which accepted the “political following” of religious jurists has dwindled to a small minority, we witness a crisis of legitimacy, as modern political regimes derive theirs solely “from political rationality and popular vote” (Mojtahed-Shabestari 2000:34–36). The political implications of Mojtahed-Shabestari’s religious hermeneutics are spelled out further. According to him, “a major element in modernization is the rationalization of the political order.” In fact, “the most important source of tension between modernity and religion in Iran today is the political order” (Mojtahed-Shabestari 2000:184). Mojtahed-Shabestari uses the hermeneutic principle as a generally accepted and key element of modern epistemology to refute the fundamental claim that it is possible to base a form of government, or for that matter any social institution, on religious jurisprudence. Only “a small minority” of Muslim thinkers consider “the political instructions of the Book and (the Prophetic) tradition to include even the form of government”9 (Mojtahed-Shabestari 1997:73). In fact, no political regime was founded on the basis of the science of jurisprudence in the past, or can be so founded in the future. Rather, the science of jurisprudence can only offer answers to certain questions that arise within the institutional framework of existing political regimes (Mojtahed-Shabestari 1996:46–66). MojtahedShabestari (2000:12) explicitly refutes the two cardinal tenets of the official clericalist reading of Islam, namely that “Islam as a religion has political, economic and legal regimes based on the science of jurisprudence” suitable for all ages, and that “the function of gov9 When this view is accepted, however, the crucial issue that arises is whether the determination of the compatibility of the political regime with Islamic values is the exclusive prerogative of religious jurists and the ordinary people are bound to follow them in political matters (Mojtahed-Shabestari 1997:75–76).
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ernment among the Muslims is the execution of the commandments of Islam.” T R M, P T C A The reform movement became a force in Iranian constitutional politics with Khàtami’s election in 1997, and reopened the question of the fundamental principles of order in the Islamic Republic for the first time since 1979. Khàtami’s platform of civil society and “the rule of law” (hokumat-e qànun) evoked an implicit contrast with “Islamic government” (hokumat-e eslàmi ), the slogan of the revolution. Atàollàh Mohàjeràni, his first reformist Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance, removed many of the restrictions on the press, and a popular pro-Khàtami press immediately flourished. Before long, a number of these newspapers were closed down by the clerical judges seriatim, while their editorial staffs were given licenses by the Ministry of Culture to start new ones. This press spread Khàtami’s new political discourse which owes much to the reform movement. Neologisms such as “civil society” ( jàme'a-ye madani ), “legality” (qànun-mandi ), and “citizen” (shahrvand ),10 and “law-orientedness” (qànun-gerà"i ), many of them coined by Khàtami himself, began to circulate, as did Khàtami’s other favorite term, “political development.” Two key neologisms came from the reformist hermeneutics: “pluralism”( pluràlizm, kathratgerà"i ) and “reading” (qerà"at) [of Islam]” (Arjomand 2000). In a major speech in April 1999 (Ettelà'àt 4/19/99), Khàtami elaborated his favorite theme of political development which required the recognition of the right of opposition within the framework of law. He then announced that “the first step in political development is participation, and the most evident channel for participation is the election of the Councils.” The Councils he was referring to were the local and municipal councils provided for in the Constitution of 1979, but never elected. The elections for the councils took place in February 1999, as Khàtami promised, and gave his supporters another landslide victory with over 4/5 of the popular vote. On the second anniversary of his Presidential victory, Khàtami addressed the 10 These terms are taken from Khàtami’s inaugural speech of August 4, 1997 (Ettelà'àt, 8/5/97:3).
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gathering of some 107,000 elected members of the village and town councils in Tehran, again emphasizing the importance of political development and the need to struggle for “the consolidation of Islamic democracy and popular government (mardom-sàlàri ).” He noted that “sacred terms such as ‘revolution’, ‘freedom’, ‘Islam’ and ‘leadership’ are not the monopoly of any group.” The Leader (supreme jurist) was notably absent and his message was read by the chief of his bureau. The coalition that was formed for the parliamentary elections in the following year and won the great majority of the Majles seats in 2000 called itself the Participation Front, and started a newspaper, Participation (moshàrekat). Khàtami also published a book on political philosophy in 1999. The ground he covers is the same as Tabàtabà"i’s (1988)—the Platonizing adaptation of Greek political philosophy by Fàràbi (d. 950), its synthesis with the ‘eternal wisdom’ of Persian statecraft by Abo’l-Hasan 'Àmeri (d. 991) and Moshkuya (Miskawayh) Ràzi (d. 1030), and the juristic theories of al-Màwardi, Ghazàli, and Nizàm al-Mulk—and he ends with a discussion of the revival of political philosophy in Safavid Isfahan in the second half of the seventeenth century. Furthermore, Khàtami (1999:111) shares with Tabàtabà"i’ the curious idea of the “decline” of Muslim political thought beginning at the very outset, after Fàràbi. I have previously mentioned Sorush’s early managerial conception of democracy. This managerial conception of democracy is shared by Mojtahed-Shabestari (2000:18) who appears to view democracy as required by “the scientific management and on-term planning” typical of modern life, and derived from the view of medieval Muslim philosophers as “management of the polity.” Sorush, however, also sought to grant the management of political affairs normative autonomy from religion, and argued that religious jurisprudence is irrelevant to the justification of democracy, which should rest on purely rational grounds ( Jahanbakhsh 2001:156–57). In a 1997 lecture, he returned to medieval Muslim political philosophy as the art of civic government with a novel question: can politics, or the political sphere, have its own distinct ethics? To answer the question in the affirmative, he divides political ideas into theories of legitimacy, such as the velàyat-e faqih, and theories of political management, which are badly neglected by contemporary Muslims. His central argument, however, is that management is a rational and experimental affair. “Therefore, the managerial branch of government is essentially independent of religion” (Sorush 2000b:143).
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Although his tripartite division of practical philosophy into ethics, economics and political science was adopted by medieval Muslim philosophers, Aristotle’s Politics was, in fact, his only major work which was not translated into Arabic. I am inclined to attribute this non-normative conception of democracy to the unavailability of the Aristotelian conception of politics and his idea of constitutional government and the rule of law as autonomous normative principles (Arjomand 2001a). Aristotle’s Politics only became available in Persian to Khàtami’s generation in a translation by the late Hamid Enayat (d. 1982). Thus, like Tabàtabà"i, Khàtami (1999:183–213) brings in the sharply contrasting Aristotelian view of politics to highlight the shortcomings of Muslim political thought. Khàtami’s explanations of the decline in Muslim political thought in terms of “the transition from political philosophy to royal policy (siyàsat-e shàhi )” (the title of Chapter 2) and its imputation to the prevalence of “forceful domination” (taghallob) in Islamic history carry little conviction.11 Nevertheless, his acknowledgment (Khàtami 1999:73–80) of the tension between rationalism and legalism or “Shari'a-orientation” (shari'at-gerà"i ) with a view to helping the revivalists and reformists who are lost in the mayhem of “the struggle between tradition and modernity” (Khàtami 1999:13), as well as his investigation of non-juristic elements in Muslim historical heritage to guide the transition to modernity, is fully in line with the reformist search for modernity in dialectical relation to tradition, albeit a neglected aspect of it. Critical for the spread of the hermeneutically-centered reformist notion of modernity was the new breed of post-revolutionary journalists, notably Akbar Ganji who flourished with brilliance in the period of opening ( glasnost) following Khàtami’s 1997 victory. In a lecture at the University of Shiraz in June 1997, Ganji (2000:186, 199), who had been working in Sorush’s publishing house and transcribing some of his lectures, branded the conservative proponents of totalitarian Islam as fascists. He supported his categorization with a somewhat dated analysis of interwar European fascism 11 This facile imputation of decline to “forceful domination” is similar to Zibà Kalàm’s resort to “Oriental despotism”. In both cases, however, the antipathy to absolute power is significant and contrasts sharply with the hegemonic attitude of the proponents of theocratic government, one of whom is cited by Kadivar (1997: 111) as saying: “According to our monotheistic (tawhidi ) belief, it is not correct to say the concentration of power is corrupting. On the contrary, we maintain that power does not produce corruption . . .”
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as “the revolt against modernity and modernism” without, however, having the time to turn to “the fascist reading of religion” as promised at the onset. (Sorush, as we have seen, had published a brief characterization of the fascist reading of religion at about this time.) The lecture was published shortly afterwards, and resulted in Ganji’s detention before the end of the year. In his defense, which was not delivered during the closed trial but was published in early 1998, Ganji documented “different readings of religion,” even among the jurists themselves, and reaffirmed his definition of fascism as “opposition to modernity under the banner of pre-modern values” (Ganji 2000:238, 253). In a series of subsequent articles in 1998 and 1999, Ganji maintained that Imam Khomeini himself had offered two different readings of religious government, the last (Absolute Mandate of the Jurist) being “a completely new reading of religion” (Ganji 2000:76, 158) which put “the ideology of violence and the legitimacy crisis” in the context of the greatest rift in contemporary Iranian society caused by the “contradiction between tradition and modernity” (Ganji 2000:261). These and some earlier articles were published in January 2000 under the significant title, The Fascist Interpretation of Religion and Government: Pathology of Transition to the Democratic and Development-Oriented State, with a preface that juxtaposed rationalist and mystical reading of Islam to ‘the reduction of religion to its husk and to dry customs, and the violent imposition of the jurisprudential reading on humankind” (Ganji 2000:7). The book was reprinted several times during Ganji’s second imprisonment and two subsequent trials. In the long run, the serious undermining of the legitimacy of theocratic government by this new hermeneutic pluralism cannot be doubted. At any rate, it has predictable touched a raw nerve and provoked the shrill reaction of the conservative Ayatollahs from the pulpit. One Ayatollah told his congregation: “Whoever says I have a new reading of Islam should be slapped in the mouth,” while another blamed Khàtami and his reform program: “This gentleman [President Khàtami] says there are different readings of the foundations of Islam and religious beliefs . . . The source of this danger is the slogan of civil society on whose side different readings of the foundations of religion take place”12 (Ganji 2000:116, 153).
12
Both these statements were made in September 1999.
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Meanwhile, the election of Khàtami had reopened some fundamental questions in Iranian constitutional politics and caused open dissent within the clerical elite. In November 1997, Khomeini’s successor-designate, Ayatollah Hasan-'Ali Montazeri spoke out against theocratic government. Montazeri had developed his constitutional ideas after his constitution-making experience in 1979, and put forward a somewhat modified interpretation of the theory of the Mandate of the Jurist which made the Supreme Jurist an indirectly elective office (Montazeri 1988). Around this time, he published a booklet, Popular Government and the Constitution (hokumat-e mardomi va qànun-e asàsi ), in which he refuted the idea of the Absolute Mandate of the Jurist as well as the authority of the jurists of the Council of Guardians to reject candidates for elected office. The legal hermeneutics of the reform movement is intellectually less daring but, arguably, politically more courageous and socially more consequential. One of Montazeri’s students, Hojjat al-Islam Mohsen Kadivar, who also belonged to the reform movement and was completing a doctoral thesis in philosophy, wrote a book on different approaches to government in Shi'ite jurisprudence, developing a full-fledged critique of Khomeini’s theory of velàyat-e faqih, which, despite the wishful remonstrance of the reformists, informs the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran. This critique unfolded in two stages. The first was implicit, and consisted of the relativization of Khomeini’s theory by presenting it as one among many recognized Shi'ite views of the state. Kadivar’s Theses on the State in Shi'ite Jurisprudence (1997) takes this step and is valuable for its departure from the official position that Khomeini’s thesis was the Shi'ite view of government. While dutifully tracing its genealogy, Kadivar separates Khomeini’s earlier and later views on theocratic government into two theses, and puts them alongside seven other theses which were presented as equally plausible. Khomeini’s earlier view, incorporated into the Fundamental Law of 1979, was characterized as “the general appointive authority of the collectivity of jurists,” and the later view, acknowledged in the Amended Fundamental Law of 1989, as the “absolute (motlaqa) appointive authority of the jurists.” Kadivar (1997:80) points out that the difference between the two positions is relatively minor and consists of the extent of governmental authority. The latter thesis gives the supreme jurist “absolute authority” by making his ordinances, which are referred to as “governmental ordinances” (singular, hokm-e hokumati ),
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superior to those of the shari'a. The orders of the supreme jurists, according to this thesis, must not only be obeyed as a religious duty, but also prevail, in cases of contradiction, upon the state law and the sacred law alike (Kadivar 1997:108–109). Kadivar intermittently points out (1997:18, 36–37, 78–79) that the idea of theocratic government was rejected by some prominent jurists from Shaykh Murtazà Ansàri (d. 1864) to the present. More systematically, both the weaker and the stronger version of Khomeini’s velàyat-e faqih are relativized by being placed alongside seven alternative theses. Historically, the most significant of these is the legitimation of monarchy in what I have called the theory of the two powers. Kadivar presents this view as the first Shi'ite thesis on government and supports it by citations from the late Safavid, early Qajar and the early constitutional periods. The second historically significant thesis is Na'ini’s well-known justification of constitutional government from the viewpoint of Shi'ite jurisprudence in 1909. The remaining theses belong to the era of the Islamic Republic. The later view of Sayyed Mohammad Bàqer al-Sadr (d. 1980) is typified as the “Caliphate of the people with the supervision of the ‘sources of imitation’ [i.e., the most eminent Shi'ite jurists],” while his earlier views, alongside those of the Lebanese jurists, Shaykh Muhammad Javàd Mughnia and Shaykh Muhammad Mahdi Shams al-Din, are presented as the thesis on “elective Islamic government.” Coming close to this view is the theory of Mahdi Hà"eri-Yazdi, which constitutes Kadivar’s thesis on “representation through the power of attorney.” Last but not least, we have the thesis on the “elective and conditional authority of the jurists” which represents the views of Ayatollah Montazeri and of Shaykh Ne'matollàh Sàlehi-Najafàbàdi in Hokumat-e sàlehàn (Tehran 1984/1363; for a summary, see Kazemi Mousavi 1992). All these are modernist attempts to create various legal fictions, drawn from Shi'ite jurisprudence, for the justification of a modern Islamic constitutional state. They are, however, modernist in the old-fashioned sense, and none of them comes anywhere near meeting the test of hermeneutic interpretation as set by Sorush and Mojtahed-Shabestari. Kadivar took the second and final step a year later with the publication of Hokumat-e velà"i, or government based on the “absolute appointive authority of the jurists.” He now offered an explicit critique of Khomeini’s theory and a refutation of the legal arguments for the validity of official doctrine of theocratic government (Kadivar
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1998:13). The book consists of two roughly equal parts; the first traces the progressive extension of the authority of the jurists from judiciary competence to the right to rule, and from authority over special categories of persons, such as the insane and orphans, and as specified by the policing (hisba) rules of the sacred law, to authority over the people in general (Kadivar 1998:102–103, 124, 132–33). This is followed by an interesting account of the politics of the incorporation of the theory into the Fundamental Law of 1979. The second part of the book is the painstaking, and often abstruse refutation of the “traditional” and “rational” bases of the official doctrine in terms of traditional Shi'ite jurisprudence. Kadivar’s theory remains strictly within the bounds of Shi'ite jurisprudence, and offers no hermeneutic questioning of Shi'ite jurisprudence itself as a historically contingent discipline. The fact that it does not meet the higher critical standards of Sorush and Shari'ati, however, should not blind us to its serious impact on the foundations of the legitimacy of theocratic government. The clerical establishment anyway felt threatened enough to arrest Kadivar in the following year, and he was sentenced to eighteen months in prison by the Special Court for Clerics in April 1999. C The complicated constitutional politics of Iran under President Khàtami is the subject of a different article (Arjomand 2001b), and was only touched upon here to indicate the impact of the movement for the Shi'ite reformation. To conclude, I must return to my subject today, which is the new life of the tradition/modernity dichotomy in Iran. Through Shari'ati’s sojourn in Paris of the 1960s and of Beheshti’s in Hamburg of the 1970s, “the Jacobin dimension of modernity,” to use Eisenstadt’s (1999) felicitous phrase, entered the process of Iranian modernization and powerfully shaped the moral indignation against the centralizing state into political Islam. Yet the force of dominant political Islam seemed largely spent in Iran by the 1990s, while it continued to thrive under repression in countries like Algeria and Egypt. In the decade preceding the Iranian revolution, in London and Hamburg, however, the influences fostering the non-Jacobin dimensions of modernity—in the form of Karl Popper’s philosophy and Karl Rahner’s theological hermeneutics—had also left their
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imprint on the intellects of Sorush and Mojtahed-Sabestari. What is interesting about the coming to fruition of these influences in the 1990s is that they are neither anti-religious nor anti-moral, but on the contrary, represent an emphatic attempt to make moral sense of modernization and its normative governance. BIBLIOGRAPHY Arjomand, S.A. (1977) “Modernity and Modernization as Analytical Concepts: An Obituary,” Communications and Development Review, 1–2: 16–20. —— (1982) “A la recherche de la conscience collective: The Ideological Impact of Durkheim in Turkey and Iran,” The American Sociologist, 17.2: 94–102. —— (1984) “Traditionalism in Twentieth Century Iran,” in S.A. Arjomand (ed.) From Nationalism to Revolutionary Islam. London: Macmillan and Albany: State University of New York Press. —— (1988) “Ideological Revolution in Shi'ism,” in S.A. Arjomand (ed.) Authority and Political Culture in Shi'ism. Albany: State University of New York Press. —— (1989) “History, Structure and Revolution in Shi'ite Tradition in Contemporary Iran,” International Political Science Review, 10.2: 109–17. —— (2000) “Civil Society and the Rule of Law in the Constitutional Politics of Iran under Khàtami,” Social Research, 76.2. —— (2001a) “Perso-Indian Statecraft, Greek Political Science and the Muslim Idea of Government,” International Sociology, 16.3. —— (2001b) “Democratization and the Constitutional Politics of Iran since 1997,” Polish Sociological Review, 136 (4). Àshuri, D. (1998/1377) “Goftemànha-ye rawshanfekri: gharbzadehgi, rawshanfekriye dini va . . .,” Rah-e Naw, 1.9 (30 Khordàd): 18–24. (Interview) al-Azm, J.S. (1981) “Orientalism and Orientalism in Reverse,” Khamsin, 8: 2–26. Boroujerdi, M. (1996) Iranian Intellectuals and the West. The Tormented Triumph of Nativism. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. Brumberg, D. (2001) Reinventing Khomeini. The Struggle for Reform in Iran. Chicago: the University of Chicago Press. Dabashi, H. (1993) Theology of Discontent. New York: New York University Press. Dàvari, R. (1999/1377–78) “Din va tajaddod,” Naqd va Nazar, 5.1–2: 58–71. Eisenstadt, S.N. (1999) Fundamentalism, Sectarianism and Revolution. The Jacobin Dimension of Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ganji, Akbar (2000/1379) Talaqqi-ye fàshisti az din va hokumat. Àsibshenàsi-ye gozàr bedawlat-e demokràtik-e tawse'a-gerà. Tehran: Tarh-e Naw. Jahanbakhsh, F. (2001) Islam, Democracy and Religious Modernism in Iran (1953–2000), Leiden: Brill. Kadivar, M. (1997/1376) Nazariyahà-ye dawlat dar feqh-e shi'a. Tehran: Nashr-e Nay. —— (1998/1377) Hokumat-e velà"i. Tehran: Nashr-e Nay. Kazemi Moussavi, A. (1992) “A New Interpretation of the Theory of Vilàyat-i Faqih,” Middle Eastern Studies, 28.1: 101–107. Khàtami, M. (1999/1378) À"in va andisha dar dàm-e khodkàmagi. Sayri dar andisha-ye siyàsi-ye mosalmànan dar faràz va forud-e tamaddon-e eslàmi. Tehran: Tarh-e Naw. Matin-asghari, A. (1997) “'Abdolkarim Sorush and the Secularization of Islamic Thought in Iran,” Iranian Studies, 30.1–2: 95–115. Mojtahed-Shabestari, M. (1996/1375) Hermeneutic, kitab va sonnat. Tehran: Tarh-e Naw. —— (1997/1376) Imàn va Àzàdi. Tehran: Tarh-e Naw.
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—— (2000/1379) Naqdi bar qerà"at-e rasmi-ye din. Tehran: Tarh-e Naw. Montazeri, H.-'A. (1988/1408Q ) Deràsàt fi velàyat al-faqih. Qom, 2 vols. Oakshott, M. (1991) Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. Rouleau, E. (1999) “Un Enjeu pour le monde musulman: En Iran, Islam contre Islam,” Le Monde diplomatique, No. 543 ( June). Saïd, E.W. (1978) Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books. Sorush, A. (1991/1370) Qabz va bast-e teorik-e shari'at. Tehran: Seràt. —— (1995/1374) “Ma'ishat va fazilat,” Kiyàn 25 ( June–July/Khordàd–Tir). —— (1998/1377) Seratha-ye mostaqim. Tehran: Seràt. —— (1999/1378) Bast-e tajrobah-ye nabavi. Tehran: Seràt. —— (2000a/1379) Siyàsat-nàmah. Tehran: Seràt. —— (2000b/1379) “Dindàri va À"in-e shahryàri,” in Dindàri va Àin-e shahryàri (Siyàsatnàmah. II). Tehran: Seràt. Tabàtabà"i, J. (1988/1367) Daràmadi falsafi bar andisha-ye siyasi-ye iràn, Tehran: IPSI. —— (1998/1377) “Sonnat, modernité, postmodern,” Rah-e Naw, 1.8 (23 Khordàd): 18–24. (Interview) Vahdat, F. (1999) “Metaphysical Foundations of Islamic Revolutionary Discourse in Iran: Vacillations on Human Subjectivity,” Critique. Journal for Critical Studies of the Middle East, 14: 49–73. Zibà-Kalàm, S. (1999/1377) Mà cheguna mà shodim. Tehran: Rawzanah.
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LITERATURE AND THE MORAL IMAGINATION OF MODERNITY Sudipta Kaviraj Although modernity is currently a widely discussed theme, its moral dimension is relatively neglected. This is surprising, because the moral dimension is quite crucial to the historical triumph of modern culture. Modernity’s challenge to traditional societies never succeeds historically until it is able to advance a moral argument for its superiority. I want to exaggerate Weber’s claim in the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. The standard reading of Weber’s work is that he demonstrates that Protestantism fashioned an ethical doctrine that provided the activity of capitalist accumulation with a new moral legitimacy. In traditional moral systems, the activity of amassing wealth was associated with lowly dispositions of greed, selfishness and a pitiless passion for money. It required a fundamental transvaluation to view diverse forms of self-regarding activity as intrinsically valuable. I read Weber as saying that until Protestantism advanced a powerful moral argument in its favor the civilizational project of modernity was fatally incomplete. As nineteenth century Bengali discussions saw it, modernity as a new civilization could be justified by three different arguments. The first is the argument of comfort or—‘commodious living’ in Hobbes’s lapidary phrase—the idea that capitalist modernity leads to a revolutionary expansion of productivity which makes a more satisfactory and comfortable material life possible for all people. It is wrong to underestimate the power of the enchantment of material prosperity. This was usually supplemented and framed by a wider rationalist argument that the modern world is based on the expansion of scientific reasoning and social rationalization in Weber’s sense. It is also an immensely powerful ideal, particularly for intellectual tastes. But it must be recognized that, in the moral context of traditional societies, neither of these two arguments is incontrovertible. In the Hindu and Buddhist traditions of India, it is possible to make the counter-argument that it is not a life of acquisitive excess but one of restraint of desire that is truly morally worthy. These
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religious traditions had well-rehearsed arguments which stressed that desire for material goods was eventually illimitable; the constant movement towards prosperity produced discontent. Material things also gave diminishing pleasure. Expansion of knowledge can similarly be seen as a morally neutral or indifferent achievement. Being knowledgeable is not the same as being good or being happy. Traditional religious beliefs also warned against the tendency of knowledge to produce unjustified arrogance. What traditional cultures find far more unsettling is the idea that modernity is not a proposal for living without morals, but by more stringent ethical rules, and that living by rationalistic rules gives human beings greater dignity than living by religious ones.1 This deeply Kantian theme constantly reappears in the religious and ethical debates in early Indian modernity—in the discourses of early modern Bengal from the late nineteenth century. To understand moral change, at least in the Indian context, we require a historical phenomenology of morals. The question of explaining or even making sense of moral change is exceedingly difficult, and the present studies appear to miss some crucial questions. It is widely recognized that moral systems are different between societies, and between historical periods in the same society. Durkheimian sociology would treat these distinct moral systems as self-contained wholes. So that we see clearly that the moral system of traditional Hindu society is fundamentally different from that of the modern West or even modern India. But precisely because these are systems of ‘conscience collective’—collective consciousness about matters of conscience—the question is how do they ever change at all? What are the processes, the mechanisms that effect this baffling transformation of those rules of conduct in a society that are not merely universally respected, but taken for granted? In Indian social science recently there is a lot of discussion about the historical transition to modernity, and in trying to understand this change, historians have paid increasing attention to the peculiar persuasiveness of literature, rather than the standard analysis of philosophical and theological disputation.2 In the first stages of the tran1 The classic statement of this position is of course, Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. 2 Two most interesting works in this direction are P. Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1994, and D. Chakrabarty,
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sition, modernity is typically supported by arguments of scientific rationality and commercial prosperity. Yet as greater self-confidence is gained, its advocates are able to claim that modernity is not just rationally and economically superior to traditional forms, but that it offers, crucially, a superior ideal of ethical life. In studying the moral transition to modernity, why should we study literature of all things—why not philosophy? Answers to this question must be given twice: one specific to India, and another more general. A puzzling feature of Indian intellectual history is that although India has a great philosophical tradition dating back to classical antiquity, historically this tradition evinced little interest in questions of the justifiability of social relations. At this moment, I can only report this fact, not explain it. Contesting schools of classical Indian philosophy developed which carried on long disputes in the fields of ontology, epistemology, logic and aesthetics, in addition to producing powerful theological doctrines interpreting the religious significance of Hindu beliefs. Strangely, Indian thinking did not develop a specialized field of social philosophy. Consequently, classical philosophic schools debated questions like whether the world really exists or not; whether in their mundane existence, human beings can really be happy; whether reliable knowledge is at all possible; or whether inferential knowledge is trustworthy, but not questions like whether the caste system is justified. This peculiarity of the classical tradition lends a peculiar twist to the modes of reflection on modernity in India. Literary reflections rather than social theory settle civilizational judgements about whether modernity offers an overall better way of existence than earlier forms, about what Hans Blumenberg called ‘the legitimacy of the modern age.’ Questions about the rationalization of society; alterations in fundamental religious beliefs; the decline of traditional authority—of both the king in the political world, of the Brahmins in social life, and of the father inside the family; the immense changes in the habits of intimacy between the sexes—questions which are asked and answered by social theory in the West are all analyzed and answered through literary writing. They are found in the discourses internal Provincializing Europe, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2000. These themes, however, are also explored in the works of Arjun Appadurai, Homi Bhabha, Gyan Prakash and many others.
