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ideological pluralism as an antidote to cliche

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Although a group of like-minded people can be precise and intellectually rigorous, the combination of consensus plus rigor is relatively rare. When we disagree fundamentally, we face more pressure to define our terms and specify our assumptions, predictions, generalizations, and other aspects of our mental models.

For instance, I often find myself in conversations in which almost everyone shares a general distaste for what they call “capitalism” and wants to blame it for specific problems. Capitalism can mean a combination of: commodification (treating categories of things as exchangeable), property rights, market exchanges, debt, inheritance, financial instruments, capital markets, incorporated entities, state enforcement of certain kinds of contracts, general-purpose business corporations, bureaucratic corporations, professions such as law and accounting, economies in which the state sector is relatively small, international trade and foreign direct investment, and norms such as materialism, competition, or individualism (or conformity and subservience). Most of these components are matters of degree; for instance, a society can have a smaller or larger capital market. The various components can go together–and some thoughtful people see them as closely interconnected–but it is also possible for them to come apart. For instance, there have been many market economies without capital markets.

If capitalism is responsible for bad (or good) outcomes, we should be able to say which components are relevant and why. In a room full of people who dislike capitalism, it is often possible and tempting to avoid such specificity.

I’ve written before against the idea of viewpoint diversity, because I think that is the wrong way to conceptualize and defend pluralism. A better way may be to see disagreement as an antidote to clichés.

See also: trying to keep myself honest; defining capitalism; social justice should not be a cliché; on the proper use of moral clichés

decolonizing Weimar

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In Nov. 2021, I visited Weimar, in the eastern German state of Thuringia, with a group of German and US-based civic educators who traveled together in both countries as we intensively discussed democratic education. This was possible thanks to the wonderful Transatlantic Exchange of Civic Educators (TECE), organized by the Arbeitskreis deutscher Bildungstätten (AdB) with Tisch College at Tufts.

One evening sticks in my mind and almost haunts me. It was a quiet and cold weekday evening in the lovely old city of Goethe–after dark, and after the shops had closed for the night. COVID was still quite prevalent. Representatives of a local project called Decolonize Weimar led us on a tour. At various stops around town, the guides basically read to us the text that you can find on their website, translated into English. These substantial narratives explain, for example, about a movie theater that previously stood at Marktstrasse 20 (now long gone), in which, during the 1920s, “ethnographic” documentaries were sometimes shown that presented African people in racist terms.

We stood in a half circle at each location, listening for considerable periods while a young faculty member or students read. Everyone was casually dressed, bundled up, in masks. Although we saw virtually no one else on the streets, police cars passed slowly on several occasions. Apparently, there was a present threat of skinhead or right-wing violence that the police were monitoring. They must have realized that we were not right-wingers (in the German context), because we were a multiracial group. But it was a bit eerie to be watched by the authorities.

To be honest, I don’t know whether the content of the talks was perfectly appropriate for the audience. I am not sure how many of us knew the standard story that our guides sought to criticize and complicate.

During the first centuries of European imperialism, Weimar was an almost autonomous little principality that had no colonies of its own and that was most famous for a cultural efflorescence that is usually categorized as “the Enlightenment” and is associated with cosmopolitan and humanistic values. Later, a unified Germany seized colonies in Africa and the Pacific that were cruel and exploitative but much shorter-lived (1884-1918) than the empires of the Atlantic European powers. For most people, the word “Weimar” connotes a humane tradition that was deliberately destroyed by the Nazis, who overthrew the Republic unofficially named for that city and established Buchenwald nearby. Many would credit Weimar with liberal and democratic values. The most evident evil would be antisemitism.

The evidence that we heard challenged these assumptions by showing that Weimar belonged to European markets and cultures that were complicit in global colonialism during the 17th and 18th centuries, and then German’s overseas empire was popular and resonant in the town. When someone asked about antisemitism and the Holocaust, our guide actually deferred the question on the ground that she was not a specialist in those topics. She wanted to keep the focus on colonialism and racism.

Uncovering this history is good, relevant, and important work. I have nothing but respect for it. It is part of an international conversation and a long and complicated process of Germans coming to terms with their own past, as Americans also must. Something about the earnestness of the evening, the empirical detail and academic rigor, the cold air, the silent but attentive masked listeners, and the quiet streets lingers for me.

See also: memory politics; an overview of civic education in the USA and Germany; and alerting people to their privilege.

Hypothetical network of a small group

a method for analyzing organizations

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I’m about to conduct a study in partnership with a civic association in the midwestern United States. It should yield insights that can inform this association’s plans and help me to develop a method and related theory. I have IRB approval to proceed, using instruments that are designed.

In the meantime, a colleague alerted me to an impressive new paper by Dalege, Galesic and Olsson (2023) that uses a very similar model. Fig. 1 in their paper resembles the image I’ve created with this post. These authors make an analogy to physics that allows them to write about spin, energy and temperature. I don’t have the necessary background to replicate their analysis but will contribute relevant empirical data from a real-world group and some additional interpretive concepts.

We will ask members of the association to what extent they agree with a list of relevant beliefs (derived from their own suggestions in an open-ended survey). We will ask them whether each belief that the individual endorses is a reason for their other beliefs. As a hypothetical example, you might think that the organization’s youth programming is important because you believe in investing in young people. That reflects a link between your two beliefs. We will also ask members to name their fellow members who most influence them.

In the hypothetical image with this post, the circles represent people: members of the group. A link between any two members indicates that one or both have identified the other as an influence. That is a social network graph.

The small shapes (stars, circles, etc.) represent the beliefs that individuals most strongly endorse. The arrows between pairs