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to literary forms like the novelistic narrative, lyrical poetry, and autobiographic writing. Charles Taylor has suggested that in the modern world human beings have no recourse but to live theoretically. I take this to mean that social theories provide modern people with large-scale moral and cognitive maps in living their social lives. Equally, in their small-scale, but individually-taken decisions about their personal lives, these theoretical structures enable them to ground their decisions and ways of acting in the world. If that is true, in the case of modern Indians, this ineluctable theoretical function is performed by texts of modern vernacular literature rather than reading texts by Kant or Mill in translation or in foreign languages. One of the main presuppositions of this conference is that modernity implies an unprecedented transformation of society’s moral imagination. This way of being morally in the world needs to be outlined in its main principles, filled out in detail, ethically justified by close reasoning, and finally disseminated across society. Philosophical and theoretical debates of great intensity—which also happen in modern India—are normally restricted to circles of intellectuals, and cannot spread very far to reconstitute the moral ‘common sense’ of society. Literature, I wish to suggest, plays a fundamental role as the primary vehicle for the dissemination, popularization and eventually normalization of these ideas about moral conduct. The triumph of modern life requires the conversion of ordinary people to modernity’s moral imagination, and turning these new moral precepts into the constituents of a Gramscian ‘common sense.’ This is what literature accomplishes historically. In the nineteenth century some ordinary Indians began an immense transformation of their moral universe. They began to conceive of God in a new way, they fell in love and related to women in their lives in a new manner, they became thoughtful about their own moral life in an unprecedented fashion, and they subjected themselves to new and stringently exacting moral standards. The cumulative effect of this led to a new conception of moral life. God is conceived not as unpredictable, vengeful, or manifesting himself in all objects of the external world; instead, God sits subtly inside the individual’s heart and whispers his moral promptings in a distinctly Rousseauian way. People are persuaded to do this, to introduce such incalculable changes in their moral lives, I suggest, not by directly reading Rousseau and Kant which few could under-
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stand at that time.3 Rather this process is executed through reading the literary works of writers like Bankimchandra Chatterjee or Rabindranath Tagore who persuaded their audience through the work of literary enchantment. Something as large and as fundamental as conversion to a different morality can happen only through a discourse that is constant, not intermittent—a discourse that is insistent, intimate, subtle, ubiquitous, intertwined with people’s very existence. This is a discourse which speaks to us through the splendor and insidious persuasion of our own language and its indefinable wonders. To understand the intellectual history of Indian modernity, it seems essential to move beyond a conventional sociology of literature which specialized in examining how literature reflected social change. I wish to suggest that we need to widen the scope of this sociology of literature and turn the explanatory point in the reverse direction: to view how literary discourse forms the directions and contours of our emotions, structures moral intentionality, and shapes the moral personality of ordinary individuals by celebrating the modern way of being in the world as both intellectually admirable and socially possible. Ethics and emotions are in any case closely, inextricably linked, as I shall try to show by analyzing the socially radical consequences of narratives of romantic love.4 I shall now use some examples from standard modern forms of literature to show how literature first suggests and then justifies a modern conception of the self around which eventually a whole structure of modern moral sensibility takes shape. First, let us turn to the modern novel. Like all great civilizations, the Indian was rich in narrative conventions. And there is a long and powerful cultural tradition which argued that moral life—what it means to act well in situations of moral complexity or puzzlement—can be examined through narrative devices.5 The Hindu epics, like the Mahabharata, 3 This is due to two separate difficulties. First, Indians would have to overcome the difficulty of reading intricate theoretical arguments in a foreign language; and secondly, both the form and the content of such arguments were vastly different from conventional traditional ideas and ideals of life in India. 4 I have tried to show this in greater detail in the case of Tagore’s poetry in an upcoming publication: ‘Tagore and the ideals of love,’ F. Orsini (ed.), Love in the South Asian Literary Traditions (forthcoming). 5 In the Hindu religious tradition, narratives are given a pride of place in moral instruction. This is because of an implicit theory that simple stating of moral principles is not always helpful in assisting individuals through situations of moral conflict
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do not offer their readers a simplistic sense of moral order and security by telling a tale of the final eradication of evil. Rather, they constantly place narrative figures in situations that are morally puzzling or transgressive, and prove that in actual human lives, it is difficult to follow ethical rules—because although the rules are clear, human lives are not. Moral excellence—living a good life—is a matter of improvization and adventure.6 In traditional Hindu society, the greatest ethical challenge is breaking the molds of typical life-patterns determined by caste laws. Traditional narrative conventions, unsurprisingly, reflected and reinforced the moral sensibility of caste by the narrative depiction and celebration of these types. In conventional stories, ksatriya7 princes led lives of bravery, the Brahmins lives of intellectual excitement. Comparably, in Buddhist tales, merchants often showed their own caste virtues.8 In terms of literary theory and narratology, these traditional characters fall generally into the pattern described by Bakhtin in his illuminating essay on the difference between the formation of characters in the epic and the novel.9 As Bakhtin suggests in his essay about European classical literature, the characters in the Indian epics also come narratively fully formed. Usually the events of the narrative arrange severe tests for the attributes of the heroic character, but the figure is already entirely formed when the narrative begins, even if this is in his childhood. He already has inside him those qualities which make him both typ-
in real life. Precepts stand splendidly alone, and unilluminated; in real life moral situations are often difficult to judge precisely because individuals have to decide between moral principles. Narratives, by placing characters in complex situations, offer us guidance about real moral choice. 6 I have suggested that this kind of narrative reflection on morals is continued by the modern narrativistic traditions with great success—for example in the novels of the early Bengali writer, Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay (S. Kaviraj, The Unhappy Consciousness: Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay and the Formation of Indian Nationalist Discourse in India, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1995, chapter 1). 7 Ksatriya was the second caste in the varna hierarchy to which rulers and warriors belonged. 8 Not surprisingly, in the epics, but also in classical stories, the heroic characters usually come from the two upper castes—the Brahmins and the Ksatriyas. Interestingly, the female figures conform to types, but these are much less determined by caste roles. In Buddhist stories, a striking difference is the use of sresthis, big merchants— in crucial and celebratory roles—something conspicuously absent from the Hindu narrative traditions. 9 M. Bakhtin, “Epic and novel,” in The Dialogical Imagination, University of Texas Press. Austin, Texas, 1998.
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ical and extraordinary. A character is ‘typical’ in the sense that he can have only those dispositions which are peculiar and distinctive to his occupation or social class—moral courage, sharp intelligence, independence of spirit, defiance of earthly powers if he is a Brahmin, and correspondingly, bravery, military skills, an irrepressible sense of justice, strength of character and fortitude if he is a ksatriya. But heroic characters of traditional stories would have to possess these ‘typical,’ i.e., caste-specific virtues, to an extraordinary extent in order to qualify as the subject of celebration through a narrative. In ordinary circumstances, he is a Durkheimian hero in the sense that he demonstrates in an exemplarily intensified way the caste ethic of a particular social group. He is extraordinary not because his behavior is idiosyncratic, deviant or his thinking is distinctively individual, unlike that of any other person; in fact, it is an emphatic lack of ‘distinctiveness’ in the modern sense which makes him a hero. Since the society’s sociological structure requires a finite number of social types, and each of these groups has a clearly determined trajectory through life, the narrative economy of the society is also correspondingly limited. It is, in fact, interesting to see not merely the restriction of types of characters, but also how traditional societies make do with a relatively small number of foundational stories and read them repetitively. The hunger for narratives of a modern society is satisfied by writing ever new stories; in traditional societies, by telling the same stories over and over again. In the case of the stories of the epics or even the puranas in India, readers do not come to the narrative with the question typical of the modern reader— ‘what happens next?’ Most readers hear the basic outline of the story early in their childhood; and thus, when they read the story or hear it repetitively later, the central question among the readership is not ‘what happens next,’ but ‘what is the meaning of things happening this way?’ Such a narrative economy is radically transformed by the coming of the novel. First, the aesthetic idea of the novel itself is shatteringly new in the context of caste society and its ordering of individual lives. The novel, in contrast with the epics, is always a celebration of ordinariness. Ordinariness, however, means several things in the aesthetics of the modern novel. Different aspects of this modern aesthetic of ordinariness have to be distinguished and explored because the meaning of ordinariness and its counterpoint to traditional
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narrative ideals vary in specific cultural contexts. In terms of traditional narrative aesthetics, the very idea of a narrative celebration of an ordinary, unexemplary individual’s life, or a passage of experience in the life of an otherwise undistinguished person is almost a contradiction in terms. How can a person deserve to be a hero, deserve to be the subject of narrative celebration because he is ordinary, because his life is not spectacular? In Indian society, the ideals of caste provide an added piquancy to the idea of the ordinariness of narratable lives. To conceive of an individual life as ‘ordinary’ in the sense that it could happen to any man, irrespective of caste, is itself a radical departure from the segmented trajectories and routines of lives. Secondly, as is well known, there is a deep connection between the ordinariness of the hero of modern narratives and the central theme of character development in the bildungsroman—which becomes the dominant genre in Bengali and later Indian novel writing. Over a period of about fifty years, the accepted structure of narratological conventions is completely re-cast in favor of the modern novel. By the middle of the nineteenth century, writing in the epic or the puranic style becomes formalistically impossible. There is a second, associated meaning to ordinariness in the aesthetics of the novel. From the point of view of the older combination of ethics and aesthetics, a most unsettling thing about the novel is the celebration of moral ordinariness that lies at its heart. This goes against the logic of the traditional caste order in several interconnected ways. First, the novelistic story of the slow, experiential ‘making’ of a human character simply assumes as its setting the modern world in which human fate is indeterminate, not a trajectory pre-determined by birth into a particular occupational caste. In traditional Hindu social order, individuals could be ordinary representatives of a particular caste which fixed their occupation, aspirations, or the range of possible trials they would face in their social lives. Despite its settledness, a ksatriya’s life is not entirely free from surprises; the life of a ruler and warrior is necessarily beset with risks. But these surprises themselves were segmentary—risks of a particular type specific to a life of that kind. By contrast, the modern novel decided to tell the stories of lives which were ordinary by a new definition. Because the plots of the novels routinely followed the fates of modern individuals in the quin-
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tessentially modern spaces of the city, they tracked the experiences of not an ordinary Brahmin or ksatriya, but of a human being without any exemplary instantiation of brahminical or heroic virtues, of a person who had abandoned the project of being virtuous in caste terms, and thus lived a more open-ended and confusing life. Often these people were not virtuous in a more straightforward sense: the novel form showed a distinct partiality for depicting lives of individuals who were often confused, usually imperfect, unable to live up to the principles they believed in, morally flawed and vulnerable. The response they elicited was not a distanciating admiration, but of identifying pity. Readers were not meant to deify these characters, and consider the exploits of heroes to be beyond the capacities of people like themselves. Rather, the imperfection and fallibility of these heroes made them similar to ordinary people, and their internal monologues on moral problems could directly throw light on an average person’s own daily mundane struggle with the demands of goodness. By conventional aesthetics, the literary celebration of the morally imperfect character was impossible. This was a travesty of literary values and of aesthetic principles. For modern writers, this was precisely the point of literary reflection on the place of the moral in human life—to depict human beings in their imperfection and vulnerability, in their difficult but unavoidable search for their own selves—a self that was not given to them by caste, but fashioned by experience and self-reflection. The novelistic character constantly reflects and assesses the whole of the life he has already lived. He extracts principles, and modifies, or at least attempts to modify the rest of his life, and give it more deliberate shape. Thus, the novel form was the primary vehicle for familiarizing people with living life in a casteless way. The narrative celebration of the ordinary itself signaled a declaration of moral change. Gradually, modern writers perfected a more complete moral argument for the new kind of narrative they were writing. The function of older narratives, it was claimed, was not merely to demonstrate the virtue of a particular kind of life—usually of the prince and the warrior—but clearly, by showing the adventures of their lives and the inevitable fact that, at times, even these exemplary characters failed to rise to the ideals of their vocation. Literary narratives taught its ordinary readers/listeners lessons of kindness (karuna). In response
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to this, modern novelists began to assert that—precisely by showing the incompleteness of the realization of moral ideals and the vulnerability of characters in a world in which life-trajectories were no longer predetermined and where individuals are constantly surprised by the changeability of conditions—the novel also trained its reader, the ordinary individual, to treat others with understanding, if not kindness. It is for this reason that the novel has to follow its strangely paradoxical principle of a fictional truthfulness, in place of traditional literature which often entertained by presenting the fantastic.10 The characters in these novels were of course imaginary and fictive, but their life trajectories, the events which constituted their narrative, and, most fundamentally, the social world through which they picked their way, had to be entirely credible. Otherwise, the moral pedagogy of the novel would fail. In early modern India, as indeed in the West, the two literary forms of the novel and lyric poetry discursively complemented each other. They contributed in distinctive and mutually supportive ways to the great transformative shaping of emotions that the historical transition to modernity required. At the center of modern narrative conventions lay the moral normalization of romantic love—the narrative development of an elective relation of affection between two individuals. In an abstract, general sense, elective love was not a new idea: in the traditional literatures of India there were famous figures like the divine couple, Radha and Krishna, who transcended all social restrictions to realize their transgressive love for each other. It was a resplendent ideal of romantic attachment, much admired for obvious reasons by modern writers; but it was generally assumed that this ideal of love, between two socially unaccredited lovers, was not a socially practicable ideal in actual human lives. At times, this ideal was interpreted in an entirely metaphysical, metaphorical key. The shatteringly radical characteristic of the new kind of romantic love was its social availability and normalcy in ordinary daily life. The novel bore a double relation with social reality: it partly reflected social practice, partly presented an ideal for social practice to fol10 Indeed, according to one of the most important classical texts of Indian literary aesthetics, the first distinguishing feature of kavya, literature, is said to be that it is a field in which the laws of nature are suspended (niyatikrtaniyamarahitam—in the very first verse of Mammata’s Kavyaprakasa).
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low. While the novel pretended, in the face of social facts, that this kind of elective affection was both morally preferable and sociologically common (which in nineteenth century Bengal it definitely was not), the task of exploring the subtle states of mind that accompanied this kind of romantic longing was left to romantic poetry. Again, this represented a great departure in the aesthetic conventions that governed poetry. Conventionally, poetry was primarily devoted to two master subjects—narrative (telling epic or historical tales) or devotional. With modernity, poetry slowly, but decisively, moved away from these traditional themes. The subject of new poetry was rarely devotional, and almost never narrative in the classic sense, since the primary vehicle of the narrative, which had much greater analytical aspiration, had become a new kind of literary prose. The narratives of modern novels aspired to provide to their readers something close to an enjoyable epistemology of social relations. This was increasingly difficult to accomplish in the restrictive structures of verse making. In fact, the telling of tales in prose instead of verse is itself a radical literary transformation. As the task of literature became more analysis rather than celebration of the lives of the main protagonists, prose became the proper vehicle of such analytical and reflexive story telling. Prose narratives did not merely describe the social world, but also analyzed and criticized it. They also focused often on the sufferings of an individual maladjusted to this social world in various ways.11 Analysis and criticism could not be properly executed in the charged, highly emotional, declamatory styles of traditional verse. Prose was the natural language of calculation, sobriety, and rational analysis, and therefore best suited to the predominantly cognitive purposes of the modern novel. With modernity, the displacements in poetics were no less startling. In conventional love poetry in Sanskrit, and in early vernaculars (for instance, in Bengali and neighboring Hindi) from the twelfth century, there existed a rich tradition of writing on love, but its endlessly repetitive and luxuriating subject was feminine beauty. Consequently, it is poetry dedicated overwhelmingly to the figure of the extraordinarily beautiful woman. Correspondingly, the aesthetics of this love
11 This line of argument is classically developed in the works of Georg Lukacs, especially in the Theory of the Novel, Merlin Press, London, 1978.
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is one of a physicalist eroticism conceptually crystallized into the aesthetic category of srngara. In nineteenth century Bengali poetry a startling transformation of this poetic aesthetics, centered on the concept of srngara, takes place. In the modern reflection on love that romantic poetry slowly develops, beauty of that entirely physical nature is increasingly viewed with deep suspicion. The resplendent beauty of traditional heroines is seen, in one type of modern novel, as destructive of the intimate, emotional companionate relationship between the sexes, a new context in which the woman at the center of the narrative is not the object of universal desire, but an individual who only falls in love with another specific person. All her qualities, including her physical beauty, are meant for that intimate special relationship, not an object of indiscriminate, universal adoration. Lovers choose this individuated feminine heroine, not because of a beauty which would be desired by everyone, but for an emotional singularity which can be understood only by another individual.12 Thus the individuals are perfectly ordinary, but irreplaceably special only to themselves. And clearly such aesthetic ideals bear a strong connection with the sphere of modern ethics, as such relationships produce the ideal family of companionate marriage. I wish to make two rather general points about this kind of poetic elaboration of subjectivity. First, the displacement of attention from physical beauty leads slowly to the elaboration of a new conception of the beauty of emotions, an idea deeply informed by the new moral ideals of restraint, innerness and refinement of sensitivity; the primary vehicle of this form of ideal is a new figure of the individualized woman. In Tagore’s novels, for instance, the writer often explicitly comments on the women’s physical ordinariness.13 Women are emotionally individuated through the events of the narratives, leading to a new ideal of refinement and sensitivity which makes a woman noticeable in real life and narratively interesting in the novel. Against this under-emphasis of their beauty, sometimes simple under-determination of their physical appearance, stands the constant emphasis and elaboration of their emotional and increasingly ethical character: their perceptions, feelings, states of mind, their development into 12 In modern Bengali literature, this transformation in the ideal of love is clearly discernible in the novels of Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay and Rabindranath Tagore. 13 In the famous novel Gora, for example, the first time the heroine makes an entry, the narrator makes a comment about her pleasing, but ordinary looks.
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a distinct personhood through the staple of the bildungsroman—meetings, misunderstandings, and final resolution or reconciliation. They are formed into individuals who cannot be mistaken for anyone else, or interchangeable with others, unlike the repetitive splendor of physically beautiful feminine figures. Nothing is more unevolving than physical beauty, and thus more unsuitable for narratives of the search for self. The moral relation between genders is intriguingly affected by this transformation. In traditional literature, the refinement or idealization of the two genders differed significantly. Sexual ideals were divided between the literary and social ones of a courageous and upright male and a beautiful and playful woman. The transactions between these two types were often narratively arresting, but men and women did not aspire to a common pattern of emotional cultivation. In the romantic ideal, these patterns were equalized—patterns of refinement were identical for men and women, with suitable adaptation to their socially designated roles. A common refinement contributes to an ideal of moral equality. Besides novels and poetry, autobiography can be seen as a form that epitomizes the reflexivity of the modern self by constant recursive moral re-evaluation of lives. Autobiographies and other para-autobiographic forms—like letters or diaries related to real lives or imaginary autobiographical novels—help individuals find new and periodic moral totalizations of their life experience. Assessing the moral meaning of a life is not done collectively, measuring each individual life against an ideal of fulfillment common to all persons belonging to a caste. It is done individually—each person opening himself to unrepeatable experiences and finding moral fulfillment in his own personal way. Also, finding the moral meaning of one’s life is not done once and forever; it is constantly renewed because, despite one’s efforts, the realization of moral ideals in real lives always remains imperfect. Unlike the narratives which elaborated and stated the moral ideals of the past, in which there was constant expounding and elaboration but no real surprise, the new moral narrative is full of surprises because individuals are weak, sinful, irresolute, and tragic—ennobled only by their often failing search for the ideal. In Bengali culture, as elsewhere, there was a strong connection between this emerging literary aesthetics and a new ethics of individuality and
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domesticity. Here I can only offer a very brief sketch. In nineteenth century Bengal, something like a vernacular version of the discussion between Kant and Hegel on the nature of ethics is played out on a large scale. This new ethics is, of course, initially read in Western texts, next imagined, and then adventurously practiced in actual personal conduct by a minority within the modern elite. However, these examples of unconventional, personal conduct remained, initially at least, heroic examples of individual experimentation in a society which looked with sullen disapproval at these ‘outlandish’ ways of a privileged and imitative minority. We must remember that in the colonial context, with the early traces of nationalist resentfulness against Western ways, it was easy to condemn such behavior as apish flattery of the Englishman. Often such behavior was condemned by both traditionalists and nationalists as being driven by a desire to gain approval from the British colonial masters, ungrounded in any serious independent moral reflection. As long as such conduct was confined to a tiny minority among the elite, and the majority of people calmly carried on arranged marriages, this mode was merely individual and extraordinary. It could be said to have deserved honor due to its moral heroism— the main point in Hegel’s critique of Kant—but it could not be called an ‘ethical life’ because it simply did not bear the effortless, taken for granted, quality of real, embedded ethical rules. Literary idealization of this model of conduct in fact contributed to its becoming sittlich in several ways. First, it produced a powerful intellectual argument through the narratives themselves, not merely allegedly reporting events of love, but, in doing so, also exhibiting how fulfilling such ways of behaving and experiencing emotions could be. Secondly, they tended to create an impression of a commonplace-ness of such actions and behavior, lending them a misleading aura of ordinariness. Such things happened all the time in the novels, in a society in which they could (in principle) happen only rarely. Fictional characters became, in a sense, shadow people in this social universe, performing, despite their irreality, the immensely imaginatively powerful function of setting examples, making arguments, providing advice to real individuals on the point of falling in love. It is hardly surprising that these novels have an intrinsically discursive quality: characters do not merely fall in love; they appear more intent on an intellectual elaboration of what falling in love means.
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Thirdly, all this produces a new sensibility in which romantic love becomes a highly influential literary, aesthetic, and idealized norm. Couples actually married by solid familial negotiations would go devotedly to watch romantic films, and would either exult in the fulfillment such love gave to marriages, or condole its tragic failure and the unfulfilled lives of the cinematic heroes. But through this aesthetic experience, their own relationships would be transformed in small, imperfect and partial ways. Often couples who did not enjoy sufficient sovereignty over their own lives to enter into romantic marriages would try, retrospectively, to transmute their mundane relationships with love’s miraculous touch. Tagore’s work in particular shows the definitive emergence of a new ideal of love in Bengali society—an ideal in this dual sense. It is both an aesthetic ideal replacing the srngara ideals of the past, and as much an ideal of ethical life. The three forms of modern literary composition—the novel, lyric poetry and autobiography—all contribute towards two crucial imaginative processes in a modern culture. They present an aesthetic representation of what a modern life is, usually in an idealized form. Secondly, they help constitute a moral ideal, and contribute to people’s conversion to that ideal almost surreptitiously, through the silent persuasion of aesthetic enjoyment. It is possible to argue for the moral significance of these narratives for another reason. Familiarity with Western modernity introduces new modern ethical ideals to Indian social groups. But their actual pursuit in real lives requires a crucial element of ‘translation’ or ‘transfer.’ Abstract elaboration of moral ideals through philosophical discourse tends to treat the ideals singly, and in a de-contextualized form. People face their moral dilemmas in real life in complex and untidy contexts. Narratives situate fictive individuals in situations of great complexity, particularly through the complex opposition of locally valid moral orders. The principle of the moral autonomy of individuals might be elaborated to great lengths in an abstract form in discussions of Kantian ethics. Yet, when individuals actually propose following a course of individuality in their real lives, they have to deal with the specific principle of filial duty to parents articulated in the peculiar Hindu caste doctrines. In narratives, this dilemma is worked out in a vernacular context of moral life. In the moral persuasion of people towards a modern ethics, literature plays a crucial
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role supplementing more abstract philosophical discourse. This kind of narrative contextualization of ethical principles leads to processes of cultural adaptation which link up our arguments with theories of multiple modernities.14 Finally, the coming of modernity in all societies has two moments— the disruptive and the constructive. Some older practices cease working, and new ones are installed in their place. It is in the constructive moment that modernity in non-European societies start becoming different from European precedents. There is also a very simple reason for this. The processes of modernity initially involve only small elites that are strategically placed in the social structure. But as modernity gathers strength, it affects wider sections of the population until it comes to affect all through its economic, political and cultural transformations. European precedents and European ideals dominated the cultural formation of the early modern elites in colonial Bengal. These elites were fluent in English, erudite in European history, and revered European modernity or at least its idealized pedagogic versions. With the expansion of the modernist project to other areas of society, the availability of Europe as an imaginative structure becomes progressively weaker. Neither their education, nor their life experience gave common Indians a rich sense of Europe’s modern past. Less educated people, drawn from poorer classes, always have to improvise when inserted into modern structures and its imaginative compulsions. We, as intellectuals, while reporting on modernity, tend to exaggerate the imaginative availability of Europe—the constant presence of the modern West as the universal ideal of modern civilization. This has been an image created by modern Europe about itself which is selective, and deeply misleading. In this picture, modernity is a onedimensionally positive achievement—without alienation, without wars, without the looming presence of the state which often crosses over from discipline into totalitarianism. This ideological image of Europe offers individualism without loneliness, power without destruction, discipline without domination. But this imaginary Europe—which the real Europe needed in order to pursue its historical purposes— 14 For a number of papers collectively arguing in favour of a perspective of multiple modernities, see S.N. Eisenstadt (ed.), “Multiple Modernities”, Daedalus, Winter, 2000.
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is, in fact, much less available to people who live in the universe of vernaculars. Ordinary people, when helped by democracy and social change to exercise greater sovereignty over their collective history, do not replicate the intellectuals’ tendency to repeat Europe’s mistakes in order to repeat its triumphs. In the modernity being shaped in the multiple universes of vernaculars, and in the experience of the dispossessed, the imaginative power of the European precedent is greatly reduced. When these groups engage in the business of creating a new world, they are more likely than the elites to create a world which is more deeply original.
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SECTION SEVEN
TERROR, GENOCIDE, AND VIOLENCE
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THE DE-CIVILIZING PROCESS Eliezer Ben-Rafael D- S I On the basis of the chapters by Christie, Dammann and Rapport, one may suggest several angles for analysis of contemporary terrorism, genocide and violence. These conflictual phenomena question the humanity and de-humanization of society and remind us that conflict is endemic to social reality and the human experience. Violence refers to those conflicts which aim at inflicting pain, running from the “simple” physical confrontation of two individuals up to mass events like pogroms and genocide. Up to a point along this continuum, violence is still accounted for by the mere development of quarrels and the dynamics of confrontations—as a “natural” outcome, so to speak, of the ultimate aggravation of the hostility between opposing rivals, contenders or enemies. Beyond this point, as emphasized by Dammann, violence ceases to be a “natural” or “expectable” occurrence and becomes a matter of management under the responsibility of specialized agents. It is then the application of a—necessarily rational—policy generated by considerations of its own that cannot be understood in terms of mere military instrumental or operational logics. Genocide is here the most extreme case and thus the most instructive; it gives its fullest expression to the paradoxical character of the use of violence in society. A large-scale project requiring coordination among complex institutions, it is always a political endeavor before it constitutes a military enterprise. Such atrocities are committed, not as spontaneous upsurges caused by momentary fits of anger and denoting a loss of self-control, but as decisions reached on the basis of lucid deliberation. Such decisions are necessarily reached by individuals on the basis of their making an abstraction of the humanity of their victims, and who, by this very mind-set, set themselves outside “regular” humanity—in fact in a non-human posture. They set themselves in a quasi-Godlike position, as they feel authorized to negate the
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right bestowed upon women and men to belong among the living. What seemingly does not cross their mind, however, is that, in this, they endow their victims with the utmost degree of humanity: they make of them suffering beings who, in the trap in which they have been caught, are led to face only one challenge—one which is, actually, the supreme test of humanity, that is the challenge of achieving and retaining human dignity in suffering. The non-humans make their victims martyrs, grant them a martyrdom that sanctifies them and puts their persecutors on trial in the eyes of morally “normal” humans. It is not impossible that what these non-humans have done to the holy humans will even touch them sooner or later, and then remain with them forever. In his discussion of the roots of morality in the context of concentration camp reality, Nigel Rapport follows Bauman (1989), Arendt (1964), and others who stand firmly against the Durkheimian paradigm. Society, he agrees, is not necessarily moral, and modernity, especially, may take on a de-humanized face. The paroxysm of dehumanization, he emphasizes, is the concentration camp which is the crudest confrontation between the de-humanized tormenter and the humanity of the victims. Together with Dammann, Rapport gainsays the traditional sociological assumption that terror, genocide and violence are always seen as illegitimate forms of social action, and constitute necessarily a challenge to the social order. As emphasized by Christie, reactions to atrocities may, too, become an aspect of “regular” social life and be equally questionable, from a moral point of view; atrocities may happen everywhere, and reactions to them may take on the most diverse forms. When it comes to the Shoah, however, additional considerations draw our attention. This case of atrocity stands at the extreme end: a category of individuals is marked for systematic destruction without reference to any pertinent context. In most other cases of genocides, one can, indeed, point to instrumental interests that guide the perpetrators of mass extermination—conquests which aspired to liquidate rebellious populations, craving designs to “free” a coveted land, cruel religious fanaticism against “heretics,” or the like. In this case, one witnesses an immense enterprise the only basis of which was a statement that Jews do not belong to humanity and are its enemy. This decision, says Bauman (1989), could have been reached only because those who took it had first undergone a dehumaniza-
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tion which the author explains by referring to the phenomenon of bureaucratization in modern societies. This universalistic phrasing of the problématique implied by the Shoah raises, however, two additional questions that remain unanswered against the specific background of the Shoah: Why the Jews? Why Germany? Many have provided answers to these questions and this is not the place to delve into the innumerable propositions. Let us point out, however, that one important contribution to the second question (Why Germany?) is that of Bjorn Wittrock (2001). Instead of looking at modernity as such, Wittrock considers the encounter between universalistic modernity and particularistic localnational cultural values and identities; their ultimate incompatibilities might be possible sources of traumas in given societies. This kind of approach tends to set a phenomenon like the Shoah outside the scope of discussions in which the notion of rationality is valid and relevant. Nevertheless, other approaches gainsay this type of outlook and explain atrocities not only as social phenomena but also as profitable enterprises. T R A In our world, indeed, terror, genocide and violence may also be studied as rational phases and may, in more than a few examples, be accounted for, like other types of behavior, by sheer instrumental aspects. Political scientists emphasize that, in circumstances where legal or political sanctions are not effective, violence may be a more “expeditious” way of achieving goals when faced with a weaker opponent. Moreover, even a vulnerable contender may be tempted to use force when the stronger side does not seem to be too vigorous and shows signs of a lack of firmness in countering resistance. This kind of reasoning leads to the notion of a “profitability of violence” as an explanation. A peculiar type of action that fits this notion is illustrated in today’s world-parliamentary politics by the politics of victimization used more than once by weaker parties who expect to attract international attention and invite pressures, or even the exercise of sanctions, from all over the world, on stronger foes. Self-victimization may be a source of profits in an era where world public opinion is influenced by myths which, in the aftermath of colonialism, glorify national
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liberation movements and struggles against “imperialism,” “colonialism” and the like, and have become an essential aspect of the contemporary, global political culture. These myths were a factor in the crystallization and expansion throughout the world of the student revolts and counterculture movements of the 1960s and 1970s, and they were not alien either to Guevara-inspired revolutionarism or Bader-Mainhoff terrorism. The favor that was shown in certain milieus, in many societies, goes not without recalling other, earlier fallacious romanticizations of—often violent—“causes.” One case in mind here is the longstanding blind support of intellectuals throughout the Western world of communist, nay even Stalinist, dictatorships (see Furet 1995). In a similar vein, violence in a variety of countries throughout the world is still often interpreted—and legitimized—as stemming from the assumed “sins of Western colonialism.” Present-day global media and their fixation on the spectacular thus play a crucial role in the overdramatization of violent events and, in the long run, their glorification in the eyes of the world public. Conveying Manichean images of world reality, they make world celebrities of specialists in violence. All these factors account for the possibility that violence could be understood as a source of profits—in terms of political advantages, international renown and support. Delving into Boudon’s (1993) notions of normative rationality and of “good reasons,” we may see rationality as a paradigmatic space along two axes, the “social” versus “subjective” referential ground of rational pursuit, and the “instrumental” versus “expressive” nature of the expected benefits. In this perspective, terror, genocide and violence may be justified either by the norms and values characteristic of a social environment or by mere individual considerations, and aspire to achieve either precise practical advantages or intrinsic gratifications. Guerrilla conflicts, revolts, state terrorism or ethnic-cleansing atrocities are but a few examples of the variety of violence that may be viewed and analyzed on the basis of such a Boudonian paradigm. Nonetheless, that terror, genocide and violence may be understood nowadays as “rational” pursuit with a theoretical significance of its own, and this is probably best evinced when recalling Norbert Elias’ (1994) analysis of the “civilizing process.”
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T N D-C P Invoking this analysis, Elias speaks of two general attitudes toward life. The first attitude is marked by a lack of restraint and adventurousness. It makes people look “childlike” and “younger,” and demonstrates something that may often be labeled as “uncivilized” or “barbaric.” The second attitude is characterized by repulsion of barbaric customs, squalor and coarseness; it insists, instead, on normativeness and order. This latter syndrome is the one that Elias calls “civilized,” and it makes people look mature. Anything, says Elias, can be done either in a civilized or an uncivilized way, and humankind has moved from the first to the second in a gradual process. It is this that he calls the civilizing process. From this perspective, civilization describes the West’s special nature of which it is proud vis-à-vis the rest of the world. It speaks of the level of technology, the essence of manners, the development of scientific knowledge, views of the world, and much more. Echoing attitudes particularly widespread in Germany, Elias distinguishes then the notion of civilization from the notion of culture— the first referring to what Elias sees as the surface of human existence, and the second to the deeper conceptual layer where collectives draw pride from their particular achievements and existence. It is at this level that society experiences its unique intellectual life, artistic endeavor and religious experience. In other words, civilization describes a process and points to something that is constantly moving “forward,” downplaying national differences. Culture, in contrast, encompasses that which exists in society as a permanent context and is strongly associated with local reality and symbols. Civilization, for instance, includes “courtesy,” while culture relates to “true virtues.” The civilizing process, Elias continues, consists primarily of changes in the structure of behavior that relate to changes in the structure of society. A wealth of observations, Elias then contends, indicate that the structure of civilized behavior is closely interrelated with the organization of Western societies in the form of states. This hypothesis is most important because its reverse signifies that a civilization which emerges concomitantly with a strong state may be endangered if, and when, the state experiences a decline and weakening of its power. At this point, one cannot avoid noting that, as discussed elsewhere (Ben-Rafael and Sternberg 2001), the contemporary
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era is widely described as marked by the declining accountability of the state. One points here to the state’s loss of control over given areas of social activity and a decreasing capacity to define, implement and carry out coherent policies. These features, it is quite widely agreed, are conducive to a slackening in the very determination of states to define national projects; one of the expressions of this process is the diminishing attraction that public and administrative careers bear for talented young people (Birnbaum 2001). Sociologists explain that contemporary globalization is bound to the emergence of multiple foci of global activity that generate flows of people, knowledge, capital and cultural symbols “over the head” of states (Appadurai 1996). Scholars also evince the recent importance assumed by “transnational diaspora” which express allegiances that cut across societies throughout the world limiting, too, the scope of control exerted by national institutions (Tambiah 2001). Furthermore, there is the development of democracy which witnesses the strengthening of constituencies aspiring to ever greater autonomy from central bodies, notwithstanding the fact that they themselves want an ever larger participation in these bodies. According to Elias’ hypothesis, this present-day decline in the accountability of the state should be a factor in a phenomenon also observed by social scientists that consists of the deterioration of the quality of social life (see Lagrange 1995). When set in relationship to one another, these two aspects permit formulating a general assessment of a process going against the current studies of Norbert Elias and which could, consequently, be labeled as a “de-civilizing process.” “De-civilization” would then mean that culture—whatever this may mean in each particular society— tends to evolve within a context where civilization is less and less stable, consistent and coherent and where it is unable to resist the re-emergence of “uncivilized” models of behavior. We think here of the loss of “good manners” in the public space, increasing violent behavior in daily life, the spread of insecurity, the tendency of social conflict to escape control, the frequency of ethnic disputes that develop into bloody confrontations, and, last but not least, the rise here and there of neo-Nazi groups. These phenomena are encompassed by the term “uncivil society,” a notion that is not too far from “uncivilized” or “de-civilized” society (Roché 1996).
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I C In the sphere of private life, this “non-civility” is embodied in the dilemma of parents for whom a quality education for their children includes raising them as good-mannered individuals. But these parents also know that “cultivatedness” and politeness may be read as weakness and vulnerability in the face of daily aggressiveness and intolerance. In the sphere of public life, the present time has shown that the civilizing process is neither linear nor irreversible. De-civilization is always possible, and it may signify the spread of brutal, populist and racist attitudes in a variety of social milieus. Where such forces gain enough strength to take control of the state—a consequence that cannot be precluded—they may well become a factor strengthening the state, though outside the scope of the civilizing process and nevertheless weakening it still more. This, actually, was the case with the original Nazism itself which was the crudest expression ever of an unprecedented strengthening of the state, taking place outside the civilizing process and illustrating, so to speak, the encounter of culture with barbarism. All in all, the civilization process remains until this very day a challenge for people of good will. BIBLIOGRAPHY Appadurai A. (1996) Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Arendt, H. (1964) Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Viking. Bauman, Z. (1989) Modernity and the Holocaust. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Ben-Rafael, E. and Sternberg, Y. (2001) “Analyzing our time: a sociological problématique” in E. Ben-Rafael and Y. Sternberg (eds.) Identity, Culture and Globalization. Leiden: Brill, 2–20. Birnbaum, P. (2001) “Becoming state Jews: from visibility to discretion,” in E. BenRafael and Y. Sternberg (eds.) Identity, Culture and Globalization. Leiden: Brill, 375–384. Boudon, R. (1993) “Towards a synthetic theory of rationality,” in International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 7/1:5–20. Elias, N. (1994) The Civilizing Process. Oxford: Blackwell. Furet, F. (1995) Le passé d’une illusion: Essai sur l’idée communiste au XX e siècle; Paris: Robert Laffont/Calmann-Lévy. Lagrange, H. (1995) La Civilité à l’épreuve. Paris: PUF. Roché, S. (1996) La société incivile. Paris: Seuil. Tambiah, S. (2001) “Vignettes of present day diaspora,” in E. Ben-Rafael and Y. Sternberg (eds.) Identity, Culture and Globalization. Leiden: Brill, 327–326. Wittrock, B. (2001) “Re-thinking Modernity” in E. Ben-Rafael and Y. Sternberg (eds.) Identity, Culture and Globalization. Leiden: Brill, 49–74.
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“WOMEN, CHILDREN, OLDER PEOPLE”: GENOCIDE, WARFARE, AND THE FUNCTIONAL DIFFERENTIATION OF SOCIETY* Klaus Dammann 1. C H B A: T S C S K This book before me is an illustrated issue of a famous book of popular philosophy written some 250 years ago by Voltaire: Candide— ou l’optimisme. It links the region of where my very own university lies—Westphalia—to another region that in the late 18th century was conceived to be the Balkans. Philosopher Voltaire wrote his book as a polemics against his German counterpart Leibniz, who maintained that this world has been created as the best of all possible worlds. Voltaire sent Candide, who was a simple-minded young Westphalian nobleman, first as a soldier into the Bulgarian killing fields and then into other most cruel adventures all over the world, only to discover that the best of all possible worlds was a world without virtue and without human rights. This Bulgarian visit represents the Seven Years War between Prussia and France (and their allies), of which Voltaire has been a contemporary. Candide saw first a battle, in which thousands of ABLE BODIED MEN of two armies slaughtered each other, and (2) after this, two villages, a Bulgarian one and one composed of the ethnics of their enemies. In each of these villages WOMEN, CHILDREN, and OLDER PEOPLE were murdered in a most cruel way. (1)
This, of course, is semantics, distinctions being used and reused in communication. It is the semantics of the Enlightenment, the semantics of human rights, which accompanied the functional differentiation of the spheres of arts, politics, and the monetary economy from * Thanks to Daniel Dammann, Leeds, for trying to correct my English.
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From: Candide. Illustrierte Ausgaben eines Klassikers. Katalog einer Ausstellung der Universitaetsbibliothek Trier. Trier 2000:125
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religion. Human, Mankind, Humankind, Humanity and so on are accompanying semantics that symbolize the universal inclusion in all spheres of communication of a population that before belonged only to one stratum in the older stratified order of society. Here let us note that Voltaire constructed a difference, a difference between the killing of middle-aged men and the killing of women, children, and older people. This is a difference that makes a difference today and in some discussion of Christian just war and of Islamic jihad (holy war) even before Voltaire. At that time Voltaire did not yet use labels like massacre, genocidal killing, or partial genocide which only came into use around the beginning of the 20th century.1 Figure 1: Labeling collective serial killing: leading distinctions (distinctions directrices) in English, French, and German language discussion of genocide since 1944 victims attribution selected: to perpetrators:
by ascriptive criteria
organizational perpetrators
G
non-organizational perpetrators Data sources: 2
P
collective serial killings
by action criteria
W (other) organized P (e.g. by trial) P by unorganized vigilantism
(a) locus classicus: Lemkin 1944, pp. 79–95 (b) Textbooks, papers and monographs on the conceptual issue: Horowitz 1980, Harff and Gurr 1988 (continued in 1996), Fein 1993, Katz 1994 and Chaumont 1997 (c) Conceptual analysis in two newer special anthologies, four new journals and two reference works. Texts of the following authors not yet included in a) and b) were examined: Andreopoulos, Kuper, Chalk and Charny in: Andreopoulos 1994; Smith and Bauer in: Chorbajian and Shirinian 1999; Huttenbach in: Holocaust and Genocide Studies 3, No. 3, 1988, Dabag in: Zeitschrift fuer Genozidforschung 1, No. 1, 1999, Scherrer in: Journal of Genocide Research 1, No. 1, 1999, Péjoska and Bouchereau in: L’Intranquille No. 4–5, 1999; Heinsohn 1998, Balint and Charny, Chalk and Johnasson, Rummel and Totten in Charny 1999.
1 See for instance Morgenthau 1918 (“murder of a nation,” “destruction of the race”). Even Holocaust seems to have been used in 1913, designating the antiArmenian killings of Adana some years ago. 2 See full bibliographic details in Dammann 2001.
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I did an empirical study of this type of semantics of genocide concepts in a time 200 years after Voltaire. You may want to have a look at the results in Figures 1 and 2 of the paper. The two leading distinctions in Figure 1 are (1) the attribution of collective serial killings to two different kinds of actors: organizations and non-organizations, with these nonorganizations being called individuals, mob, crowd and so on.3 (2) Voltaire’s distinction. That what in my left column is called victimization by “ascriptive” criteria means in everyday language “innocence” of the victims. Of course the distinction is not by guilt. Normally, conscripts or even professional soldiers are not judged guilty in a strict moral sense. But there is a distinction between the “innocent,” who are chosen because they “are what they are,” and the “not so innocent,” who are killed because they acted in a certain manner or did not act in an expected way. In Figure 2 you can see thirteen distinctions used in discussion of collective serial killing, especially for genocidation, bellification and pogromization of such murder. They supplement the leading distinctions no. 1 (organizations as perpetrators) and no. 4 (selection of victims by ascriptive criteria). With this semantic opportunity structure shown in my two figures you can produce both a festival of denial of genocide and a festival of newly constructed genocides: – “There was no genocide of Armenians killed in Ottoman Anatolia during World War I.” 3 If you gradualize the concept of organization (which is in sociology the successor concept for bureaucracy) nearly all sociologists and scholars of history agree that the Shoah was the most bureaucratized genocide of the last century. However, even some events during the Shoah have been attributed to actors other than bureaucracies, namely individuals and “crowds,” especially in “pogroms,” that is genocidal massacres incited by German authorities, or in the case of the Jebwabne “pogrom”—following Jan T. Gross’ study (2001)—executed by members of a Polish municipality. Indeed we must analyze Shoah murder events by asking 1. Why did organizations decide? (The most often asked question in historical studies, let us call it the “Mommsen”question.) 2. Why did members of these organizations continue to participate (even if they were not negatively sanctioned)? (The “Browning”-question.) 3. Why did these members commit “excess” atrocities which can be attributed only to them (and may be better explained not by social but by psychic factors)? (The “Goldhagen”question.) See as an empirical study of shifting attribution Dammann and Rychlewski 2000. For example: the 1881 “pogroms” in Russia’s Jewish Pale of Settlement that traditionally were attributed to Tsarist organizations, have been re-attributed to nonorganizational actors by the newer historical research of Hans Rogger and Michael Aronson (see Aronson 1990).
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Figure 2: Genocidation of collective serial killing: supplementary distinctions in English, French and German language discussion of genocide since 1944 victims:
(4. their selection by ascriptive criteria) 5. own inhabitants/citizens 6. real group (1. organizations) 7. group as such 2. state organizations 8. masses 3. central state organizations 9. all 10. systematically perpetrators:
relationship victims/perpetrators: 11. intention to kill 12. at least negligence 13. broader intention, directed at criteria of selection 4. to 10. 14. killing without any reason 15. illegality of killing action Data sources: see Figure 1
– “There was no genocide of Jews killed during the Shoah in World War II.” – “There was no genocide of Tutsi and of oppositional Hutu in Rwanda in 1994.” Go into the internet and you will hear about all that. And contrasting to that, there is a festival of newly constructed genocides: – “There has been a genocide of North American Indians, a genocide of male homosexuals in Nazi Germany, and a gynocide, that is a genocide of witches in pre-19th century Europe.” All this you can find in academic writing. I found in my research that all 15 distinctions have indeed been used as schemata in the denial discussion on the Armenian Catastrophe.4 Scripts for denial and acknowledgement of genocide have been formed with help from all of them. The most frequent thesis in genocide denial has been that the victims (“if there were any”) were victims of warfare. Now let us go from semantics to social structure. This distinction of semantics/social structure comes from Niklas Luhmann’s theory of 4
See footnote 2 for this research.
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society and is designed to substitute older ones as superstructure/basis, culture/residual structures, ideas/other social facts, and so on. Social structure can be identified on an operational level, “where communication just happens,” and semantics constitute “an observational level, where communication describes itself.”5 This is not a distinction which may be used without difficulty, and has now been subjected to discussion.6 I shall not elaborate on this. The use of these genocide semantics is not arbitrary, but disciplined by social structure, in particular not by the vertical but by the functional differentiation of society. In science, both in historiography and social science, you can find a minimal concept of genocide which is created by merely using the two main distinctions. You need not even have intent of killing.7 This will not be expected in political and legal communication. I found indeed that, in the Armenian case, intent and attribution of the killings to central state authority are very prominent. If you want retribution, if you want restitution, if you want excuses, and if you want the European Community to act on this when considering the membership of Turkey as successor state of the Ottoman Empire, you can barely avoid this type of reasoning. But in addition to this use of genocide and war semantics in different functional spheres of society, there is another question on genocide and functional social structure: What about searching for a distinction of genocide and warfare not as a topic in the discussion that makes use of genocide semantics, but as constituting different spheres of decision-making communication? Is warfare a special sphere of communication as is sports, politics, religion, medicine, the arts, and so on? And does genocidal decision making still remain within the spheres of politics and the economy and maybe religion—in the case of murderous religious movements? 2. C W C: T S S K You may ask this question in different frameworks of differentiation theory. Still, I found only in one of them some conceptual means that
5 6 7
Luhmann 2000a:195; more on this: Luhmann 1996:60–69. See Staeheli 1998; Stichweh 2000. See Barta 1987.
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provide an answer: in Niklas Luhmann’s theory of function systems of society. My impression is that Weberian theory of value spheres and life orders,8 American neofunctionalist differentiation theory,9 and to a lesser degree Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of fields10 are interested in studying those social spheres which are not disputed, but these approaches do not give instructions on how to find new spheres or make spheres less disputed which are already being discussed. Warfare is not a new sphere in the sense that nobody is talking of “warfare and politics” or “warfare and the economic sphere.” There are even sociologists, who are aware of differentiation theory and are writing about it, who tell us that the military is a social sphere of its own,11 but explicit treatment of the questions Why? and How? is nearly absent.12 With a little help from Niklas Luhmann’s theory of society I suggest that the sphere of warfare communication is nowadays differentiated from politics and the economy and is so by a binary code. We learn from Niklas Luhmann that the binary code of politics is to be in state power or not to be and that the economy is coded to have money or monetary equivalent or not to have it.13 My suggestion for the military code is organizational destroying of organized destroy capacity or not doing so. I use the terms military and warfare as synonyms, but we must bear in mind that warfare means not only communication in war times—preparation for war is included. Victory/defeat cannot be the code of warfare – because it is successfully applied as the code of sports,14 – and because we know from military discussion that, in unconventional warfare (which of course must be included!), a state of victory may sometimes simply be absent and cannot be expected. 8 For six spheres see Turner 1992: chapters 4 and 5, and for an elaborate version of seven such spheres (six spheres and a law) Schwinn 1998 and especially his figure on p. 316. 9 See Alexander 1985 and Colomy 1990. 10 Influenced by Weber’s theory, see Bourdieu, in English language from 1969 and 1975 to 1987, 1993: chapters 9 and 15 (sports), and 1995. 11 See Lee 2000:328 and Schimank 2000:154. Both refer to Luhmann’s theory. 12 In the English language I only found an M.A. thesis in the Luhmannian framework (Kirsch 1998), but it does not discuss by what code the military (in Guatemala) is differentiated from other spheres. 13 See newer English language versions of Luhmannian theory of differentiation: Luhmann 1992, 1997, 1998a, b, and 2002. 14 See Schimank 1988.
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Neither is friend/enemy the code of the function sphere of warfare.15 Third party military operations for peacekeeping do not refer to this code. And this distinction allows for extermination of whole populations labeled foe. But data show us that killing communication uses another distinction at least since the turn of the 19th century: which parts of a foe population must be eliminated to destroy organized destroy capacity? There will be enemies alive even after war and even if the war is won. Military communication allows enemies to surrender. Only genocidal killing is intended to eliminate enemies included in the genocidal foe label without considering surrender. To speak of the functional differentiation of society we need no functionalist thinking. In any case the idea of functional differentiation is today no longer linked to the notion of system maintenance.16 And, in my opinion, we do not need society—as Max Weber did not in his theory of value spheres and life orders. When I use the term society, it is for me a synonym for all that is social (and not psychic), that is: all communication which is accessible for each other. For the military I just give a very short sketch of further attributes of functional spheres which have been found in spheres other than the military: (1) Indeed a function can be postulated which may be stated as such: The function of the sphere of warfare is to secure the capability to make collectively binding decisions against organized appropriation of this capability.17 (2) There are at the core of the sphere, as in most other spheres, specialized organizations: military organizations. But as in other spheres of society different types of organizations may continually, or in sporadic events, participate in warfare communication, as for instance paramilitary forces, police units, ships of the merchant fleet, and so on. (3) And there is, as in many but not all spheres of society, a special professionalized workforce.
15 Treml 1995 proposes this code. This seems to be the only explicit use of Luhmann’s theory in order to distinguish the military from other spheres. 16 As it was in the times of Talcott Parsons. 17 This functional statement—“securing the capability to make”—excludes the making of collectively binding decisions (including enforcement), which remains the function of politics and administration.
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3. G A: I W V G K? Let us now examine some types of organizational killing activity that are linked both to warfare and to genocide in genocide semantics. I have listed them from a) to f ) and I have listed in parentheses the non-scientific theories of warfare related to them in warfare discussion: a) terrorism (“guerilla”) b) attacks on village populations (“raids”, “guerilla”, “counterinsurgency”) c) carpet or area bombing (“total war”) d) punishment (“holy war”?) e) killing of weaponless soldiers (“war of extermination”) f ) starvation (“war of extermination”) These theories do not constitute social science, they are self-descriptions of the sphere in which killing is perpetrated, even if academics are authoring.18 My two questions are: (1) Does decision-making communication and self-descriptive theory refer to the code of warfare? (2) How is the very old gendered and life span distinction of – “able bodied men” on the one side and – “women, children, older people” on the other side related to warfare communication? I use data mainly • from killing activities in which German organization participation is reported: – the colonial war against Hereros and Nama after the turn of the last century, – the events in the Ottoman Empire during World War I, – and of course killing in the Second World War. • But for – carpet and area bombing, British and North American air forces are more famous, 18
See for a concept of self-description Luhmann 1984.
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– and frontier raids have been an occupation of Caucasian, Anatolian, and US-American fighting units. A short sketch of my results:19 I have found most of the types of organized killing decision-making and its theoretical self-descriptions referring to the warfare code. There are doubts in what concerns parts of terrorism and of some other types of killings, and there is no referring to the military code in the two overlapping cases of victimizing prisoners of war and (other) covert starving activities. For terrorism a rather narrow concept is used: subnational organizations acting on a target audience (“propaganda in deeds”). There may be some doubtful incidents not in my sample, in which the perpetrators do not claim terror activities,20 where there is no suspicion, and where the audience is not reacting. In cases of indiscriminate murder of village populations, only the decision making on, and the theories of, frontier raids present difficulties in observing a reference to the warfare code.21 There may be no communication of what is expected from the population raided upon. People may be killed even if they do what is expected of them, namely showing the booty to the perpetrators. And there may be no visible organized adversary violence. Cases of punitive measures nearly always have a preventive meaning (even if this meaning may not be the only one), and for that reason punishment constitutes military action. But the deterrent meaning is absent if the suspicion is very abstract as in the Stalinist persecution for “sabotage”22 and in the Nazi labeling of many of the male Jews killed after the German attack on the Soviet Union.23 The Islamic theory of jihad relates to struggle inside the soul of Islamic people but also to armed conflict. There are some Shia texts which seem to allow killing pagan people (not Jews, not Christians) when they do not consent to conversion.24 So part of “holy killing”theory is not only about warfare, but also about politics and religion. For unarmed prisoners of war the code of the military does not 19
The empirical study will be published in 2003. On not claiming see Hoffman 1997 and the subsequent discussion. 21 See Reid 1989 (Caucasian and Anatolian raids) and Utley 1999 (US-American frontier raids on American Indian populations). 22 See Ziemba 1999. 23 For German military communication that denies sabotage of Jews killed by German police forces see the diary of an officer in Hartmann 2001:144. 24 See Bat Ye’or 1985. 20
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mean that killing these prisoners means warfare—destroying them to prevent them from becoming destroy capacity again. Unarmed prisoners do not actually form destroy capacity to be destroyed by referring to the military code. But, of course, it sometimes remains open in decision-making communication when enemy men become prisoners. Also, nowhere in the functional differentiation of our society do questions of legality enter into the code—if not in the legal sphere, the code of which is illegal/legal.25 Questions of the necessity of means of warfare and of proportionality have nowadays become matters of legal reasoning. Illegal warfare—and today this includes unproportional warfare—is warfare, and can be observed in warfare as warfare by looking at coded communication. The legal/illegal code is used elsewhere to label some of these warfare activities. The concept of a war of extermination has been used, if not invented, by Arnold Toynbee, this close observer of atrocities at the end of the Ottoman Empire,26 and has been used by German organizations during World War II.27 I think that this concept both signals (1) that genocidal, that is extra-warfare collective killing, is occurring in times of war and (2) that the same social event, one killing decision, is participating in several, not merely one, functional spheres. So the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing decision—mentioned by Nils Christie—was involved in – military communication (referring to Japanese surrender)28 and
25 Parsons, and Luhmann in his early writings, did not yet assume a differentiated functional sphere of the law. 26 See his book 1922: chapter VII. 27 See Streit 1986 and Gerlach 1999. 28 See even Alperovitz 1995 for the decision making process (a book which stresses the more latent reference to “we’ll show that we are more powerful than the Soviets”). As a colleague from Hiroshima told me, indeed this concrete information (the US being able to drop an atomic bomb) did not reach Japanese authorities and the inhabitants of the two cities before the air strike. But in referring to the military code concrete warning is not necessary. The war between Japan and the US implied the general expectation: “If you (the state of Japan) surrender (without conditions), war killing will be stopped.” The question, if there was reference to Japanese surrender in communication, is different from the other two questions, if the US decision was caused by the will to win the war or if dropping the bombs was necessary to win the war without invasion.
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– economic communication (referring to the monetary costs of prolonged warfare) and – political communication (“we are saving our boys’ lives”). But I am not able to observe any military communication in the German killing of millions of Soviet soldiers formally made prisoners of war, and I am not able to do this in the case of other more or less covert starvation policies in the Ottoman29 and German Empires.30 “Able bodied men” versus “women, children, older people”—this gendered and life span formula is found in many data sources • on World War I in Anatolia • on World War II on the Eastern and Serbian battle fields • and on German colonial wars. The Ottoman and German forces killed first the Armenian or Jewish “able bodied men” using some warfare communication, and then (as very often noted in their own and in victim sources) they killed women, children, and older people, that is they resorted to genocidal communication.31 I think this gendered and life span formula may be considered a secondary code of the military sphere. Killing is considered military only
29
One data source is Riggs 1997, and the most important collection of sources: Kévorkian 1998. 30 There is now much documentation of German communication, from 1941 on, which related the killing of Jews, prisoners of war, and other parts of the Soviet population to German food needs and these food needs to warfare: without the death of many millions in the occupied zone sufficient food for the German core population (civil and military) was considered missing, see Gerlach 1999. But in the sociology of societal differentiation all preconditions of differentiated decision-making are not part of this differentiated sphere: buying heating power for a court’s building is economic and not legal communication, legal communication only, when the terms of the contract are in dispute. 31 See for instance Morgenthau 1918, Ch. XXIV (Armenocide) and data sources on which Browning 1991 relied ( Judeocide in Serbia and the Soviet Union). For the Herero war in German Southwest Africa, Bridgman (1981:171f.) tells us, that the German military used terror to break the will of the enemy (“war of annihilation”) and that they thought that for this reason even children, babes-in-arms, could not be spared. He cites no sources for this. Other authors use sources, in which we see the difference of men on one side and women and children on the other side in German killing communication, see for instance Krueger 1999:116–122. This does not mean that women and children have been spared, but that their killing was not considered war.
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– if able bodied men are killed, which form or may form organized destroy capacity,32 – if a population is killed without discriminating by gender and age and in the same time referring to surrender of the enemy’s organizations, – if women, children, older people are seen with arms or in uniforms. The gendered and life span distinction uses, for plausibility, two other schemas: – The first one is dangerous/not dangerous: Women, children, older people do not form the membership of and aid for organized destroy capacity. Thus, there is no military script for killing them. – The second schema is not dependent/dependent: Women, children and older people seem to be useless users of food and dwellings if their household is not any more provided for by able-bodied men (who are at war, on forced labour, or killed before). Thus, a political and economic script may be employed to kill them. Of course the tough and dangerous versus tender and harmless schema will change when more and more women and children will have become combat soldiers, both regular and guerilla fighters, including suicide bombers.33 We know secondary codes like this code of military communication from other societal spheres. They function as substitutes for the sake of simplification. Government and opposition is such a secondary code in democratic politics and reputation serves as a substitute for truth in the sphere of the sciences.34
32 In Srebrenica (Bosnia) 1995 about 8000 Moslem males were killed by Serbian forces, and women, children, older people were deported. In the trial of the Serbian general Radislav KrstiÆ at the International Tribunal on Crimes in Former Yugoslavia the question was to be resolved: Were the men killed because of a military danger: that they constituted destroy capacity? The non-murderous ethnic cleansing of women, children, older people has been used by the tribunal as an indicator that the killing of the men was not for military reasons either. 33 Gender roles in war are very consistent in the past and present all across world regions (Goldstein 2001), even in guerilla forces. Guevara tells us: “Of course there are not too many women soldiers . . . If captured, they will invariably be treated better than men, no matter how brutal the enemy” (Guevara 1961:58). Even in Israel, a country with conscription for people of both sexes, women soldiers were excluded from combat forces until 2000 (Klein 2001:42). 34 See Luhmann 1990:245–251, 351–354, and 2000b:97–102.
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4. T M B M P S S I now ask the question: Is there a moral basis for the differentiation of warfare from other spheres? Of course warfare is supported by politics. That means: Warfare communication itself does not need to mobilize support by means of moral reasoning. But how is it possible for political communication to mobilize support for a killing activity that, on first glance, is so similar to more detested killing? There was a slogan in the German Peace Movement—“All soldiers are murderers!”— and the Constitutional Court even legalized uttering such verdict. The sociological argument goes: If indeed “all soldiers are murderers,” there are two different kinds of murder activity: murder in just wars and murder in not justifiable wars. There are wars called just wars, and there is just war theory.35 But there is no “just genocidal killing” theory—that is a generalizing theory36—but merely the “dirty hands” argument for individual cases: “We must tolerate the killing of Armenians if we, the American state, want a strong Turkish state in the Near East” (as an American academic put it 80 years ago),37 or: “We must tolerate these killings if we, the German state, want to win the war together with our Turkish ally” (as a German prime minister told us).38 I think it is the theory of just war justifying ius ad bellum which supports the persistence of warfare differentiation. This becomes most clear when war is waged for self defense39 or for humanitarian reasons. There is even “war against genocide”, as some communication went during the Kosovo crisis. And of course many regret that World War II was not a war against genocide, some of them by posing the question: “Why did the Allies not bomb Auschwitz?”40 Can we imagine “genocide against war” or even “genocide against genocide”? 41 35
See Walzer 1992 for a modern liberal view. Kuper 1990 analyzes “theological warrants for genocide,” but fails to distinguish between warfare and genocidal killing and does not prove that religious theories do not only legitimate persecution and risky deportation (which may result in ethnic cleansing, but do not constitute genocide). 37 L.V. Thomas cited by Hovannisian 1986:124. 38 See Gust 1999:73. Morgenthau 1918:329 calls this goals/means-reasoning a “Prussian doctrine.” 39 There is a myth that the Westphalian peace of 1648 institutionalized sovereign states to avoid moralizing wars and that until the Kosovo war in 1999 this has been the dominant paradigm in international relations. At least this latter statement is not true: the League of Nations’ law of warfare did not forbid defensive wars. This difference of aggression and defense is a moralizing one, see for instance Regan 1996:48. 40 See Schwartz 1999 for references. 41 But we can see that, in both liberal and right wing communication, “geno36
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5. I S I come to the end. Let me sketch just two implications for a sociology of genocide: (1) The theory of functional differentiation gives us a clear picture of what is modern in genocide. Raul Hilberg, Hannah Arendt, Zygmunt Bauman, and others have pointed to organizations.42 But there have been organizations in the ancient bureaucratic empires, and the Armenian and Catholic churches are old ones, too. The asymmetric society of organizations that James Coleman stressed43 may be a new phenomenon—but what is its relevance to genocide? The theory that I have sketched points to the fact that genocides occur – when a plurality of organizations do not veto each other – and when several spheres of communication (which symbolize modernity) coincide in serial killing decision-making. (2) Wars and genocide are deliminated topics of research in which causes are attributed to collective serial killing. If you take semantics to deliminate what you try to explain, you rely heavily on non-sociological sources of knowledge: on philosophy and even on philology. To give one example, in order to solve the puzzle, if area bombing is to be treated as warfare or genocide (in the form maybe of nuclear omnicide),44 some say this is not genocide, because the population is not victimized because of “what they are,” but because of “where they are,” meaning in what space they are.45 In the view of differentiation theory, which I have sketched, the criteria are more clear: you have merely to observe decision-making communication to know what you have to explain.46 One proposition explaining area bombing may be: warfare is a moral silencing force. It is not as easy to moralize in warfare communication cide” or “war” become levelling labels: For some liberals (in the American sense of this word) much wartime killing is genocidal and some right wing argumentation goes: all killing is war. 42 Hilberg 1961, Arendt 1963, Bauman 1989. 43 Coleman 1982. 44 See Markusen and Kopf 1995:261. 45 See Fein 1993:21, who does not seem to agree with this philological argument. She uses the warfare code instead. 46 And if you want to explain genocidal killing, you can of course take war as a cause: “War is genocide prone.” See Levene 1993 and Markusen and Kopf 1995:243ff. for this hypothesis.
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as it is in politics, because all wars are considered just wars by those who do the dirty work.47 Ius ad bellum justifies ius in bello for those who fight—notwithstanding all sophisticated legal and ethical reasoning. But then obviously the question remains: what are moral silencing forces in genocidal killing? And does decision-making for killing or street level killing need moral silencing forces? BIBLIOGRAPHY Alexander, J.C. (ed.) (1985) Neofunctionalism. Beverly Hills. Alperovitz, G. (1995) The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth. New York. Arendt, H. (1963) Eichmann in Jerusalem. A Report on the Banality of Evil. London. Aronson, M. (1990) Troubled Waters. The Origins of the 1881 Anti-Jewish Pogroms in Russia. Pittsburgh, Pa. Barta, T. (1987) “Relations of Genocide: Land and Lives in the Colonization of Australia,” in I. Wallimann and M.N. Dobkowski (eds.) Genocide and the Modern Age. Etiology and Case Studies of Mass Death. New York, pp. 237–251. Bat Ye"or (i.e. Y. Masriya) (1985) The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians Under Islam. Cranbury, N.J. Bauman, Z. (1989) Modernity and the Holocaust. Cambridge UK. Bourdieu, P. (1969) “Intellectual Field and Creative Project,” Social Science Information 8, pp. 89–119. —— (1975) “The Specificity of the Scientific Field and the Social Conditions of the Progress of Reason,” Social Science Information 14, pp. 19–47. —— (1987) “The Force of Law: Toward a Sociology of the Juridical Field,” in Hastings Law Journal 38, pp. 805–853. —— (1993) Sociology in Question. London. —— (1995) The Rules of Art. Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field. Cambridge UK. Bridgman, J.M. (1981) The Revolt of the Hereros. Berkeley. Browning, C.R. (1991) Fateful Months. Essays on the Emergence of the Final Solution, revised edition. New York. Coleman, J.S. (1982) The Asymmetric Society. Syracuse, N.Y. Colomy, P. (ed.) (1990) Neofunctionalist Sociology. Aldershot. Dammann, K. (2001) “Die Armenische Katastrophe—Genozid, Pogromwelle, Krieg, Bestrafung oder was sonst? Eine soziologische Untersuchung semantischer Opportunitaetsstrukturen zur Leugnung von Voelkermord”, Bielefelder Arbeiten zur Verwaltungssoziologie 2001/1, Bielefeld. Dammann, K. and Rychlewski, H. (2000) Genocidation of Serial Mass Killings. Saving the Concept of Civil Society From Racist Social Movements. Contribution to the session on Civil Society (directed by Piotr Gli…ski and Piotr Sa∑ustowicz), Polish Sociological Association Meeting, 22nd September 2000, Bielefelder Arbeiten zur Verwaltungssoziologie 2000/2, Bielefeld. Fein, H. (1993) Genocide. A Sociological Perspective, 2nd ed. London. Gerlach, C. (1999) Kalkulierte Morde. Die deutsche Wirtschafts- und Vernichtungspolitik in Weißrußland 1941 bis 1944. Hamburg. Welch 1993 studied the justice motive in five international wars from 1853 to 1982. He found justice motives (from “very weak” to “very strong”) in the communication of 15 of 18 state participants, and this is a conservative assessment. 47
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SOCIETY AS A “MORALITY-SILENCING” FORCE: PRIMO LEVI, EXISTENTIAL POWER, AND THE CONCENTRATION CAMP Nigel Rapport It must be remembered that each of us, both objectively and subjectively, lived the Lager in his own way. Primo Levi (1996:56)
The Holocaust represents an event far from easy to comprehend in habitual terms: it was “written down in its own code,” Zygmunt Bauman suggests at the outset of his provocative essay Modernity and the Holocaust (1989:viii). And yet, he continues, it is a long-overdue sociopolitical task to bring the lessons of the Holocaust to bear on the self-awareness and practice of the institutions and members of contemporary society (not least on the institution and profession of sociology). The Holocaust encourages a radical revision of sociological principles, to encompass for instance “pre-social grounds of moral behavior [and] the origins of the sources of moral norms and their obligatory power” (1989:177). Modernity and the Holocaust thus becomes an instrument through which Bauman calls into question conventional Durkheimian approaches to society and morality. Moral behavior is not born of the operation of society, he contends, nor is it necessarily maintained by the operation of social institutions; society is not essentially a humanizing or moralizing device, and socalled immorality is not necessarily evidence of social pathology. The orthodox sociology of morality, Bauman concludes, can be seen simply to be part of the ideology of modern bureaucracy and worldview with its unmitigated dream of social rationalization. This essay represents an attempt to use the Holocaust similarly— in particular the account of his experiences at Auschwitz as provided I am grateful to audiences in Krakow and Oxford for their comments on earlier, spoken versions of this essay, in particular to Grazyna Kubica and Lynn Rappaport, David Parkin, Roger Goodman, Shirley Ardener, Marcus Banks, Lydia Sciama and Judith Okely.
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by Primo Levi—to throw into relief certain sociological orthodoxies. Bauman ends by arguing for an appreciation of moral patterns being rooted in “existential factors unaffected by contingent social rules of cohabitation” (1989:174). Likewise, I refer to an existentialism which gives on to certain notions of fulfillment concerning the human condition, of individual power and moral perfectibility; I explore “the human existential mode” in the context of the Holocaust so as to offer a critique of conventional sociological theorizing. More precisely, I shall question a sociological tendency to regard the individual actor as put upon rather than putting on, his/her behavior socially-driven rather than self-motivated. In Alfred Schuetz’s phrasing (1972), in orthodox sociology causal or “because” motives predominate over intentional or “in order to” motives where individuals might be seen to be consciously and creatively responsible for determining and effecting thought and action. First, however, I introduce Bauman’s polemic more fully before turning to Primo Levi and the question of existential power. M H “[M]an is a moral being only because he lives in society” and “morality, in all its forms, is never met with except in society,” Bauman quotes from Durkheim in setting out the conventional sociological approach to morality (1989:172–3). Rejecting arguments (such as those that would be made by Bronislaw Malinowski) which related moral norms to individual needs or interests, Durkheim claimed that moral norms must have a social origin and cause. Their purpose, he felt, was to serve the needs of social integration: “[a]ny moral system is destined to serve the continuous existence, and the preservation of the identity, of the society which supports its binding force through socialisation and punitive sanctions” (cited in Bauman 1989:172). To do this, society constrained individual members’ pre-social and a-social predilections, subduing the selfish, blind, cruel, unthinking and threatening rule of their animal passions through coercion. In submitting to society, to its “great and intelligent force,” individuals achieved a “liberating dependence” (cited in Bauman 1989:173). The consequence of identifying morality with society in this way was that, by definition, immorality was anti-social for Durkheim (and
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anomic), and a-sociality amoral. Moral behavior became synonymous with social conformity and discipline: obedience to the norms obeyed by the majority. Which also meant that the evaluation of moral systems was removed from the sociological agenda; unless it were moribund, each society simply had the moral system it needed for its integration and self-maintenance. Bauman describes Durkheim as personally unable to live with the implications of his ideology. For while, as social scientist, he would have had to accept that morality has nothing to do with “natural good”—and that actions were “evil” merely because they were socially prohibited and deleterious—as a patriot he also believed that it was right for French “civilization” (including his own theories) to encompass and replace the cruelties and animalisms of other social systems. Whatever the truth of Durkheim’s contradictory patriotism, it has certainly been the case, according to Bauman, that the twentieth century revealed the impoverishment—both practical and ontological—of a sociology which tied what was morally right relativistically to social systems. More particularly, the Holocaust showed how “morality may manifest itself in insubordination towards socially upheld principles, and in action openly defying social solidarity and consensus” (Bauman 1989:177). While the Nazis on trial at Nuremberg might be said faithfully to have followed their society’s moral norms, still one wanted to (and did) charge them with “legal crimes,” with “immorality,” and to claim that their punishment was more than mere relativistic, intertribal difference or vengeance. As Hannah Arendt elaborated (1964:294–5), the Nuremberg Trials evidenced a claim and a demand that “human beings be capable of telling right from wrong when all they have to guide them is their own judgement”—and even when this may be completely at odds with unanimous opinion around them. And it was indeed the case, she felt, that some individuals succeeded in acting morally “only by their own judgements”: through private judgements which were made without having socially legitimate rules or precedents to follow. The implication of the Holocaust and the Nuremberg Trials which followed was, in short, that there can be a moral responsibility in resisting socialization, and that the authority and binding force of “good” versus “evil” cannot be legitimated by reference to the social powers which sanction and enforce it. “Even if condemned by the group—by all groups, as a matter of fact—individual conduct may still be moral; an action recommended by society—even by the whole
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of society in unison—may still be immoral” (Bauman 1989:178). Furthermore, the coercive power of a society and the plurality and relativity of moral systems among societies does not affect the human ability to tell right from wrong, and should not, we feel, be able to tellingly to affect the human ability to act upon that judgement. This leads one to question whether morality is necessarily a social product, and whether immorality is necessarily an example of faulty or insufficient social management. One is led to consider morality, as Bauman puts it, as “an ability (. . .) grounded in something other than the conscience collective of society” (1989:178). Bauman imagines the moral sense as an existential predisposition which society faces “fully formed,” much as it does “biological constitution, physiological needs or psychological drives” (1989:178). As with the latter “stubborn realities,” society then tries to harness, channel or suppress this predisposition according to its own interests of the time; socialization might be conceived of as the manipulation not production of moral capacity. The moral predisposition is not merely a passive instrument in social hands, however. In certain circumstances an existential morality may be neutralized or suppressed by countervailing social forces, and society succeed in acting as “a ‘morality-silencing’ force” (1989:174). It is also true, notwithstanding, that the moral predisposition can resist, escape and survive socialization processes; “so that at the end of the day the authority and the responsibility for moral choices rests where they resided at the start: with the human person” (Bauman 1989:178). For elucidation of his “existential morality” Bauman turns to Emmanuel Levinas. According to Levinas (1982), human morality may be occasioned by the social fact of being-with-others but this is a “fact” which bespeaks a context of human co-existence or sociality and not of human coercion or training. Being-with-others is a primary and irremovable human condition; it is our existential modality. And morality, for Levinas, emerges naturally from this condition, as a stimulus and a duty, in the form of a sense of responsibility. Responsibility becomes an essential, primary and fundamental structure of subjectivity: the mode of the presence and proximity of the other. “Morality” is the name one gives to the structure of intersubjective relations which a sense of responsibility imbues. There is a “pristine human ability to regulate reciprocal relations on the basis of moral responsibility,” Bauman concludes (1989:198).
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The quality of this moral drive is independent of the social order. Nevertheless, it is something with which the character of the social milieu interacts. For instance, the fact that the moral impulse emerges from being-with-others means that it is felt strongly close at hand but less so as distance prevails; responsibility may be replaced by resentment as proximity is eroded. Hence, it is the case that the danger of moral indifference becomes increasingly acute the more society modernizes: that is, the more society employs rational means— from technology to bureaucracy—to act at a distance with regard to categories of entities it deems alike. Precisely this “rationality,” indeed, characterized the Holocaust whose means was technologically and bureaucratically to erode the proximity between Jews and their persecutors before and during World War II. The Nazis neutralized the moral impact of the human existential mode by removing Jews from the horizon of daily life and making them into an abstract category and stereotype to be dealt with “industrially” and “scientifically.” The mass murder was achieved by way of a virtual absence of spontaneity and a prominence of carefully calculated design, by experts and specialist organizations which eliminated contingency and chance, and depended neither on group emotions nor personal commitments; violence was turned into a rationalized technique, free of emotion. Hence, the propaganda, feeding on itself, actually came to be propagated more vehemently as the numbers of Jews—and their actual “threat”—decreased. This is why the violence against the Jews did not peter out, as with the sporadic, historical pogroms of “psychopaths, sadists, fanatics [and] other addicts of gratuitous[ness]” (Bauman 1989:188), but culminated in the concentration camps. And this is why, finally, Bauman would see the Holocaust as only another face of modern civilization: revealing its hidden possibilities, fulfilling its technological and bureaucratic potential. The Jews did not fit the scheme of the Nazis’ perfect society; their murder was an uninhibited expression of that “civilizing process” which imagined a social milieu of perfect design and control. T H W Michael Bernstein observes (1998) how often the Holocaust or Shoah is employed as an extreme or primal or limiting case (“After Auschwitz, there can be no poetry”). At a time when other absolutes and
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totalizing claims have come to be eschewed, this catastrophe seems to maintain its imaginative grasp, in a variety of discourses, as telos: an ultimate negative truth by which human experience can be subjected to an all-encompassing standard; a “moral marker of absolute evil” (Aschheim 2001:29). Leo Strauss dubbed this reflex the reductio ad Hitlerum.1 I do not mean to employ the Holocaust in this kind of way. I might concur with Bernstein that, “[a]s an actual historical project, devised and carried out by a modern industrialized nation, I believe that the Shoah was, in an almost primal sense, without parallel or precedent” (1998:6), but it can yet be emphasized, as does Bauman, that, historically, the Holocaust was nevertheless continuous with, part and parcel of, a recognizably quotidian or domestic social domain. Bauman talks of the Holocaust as a window, throwing an especially bright light onto certain features of modern social life, rather than a distinct thing-in-itself. What should also be emphasized, however, is the unique, extreme or primal effects that feeling caught in the Holocaust spotlight can have had on the individual. In Primo Levi’s account of “Lager life,” the process by which an individual descends into abysmal depths and rises from them again is portrayed “in an almost primal sense” as a discursive break or paradigmatic shift. “Nothing is true outside the context of the Lager,” Levi wrote; or again: “after Auschwitz, a new shape of knowing invades the mind” (Terrence des Pres, cited in Bernstein 1998:8). But what is the precise nature of that “invading context,” and what does it tell us about the existential nature of individuals living in social milieux? This is what I hope to interrogate further in this essay. We have heard from Hannah Arendt how the Nuremberg Trials evidenced the individual human capacity to make judgements and decisions which were based on their own definitions of the world
1 The main bone of contention in “genocide studies,” as Aschheim explains (2001:29), concerns the extent to which the Holocaust ought to be treated as “radically unique, incommensurably singular.” On the one hand are those who would bestow on the Holocaust “a kind of ‘metahistorical’ status, rendering it an event resistant to rationalization, an ‘interpretative void’ ”; at the least, they would argue, its transgressive enormity endows it with a paradigmatic and universal status whereby it throws light on other genocides but is itself unprecedented. On the other hand are those who feel that resisting a more global and comparative view of ethnogenocide says more about the Holocaust as an ideological totem of “identity politics” than it does about “historiographical and conceptual precision.”
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around them. These might be completely at odds with the unanimous opinion surrounding them at the time, judgements, indeed, beyond socially legitimated rule or precedent as such, and yet they might be morally apposite. In this context I am struck by a particular phrase of Primo Levi’s which I have employed as epigraph to this essay: “both objectively and subjectively, [each individual] lived the Lager in his own way” (1996:56). Even in the depths of the concentration camp, Levi seems to be intimating, it is inevitable both in terms of facts and of perceptions that individual lives will embody individual judgements and decisions. In the remainder of the essay I occupy myself with teasing out the possible implications of this conclusion. They ramify, I shall argue, both into notions of existential power and of existential morality. By focusing on one individual’s written accounts of his Holocaust experiences I would examine the question of individual capacity and will in the very depths of the totalitarian domain. However seemingly offensive the notion, I would consider the extent to which Primo Levi can be said to be responsible for “extreme or primal” experiences in a Nazi concentration camp which were individually willed. I have suggested that in conventional sociological treatments of the behavior of individuals in socio-cultural milieux “because” motives (in Schuetzian terms) are muchly discussed while “in order to” motives barely figure. That is, questions such as how individuals cope with life, how they find meaning in the face of suffering or change, of birth or death, of good fortune or of the quotidian, become questions largely of social determination. Simply put, individual agency is seen to be overwritten, more or less vulgarly, by habitus and hegemony, social structure and institutionalism, hierarchy and history. In Michael Jackson’s designation (1996:22), in the rush to depict “political power” a recognition of “existential power” is lost in translation. In this essay, however, I would turn this around. I locate forces of behavioral determination, of the “writing” of meaningful worlds, in the individual as such. I look through the window of the Holocaust onto the polemical thesis that there are only “in order to” motives, exercised by willful individuals; “because motives” are what people formulate out of bad faith in order to claim that something or someone other than themselves is responsible for their behavior. And finally: might not recognizing this “existential power” also give on to notions of an “existential morality” whereby what is most apposite
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is for individuals to fulfill their capacities for individual interpretations and judgements? Primo Levi writes how for him the experience of the concentration camp was an “education”: “if I had not lived the Auschwitz experience, I probably would never have written anything. I would not have had the motivation, the incentive, to write” (1987:397); “the Lager was [my] university. (. . .) [B]y living and then writing about and pondering those events, I have learned many things about man and about the world” (1987:398). To what extent does Levi’s evincing of “living the Lager in his own way” bespeak a certain existential power—the power, even amid extreme experiences, to live by way of “in order to” rather than “because motives”: in order to accomplish something of his own decision and definition rather than because of someone else’s? P L, L, R W “[I]n the sad event that one of you should survive me, you will be able to say that Leon Rappoport got what was due him, left behind neither debts nor credits, and did not weep or ask for pity. If I meet Hitler in the other world, I’ll spit in his face and I have every right to . . .” A bomb fell nearby, followed by a roar like a landslide. One of the warehouses must have collapsed. Rappoport had to raise his voice almost to a shout: “because he didn’t get the better of me.” (. . .) I have reason to believe that Rappoport did not survive [the frightful situation surrounding the evacuation of the Lager]. So I considered it my duty to perform as best I could the task with which I was entrusted. (. . .) [W]e too are so dazzled by power and money as to forget our essential fragility, forget that all of us are in the ghetto, that the ghetto is fenced in, that beyond the fence stand the lords of death, and not far away the train is waiting. Primo Levi Moments of Reprieve
To reduce the infinite, undefined tangle of the world to a schema may represent a simplification which is necessary for human orientation in complex environments, Primo Levi admits, and for decid-
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ing upon courses of action. But such working hypotheses should not be mistaken for knowledge of reality; for to know is to embrace ambiguity. Certainly, it is ambiguity which colors Levi’s descriptions when he introduces life in the Lager as a set of complex relations which do not reduce to “victims” and “persecutors,” “righteous” and “reprobates,” “good” and “evil.” This he disparages as the world of children—or of Lager newcomers. The totalitarian state can exert a frightful pressure over the individual, Levi continues: the inculcation of terror; the control of information; the ideologizing of socialization, enculturation and everyday life. “Nevertheless,” he concludes, “it is not permissible to admit that this pressure is irresistible” (1996:16). But what does Levi mean to be the precise intent of the phrase “permissible to admit”? That it is true but not ethically enunciatable? That it may be made true or made false according to one’s behavior, but that for the sake of humanity’s moral advance it should not be admitted as even possibly true? Or that it is simply not true in any circumstance? In any event, life in the Lager and under totalitarianism are not quite synonymous, Levi proceeds. For while, in one respect, the Lager reproduces the hierarchical structure of the totalitarian state— inasmuch as “all power is invested from above and control from below is almost impossible”—nonetheless “there never existed a state that was really ‘totalitarian’ from this point of view”; even in the larger Third Reich, or in Stalin’s Soviet Union, “[s]ome form of reaction, a corrective of the total tyranny has never been lacking” (1996:31). However, in the Lager, any such reaction was impossible (at best suicidal), any such a corrective was non-existent, and the power of the representatives of the institution absolute; oppression was extreme and enforcement extremely efficient. After the laceration of family ties, the forced migrations, segregations, humiliations, and malnutrition, individuals were too demoralized to resist. Ignorant of where geographically they were, who they worked for and for what reasons, why frequent selections and “disappearances” occurred, and fastened to immediate needs and happenstance, individuals were unable to form representations of anything bar an enormous edifice of violence and menace which overwhelmed them. More precisely, people in the Lager lived animal lives: without sense of culture, family or country, without their property, clothes or hair, and confined to the present by feelings of hunger, fatigue, cold and fear. They lived without reflecting, reasoning, or even
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experiencing (observing, comparing, remembering, or expressing themselves); they lived neither by acts of their own will, acts for which they were responsible, nor by way of their own cowardice. Here was “the anonymous, faceless, voiceless mass of the shipwrecked” (1994:10). It is for this reason too, Levi concludes, that suicides were more common after the Lagers were liberated than before; in the Lagers, individual freedom did not even extend to such acts of choice as these. This is a totalizing portrayal of non-humanity and deindividuation (“If This Is a Man”. . .), of the non-existence of free will—or any will. However, other details of Levi’s recounting, including his own reactions, ameliorate—at the least ambiguate—such a portrayal. It becomes apparent that the mortification processes of the Lager do not necessarily, or so easily, reduce to nothingness individuals’ senses of self, nor their acts of sense-making. Admittedly, these senses of self appear initially in largely dismal vein: Levi and others feeling shame at witnessing crimes against which their will is too feeble to put up a defence; their feeling guilt at not having enough will to resist being absorbed into the system; their feeling pain at the diminishment of reaction to their being regularly categorized—before work, before sleep, during air-raids—not for what they are but in terms of placement within a group to which they have been assigned. More positively, however, there is too the will and capacity to react, even to rebel, against the tyranny, which Levi recognized in a few. Usually, these were not among the most oppressed individuals in the system, the least well off—“the persecuted, predestined victim, the prostrate man” (1994:10)—but men who possessed what Levi calls “valor” or “virtue.” This possession which “allows them to survive and makes them unique,” and which is most important for my purposes here, Levi is careful to distinguish from the understanding of those qualities normally “approved of by common morality” (1994:10). In terms of the latter, it sometimes seemed to Levi that “the worst survived, the selfish, the violent, the insensitive, the collaborators” (1996:63). And there is a further subtlety here. For while “valor” and “virtue” may be understood as both referring to an individual’s “worth,” Levi makes a distinction between them. It is true that both those with valor and with virtue exhibited the power to react against the mortifications of the Lager and, in a sense, to continue to exist as themselves within it, but those with valor normally died. For they insisted not only on maintaining an identity, but also a dignity. They insisted on “trading blows” with “the entire world” that the Lager
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represented, seeking to give as good as they got, and in achieving this dignity they paid a high price: usually they were “defeated” and killed (1996:110). The virtuous lived, meanwhile, and “found reprieve,” because, while losing their dignity, they still managed to exert leverage upon their present hell so as to gain perspective on it, contextualize it and look at it askance. As Levi puts it, they drew strength from elsewhere: from music, from a feral vitality, from cunning, from love, from legend, from superstition and belief. Faith in a wider, comprehensible universe, for example, whether Jewish, Christian, Zionist or Marxist, helped situate the Lager and put its experiences in their place. Moments of Reprieve was the title Primo Levi gave to the volume where he recounted the stories of those with the valor or the virtue for self-survival: Tischler, Grigo, Wolf, Cesare, Rumkowski, Bandi and, as above, Rappoport. But what of his own survival? Here, Levi is as ambiguous as before. “Each individual is so complex an object,” he begins (1996:43), “that there is no point trying to foresee his behavior, all the more so in extreme situations; and neither is it possible to foresee one’s own behaviour.” “[O]ur future depends heavily on external factors, wholly extraneous to our deliberate choices, and on internal factors as well, of which we are, however, not aware” (1987:397). Certainly, Levi had no religious faith, and as an atheist he resisted the one occasion he was tempted to pray (before a final selection process at Auschwitz) because he did not feel he could “change the rules [by which he had lived his life and played his game] at the end of the match,” or without feeling shame later were he to survive (1996:118). He survived, Levi concludes, largely by luck (by his having scarlet fever and being unable to walk when the Lager remnants were force-marched away by the Nazis just before the end of the war); also by his interest in the human spirit, by his stubborn insistence on always recognizing his companions as people not things, and by his will to survive and to recount what he had witnessed and endured. To elaborate somewhat, when he first published If This Is a Man in 1947 and The Truce in 1963, Levi felt he had performed the only “task” which he found clearly defined for him to undertake. Here were accounts of things he had experienced which seemed imperiously to demand of him that he tell them. Therefore, he had “testified,” assuming thereafter that he would return home, and to his profession as a chemist. Moreover, he had written in the style of a chemist:
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the lucid scientific witness, filing his weekly report on a monstrous experiment to which he found himself an unwitting survivor, with precision and concision. However, Levi found that a host of details kept returning to his mind surrounding the fundamental features of Auschwitz which he had described; indeed, that of his “two years of life outside the law” (1994:11) he had not forgotten a single thing. People especially kept coming to mind, asking him to grant them “the ambiguous perennial existence of literary characters” (1994:10). Hence, as the years passed, writing made a space for itself in his life, eventually taking over completely. But then Levi’s words also give on to another picture of the place of writing in his life. For he explains that his need to write the story of his experiences was so strong that he began it during his time within the Lager itself; despite the dangers, and even though he had to destroy his notes immediately, he found himself working towards a refined receptivity to all he experienced—including sentences in languages he did not know. This receptivity was not only a symptom of the time, he explains (of culture-shock, we might say), but also a vital factor in his salvation. For, “[t]he aims of life are the best defence against death” (1996:120), and aiming to write and to testify gave him a goal, a future life-project which cognitively displaced him from the totality of the Lager; it afforded him an elsewhere. Hence, Primo Levi can even conclude that the sum total of his brief but tragic Lager experiences and the longer, complex writerwitness ones is “clearly positive” (1987:398). Overall, he is richer and surer than he would otherwise have been: he had “challenged and defeated Auschwitz and loneliness” (1997:154). Levi’s words clearly resonate with those he describes in Moments of Reprieve as “Rappoport’s Testament” (1994), and in their affirmation they also have a Nietzschean ring: “What does not kill me makes me strong” (1979). But even here the ambiguity does not go away. In order to resist an infernal order such as the Nazis, Levi counsels, one needs a very solid moral foundation: this is the “elsewhere” of valour and virtue which displaces the self of the individual from the present. Without this, one succumbs; even as a victim one becomes corrupted and part of the system. In his writing, therefore, Levi always attempted to repress hatred in himself, seeing it as a Nazi way; instead, he counted upon reason and discussion as supreme instruments by which progress and justice might be effected. And
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yet, there is a sense in which one cannot, indeed must not, understand or rationalize what happened, for this is to explain it, contain it and in part justify it; here are inhuman words and deeds—counterhuman—which are without precedent and without rationality, and which must remain so. The violence of Hitlerian Germany, Levi concluded, was useless and without logic, succeeding in causing pain for its own sake and in effecting a schismogenesis of violence which continued unabated into the present. Reason, art and poetry were of little use for understanding a place where they have been eradicated. Levi committed suicide himself in Turin in 1987. T C C V B L In his phrasing, Levi often comes tantalizingly close to endorsing Bauman’s portrayal of an existential morality. To resist the infernal order of the Nazis one needed “a solid moral foundation,” he explains, but the “virtue” and the “valor” to which he refers are not necessarily what would be recognized as such in “received morality.” He himself survived his two years “outside the law,” in Auschwitz, by insisting on recognizing his companions “as people not things.” But what kind of evidence can the ambiguities of Levi’s life and writings represent for an elucidation of existential power? In one reading, they amount to a rather conclusive indictment of my claim that: “there are only ‘in order to’ motives and to claim otherwise is bad faith; ‘because motives’ are what we formulate in order to pretend that something or someone other than ourselves is responsible for what we feel, think, say, or do.” In the Lager, according to Levi at one point, totalitarian control was so complete that people were mostly reduced to animals: robbed not only of the will to act but even the capacity to react. Those few who did manage to react almost committed suicide: they were up against the entire system and were summarily extirpated. Those few who survived did so by chance, but then had to live with their shame. What defences can I mount against this reading? The first is to reiterate once more my epigraph from Levi that “both objectively and subjectively, individuals lived [and, one might add, died] the Lager in their own way.” Only post facto and in certain essentialist constructions do “World War Two” and “Auschwitz” become singular
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things-in-themselves. And this defining of them as singular is, in an important sense, a limiting of them if it obscures the myriad of individual activities and circumstances that went to make “them” up, and the manifold ways in which “they” were experienced. Within the place “Auschwitz,” then, hundreds of thousands of different lives were lead and lost, made up of countless experiences and interactions (cf. Young 1988). To amass these is to continue the Nazis’ process of dehumanization, of massification; in other words, each individual lives his or her own tragedy of dehumanization, makes their own sense of it, and possibly dies their own death from it. But then, “it” is not really “it” either; one does not get very far if one replaces an institution, “Auschwitz,” by a process, “dehumanization,” if it is still something that all individuals go through, even if it is in their own individual ways. And from the Nazi point of view, the difference is negligible, irrelevant. To the extent that the Nazi desire is to exterminate a group or category of people whom they designate as the same, it is irrelevant if the individuals placed within that category feel themselves different, and continue to experience such difference up to the point of their extermination. Hence the importance of Levi’s recounting of those in Auschwitz who exhibited “valor” and “virtue”: those who refused to be dehumanized, or refused to give in. Among these people, will is most easily witnessed still. More precisely, here were individuals able to look askance on the immediate present, on their immediate contexts, by seeing them in the light of a broader, ongoing life-narrative or “project,” which provided them with an “elsewhere”: a means of removing themselves cognitively from the world, the total institution which the Nazis would impose on them. Levi’s acts of testimonial writing, beginning immediately in the Lager, represent one kind of this self-promise of futurity. Others’ strategies (which may sometimes seem in terms of contemporary social moralities to be signs of selfishness, duplicity, insensitivity or violence) allowed them to do likewise: to get the better of the selection processes and those administering them. Here were individual acts and frames of mind by whose valor dignity was maintained, and by whose virtue survival was achieved. And yet, Levi insists that such valor and virtue, while representing inner qualities of the individual—and within the grasp also of those who let themselves become “anonymous, faceless, voiceless, prostrate” by the “loss of their family ties, the forced migrations, segregations, humiliations, and the malnutrition”—are qualities beyond
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individual awareness and control. But this insistence, I must insist, is a rhetoric on Levi’s behalf, a trope: a modesty through which to explain his own survival and that of others, in the context of the enormous loss of life, without claiming any special intentionality on the part of the survivors or lack of it on the part of the dead. Hence, Levi’s depiction of unconscious determinism, of “internal factors of which we are not aware,” is belied by his own extreme selfconsciousness, both at the time and after, and that of numerous others whom he describes. Of course, Levi could still argue that how one person comes to be self-aware (and another not) is beyond his or her awareness, but this seems to be a path to possible infinite regress and without final resolution; either one accepts that—insofar as we understand the roots of human consciousness at all—the fact that we are self-aware means that we can make ourselves aware of how we come to have that self-awareness (as I would), or one posits an initial unawareness or unconsciousness beneath which no awareness can reach (as Levi seems to). These are different givens. Suffice it to say that, at least for my case here, it is arguable that whatever his protestations to the contrary the individuals whom Levi describes as valorous and virtuous knew where their valor and virtue, their strength, their will to preserve their integrity or their lives, “came from”: they knew themselves and the sources of their identity. But I am still faced by Levi’s broader insistence that individual futures are determined—influenced at least—by “external factors, wholly extraneous to their deliberate choices.” Whatever the valor or the virtue of particular individuals, the conditions of the Lager— the possibly random selection procedures, the caprice of the absolutely powerful kapos and other Lager satraps—were non-rational, unfathomable and ungainsayable, and hence represented circumstances outwith the effects of individual intention and outwith their control. The inmates of the Lager were “helpless before a catastrophe that had no more relation to their characters, motives or actions than an earthquake” (Dwight Macdonald, cited in Wheatcroft 2000:10); their experience was more of a natural “horror” than a human “tragedy.” Here, as Levi concludes, was violence beyond logic. Such violence, it seems to me, is the limiting case where the act of suicide (rather than the idea of suicide) represents the only “in order to” motivation whereby the individual can escape the clutches of prior or encompassing circumstances and will his or her own way forward. Where interaction between people is such that one party
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treats another in a completely arbitrary way, even to the extent that their life might be forfeited, then the only possible intentioned action still available to the threatened individual (the Lager inmate, the slave-laborer, the dehumanized subaltern) is to take his/her own life before that eventuality transpires. These are extreme circumstances, I suggest. Janina Bauman (2000) has argued that one should recognize in the suicides of the Lager (and the Ghetto) the exerting of a will which makes all the difference in the world to the process of dehumanization: to choose the way and time of one’s dying is to resist the oppressor, escape humiliation, and insist on one’s dignity. Nevertheless, what damage does the possibility and the practice of some human beings subjecting others to events of such inhuman randomness do to the thesis of this essay? If one can envisage, indeed, read accounts of, conditions where individuals are free to commit suicide but nothing besides then this seems as if a tremendous amount in their lives does occur because of the intentions of others—however the circumscribed individuals might see themselves and the projects of their lives. Moreover, if one allows for “because” motives here, as one seems to—“this individual lives his or her uncertain life in Auschwitz [on a Roman galley, as a savage ‘Indian,’ as a battered wife] because of the whim of their gaolers’—then when is it definitively not the case that because motives do not at least represent a component in individuals’ decisions? To counteract this line of argument I have to claim that individuals are always responsible for the sense they make of their lives, for the meanings they live by, and that what is special, and unique, about the circumstances of “violence beyond logic” described above is that they are the only circumstances in which the sense, the meanings, which individuals make of their lives and by which they intend to lead them is irrelevant. In all other circumstances, interaction amounts to a formal negotiation (a negotiation in terms of symbolic forms) by which individual meanings and orders come to be aligned one with another. In the Nazi Lager, exceptionally, one party to the interaction is not interested in negotiation but only in obliteration of the other. T “D V” E L According to Zygmunt Bauman’s reading of Levinas, a sensory beingwith-others engenders among human beings a sense of mutual moral
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responsibility; it was the case of the Nazi machine that it succeeded in replacing this being-with-others (with Jews) with distance—physical, categorial, social. The Holocaust dealt out death bureaucratically and rationally. But one might be led to question this notion of distance in reading accounts of the Lager; for here, surely, was violence and murder close at hand; guards and kapos must have found the death and decomposition of inmates sensorially unavoidable. One wants, perhaps, to bring back into the picture the gratuitous violence of “psychopaths, sadists [and] fanatics” that Bauman seeks to play down, and to emphasise the irrationality and nescience at the core of Nazi eugenic “science.” One wants to say that what most characterized the experience of the Lager for individuals immersed in it was an arbitrariness: a “violence beyond logic,” as Levi puts it. The further suggestiveness contained in Levi’s phrasing is its intimation of a violence which is “within” logic. Violence per se was not what made the conditions of the Lager extreme so much as a kind of violence which was indiscriminate and random. I would call the latter a “nihilistic violence,” one determined to explode the possibility of quotidian routine and perception, as distinct from a “democratic violence” potentially contained within the logic of everyday life (cf. Rapport 2000). Let me explore this a little further. For Anthony Wallace (1964; and cf. Rapport 1993:182–91), the best term to describe the relationships between individuals which make up the day-to-day routines of ongoing socio-cultural systems is “equivalence structures”; elsewhere I have referred to them as “talkingpartnerships” (1987:170–7). Individuals manage to organize themselves, align their behaviors into reliable and joint systems of trust, without developing uniform cognitive maps or possessing equivalent motives, by virtue of their behaviors’ equivalency: by coming to possess sets of equivalent behavioral expectancies of one another (cf. Devereux 1978). Individuals learn that, under certain circumstances and in specific situations, others’ behavior is predictable and can be habitually and confidently interrelated with actions of their own. Hence, Wallace calls such joint systems “contracts”: things which individuals establish for the mutual facilitation of their separate strivings and which amount to structured wholes. What is vital for the success of these behavioral contracts, to repeat, is not so much agreement between individuals concerning what is taking place—or any such mutual understanding or homogeneity of this kind—as expectability. Hence, the socio-cultural system that is constituted by these behavioral contracts can amount to an
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“organization of diversity.” Indeed, Wallace argues that it is difference that is likely to be necessary—a difference of opinion concerning what the relationship is about and why it is taking place—for the relationship to continue. Whether “necessary,” in a functional sense, or not, I would argue that such difference—a diversity of individual worldviews which are maintained by the exchange of “the same,” shared symbolic forms—is the existential norm (cf. Rapport 1993). However different and diverse may be the interpretations of individuals who partake of the contractual relations of exchanging common social forms, so long as each can predict, each can expect, certain behaviors from the other, then the relationship is able to continue—as can the underlying diversity. Expectability means that each individual is able to continue to find the behavior of the other(s) understandable, trustworthy, meaningful. This is true even to the extent that had each understood the actual meanings of the other, then they each might have felt violated: felt that the sense each was making of their relationship, and the way each was using it towards the fulfillment of an individual life-project, amounted to doing violence to the other’s sense of self and the world. This, however, does not ordinarily become apparent. The “friendly ambiguities” of language, as Edward Sapir puts it, are such that it is normally the case that each individual manages to “reinterpret the behaviour which he has under observation in terms of those meanings which are relevant to his own life” (Sapir 1956:153; cf. Rapport and Overing 2001). This violence, therefore, I should like to describe as of a “democratic” kind. For if the sine qua non of the social contract is individuals” possession of mutual expectations which allow them to orient their behavior to one another in a particular relationship or kind of relationship, then the stability of such expectations is not threatened by a violent diversity of individual interpretations which do not breach the civil surface of the exchange. At the same time, “democratic violence” recognizes the norm for individual differences—for the individual construction of a diversity of possibly incompatible and mutually contradictory life-projects and world-views—to live beneath an ambiguous surface of social-structural calm and within a form of behavioral norms which individuals continue to share. In short, democratic violence may be defined as one which does not deny or negate the possibility and ability of fellow-interactants to go on interpreting and meaning as they choose,
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even while the meanings which each construes in the interaction might be found to violate the others. Democratic violence amounts to an appreciation of the “ordinary violence” of everyday life and exchange, “a sort of constant” around which the social is organized (Aijmer 2000:9); an appreciation of the extent to which “beliefs and blindnesses,” in the novelist’s words (Compton-Burnett 1969:30), are the substance of interpersonal relations. There always is such violence in the everyday inasmuch as there always is individual diversity and creativity existing within, beneath and through social structure. Indeed, drawing on the Camusian “rebel” (and, more broadly, the gratuitousness of the existential imagination [after Sartre and Nietzsche]), Edmund Leach depicts the doing of violence to existing social structures, to current norms, as basic to individual creativeness; and this latter as “the very essence of being a human being” (1977:19). In short, while the very term “violence” may be commonly associated with the breakdown of civil order and exchange and a breach of media of civility (cf. Stanage 1974:232), by distinguishing, nevertheless, between the outward form of civil exchange and its inward content, one can reach a point of accommodation between the violence of universal and ubiquitous individual creativity on the one hand and the civility of social structure on the other. Through an appreciation of the distinction between symbolic form and its individual, meaningful interpretation, there is a way in which this violence and violation might be approached as “democratic.” A “nihilistic violence,” on the other hand, I would define as behavior which disorientates others in the relationship such that the latter’s acts of prediction and interpretation are made both impossible and irrelevant. This may be deliberate or non-deliberate, but nihilistic violence breaches the surface of civil exchange, breaks the shared forms of behavior, such that orientation towards it by others, and their development of stable expectations of trust with regard to it, are prevented (cf. Johnson 1982:8). Violence of a nihilistic kind is that to which others cannot adapt, behavior which others cannot expect or predict and find meaningful in some way; it makes mutual expectation and a diversity of individual interpretation impossible. Nihilistic violence further denies the possibility of a civil relationship of mutual predictability and orientability by violating any practicable norms of exchange. This denial or negation may take a variety
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of forms and degrees. Random sounds, silences and actions will preclude viable interactions of a routine and ongoing kind, and hence deny others the opportunity of making sense, of making meaningful interpretations of the particular exchange. But then maiming or killing will preclude viable interaction and meaningful interpretation henceforward and in general. Hence, a sliding-scale of nihilistic violence may be conceptualized, the severity adjudged in terms of the intended and/or received injury to others’ ability to make sense, to create meaning, at that time and henceforward. In this depiction, violence per se might be morally neutral, a fact of the individual (creative) interpretation of social exchange even within the ambit of the apparently orderly, habitual and routine (cf. Marx 1976:110). Furthermore, violence need not be tied only to particular forms of behaviors and excepted from others: violence does not correspond to brutality or physicality or the absence of empathy, for instance; violence is not precluded by the presence of empathy or the expression of love, per se (cf. Rapport 1987:191–3). Rather the emphasis is on violence as an “experienced reality” (Aijmer 2000:3): as that which gives on to or negates a diversity of meaningful experiences. Democratic violence is that which can encompass a diversity of individually created meanings; nihilistic violence is that which negates it. As Iris Murdoch writes suggestively (1970), the definition of “goodness” in a “moral society” is perhaps not so much to be found in the doing of good to others as in the abstaining from doing others harm: abstaining from visiting one’s own desires onto them so that they may come into their own, and visiting one’s own desires only on oneself. C O’ O: M I P Freedom in the positive sense [is] the maximum power for all members of human society alike to make the best of themselves. T.H. Green (cited in Hurka 1993:23)
Moral arguments, according to Thomas Hurka (1993:5), have tended to concern what people should and should not do to others; they have had less to say about what they might choose for themselves.
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“Perfectionism,” however, represents a submerged line of argument with a long and continuous history which suggests that each human being should develop their nature. Perfectionism gives a central place to self-regarding duties, telling each person to develop their own talents, their own rationality and capabilities—and help others do similarly. It is immoral to hinder others from fulfilling their potential and to squander one’s own. What “individuals developing their nature” precisely means has been variously answered. Aristotle emphasized rationality, Rousseau temperament and character, Kant a good will, Hegel the realization of Spirit, Nietzsche personal power. But in a way this variety is grist to the mill of the philosophy; perfectionism argues for the morality of individuals making the best of themselves and describes the realization of this as freedom but it cannot prescribe what this might entail. Perfectionism prescribes governments with the role of promoting those conditions whereby individuals might focus on selfdevelopment, and also of maintaining that normative environment whereby individuals are at liberty to fulfil themselves to the extent that they do not infringe on others. Moreover, given the innate variety entailed by perfectionism, this need not be a zero-sum game; one person’s kind of perfection need not preclude others. The foundation of perfectionism is that there exists a potential in human nature for self-fulfillment which can serve as an ethical bedrock, which can ground a free-standing morality. It is here that I find significant overlaps with the reflections on the Holocaust that we have encountered in this essay: with Bauman’s and Arendt’s analyses of a morality beyond society which springs up from an existential predisposition to make moral judgements; with Primo Levi’s account of individuals living distinctive Lagers and drawing from elsewhere a moral strength to remain themselves. I am reminded in particular of a character from Auschwitz whom Levi names “Alberto” (1997:142) who was much loved for the way in which, sentimentally and “miraculously he had remained free” in the Lager. Here was an individual “of good and strong will” whose “words and acts were free: he had not bowed his head, he had not bent his back.” For Alberto, “renunciation, pessimism, discouragement were abominable and culpable: he did not accept the concentration camp universe, he rejected it both instinctively and with his reason, and he did not let himself be tainted by it.” In an
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important sense Alberto’s strength was a moral act, Levi concludes (1996:142), for: A gesture of his, a word, a smile had a liberating virtue, they were a rip in the rigid fabric of the Lager, and all those who had contact with him felt this, even those who did not understand his language.
Being “one’s own person,” in short, may inspire others to be likewise. Living one’s own life is unselfish in another way besides, I would contend. For, self-centeredness, in the form of self-knowledge and self-motivation, may be regarded as necessary for the enabling of social relations. Controlling oneself and respecting oneself, reflecting upon the project of one’s life, provides the possibility of forming intentionally reciprocal (as distinct from merely habitual or rote) relations with others. Self-centeredness and self-knowledge also seem to me positive and necessary things for social relations because they provide a basis for equitability. As Alan Gewirth has recently argued in more logistical terms (1998), such “self-fulfillment” can be seen to possess an inherent moral respectability: inasmuch as the endorsement of one’s own rights to a prospective and purposive agency—to developing one’s potentialities and satisfying one’s desires free from arbitrary restriction—must be seen to entail endorsing the rights of others and committing oneself to universalist standards. An interpersonal morality, in short, of individual agents living under conditions of mutual entitlement may be seen to derive from inner-oriented fulfilment as much as outer-influenced denial. Individuals grant inherent dignity to the lives of others and accord them respect because they do so to their own. Being on their own journeys of fulfillment—of self-betterment, of becoming other to themselves—individuals imagine themselves possibly as the others they meet and treat them accordingly. An individual’s individuality, and his or her awareness of it, thus connects him or her to others. In order for there to be a “Werelationship,” as Schuetz once asserted, there must first be an “I”; for, “[e]verything I know about your conscious life is really based on my knowledge of my own lived experience” (1972:106). On this basis, individuals can nonetheless achieve “sympathetic participation” in one another’s lives through an awareness of their different streams of consciousness, their “subjective contexts of meaning,” proceeding side by side (1972:166). Even granting the “bodily givenness” of faceto-face interaction, any such mutuality of perspectives will be subject
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to manifold shadings, but there is still the possibility of what Schuetz termed “true” and “pure” meetings. What do I say, then, finally, about an individual’s control over his or her life, about the relationship between self consciousness and independence, and the balance of “in order to” motives and “because’? Self-knowledge, self-centeredness and self-motivation may enable one to resist deflection in one’s life-course, to react against external pressures with valor or virtue, but does it allow one to ignore what is beyond oneself—the environment of prior conditions, sociocultural circumstances, and of others? Yes and no. Yes, inasmuch as the meaning of this beyond is not given and not essential: the individual decides what these forms (words, norms, people, actions) mean. No, inasmuch as the individual can be forced into taking account of, and attempting to make meaning out of, certain forms which are directed at him or her. Acknowledging nihilistic violence to be behavior which prevents individuals from pursuing their life-projects (by making it impossible for them to see their environments as orderly and meaningful, or making their interpretations of meaning irrelevant to their life-projects by random and summary extirpation), thus forcefully delineates the role of otherness beyond the self in individuals’ successful effecting of their life-projects. And yet, all is experienced within the life-world of the interpreting individual: between form and individual there is an “internal relation” (Winch 1970:107). External forms affect the individual’s life-world, but there is no necessary, direct, singular or essential effect that they have within it. Their significance remains subjective, and for this reason, I would conclude, their nature is subjective too. It is in this way that I understand Sartre’s summary that: “the secret of a man is (. . .) the limit of his own liberty, his capacity for resisting torture and death” (1947:499). Or, to rehearse Levi’s words once more, since external forms (say, circumstances in the Lager) come to be subjectively experienced and lived, the forms (the Lager) can be said to become objectively distinct in each experiencing. This is what enables individuals to assert a sense of humanity (regarding themselves and others) even in the most dehumanizing situations. And this is why, as Jackson has put it (1998:203), individuals are not themselves reduced to nothingness even when their capacity to affect the external world has been rendered negligible: they are still responsible for constructing and reconstructing the reduced world in their imaginative interpretations of it.
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In sum, there are no (necessary, direct, singular, essential) “because” motives because the affecting forms only take shape, only become particular things with particular effects, when particular individuals apprehend them. E The Schuetzian formulation of “in order to” that I have been employing as trope in this essay, in forming an argument concerning lifeprojects, existential power and morality, has brought me to the conclusion that, in extremis, in the case of the nihilistic violence of the concentration camp, to say that only “in order to” motives exist (and that “because” motives are bad faith) must take into account the power of others to force themselves on an individual’s attention and elicit a reaction—however subjective or idiosyncratic, or imaginative, or constructive, or negatory the latter comes to be. Individuals are always responsible for their acts of interpretation, for the ways their lives become meaningful—and hence come to be per se—but violent others have the power to force such acts upon them, or even to kill them and make further acts of becoming impossible. Zygmunt Bauman was keen to stress that, however rash and reckless, however fatal the consequences, resisting evil was always a possible choice (1989:207). Even though both societal morality and the logic of selfpreservation seemed to point in the opposite direction, there were those who did resist and did show that nihilistic violence can be defied even if not ignored. What I would point up, in closing, is the routine and mundane nature of the battles against deinidividuation which are to be fought, far from the heroics of the society and the sociology of the concentration camp. Individuals routinely have identities foisted upon them by others, attempting, willy nilly, to press them into the matrices of certain sociocultural (religious, ethnic, local, economic, occupational) categories or groups. These massificatory practices are attempts, in Anthony Cohen’s words (1994:180), to colonize and occupy individuals’ consciousnesses; and they are practices, moreover, to which sociology has been particularly prone. For they are perpetrated every time a categorial mask, a label, a collective identity, a symbolic form is caused to stand for the meaning an individual would impart to his or her life, and the particularities of their
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words and actions. Perhaps it is to excuse themselves the bad faith of such practices that social scientists have also seen fit to exaggerate individuals’ vulnerability to external forces—to treat “because” motives in the absence of “in order to” ones—and to underestimate individual resilience. Instead, Cohen stresses, social scientists might make deliberate efforts “to acknowledge the subtleties, inflections and varieties of individual consciousness which are concealed by the categorical masks which we have invented so adeptly. Otherwise, we will continue to deny people the right to be themselves, deny their rights to their own identities” (1994:180). This would be both a moral venture—sociology contributing to a decolonization of the human subject, a democratization and liberalization of the institutional forms (social-scientific writings as much as polities) within which individuals lead their lives and engage in their life-projects—and also a methodological venture—affording a better comprehension of institutions (their formations, workings and evolutions) as informed by the consciousnesses of the individuals who animate them in particular situations and at particular times. BIBLIOGRAPHY Aijmer, G. (2000) “Introduction,” in G. Aijmer and J. Abbink (eds) Meanings of Violence: Symbolism and Structure in Violent Practice. Oxford: Berg. Arendt, H. (1964) Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Viking. Aschheim, S. (2001) “A Review of the Journal of Genocide Research,” Times Literary Supplement 5145: 29–33. Bauman, Z. (1989) Modernity and the Holocaust. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Bernstein, M. (1998) “Homage to the extreme: The Shoah and the rhetoric of catastrophe,” Times Literary Supplement, 4953: 6–8. Cohen, A.P. (1994) Self Consciousness. London: Routledge. Compton-Burnett, I. (1969) Mother and Son. London: Panther. Devereux, G. (1978) Ethnopsychoanalysis. Berkeley: University of California Press. Gewirth, A. (1998) Self-Fulfillment. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hurka, T. (1993) Perfectionism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jackson, M. (1996) “Introduction. Phenomenology, Radical Empiricism, and Anthropological Critique,” in M. Jackson (ed.) Things As They Are: New Directions in Phenomenological Anthropology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ——. (1998) Minima Ethnographica: Intersubjectivity and the Anthropological Project. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Johnson, C. (1982) Revolutionary Change. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Leach, E. (1977) Custom, Law and Terrorist Violence. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Levi, P. (1987) If This Is a Man and The Truce. London: Abacus. ——. (1994) Moments of Reprieve. London: Abacus. ——. (1996) The Drowned and The Saved. London: Abacus. ——. (1997) The Periodic Table. London: Abacus. Levinas, E. (1982) Ethics and Infinity: Conversations with Philippe Nemo. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.
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Marx, E. (1976) The Social Context of Violent Behaviour. A Social Anthropological Study of an Israeli Immigrant Town. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Murdoch, I. (1970) The Sovereignty of Good. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Nietzsche, F. (1979) Twilight of the Idols. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Rapport, N. (1987) Talking Violence: An anthropological interpretation of conversation in the city. St. John’s: ISER Books, Memorial University of Newfoundland. —— (1993) Diverse World-Views in an English Village. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Rapport, N. and Overing, J. (2001) Social and Cultural Anthropology: The Key Concepts. London & New York: Routledge. Sapir, E. (1956) Culture, Language and Personality. Berkeley: University of California Press. Sartre, J.-P. (1947) The Republic of Silence. New York: Harcourt Brace. Schuetz, A. (1972) The Phenomenology of the Social World. London: Heinemann. Stanage, S. (1974) “Violatives: Modes and Themes of Violence,” in S. Stanage (ed.) Reason and Violence. Totowa: Littlefield & Adams. Wallace, A. (1964) Culture and Personality. New York: Random House. Wheatcroft, G. (2000) “Horrors beyond tragedy,” Times Literary Supplement, 5071: 9–10. Winch, P. (1970) The Idea of a Social Science, and its Relation to Philosophy. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Young, J. (1988) Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
ANSWERS TO ATROCITIES1 Nils Christie S 11 So much changed on September 11th this past year. This was not only because of our knowledge of the four hijacked airplanes or our imaginations of what must have occurred inside them during the last minutes of their flight, not because of the two New York towers that collapsed, and not because of the some 4,000 human beings exterminated. These were atrocities, yes, but nothing special compared to the inhuman history of humans. These were nothing compared to World War I and II, nothing compared to Auschwitz, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Dresden, the Gulags, Vietnam or Cambodia. Nothing. Why then has something changed? Because it did not only hit New York or the USA, it hit us, the West. It came out of the skies, beautifully shining in the sun, so elegant. Maybe the shock was a contrast between form and content. It ought to have come out of the dark misty underground. The earth ought to have opened, and out should have emerged the bony arm of vengeance, an arm and a hand from those that have not taken part in our grand banquet, the one hundred years of material progress in the Western world. Revenge and a new balance would have been easier to understand. I can still remember the day I got to know that I had received a permanent job at the university. It was such a great joy that I immediately thought a nuclear war would break out. Life in heaven should be balanced somehow. Yet what about us now? The dark forces have appeared. All our defense systems could not hinder them. Outside Fortress Europe,
1 New parts were added to this article December 2001 during a seminar in the honor of Tony Peters, University of Leuven, and at seminars and also heated public discussions in Oslo during Spring 2002. I am most grateful for the many stimulating comments I have received. I am particularly grateful to Hedda Giertsen, Hanne Marie Greve, Ragnhild Hennum, Kristin Hobson, Monika Platek and Lill Scherdin for stimulating comments.
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outside the USA—World Power Number 1—someone is perhaps seeking revenge. President Bush has an explanation other than the bony arm arising up from the ground. I quote from his much-celebrated Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American people on September 20: Americans are asking, why do they hate us? They hate what we see right here in this chamber—a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms—our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.
Hand in hand with this interpretation of the events comes a dark terminology. On December 5, the President states: The evil ones still intend to harm America. ... Now is the time for the free world to stand up and defend the freedoms that these evil ones hate.
With these words from the President, we are back on familiar ground in criminology. Evil people may be monsters, and have to be driven out or exterminated. Or, again, as formulated by Bush on September 20: . . . the only way to defeat terrorism as a threat to our way of life is to stop it, eliminate it, and destroy it where it grows. [Applause]
This terminology comes, however, with some problems attached. Evil people are their own explanation. The discussion is closed, the phenomena is understood, and there is no further need for intellectual efforts. Moreover, when dealing with evil people, the next step becomes very nearly obvious: they have to be eliminated. War is the natural answer—war and extermination. We have in the Nordic countries our own breed of monsters, not quite as bad as terrorists—not completely and thoroughly evil, but close to it. We call them Trolls.2 One does not treat Trolls, nor train them, nor put them into rehabilitation programs. It is a condition to be a Troll.
2 Denmark also has Trolls, but these are—typical for the landscape—very, very small and they operate mostly underground.
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The central actors of September 11th were not called Trolls. They were called “terrorists,” with Osama bin Laden as the “super-terrorist.” Here we return to an old theme in criminology. These people are seen as terrorists because what they did were terrorist acts. But can we say that people are what they do? Do thieves steal all the time, do murderers kill all the time, or do, for that matter, lovers make love, or painters paint all the time? Some people come close to being their acts: Gandhi and Jesus are supposed to be of that type. But usually we are capable of seeing that most people are multidimensional. A person might have committed some acts we might deplore, but he has other facets as well. By opening ourselves up to this observation, it is not quite that easy to see the other person as a monster, even if we think some aspects of his or her acts might be particularly unacceptable. But this claim for differentiation between the act and the person is often also controversial within criminology. We have our own monsters or Trolls. In criminology, these are called psychopaths. Of all psychopaths, the one with the closest proximity to monsters is called in my language følelseskald psykopat; I suppose the English phrase for this would be “a psychopath without feelings.” I have never met such a person, but some psychiatrists seem to meet them again and again. Orham Panuk has an alternative explanation to those of President Bush. Panuk (2001) is a novelist from Istanbul. In the 15 November 2001 issue of the New York Review of Books, he writes: It is neither Islam nor even poverty itself that directly engenders support for terrorists whose ferocity and ingenuity are unprecedented in human history; it is, rather, the crushing humiliation that has infected the third-world countries. At no time in history has the gulf between rich and poor been so wide. (and) . . . at no time in history have the lives of the rich been so forcefully brought to the attention of the poor through television and Hollywood films.
The Norwegian Trolls have one peculiar point of vulnerability. They are endangered by sunshine. At the first glimmer of sun that might find them, they crack, or turn to stone. That is the explanation for the many strange stone formations you find if you walk in the Norwegian mountains. Yet images of monsters are difficult to preserve if you come to know them. Ordinary acquaintances might do, or academic ones, when we understand somewhat more of human
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behavior. This is particularly true when and if we see that behavior in a way that makes recognition possible. When we are able to see ourselves in the other person’s behavior, then the monster dissolves. B, D, M It is obvious that none of us could survive with a memory of all that we might have remembered. It would mean an overload. We do not register all the graffiti and information on the walls we pass. And if we do register something, we remember only a fragment. It is also obvious that we are highly selective in what we see, in what we store, in what we recall, and how we recall it. What is abortion to the doctor might be perceived as killing by the priest; to some women it might be a moment of great relief, to others the utmost of sins, hidden behind stone walls in the mind.3 We perceive selectively, we remember selectively, we recall selectively. We construct. We are human beings. I was a child in an occupied country during World War II. I did the usual things. I followed the unwritten rules: never fraternize with a German soldier or a Norwegian Nazi collaborator. There were big signs in streetcars and buses announcing that it was strictly forbidden, and punishable by imprisonment, to remain standing in the carriage if there was an empty seat next to a soldier. Yet, I was a good Norwegian and remained standing. Nevertheless, I cannot remember anything about the time that the Jews were deported; I cannot remember one single comment about it in my generally patriotic circles. The Jews were apprehended by the ordinary Norwegian police. Since they were so many and yet so few, one hundred ordinary taxis were used to transport them to the ship that brought them to Germany. I suppose the drivers soon forgot this episode in their lives. When the few survivors came home from the camps, they came to a country that to some extent had forgotten that they had ever been there. And their property was mostly gone. It was not until 1996 that they—or mostly their children and grandchildren—got a decent compensation.
3
“Mind,” or in old-Norse “minne”—a term which, significantly enough, means just memory.
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Silence is one of the answers to atrocities. Silence, because there is nobody around to listen. Isolation of the victim is one of the major features in social systems where illegitimate violence is applied. The mechanism can be observed in cases of battered women. Husbands, in such cases, tend to isolate the wife and children, see to it that they have no close friends or relatives near by. Kids are not allowed to bring friends home. There is nobody to tell, or may be nothing to tell. The dinner was not ready when he came home that day or the meat not quite tender. Maybe the husband had reasons for his anger. The wife’s intellectual need for an explanation is directed towards her own deficiencies and silences her protest. To change this, it is essential that she come out of her isolation and gain access to an audience that will not reinforce her husband’s definition of the situation. So was it, too, in the concentration camps. Those unable to see themselves as enemies of the oppressors seemed to be worse off than militant opponents bearing a cause. The former had nothing to say except that it was all a terrible misunderstanding. But most prisoners struggled to break the silence, to convey the truth to those outside the camps. The milk buckets from the ghetto in Lodz is a moving example. In Lodz, a large, industrialized city west of Warsaw, despite all the turmoil in the ghetto, a newspaper was printed there every day in three copies. A few days before the last transport left in 1944, one copy of all the volumes was hidden in a bucket, buried, regained after the war, and then published in the terrible/wonderful book by Lucjan Dobroszycki, The Chronicle of the Lodz Ghetto 1941–1944 (1984). Here, too, the victims had a voice. There is no end to attempts by oppressors to silence their victims. Nor is there an end to the continuous struggle to break the silence. For me, Mauricio Rosencoff is a prime example. He is from Uruguay and for eleven years he and ten other men were kept in complete isolation by the military junta of the country. International attention prevented their killing, but not the torture and the totality of their isolation. At times, they got nearly no water and, to survive, had to drink their own urine. To survive as human beings nearly all of them engaged in some sort of artistic activity. The one who did not went insane, just as intended by the junta. Mauricio Rosencoff wrote poetry in his head. At one point, he got hold of a piece of a pencil and, little by little, he was able to smuggle his poems out on small bits of paper. Upon his release he found he had become a
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famous poet in Uruguay. “They treated us like dogs,” said Mauricio Rosencoff, “But we did not bark back.” Rosencoff took part in a seminar in Oslo on the subject of torture. So did a man who had acted as a torturer in Uruguay. One day this man was given the task of working on a person from his own street. He saw a man like himself and fled the country. After the seminar, Mauricio and the former torturer went out for coffee. J D Not far from Krakow is Auschwitz I and not far from it is the major death-camp—Auschwitz II-Birkenau. Where the railway tracks ends in Lager Birkenau, a gallows was raised after World War II. Here they hung the Commander.4 I have never been able to understand it. One life against one and a half million! One broken neck against all those humans suffocated, starved to death, or plainly killed in that camp. To me, the execution became a sort of denigration of the 1.5 million victims. Their worth became, for each of them, 1.5 millionth of the worth of the Commander. But what else could be done? So asked my Polish colleagues when I revealed my doubts a long time ago. And I had no answer, except this: Maybe a trial should have been carried out at which, day after day, survivors would reveal what had happened. All sorts of victims would express their despair, rage, and perhaps a wish for vengeance. The Commander would also express his position, his reasons then and now, in front of the survivors and his judges.5 But then, as for the judge—if he was a free judge and not only an executioner hired by the rulers—what should he decide in the end? One possibility, and that would be my preference, would be that he should express the following to the Camp Commander: “You
4 This is as I remember it. But in the book Auschwitz (1985), I find that Rudolf Höss was hanged April 1947 outside the crematorium at Auschwitz I, across from the building from which he had governed the camp. 5 Rudolf Höss was extradited from Allied-occupied Germany to Poland to face trial in 1947 before the Supreme Tribunal there. Among those testifying against him were survivors of Auschwitz I and II. His fate, however, can be said to have been foreordained.
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have clearly done it. You have administered the death of more than a million human beings. You are guilty. Your acts are morally repulsive to an extent above what can be imagined. We have heard it. All in the civilized world will get to know about your horrible acts carried out at this horrible place. No more can be said and done. Go away in shame.” Yet, of course, I knew that could not happen. At the beginning of the 1960s, I had long talks with Professor Batawia in Warsaw. He was a professor in forensic psychiatry, and had carried out long conversations with the commander of one of the large concentration camps (I have forgotten which one, though it was probably Rudolf Höss). We compared notes. I had worked in the same field, interviewing guards who had tortured and killed in the Nacht und Nebel (Night-and-Fog) camps in the North of Norway. We found that we had two common experiences. First, none of us ever met any monsters from the camps. This is bad news for those hoping to find beasts behind the atrocities; by and large they are not there. Secondly, neither the Polish, nor the Norwegian society was particularly interested in getting acquainted with our results. Batawia was flatly forbidden to publish, my small articles were ignored. It was not until a new generation had matured that I could publish the whole report in the form of a book. With closeness to the atrocities, it was not analysis that was desired, but revenge. T E I But nonetheless, they might have been right, those who hung the commander. They did not only hang the commander, but a whole system. His broken neck symbolized a broken idea. It was the Nazi ideology that was hanged on those gallows. Societies need clear and fast answers when their most fundamental values have been under attack such as under the Third Reich. I agree—of course, I agree. How could I not? Nonetheless, in a little corner of my sociological conscience, lurk some doubts. We killed the commander, yes. We even killed the major initiators after Nuremberg. We exterminated the evil ideas and their major carriers, swiftly and unanimously. We made it crystal-clear that certain acts—genocide and the extermination of unwanted minorities—are crimes so far beyond the pale that no mercy is possible. My doubts
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are only whether we thereby hit the whole target? By hanging the commander and also those bosses in Nuremberg, a good feeling of accomplishment is created, vengeance, often called justice, is carried out. Yet, at the same time, the discussion of related phenomena is effectively closed. The commander was guilty, and from a legal point he certainly deserved his destiny. Nevertheless, at the very same time he also functioned as a scapegoat, as did his chiefs hung in Nuremberg. Behind them were some untamed forces protected by the penal actions against their carriers. Atrocities met with individual punishments might prevent the development of a more full understanding of these forces and of the phenomena in general. It was not until 1989 that we got into the deep layers of understanding of the concentration camps with Zygmunt Bauman’s book, Modernity and the Holocaust. Still, while hanging commanders and focusing on personal guilt for certain atrocities, other phenomena were left in peace, left to fester and grow. Three items were not discussed in Nuremberg: • Dresden • Hiroshima and Nagasaki • the Gulags Dresden was made into a non-city in less than 24 hours, and with at least 135,000 victims. Afterwards, it was difficult to find rational military reasons for their extinction. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were made into churchyards with one atom bomb per municipality. The reasons behind these mass-killings of civilians seem unclear, yet no one—even if they had tried—was able to put the question before Nuremberg or any other international court. It has been difficult to find rational military reasons for what happened here as well. A more solidly founded hypothesis seems to be that the dropping of the bombs was intended as a sign of warning to the USSR—a glorious introduction to the Cold War. And then there are the Gulags. Of course they could not be discussed in Nuremberg with a prominent Russian among the judges. But while the magistrates were handing down death sentences in Nuremberg, the Gulags bulged. But by hanging the individuals most closely related to the atrocities, we re-establish certain standards. We teach everybody a lesson:
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mass-killers will end up on a gallows. Perhaps we are preventing other people from going into the service of evil forces. These are the conventional arguments for all severe punishments. And I am afraid they have even less validity here than in more ordinary cases. Perpetrators of this type of evil acts see themselves as servants of states, most often of national states surrounded by aggressors. Or they are just functionaries, as Adolph Eichmann in his office. Or they see themselves as soldiers in an inevitable and also just war, as when secret forces from Israel kill or kidnap persons far outside the border of the Middle East. In my country, we shot the chief traitor, Vidkun Quisling after World War II. Still, it is not reasonable to think that this will influence the next potential traitor. The situation will be another; the cause will be another. And the next person will—while he taking certain actions—see himself as an obvious winner. It is the bandits on the other side who will be brought to trial. I P C The Nuremberg court was clearly a court established by the winners. It was a military court, and international only in the meaning that the four judges came from the four major countries that defeated Germany. And it was a court deciding on an enemy that had suffered total defeat. In more recent attempts to establish international standards, this has been changed to some extent. Some courts have gone international. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague is the most recent example. The International Criminal Court will come into effect when 60 countries have ratified it. These are or will be civil courts with judges and prosecutors from several different countries. This represents long steps forward compared to Nuremberg. Certainly, in contrast with what has happened in Afghanistan, proceedings before an international penal court would have been highly preferable. With an international court in action, the arguments for sending suspects to The Hague rather than bombs to Afghanistan would have been obviously strengthened. The International Criminal Court might have helped discover more civil ways of handling this conflict.
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This might also have calmed the wild demands for vengeance appearing after September 11 th. We might have prevented an Afghanistan now in even more ruins than before. We might also have avoided the later developments in the creation of military courts, as well as prisons such as those constructed at the US army base on Cuba, and the degradation ceremonies carried out on the prisoners held there. The danger of further escalation of this conflict is also obvious with Iraq and Sudan as the next possible targets. In Columbia, the ultimate goal for the US military build-up seems slowly to transform from a war against drugs to a war against terrorists. As it all evolves, September 11th will eventually be part of a stepby-step conversion into a war against those resisting the West. Access to an international penal court might have helped in preventing this development. However, some basic problems with penal courts do remain. When I was first preparing this essay in the spring of 2001, Yugoslavian authorities were brought under enormous pressure to send Milosevic to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague. At this point Milosevic was in prison in Belgrade, awaiting trial.6 If the government sent him to The Hague, they would receive money from the West to rebuild the country. If they only brought him to court at home, they would receive nothing. They extradited him, and the next day received a promise of funds: 11.9 billion dollars against one Milosevic. It happened on June 28th, the very same day on which Serbs memorialize a catastrophe in the war against the Turks in the 14th Century. The prosecution raised the claim to get Milosevic to The Hague before the NATO war against Yugoslavia had come to an end. It now seems probable that this actually prolonged the war and, after the war, the prosecutor’s claims have created considerable internal instability in the country. The President of the Former Yugoslavia was strongly against the deportation. The Supreme Court of Yugoslavia had not finished their discussion on the legality of the case. The same sort of turmoil, for the same reasons, is taking place in Croatia. In addition to these concrete problems, three principal problems mar the international courts of the type we find in The Hague.
6 Milosevic might be a bad man, and also be found guilty. I have no opinion on that.
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Firstly, Western legal order emphasizes the value of being sentenced by peers and according to laws made by elected representatives. Even within the most tranquil of national states, these values are not always adhered to, or perhaps I should rather say that they are never fully realized. Members of the jury as well as judges are nearly always older, better educated, and of more prominent class background than those they are to decide over. Laws are mostly better suited to control the poor than the rich, and to control those without power more than those with power, and they are given by and for the more successful citizens of the population. With international courts or tribunals, it is even more difficult to play according to the basic rules of the game. This will not be a play according to national laws, this will not be a trial carried out by national judges, and it will not be a trial by an ordinary jury. In my little country, 80,000 collaborators were convicted after World War II. Of course no Nazi members served as prosecutors, jurymembers or judges. They were, by definition, not worth listening to. The winners decide upon the aftermath of wars. There was never much talk about genocide when Europe took hold of Africa, America and parts of Asia. Not until recently have claims come from Africans or Indians for Truth Commissions. This break with normal procedure is both inevitable and desired when a dictator from a regime of terror is brought before an international court, but it becomes a burden to the legitimacy of the international court in cases where the suspect comes from a more ordinarily functioning state. Secondly, values of impartiality and fairness are emphasized in Western legal systems. Equality is an important element here: equal results in equal cases. Yet this process entails not only what comes out of a court, but also what goes in it. Again, I speak here of an ideal not always realized in national courts: it might sometimes prove less risky to embezzle an entire bank than to rob a cashier. International courts face extraordinary problems. Large and powerful states—and small ones with good connection to the large ones—are obviously better protected against being brought before international courts than small states without power and/or with miserable connections to the great powers. It was the total losers who were hung in Nuremberg. When the International Criminal Court comes into being, new problems will arise. Turks might be expected there, due to their treatment of Kurds. Some might expect Ariel Sharon there for both old and new acts, and not only at the behest of Belgian
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courts. Some Russian generals might also be asked to come to answer for their methods in Chechnya. The third problem with the international courts is the question of relevance which I have already discussed. To create equality, lawyers have strong wishes to eliminate certain elements and to concentrate on others in courts, Still, international courts are close to international politics. Sharon will claim that his state was in danger; his acts must be seen as a response to this. Milosevic—if he decides to defend himself before a court he claims is illegal—will probably say that the Kosovo Albanians were trained and supported by the CIA, and that the whole NATO operation was intended to weaken Yugoslavia and yield access to territories further east in Europe. Courts are badly suited to handle such assertions. They will retreat to questions of relevance and, just as in ordinary trials, not open themselves up to what accused persons see as their most important arguments. Still, the accused thereby expose their basic weakness in telling us what happened. I have no definite answers to the problems raised here. What I cannot and will not hide is ambivalence, bordering on skepticism, regarding international penal law as an answer to atrocities. Penal law always creates restrictions on the flow of information, and is therefore not the best instrument for clarifying what happened. International penal law is inevitably that of the winners and, therefore, of dubious utility in attempts to create social peace. It is an instrument to describe parts of what happened in the past. Yet we need systems that look forward. We need instruments that both clarify the past, and facilitate the future. Systems for truth and reconciliation might be one answer. T C Another measure, before vengeful violence has erupted, has been Truth Commissions. There is nothing mysterious here—only a systematic attempt to break a silence, combined with a trust in the strength of truth. Bishop Tutu was central in creating an arena for disclosure in South Africa. People forced into unbelievable degradation in the form of physical and mental pain were given the opportunity to tell their tales. They could do so eye-to-eye with their oppressors. This is another, essential benefit, regardless of all the
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criticism which has also hit the commissions. Victims were given the opportunity to concentrate on what they had seen and experienced, and not on the matter of revenge, particularly not on the task of getting anybody formally sentenced. Some of this also comprised essential elements in the situation of the oppressors. Mostly they appeared before the Truth Commission as an alternative to being brought before a penal court. When they talked, they did so under stress. They had much to defend—selfrespect, honor—but they had agreed to break the silence, to participate, and to reveal what they knew. Now they could speak within a framework unconfined by legal constraints. Did they tell the truth? We will never be able to know. Yet we are able to compare the two systems. We can compare the Truth Commissions to the ordinary penal courts and ask: What type of information emerges from these two social systems? What sort of answers to atrocities do they produce? Several elements are clearly different. First, the goals of the whole operation are basically different. Penal law is oriented towards tracing responsibility or guilt. This bears consequences in the pattern of thinking within the institution. Penal law is built upon dichotomies: guilty or not guilty. A decision of “half guilty” does not count; it is a decision of either-or which does count. Truth Commissions are, in a way, relieved of this dilemma. They can think in continuums: “It was bad what he did—in fact awful—but certain acts were OK.” If the total picture was of a nature which proved him “guilty” this was not central to the description. Within penal law there must also to be a personalized guilt. Not a “system guilt,” not a historical development, but the behavior of one specific person. Once more we see that the Truth Commissions have more to play on, greater possibilities for raising questions closer to a sociologically oriented understanding of the phenomena. In addition to decisions on guilt, the essence of the penal process is delivery of pain. In much writing on penal law this is camouflaged; pain and suffering are not elaborated upon. The system is filled with euphemisms: prisons are called institutions, cells are, in my country, called rooms, prisoners are called inmates, guards are called betjenter which literally means one who serves other people. Nonetheless, even in countries without torture and capital punishment, we know that delivery of pain is an essential part of the whole operation. Though pain makes this a serious matter, most states develop mechanisms
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to control it. The emphasis on equality is one such mechanism: punishment that fits the crime. Yet crimes are seldom equal, and offenders are rarely identical twins. Central within penal law is, therefore, the striving towards ways of handling the differences, particularly by reducing the number of factors to be taken into consideration. This is primarily done through elaborate systems of training or socialization as to what sort of information is acceptable as “relevant.” Legal training is, to a large extent, training in relevance, or, to be more precise, in irrelevance. Many among us have been in situations where we have been told by our lawyers that what we think of as our best arguments in a legal conflict should not be mentioned at all in court. The judge would think we were out of our mind, and that the lawyer was a bad one by bringing in what, for us, was the crux of the case. Again, it is probably necessary in a legal system to have established some sort of agreement on relevance, but this is not necessarily good for exposure of the whole story of what happened. Compared to this, the Truth Commissions are in a freer position. It is an arena for exposure, for complaints, for emotional displays, and also for denials. But the central point is the exposure of what happened, not a decision about subsequent delivery of pain. For the purpose of preventing errors in the delivery of pain, penal law arrangements—when they function properly, though sometimes they do not—are probably the best that can be invented. Nevertheless, when it comes to more thorough exposure of what happened, my preliminary conclusion will be that Truth Commissions—if they function properly, and, again, sometimes they do not—are probably better instruments than penal courts.7 R8 Truth is one important step, though more steps must be taken to create peace. Most importantly, there is also a need for reconcilia-
7 There is one reservation: presented here is an ideal-type. Some Truth Commissions have worked under highly unfavorable conditions, politically and/or economically. They have thereby experienced the same trouble as penal courts in the same situation would have. 8 For a highly clarifying discussion of the relationship between reconciliation and restorative justice, see Parmentier (2001).
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tion. That process has two parts. First, there is the question of compensation to the victims. It is fine that the truth is established; it is clear what the outcome has been when rich and powerful offenders have met very poor victims. But truth and excuses are not enough. The basic problem of inequality remains even after some common understanding of history has been established. This problem must also be approached, but is often ignored in these processes. The affluent offender goes home to his comfortable villa after having told the truth, while the former prisoner goes back to material misery. The second question has to do with mediation, leading towards peacemaking. The question can be raised: is peace at all possible after years of oppression, years of murder and rape, and maybe serious attempts at genocide, too? Of course, it cannot be completely. Husbands and sons are killed; those women raped are left with their scars and maybe also with children intentionally forced upon them by the enemy. Or they are, as Travelers—a Gypsy-related group in my country—led to a situation where they are sterilized, or their children are brought to unknown addresses by the authorities. These evil acts can never be undone. Particularly complicated in Europe during the last years has been the situation in Kosovo with highly deplorable Serbian acts, with highly deplorable Western intervention, as well as with highly deplorable Kosovo Albanian acts. Before the bombing, there were 1,300 international peacekeepers in Kosovo. They were withdrawn, so the bombing might commence. Most observers today seem to agree that 13,000 international peacekeepers would have maintained concord in Kosovo, and thus prevented the bombs and flight of 800,000 civilians. Today, there are 45,000 soldiers in the province. There are two ways to confront the Kosovo conflict. There is the usual penal one: kill the killers, or hurt them. Or one can help conflicting parties to meet, create an arena where they can tell their stories, expose their grievances, and then—slowly, maybe after many, many attempts—come to some sort of common understanding of what happened, and what might be done in attempts to alleviate the situation. Is this a display of the utmost of naiveté? Not quite. A very strong influence on modern penal policy these days stems from native traditions in New Zealand, Australia, and from Native American culture—particularly in Canada, but also in the USA. It has become clear how native youngsters are heavily over-represented in modern
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prisons. Thereby the need for returning to the old ways of coping with conflicts has been rediscovered. These old ways are based on mediation. In relatively egalitarian societies—far away from central authorities—it is fairly obvious that punishment might lead to civil war, just as punishments on the international arena without one central power can lead to renewal of old conflicts and warfare. In such societies, it becomes essential to restore the normal situations and, thereby, preserve social systems. “Restore” is an Old Norse term. It means, literally, to raise once more those wooden stocks—the staur—that have fallen down, or, more poetically, to rebuild the house. These activities represent a negation of penal law ideals. Hence, if blame and shame are to be applied, this has to be re-integrative. If an offender is clearly defined, emphasis is put on how he or she can repair the damage, materially or symbolically, and not on how that offender can be brought to suffer. Restorative meetings of this type are, in many ways, a further development of Truth Commissions. This is not possible in the Balkan region. I met with such a declaration in Tirana, the capital of Albania, some years back. There was a huge meeting with hundreds of participants. The theme was on how to get blood-vengeance to come to a halt. “Impossible,” said several of the participants. “We are so proud that the rules of bloodvengeance have to be obeyed.” Then rose a huge, white-haired man. I later learned he had served as a general in the guerrilla forces against the Italian occupants, and later in the army though that was long before. Now he said, “I have been imprisoned for so many years under Hoxa (the former ruler of Albania). Now it is over. I feel no hatred. Albanians are not the way you portray them; they are not some peculiar sort.” The discussion immediately came to a close. The project on mediation is now well-established in Albania. This is not possible when monsters are behind the atrocities! Having worked with crime and punishment most of my life, I have to confess that I have never met any monsters. I could not find them among the killers in concentration camps, nor have I met anyone later. There are people I dislike, but none that are completely impossible to reach, at least for some important seconds. My basic supposition is that most people are like most people. We have all been infants and cared for. We have, as Cooley (1902) sees it, had the common experience of being nursed by someone. This common experience is what makes it possible for us to understand the plot
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of a 2000 year old Greek drama, as well as the persons behind recent atrocities. But what about when the acts are unbelievable, when they entail genocide? Many nations are based on genocide, my own included. Norway made an attempt to exterminate the Sami people and culture to the best of our abilities. But in the 1990s the remaining Samis got their own Parliament. It was offered as compensation for the particularly ugly destruction of one of their major salmon rivers. Quite recently the University of Oslo, which is my university, has also given back the Sami a whole collection of sculls. It was the physical anthropologists who had them, and they were exhibited for years not far from my office. Several Samis had been executed for sorcery, some for opposition against Norwegian authorities. I admit that these sins are old and small scale compared to the White Man’s behavior in Africa or America. But they were not small for the Sami population, confronting what they might have seen as Norwegian monsters. What I am trying to say is that atrocities are common phenomena. It is important for our understanding of them that their answers not be monopolized as the property of one nation or one category of victims. They are general features of human history, a part of our destiny. Many nations have been involved, as victims or as perpetrators, most often as both. This makes it important to include atrocities into the normality of abnormality. We must find ways of both preventing and reacting to atrocities by which we mobilize the ordinary stock of knowledge on how to handle social conflicts. But what if the acts are fully and completely extraordinary, such as the acts we believe have been initiated by Osama bin Laden? Am I willing to negotiate with the Devil, in Hell? I am. Mediation is the basic principle in restorative justice. Naturally, we must try to initiate negotiations. Before, and preferably instead of violence, and at any point later on, attempts must be made to create conditions for dialogue. We ought to meet those who we think have done something terribly wrong, attempt to understand why they have done it, attempt to convey alternative ways of perceiving the acts, and also look for some common ground. How can we stop this violence otherwise—as between Israel and Palestine—if they both dig down in their separate and divided understanding of the situation. Seen from the perspective of preventing violence, the US is probably more protected by conversations than by bombs.
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Perhaps nothing will come of conversations, but it would have been good to have made an attempt to try to get to know how Osama bin Laden perceived the matter before the bombs were dropped. Just perhaps it might have also been possible that he, little by little, would come to see that his cause also had much to gain if he said: “I have got some of my message across. I am willing to meet before an international court, yes, even before an ordinary court in the US.” Of course, this is highly improbable. For bin Laden it would mean suicide though, as is well known, suicide is a type of language not quite unfamiliar in his world. Furthermore, the United States might not necessarily have welcomed such a move, and bin Laden might have known that, or this, in fact, might have encouraged him to do it. Key politicians in the USA have stated clearly that they do not want him alive in America where they think he would abuse the freedom of speech, making statements which they would rather not hear in their country. September 11th was an extraordinary day. This was my point of departure, though what I have then done in my presentation is to show that it was not that extraordinary after all. It was bad, but not the worst, out of the ordinary, but not completely. These were evil acts, but committed not by monsters. This is difficult to understand, but not impossible. This was far out of the ordinary, but not so far that dialogue is out of the question. Briefly, this is a case where our ordinary tools—drawn from the social sciences in general, and criminology and peace-research in particular—might be applicable. T I N H A My major conclusion from the attempts to find answers to atrocities is that there are no easy answers in individual cases, and maybe no good answers in general. This sounds negative, and is intended thus. Pretensions of having the answers might be counterproductive. There are many vested interests behind claims of having the good answers. So much has been launched as an answer to atrocities which has actually increased chances for further atrocities. Penal action might strengthen certain nations, or forces within those nations, but weaken others. They might also carry the seeds for new atrocities. International
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courts, deviating so much from the ordinary judicial models, might prevent a deeper understanding of the forces behind mass-scale killings. A conclusion that there are no good answers to atrocities is not a heroic one. It is not one that will initiate strong actions, or immediately create new barricades against evil forces, but maybe an admittance of the non-existence of good answers is a foundation upon which to build peace. If the hunt for good answers is a vain one, we are forced back to ordinary ways of handling conflicts. In particular, we need to tap experience from peace-research and civil ways of handling conflicts. We have to live with sorrow and misery in the shadow of atrocities. Forgive me for expressing my own morality—we must at the same time also try out some old-fashioned ways of solving conflict: restore and forgive, maybe even before the culprits have moved so far as to ask for it. We do not want amnesia, though—after everything has been brought to the surface, imprinted onto all minds and all of human history—we might, in the end, find no better ultimate solution than forgiveness. BIBLIOGRAPHY Auschwitz 1985, Warsaw. Bauman, Z. (1989) Modernity and the Holocaust. Cambridge: Polity Press. Cooley, C.H. (1902) Human Nature and the Social Order. N.Y. Dobroszycki, L. (1984) The Chronicle of the Lodz Ghetto 1941–1944. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Loz, M. and Zybertowicz, A. (2000) Privatizing the Police-State. The Case of Poland. GB: Basingstoke. Misztal, B.A. (2001) “Legal Attempts to Construct Collective Memory”, Polish Sociological Review, 1 (133). Panuk, O. (2001) New York Review of Books, Nov 15. Parmentier, S. (2001) The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. “Towards Restorative Justice in the Field of Human Rights” in Victim Policies and Criminal Justice on the Road to Restorative Justice: Essays in Honour of Tony Peters, E. Fattah and S. Parmentier (eds.). Leuven, pp. 401–428.
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AFTERWORD
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THE MORAL FABRIC: DIVERSE TEXTURES IN THE POSTMODERN WORLD Krzysztof Kowalski and Annamaria Orla-Bukowska Once upon a premodern time in the West, there was a “grand narrative” as S.N. Eisenstadt phrases it. It was a single and singular, spiritual “metanarrative.” Its narrator was one God, His narration was inscribed in the Bible, and all relations between people and all understanding of the phenomena of this world were understood with reference to Him and His word. The metanarrative was the key which opened the door to a lucid and comprehensible universe. For the people who lived in it, that world was simple; within it all ethical choices were also simple. The moral fabric was uniform and consistent then; it was monochromatic and of a single thread. It was as seemingly smooth and as strong as silk—the warp and the filling of a single texture. With the Enlightenment, modern history and the condition of modernity were initiated in Western civilization. Modernity arose out of the revolutionary belief (and the desire to manifest and make increasingly evident) that man was the motor of change in this world, that man could finalize God’s cosmogonic act and create a better man. As Leszek Ko∑akowski put it, the Enlightenment “raised man to the dignity of a potentially all-powerful creator.”1 More to the point, each individual could create a better self and a better life on Earth. In fact, à la Candide, this was the best of all possible worlds; there would be no other. But with the emphasis on the individual and on the secular, the age-old worldview revolving around the metanarrative of a monotheistic God—whose canon, embodied in the sacred texts, was translated by a select elite, and who promised a better world in the afterlife—first crumbled, and then collapsed. The single metanarrative had provided a bipolar model of life where decisions were based on the concepts of clear oppositions (and thus clear moral choices) between Black and White, between Good 1
L. Ko∑akowski, Moje s∑uszne pogl[dy na wszystko, Kraków: Znak, 1999, p. 44.
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and Evil. As Lyotard described it, “What is new is that, in this context, the former polarized order shaped by national states, parties, trade unions, and historical institutions and traditions loses its appeal. And it does not seem that something will take its place, at least not at the same level.”2 The sharp contrast between the two sides blurred as the single metanarrative gave way to the introduction of an increasing number of micronarratives. Lyotard describes the outcome: “Thus the society of the future falls less within the province of a Newtonian anthropology (such as structuralism or systems theory) than a pragmatics of language particles. There are many different language games—a heterogeneity of elements. They only give rise to institutions in patches—local determinism.”3 As a result, a new guideline evolved. Contradicting Kant’s imperative—“act only on that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law”—was “act only on that maxim which the group in which you live decides or recognizes as a current Good.” God is no longer the only judge, neither are concepts of immanent good or evil the sole measure. Instead the individual looks at himself in a mirror he finds in the eyes of his society. As man’s increased, God’s role diminished; some even declared him dead. First to announce this to the elites was Friedrich Nietzsche. More significantly, he identified those who had committed this act of deicide: “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.”4 As Leszek Ko∑akowski elucidates: Nietzsche triumphed because it was he who articulated everything to the end: the world does not create sense, nor does it create a differentiation between good and evil; reality is aimless, and there is no other, hidden reality. The world as we see it is the Ultimuum; it does not attempt to tell us anything, does not refer to anything else, it exhausts itself, and is deaf and dumb. All of this had to be said. And Nietzsche also found the solution or cure for his despair: this medication was madness.5
2
J.-F. Lyotard, Kondycja ponowoczesna, Warszawa: Aletheia, 1997, p. 58. J.-F. Lyotard, “The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge”, in From Modernism to Postmodernism, L. Cahoone (ed.), Oxford: Blackwell, 1996, p. 481. 4 Gay Science, as cited on http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/philosophy/nietzsche_ God_dead.html. 5 L. Ko∑akowski, Moje s∑uszne pogl[dy na wszystko, Kraków: Znak, 1999, p. 194. 3
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Nonetheless, his triumph was not popularly celebrated in his time, and neither, most certainly, was his cure. Nearly a century later, the demise of God and his metanarrative was more publicly let slip by John Lennon in his casual retort about the cult popularity of the Beatles. More officially, it seemed affirmed by the 8 April 1966 Time Magazine cover—Is God Dead?—appearing on the heels of discussions published in October of the previous year. In fact, God did not die in the sense that He no longer existed for anyone in Western civilization, but rather in the sense of a single metanarrator. His narrative had become declassed—brought down to Earth, as it were, and made equal to any and all of the multiplying micronarratives on hand. No longer interpreted for the peripheries by a narrow elite, it was being explored in various versions, by broader circles—directly, hermeneutically, as well as in its original languages. The secularization of this grand narrative led to the delapidation of values, a deterioration of the moral fabric in the West. Yet His infirmity did not prevent Europe from exporting its divinity to Asia, Africa, and other regions of the world. Non-Western cultures still had their gods and their own metanarratives in place, but these were the guarantors of certain values—sometimes including polygamy, cannibalism, and certain taboos, etc.—which were unacceptable to and hence uprooted by incoming Westerners. Here Ko∑akowski’s words summarize the consequences: When, however, I try to find the one, most dangerous side of modernity, I have the urge to sum my fears up in one phrase: the loss of taboo. One does not know how to differentiate ‘good’ taboos from ‘bad’ ones, artificially supporting the first and expunging the second; when we nullify one of them under the pretext of their ‘irrationality,’ we put a ‘domino effect’ into motion which eradicates others.6
The colonizing elites (government officials, military officers, missionaries, writers, and anthropologists) also undermined the existing systems of values by their very asking which instilled a seed of doubt about what had heretofore been indubitable. Exegeses of myths and rituals—not to mention the outright abolition of various customs and traditions—meant, too, a loss of dignity for the autochthonous peoples. It conveyed particularly a lack of respect for their metanarrative—their greatest and most important resource and source of all 6
Ibid., pp. 199–200.
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knowledge. The supplanting left subjugated cultures with first their own god(s) in doubt, then with a weakened deity, and finally, in many cases, with none. It unraveled—in part or in whole—values and criteria, and thus the moral fabric woven of these. The delicate equilibrium was often, suddenly and violently, disrupted, never to be fully restored. In the West itself, it was between Nietzsche’s declaration and Time Magazine that God suffered the cruelest of blows. A consequence of the Shoah was that the first monotheistic people—the Jews—ceased to trust their God and his metanarrative promising a better world in the future in compensation for the suffering experienced in this one. Violence, pain, and misery had to be part of a black and white world, but was understood as a guarantee of a better life, of some subsequent, appropriate and proportional reward. By such reasoning, the utmost “voucher” had been earned by European Jewry through their mass persecution and murder at Auschwitz-Birkenau and other death camps. Yet is a remuneration for a catastrophic tragedy of this scale even possible? Jahveh had seemed to have abandoned His people. The horrific crimes of the Second World War made disbelief wholly fact for many. Even before the Sixties, Time suggested, a few particularly perceptive Christians foresaw the impending crisis. “During World War II, the anti-Nazi Lutheran martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote prophetically to a friend from his Berlin prison cell: ‘We are proceeding toward a time of no religion at all.’ ”7 In such a case— if indeed there will be no better world and human life is enclosed in finite, historical time—then such affliction is senseless. Moreover, as Norman Davies extrapolates, “History deprived of a moral dimension is senseless.”8 Despite all of the above, the Nuremberg Trials serve as strong evidence that God’s demise was not immediate. In fact, they made greatly and grandly manifest the continuance of a belief in God as a guarantor that Good would always conquer Evil. The judges were executors of divine will, therefore, as Nils Christie points out, there could be no mention of the evils committed by the “Good” side:
7
“God is Not Dead”, www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2002/006/1.10.html. N. Davies, “o historii prawdziwej”, in Rozmowy na nowy wiek, tom 1, Kraków: Znak, 2001, p. 45. 8
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Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the Gulags. Yet contemporary narratives now confirm, “The conviction that the great alliance was not only good, but also all-powerful is a myth, as well as that it was successful in freeing Europe and realizing all of its goals. That is absolute nonsense.”9 At the end of the nineteenth century when Friedreich Nietzsche pronounced the death of God, he was philosophically and rationally rather alone in his convictions. The drama of the Endlösung led to gradually more widespread acceptance of his ideas among broader public spheres. It seemed at first that a catastrophe so monumental could only mean the Second Coming and the reward for having experienced this apocalypse. Yet such an event was not forthcoming and the first “answer to the atrocity” was silence and amnesia. The Western world accustomed itself to the idea of a lowercase “god.” Successive generations would live in a different world because their forefathers had put the metanarrator in doubt. The question arose: who would be the new one? The answer came: there will be no other metanarrator; there will be many narrators. As Lyotard described, The narrative function is losing its functors, its great hero, its great dangers, its great voyages, its great goal. It is being dispersed in clouds of narrative language elements—narrative, but also denotative, prescriptive, descriptive, and so on. Conveyed within each cloud are pragmatic valencies specific to its kind. Each of us lives at the intersection of many of these.10
Instead of one mythological tale with heroes and antiheroes, we have several. As a result, the moral fabric seems to have become a rough and haphazard patchwork quilt. The moral fabric as a security blanket appears to have been cut into moral fabrics which one can change as one would change clothing—several times in a lifetime, even several times a day. Modern man would, like Ryszard Legutko’s libertarian, “actually realize the anarchists’ dream and become a religious poet in the morning, an atheistic philosopher in the afternoon, and a hard-working bourgeois in the evening.”11 But does he wear all of these roles equally comfortably? 9
Ibid., p. 47. J.-F. Lyotard, “The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge”, p. 481. 11 R. Legutko, Etyka absolutna i spo∑ecze…stwo otwarte, Kraków: ARCANA, 1998, p. 52. 10
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The grand and metanarratives guaranteed that the individual always made the right decision, or knew when he had made a wrong one. Currently there is no certainty, no assurance that one is choosing correctly. In fact, there is no bad choice; every choice is good because it can be justified by referring to a different narrative. An extreme interpretation of this worldview means “that individuals are not only the sole judges, but also the sole legitimated creators of ethical and political criteria”; they feel “that no system of community norms is more real than any other. All worldviews and philosophies, . . . seem equally legitimate, i.e., equally attractive, and concurrently equally possible.”12 From such a perspective, “. . . there is no reason to assert, as did St. Augustine and Kant, that we are only free when we choose good and not evil, and that our freedom is thus described by the content of our choices and not by the very capability of choosing.”13 For many living under the condition of (post)modernity, this triggers fear. It provokes a desire to escape from this freedom of choice—escape, as Erich Fromm would have it, from freedom itself. T In the premodern Western world, choices were limited, and hence uncomplicated and unproblematic. Furthermore, the metanarrative delineated the right choices—usually deciphered for the broader social strata by elites—as well as the sanctions which would be incurred by wrong ones. This affected interpersonal relationships in the sense that the individual trusted his own decisions and could likewise trust those of others: both sides chose on the basis of the same principles and value systems whose guarantor was one and the same. “Trust,” as Claus Offe defines it, “is the belief that others will do certain things or refrain from doing certain things.” It achieves a steadiness only when there is “perception of predictability, consistency,” and when both partners “always remain faithful to shared beliefs and values. . . .”14
12
Ibid., pp. 38, 52. L. Ko∑akowski, Mini wyk∑ady o maxi sprawach, Kraków: Znak, 1997, p. 81. 14 As cited in S.N. Eisenstadt, “Some Observations on Problems of Trust in Modern Societies”, this volume, p. 68. 13
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Yet the human being is not self-sufficient and cannot, therefore, “depend upon his own judgements and rely upon his own wisdom”; he needs a guide or advisors.15 In premodernity, God was such a pilot; during modernity, human rationality was assumed sufficient. But the postmodern world simultaneously introduced an ever-expanding range of choices in the absence of a shepherd. As Zygmunt Bauman describes this state, freedom here entails a chain of risky decisions, each of which might close the door to numerous, just as defensibly “right” paths. The individual is uncertain, fearful, skeptical of his own common sense, and competency; he also cannot be confident about whether options are “good” or “bad,” nor whether he will reap benefits or punishment.16 C A world of competing micronarratives is not a good foundation for trust among individuals, and even less so for trust between individuals and institutions. Corruption—because both sides break the law— seems to be a strategy which imparts at least a smattering of illusory stability in a world of ever-changing rules and values, and the narrations which support them. Lacking trust in institutions, the postmodern man chooses the means by which he can best satisfy his hedonistic expectations of the world. An unethical act is easy to justify—or even lend a positive tone—simply by finding the appropriate and adequate narrative. Corruption is not, however, a disease rife only in the West. Ferrari observes that (as with the other “negative” phenomena discussed in this volume), “a certain measure of corruption (in the broad sense) is endemic in all societies. . . .”17 It is, nevertheless, important to emphasize that it is the strategy primarily of elites, noticed by several authors herein. It is members of the political, economic, and social elites who are public figures and lead public institutions. “Corruption is abuse of public trust . . .” as Jacek Kurczewski has succinctly described it.18 Or it is “The achievement of personal or group advantages by means of paid or unpaid acquiescence on the 15 16 17 18
Z. Bauman, Ponowoczesno≤Æ jako z´ ród∑o cierpie…, Warszawa: Sic, 2000, p. 318. Ibid., pp. 317–18. V. Ferrari, “The Paths of Italian Corruption”, this volume, p. 166. J. Kurczewski, “Is a Sociology of Corruption Possible?”, this volume, p. 157.
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part of civil servants.”19 During modernity elites were expected to act as role models of moral behavior. Now they are merely those who shift the rules of the contest and/or are better at competing. Perchance the fact that corruption is not blatantly labeled “robbery” or a “crime” is indicative of a preference to continue to perceive the elites as still somehow moral. As Dogan points out, corruption is part of a longterm “erosion of confidence in institutions” which is universal, not incidental, and accompanies the chronic disenchantment evident “in almost all advanced democracies.”20 These provide a fertile milieu for “gameplaying.” Postmodern society, instead of a fixed canon of norms and values, introduces political, linguistic, etc. games whose rules can be altered by any player at any point in time. In the end, “Overloaded with conflicting tasks, governments cannot satisfy all aspirations. By its omnipresence, the state engenders doubt and dissatisfaction. In this stateist society, a large part of the GNP is collected and redistributed by the state according to criteria and methods which are contested by certain categories of the population, disadvantaged or privileged.”21 I The multitude of inequalities in the contemporary world demand justification. With regards to this issue, postmodernity would appear to have at its command a bottomless reservoir of narrations and images. As Bauman writes, one of these is the utopia of the free market. For it, inequality is a natural condition, a natural consequence of the battle in which the strongest win. Human life is judged by a mortal and not divine measure. Success—however one would define it—comprises the value of human life in the world. To truly “be in the world” means to “be better than all the rest.” Winning, however, pertains not only to individuals within a society, but to the societies or nations as a whole. At a global level, too, there are elite countries and periphery states. The latter ofttimes find themselves “dispossessed”—deprived of the rules of the game, deprived of some of the pieces, or playing on a different board. A perfect illustration is the Oxfam quote Göran Therborn provides: “When 19 20 21
V. Ferrari, “The Paths of Italian Corruption”, this volume, p. 165. M. Dogan, “Trust-Mistrust in European Democracies”, this volume, p. 177. Ibid., p. 194.
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the IMF consults with a poor and weak country, the country gets in line. When it consults with a big and strong country, the IMF gets in line. When big countries are in conflict, the IMF gets out of line.”22 Therborn further points out how some of the very things which helped the West develop (emigration, colonialization) are completely unavailable for the poorest, most populated nation-states. In the meantime, Western ones are reducing or halting the immigration which might ease pressures. Power in the postmodern world begins with economics: without financial or other assets, the “different actors . . . [do not have] enough resources with which to enter the political game and continue in it.” Shmuel Eisenstadt continues: The various processes of structural change and dislocation which continually took place in modern societies . . . have led . . . not only to the promulgation by different groups of various concrete grievances and demands, but also to a growing quest for participation in the broader social and political order and in the central arenas thereof, and for the incorporation of the peripheries in the centers of their respective societies.23
Yet, Sudipta Kaviraj discerns how this incorporation “is, in fact, much less available to people who live in the universe of vernaculars” and how “Less educated people, drawn from poorer classes, always have to improvise when inserted into modern structures and its imaginative compulsions.”24 On the one hand, modern man wanted to be able to realize the Enlightenment motto of “equality,” yet the postmodern man is coming to realize that inequality is also innate and inherent. On the other hand: Can one, nevertheless, proclaim equality—as a reality and not just as an order—regardless of a faith in the unity of humanity in the face of God? It seems to me that one can, but this requires certain principles of a moral nature, and also referring to the very make-up of humanness. When we say that people are equal we have in mind that they are equal in human dignity which everyone is due and which no one has the right to violate.25 22 G. Therborn, “Dimensions and Processes of Global Inequalities,” this volume, p. 136. 23 S.N. Eisenstadt, “Some Observations on Problems of Trust in Modern Societies,” this volume, p. 74. 24 S. Kaviraj, “Literature and the Moral Imagination of Modernity”, this volume, p. 278. 25 L. Ko∑akowski, Mini wyk∑ady o maxi sprawach, p. 23.
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In the Manichean days of premodernity, human life in this world encompassed the binaries of White/Black, Good/Evil, and Peace/ Violence. On the one hand, choices had to be structured as between two opposites; on the other, the Earth was expected to be imperfect and full of dangers because it was to contrast with the promised paradise. Hence, as Ko∑akowski asserts: “Violence is a part of culture, not of nature [. . .] Violence has been an ineradicable part of human history from its beginnings. . . .”26 Alongside it, “conflict is [also] endemic to social reality and the human experience” as Eliezer Ben-Rafael notes.27 Yet here, too, modernity with its logic, rationalization, and goal of creating Heaven on Earth, introduced a deep—though inevitably unfulfilled—desire to rid the world of all evils, including violence. Of course, “It is easy to say that we want a world without violence but no one has yet found a reasonable prescription for such a world. To absolutely denounce any and all violence, without distinction, is to denounce life.”28 Ironically, when violence ceased to be natural, it began to be logically managed and channeled. Actors “set themselves in a quasiGodlike position”29: judging who would live and who would die became a decision made by human individuals and organizations. Only in the postmodern world could the saying “All is fair in love and war” become nearly a maxim. In the twentieth century it has struck with much greater force at civilians. It has meant genocide of, above all, the most helpless and innocent—the women, children and older people which Klaus Dammann’s title so tersely distinguished. One could say, to paraphrase Kurczewski, that violence is an abuse of interpersonal or person-institution trust. The more it has been abused, the more society will “de-civilize,” the more norms will be violated, and the greater the trauma. Afterward—whether mistrust has spiraled between individuals, or between individuals and institutions—a similar “healing process” can be observed; Vincenzo Ferrari makes this connection explicit in his reference to Nils Christie. 26 27 28 29
Ibid., 72. E. Ben-Rafael, “The De-Civilizing Process”, this volume, p. 283. L. Ko∑akowski, Mini wyk∑ady o maxi sprawach, p. 78. E. Ben-Rafael, “The De-Civilizing Process”, this volume, p. 283.
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Paradoxically, the broad freedom of choice in a free market and democratic state—when accompanied by mistrust and a sense of social, political and economic chaos (or Eisenstadt’s “dissociation between sectors”)—can lead citizens to bring in dictators through election, consensus, or revolution. The “breakdowns of modern, especially constitutional-democratic regimes”30 and their substitution by tyrannies came as a surprise to the logical, rational man thinking in terms of linear, historical succession and “progress.” How illogical and impossible it seemed to be for modernity to have taken a step back—though many would hope it was actually a slight sidestep. Perhaps, among other factors, it was a refusal to believe that this was indeed rearward movement which facilitated acceptance of fascism and hindered reaction to its terrors. Such an escape from freedom has also appeared elsewhere: a generation after the Shoah, Western-educated and enlightened elites, fearing the state would collapse, paved the path for Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran. Eisenstadt speaks of “. . . the destructive forces which are inherent potentialities in the modern program, most fully manifest in the ideologization of violence, terror and wars.”31 Genocide becomes more feasible because “This is a jungle divested of any and all law, even the law of the jungle.”32 After deicide, genocide becomes more rationally possible as well as more impossible to bear. Madness or suicide become the only balsams for this pain—Primo Levi and Jean Améry among those who applied it. In light of the above, how horrifyingly unexpected and yet horrifyingly understandable then was 11 September 2001. Coming less than two months after the examinations of this side of postmodernity presented by Ben-Rafael, Christie, Dammann, and Rapport, in one day, in one relatively small corner of the world, over 3,000 civilians—including women, children, and older people—were killed. Moreover, this act of terror brought out both the moral heroes as well as the immoral antiheroes in society. But the answer to this atrocity was not silence; a spiral of terror and violence has been initiated.
30 S.N. Eisenstadt, “The Moral Dimensions and Tensions of Modernity”, this volume, p. 216. 31 S.N. Eisenstadt, “Some Observations on Problems of Trust . . .”, this volume, p. 76. 32 Z. Bauman, Dwa szkice o moralno≤ci ponowoczesnej, Instytut Kultury: Warszawa, 1994, p. 74.
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At the turn of the 1980s/1990s, the states of Central and Eastern Europe suddenly leapt from a rationalized grand narrative of modernity to the plethora of justifiable narratives of postmodernity. In this region—sometimes culturally and historically included, and sometimes excluded from Western civilization—the shift from premodernity to modernity to postmodernity was not gradual and progressive but an abrupt and “traumatic” shock. For most of the period of Western modernity, most of this region lived not under civic democracies, but under large autocratic empires. Here the seeds of civicterritorial definitions of citizenship found shallow, barren soil into which only ethno-religious, bloodline, and cultural definitions of belonging were able to send their roots. The consequences of all this make more obviously apparent in these societies many of the aspects explored heretofore in this volume. The grand ideological narratives may have passed away in the West long before. Nevertheless, they had made their deepest and longest impression upon Central Europe which—at various times and in various forms—was subject to an attempt to construct a paradise on Earth. Raymond Aron has perfectly illustrated and described how far these ideologies fed off structures of a religious nature.33 He called them secular religions, paradoxical in their essence because they encompassed two contradictory (it would seem) elements—the sacred and the secular. If one were to look deeply into the process by which the world became “disenchanted,” then one also notes that, in depriving the world of its transcendence, man did not manage to carry this through to the end. He did not foresee that a confrontation with a sterilized reality would be beyond his capabilities. Thus he undertook attempts to find new, substitute and artificial, degraded or even camouflaged transcendencies. And of the great tantalizing power these would have, one could be convinced especially (if not only) in Central and Eastern Europe: “Doctrine provides real communists a global interpretation of the world; it arouses in them the feeling which crusaders of every era have had. It sets a hierarchy of values and delineates what behavior is good. It fulfills a few functions which—whether this concerns
33
R. Aron, Opium intelektualistów, Warszawa: Muza, 2000, p. 295.
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the individual soul, or societies or sociology—are generally assigned to religion.34 But if this was religion, then this was a return to Manicheanism. In fact, the entire semantics of official discourse was structured on dualism and bipolarity. The “decaying West” was contrasted with the “progressive East” while the word pairs “they” and “we” were ubiquitous. Quite reasonably then, though rather sardonically, as dissident peripheries rebelled against the ruling elites, increasingly so after 1968, the former created an equally Manichean grand narrative in opposition to that of the latter. On the one hand, it seemed a return to the Enlightenment and eloquently bespoke of Western ideals such as solidarity, freedom, and democracy, yet its vocabulary was just as black and white. For an illustration, one has only to recall the title of Teresa Tora…ska’s 1980s compilation of interviews with former Polish communist party leaders: Oni—“they.” When the epoch of the single grand ideological narrative floated into the past after 1989, the postcommunist individual stood once more before the dilemma of calling forth a new one. He sought transcendence, a redefinition of the world, and a way to find his place in it. Here, however, history again manifested itself in all its glory: the end of the grand Marxist narrative was the end of grand narratives at all. Instead of one there appeared many different and autonomous micronarratives, and, more frighteningly, none referred to any transcendence. Choosing from amidst the cloud of proposed senses in this part of the world has been all the more dramatic (and traumatic) because the expectations regarding the future from the perspective of 1989 were entirely different from the realities which all Westerners (not only those who have just recently joined the West) have had to face. What was assumed subconsciously was that the new, grand “good” narrative would supersede the old “bad” one. In other words, if the communist metanarrative was gone, then it should be wholly substituted by a Solidarno≤Æ or Karta 77-based one. In fact, many of the new postcommunist politicians (stemming from the elites of the former opposition) ofttimes acted in the new system as if it was as holistic as the previous one. Unfortunately, in the postmodern world the postcommunist became simply only one of many possible
34
Ibid., p. 295.
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micronarrative propositions. It must still compete with the postmodern utopian visions—not to mention the “free market” one35—each of which have large groups of followers. The societies undergoing system transformations—particularly in Central and Eastern Europe where the centers of social and economic power and the central political institutions and arenas shifted overnight—are a perfect example of the appearance of inequality in countries in which equality had been an ideologically postulated value. The group narrative of the battle for freedom, along with the patriotic values evoked by it, have been supplanted by the narrative of individual success. Pavel Machonin is perfectly accurate in his description of this when he points out, on the one hand, the mechanisms of social differentiation and stratification which began to divide and subdivide the societies of this region, and, on the other, the feeling of social justice which is increasingly more sensitive to growing social inequalities: For instance, despite what has been said here about the negative perception of many upwardly mobile careers under postsocialism, social status achieved by education, skill and honest endeavor (“hard work”) is usually perceived in these societies as socially justified by most. At the same time, people dislike wealth and power achieved by mostly ascriptive factors and/or by dirty, i.e., illegal and immoral means. I would even state that feelings of social justice, based on the abovementioned criteria, belong to the most important sources of what is called social morality.36
One of the several responses to a world in which all values are equally “real” is a search for a firm foundation in the past. Thanks to this strategy “being in the world” takes on meaning through redefinition of the individual (and/or collective) genealogy. In this case, this effort is directed not at uncovering some narrative, but rather on its independent creation. It is worth emphasizing that, although this singular narrative is limited and does not pretend to universality, its incontrovertible importance lies in the redefined past. It is precisely this sort of stability, in confrontation with a world of quicksand reality, which manifests itself as an oasis of peace and a safe basis for the construction of Self: 35
Z. Bauman, Dwa szkice o moralno≤ci, p. 61. P. Machonin, “Postsocialist Transformations and Various Faces of Inequalities in the Divided World”, this volume, pp. 144–145. 36
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Reconstruction of biographies . . . is provoked by a demand to gain a[n] . . . integral narrative of one’s life in which ends meet. . . . the authentic image of Self, appropriate for presentation under the new social conditions. This can provide the individual with the symbolic capital of trust and dignity. The focus of biographical work . . . is in finding one’s place in a historical context, and in determining one’s life choices as well.37
In other words, genealogy is seen as limiting choices. If in a primordial sense, one turns out to be a Jew, or the son of a dissident, then this is in one’s blood and choices are narrowed or even predetermined. Even if one must choose between a communist and a dissident ancestor, then from that point forward much will have been settled. Here one is conditioned by predecessors; an individual is not him- or herself, but rather a “post-ancestor.” These strategies described by Elena Zdravomyslova are made evident as a redefinition of the past with reference not only to individuals but also to whole societies or communities which, in this region of the world, after the “revolutions,” undertook the task of searching for a new form of collective memory and identity. This strategy has expressed itself in symbolic acts through which power over memory could be reassumed by individual citizens, even at the peripheries. Not infrequent have been exhumations of “national heroes” and reburials; there has been elimination and supplementation in national pantheons, as well as cessions of state insignia or cultural artifacts held outside the country for decades. For instance, in Poland this has resulted in the exhumation and journey from the Soviet Union of the purported remains (the body turned out to be female) of Stanis∑aw Ignacy Witkiewicz, the prewar avant-garde artist and playwright. It has meant as well the return of state insignia held since 1939 by the Polish government-in-exile in London and only handed over to President Lech Wa∑\sa after his election in 1990. A new history has had to be written.38 But, as Michel Foucault would declare, even genealogy is grey and not a firm foundation for a grand or metanarrative.39 37 E. Zdravomyslova, “The Genealogical Search Initiative and its Soviet Legacy”, this volume, pp. 110–111. 38 A.-M. Losonczy, A. Zempleni, “Anthropologie de la ‘patrie’: le patriotisme hongrois” Terrain 17 (1991), pp. 29–39. 39 M. Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History”, in L. Cahoone (ed.), From Modernism to Postmodernism, Oxford: Blackwell, 1996, p. 360.
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. . - C
Postmodern man is not anchored and is constantly slipping on what seems to be shaky ground. As Leszek Ko∑akowski wrote, “Many spoke of this, many atheists also knew of this, Nietzsche among them: order and sense stem from God and if God has really died then it is in vain we seek to convince ourselves that sense can save.”40 If it is true that, as Nietzsche once stated, “Religions gain their power by being standards of value, criteria,”41 then, in the absence of a metanarrative, wherefrom can society draw its values and moral criteria? Ko∑akowski summarizes the outcomes in a world without a moral fabric: The fundamental ties which underlay and supported human community—family, religion—were derided or violently torn asunder. To put it briefly, the Enlightenment was one great cultural catastrophe. Human existence was reduced to its purely natural predicates and thus human beings became completely replaceable—nothing more than bricks in a wall. And that is how, in the end, the foundations of twentieth century totalitarianisms were laid.42
If one of the reactions is to create totalitarianisms; another is to grasp something which seems immovable—such as a historical past, roots, or genealogy. This is expected to be grounded in something known—or in the postcommunist countries becoming (re)known. The postmodern world has worked out techniques for battling chaos, as Cornelius Castoriadis has pointed out. The grand narratives which, like woven material, sheltered one from the chill of calamities and misfortune have been long lost or forgotten in the closet. The postmodern world accepts instead various interchangeable narratives. The trusted institutions of the modern world have been deconstructed or degraded. It had been their task to act as guardians against the repression of the individual or group. It was they who were commended to move society, towards the ideal state: towards rational order and perfection, towards rational perfection and perfect rationality. [. . .] It is not at all clear now how matters of morality, good, and justice can move forward in
40 41 42
L. Ko∑akowski, Mini wyk∑ady o maxi sprawach, seria druga, Kraków: Znak, 1999, p. 10. http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/18/feb00/wilson.htms. L. Ko∑akowski, Moje s∑uszne pogl[dy na wszystko, p. 44.
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a world which has as if assented to its own groundlessness, has ceased to worry, and no longer suffers sleepless nights over the incompetency of agencies responsible for reigning in the chaos.43
Movement forward in this respect can only take place if an individual or society breaks out of the inflationary spiral—or the “schismogenetic chain”44—of their converse. The more the individual looks into the eyes of his society and regards himself and his actions as Good, the more often he is tempted to narcissistically glance at his reflection again. If the mirror is morally distorted, the person becomes more capable of committing Evil which the group deems as Good. In such a way Christopher Browning’s Ordinary Men were led to commit mass murder, face-to-face with their victims. The reflection they caught assured them they were doing Good, not Evil. Mistrust, corruption, violence, and inequality are not only inbuilt in society, but—to use the descriptions applied by a few authors here—self-building, self-reproducing. Yet so are their opposites: trust, honesty, peace, and equality. As Bauman notices with regards to other “ordinary people” during World War II, and especially with reference to the Holocaust, there were those who “slip[ped] into the role requiring cruelty or at least moral blindness,” but there were concurrently those who rebelled. Though their “capacity to resist evil was a ‘sleeper’ through most of their lives,” their moral conscience was now aroused.45 Once the process is triggered by which morality is either suppressed or encouraged, the mechanism becomes selfpropelling. The counterpart of the machinery of destruction is the machinery of construction. “We . . . tend to exaggerate the . . . constant presence of the modern West as the universal ideal of modern civilisation. This has been an image created by modern Europe about itself which is selective, and deeply misleading,” writes Sudipta Kaviraj.46 From the perspective of societies into which Western (post)modernity was introduced or imported much later (and/or more suddenly), a critical view is more possible. Moreover, on the one hand, the Central and
43
Z. Bauman, Dwa szkice o moralno≤ci, p. 63. G. Bateson as cited in Z. Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989, p. 167. 45 Z. Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, p. 168. 46 S. Kaviraj, “Literature and the Moral Imagination of Modernity”, this volume, p. 278. 44
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Eastern Europeans, Bengali, or Farsi send their children to be educated at Harvard, Oxford, and the Sorbonne—opening future generations up to an increasing palette of choices—but, on the other hand, prefer to have their literature, their film, their art, their music, etc. remain stable in its form and content, and express certain, ageold values and morals. As Said Arjomand illustrates in his article premodernity and modernity and/or postmodernity coexist—within families or whole societies, in dichotomies or even trichotomies. “Perhaps in the same sense in which modernity has been inscribed in history as the age of ethics, the emerging postmodern era will be inscribed as the age of morality?”47 Bauman’s prediction may be correct, but one wonders what this “morality” will be and whether what we discover will be one morality, or “multiple moralities.” The question still remains as to whether the moral fabric—even if no longer of one fiber and texture—is woven on one loom whose warp threads run through and are common to all cultures; in this case core values of, for instance, specific human rights, do exist and only need to be identified. On the other hand, however, it might be a quilt of many fabrics sewn together incongruously and roughly, cut from many different textiles, each from a different culture. More intimidating might be the thought that the postmodern condition is one in which each man changes moral fabric at will, several times a lifetime, or several times a day.
47
Z. Bauman, Dwa szkice o moralno≤ci, p. 75.
LIST OF EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS E GRAÛYNA SK·APSKA is Professor of Sociology and Chair in the sociology of norms and organizations at the Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland. She is Vice-President of the International Institute of Sociology. She has written and spoken on postcommunist transformations, sociology of law, law and democracy, and dealing with the past. Her most recent publications include Between Civil Society and Europe: Constitutionalism after Communism—Sociological Investigations. ANNAMARIA ORLA-BUKOWSKA is a social anthropologist at the Jagiellonian University; her general field of research is majorityminority relations. She lectures, too, for the postgraduate programs at the State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau and Central European University-Warsaw, and has guest lectured in the USA, Belgium, Greece, and Australia. She was a 1999 Koerner Holocaust Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew & Jewish Studies, and will be a 2004 Yad Vashem Fellow. KRZYSZTOF KOWALSKI (Ph.D., Jagiellonian University, 2000) works and teaches in the Centre for European Studies at the Jagiellonian University. His specialization is in political anthropology. He has recently published (in Polish) Europe: Myth, Models, Symbols (2002). C SAÏD AMIR ARJOMAND (Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1980) is Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and Editor of International Sociology. He was the President of the Association for the Study of Persianate Societies (1996–2002). His books include The Shadow of God and the Hidden Imam (l984), and The Turban for the Crown (1988). He has edited the special double issue of International Sociology (2003) on Constitutionalism and Political Reconstruction, and is currently working on a constitutional history of the Islamic Middle East.
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ELIEZER BEN-RAFAEL is Weinberg Professor of Political Sociology, President of the International Institute of Sociology, and Chair of the Israeli Association for the Study of Language and Society. Among his books: are Identity, Culture and Globalization (ed. with Y. Schternberg, 2001); Jewish Identities: The Answers of the Sages of Israel to Ben-Gurion (2002), Crisis and Transformation: The Kibbutz at Century’s End (1997), and Language, Identity and Social Division: The Case of Israel (1994). NILS CHRISTIE is Professor of Criminology at the University of Oslo. He has been a member of Royal Commissions in Norway which have dealt with such issues as the organization of the police. The author of many books and articles on crime and crime control, as well as drugs and alternative communities, over the last few years he has focused on the analysis of prison numbers in industrialized countries. Among his recent works is Crime Control as Industry: Towards Gulags, Western style (2000). KLAUS DAMMANN (Ph.D., University of Hamburg) is, at present, Professor at the University of Bielefeld and Visiting Professor at the St. Kliment Ohridski University in Sofia. Prior to that, he was Associate Professor at the Free University of Berlin, Visiting Professor at the University of Heidelberg, and Assistant Professor at the Universities of Konstanz and Hamburg. MATTEI DOGAN is a sociologist and political scientist. He is Research Director at the National Center of Scientific Research in Paris, and Professor at the University of California-Los Angeles. His recent publications are Pathways to Power; Comparing Nations; Creative Marginality; How to Compare Nations; Comparing Pluralist Democracies; Elites, Crises and the Origin of Regimes; and A World of Giant Cities. He is Chairman of the Research Committee on Comparative Sociology of the International Sociological Association and the Committee on Political Elites of the International Political Science Association. S.N. EISENSTADT (Ph.D., Jerusalem, 1947) is Professor Emeritus of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is also member of many academies and the recipient of honorary doctoral degrees from the Universities of Tel Aviv, Helsinki, Harvard, Duke, and Hebrew Union College. Among various prizes and awards, he has been recipient of the International Balzan Prize, McIver Award of the American Sociological Association, Israel Prize, Rothschild Prize in Social
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Sciences, Max Planck Research Award, and the Amalphi Prize for Sociology and Social Sciences. His publications include: Political Systems of Empires; Power, Trust and Meaning; Japanese Civilization—A Comparative View; Paradoxes of Democracy: Fragility, Continuity and Change; Fundamentalism, Sectarianism and Revolutions; and Die Vielfalt der Moderne. VINCENZO FERRARI is Dean of the Law Faculty at the University of Milan, Italy. He has been Visiting Professor at various universities, including: Peking (1994), Stanford (1995, 1999), Hokkaidó, Sapporo (1995), UNAM-México (1996, 1998), Externado de Colombia, Bogotá (1996, 1997), Ain Shams, Cairo (1998), Carlos III de Madrid (1997), Córdoba, Argentina (2000), and Nacional de Chile (2000). He has acted as Chair of the ISA Ethical Code Sub-Committee (1998–2002) and was Member of the Editorial Board for the Encyclopedia of Law and Society: American and Global Perspectives. Among his recent publications is Citizenship and Immigration (1998; with P. Ronfani and S. Stabile). SUDIPTA KAVIRAJ lectures at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. He works in the fields of political theory and intellectual history; other fields of research include the historical sociology of the state, democracy, and literature and modernity in India. Among his publications are: The Unhappy Consciousness, (1995), Civil Society: History and Possibilities, (with S. Khilnani, 2002), and Politics in India (ed., 1998). MARTIN KRYGIER is Professor of Law at the University of New South Wales, Australia. His writing is concerned with institutional means of civilizing power. His main source of empirical data and concern is postcommunist Europe. JACEK KURCZEWSKI (Ph.D., Warsaw, 1972) is Professor in the Chair of the Sociology of Custom and Law at the University of Warsaw. Between 1980–81 he was member of the Program Council of Solidarity; and, between 1998–1991, a member of the Civic Committee associated with Lech Wa∑êsa. He was also on the Solidarity negotiating team regarding freedom of associations at the 1989 Round Table Talks. He has been Deputy Speaker and a member of the Polish Parliament; Member of the Board of the International Center for NonProfit Law in Washington, D.C.; advisor on Third Sector legislation in Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan; and Director of the International
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Institute for Sociology of Law in Onati, Spain. He is the author of Conflict and “Solidarnoœæ” (in Polish, 1981), Resurrection of Rights in Poland (1993), Deputies and Public Opinion (in Polish, 1999), and co-editor of Corruption in Social Life (in Polish, 2000). PAVEL MACHONIN (born 1927) completed his studies at the Graduate School of Social and Political studies in Prague in 1949. After earning subsequent degrees, his academic career as researcher and research team leader at Charles University was interrupted by a twenty year Berufsverbot during the communist period. Since 1993 he has worked at the Institute of Sociology, CASS in Prague, participated in many both domestic and international research activities, and written a series of studies in the field of social stratification and mobility, transformation and modernization and social elites. NIGEL RAPPORT holds the Chair of Anthropological and Philosophical Studies at the University of St. Andrews; he is also Professor (Adjunct) at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim. He has carried out anthropological field research in England, Newfoundland, Israel and Scotland. Among his recent publications are: Transcendent Individual (1997), Social and Cultural Anthropology: The Key Concepts (2000), British Subjects (ed., 2002), The Trouble with Community (2002), and I am Dynamite: An Alternative Anthropology of Power (2003). He is interested in furthering an existential and liberal Human Science. MASAMICHI SASAKI (Ph.D., Princeton University) is Professor of Sociology at Hyogo Kyoiku University in Japan and recently completed his term as President of the International Institute of Sociology (1997–2001). The Founding Editor of Comparative Sociology, his books include Comparing Nations and Cultures (with Alex Inkeles, 1996) and Social Attitudes in Japan: Trends and Cross-National Perspectives (with Tatsuzo Suzuki, 2000). JIÒRINA ”IKLOVÁ was born in Prague in 1935. Working as a sociologist in the Department of Sociology, she was forced to take different jobs after 1968. In 1990 she returned to the Faculty of Arts. She is founder and head of the Department of Social Work (applied sociology) and The Center for Gender Studies in Prague.
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PIOTR SZTOMPKA is Professor of Sociology at the Jagiellonian University where he heads the Chair of Theoretical Sociology, as well as the Center for Analysis of Social Change “Europe ’89.” He has been a visiting professor at numerous foreign universities in the USA, Latin America, Australia and Europe. He is a member of Academia Europaea (London), the Polish Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Cambridge, Mass.). He was Vice-President of the International Sociological Association (ISA) since 1998, and has been President since 2001. He was also recipient of the 1996 New Europe Prize. His books published in English include: System and Function (1974); Sociological Dilemmas (1979); Robert Merton: An Intellectual Profile (1986); Rethinking Progress (with Jeffrey Alexander, 1990); Society in Action (1991); Sociology in Europe: In Search of Identity (with Birgitta Nedelmann, 1993); The Sociology of Social Change (1993); Agency and Structure (1994); R.K. Merton on Social Structure and Science (1996); and Trust: A Sociological Theory (1999). GÖRAN THERBORN is Professor of Sociology, formerly Professor of Political Science. Since l996 he has been the Director of the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences. Currently he is working on study of global and European processes. His next book is Between Sex and Power: The Family in the World 1900–2000 (2004). BJÖRN WITTROCK is a university Professor at Uppsala University and Principal and Permanent Fellow of the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences, Uppsala. He has published extensively in the fields of intellectual history, historical social science, and social theory. His most recent volumes are as editor with S.N. Eisenstadt and Wolfgang Schluchter, Public Spheres and Collective Identities (2000), with Dietrich Rueschemeyer and Marilyn Rueschemeyer, Participation and Democracy (1998), and with Johan Heilbron and Lars Magnusson, The Rise of the Social Sciences and the Formation of Modernity (1998). ELENA ZDRAVOMYSLOVA (Ph.D., Social Sciences) is an Associate Professor. She is coordinator of the MA Program in Gender Studies at the European University in St. Petersburg. Her primary fields of interest are: gender studies, biographical research, and the sociology of everyday life.
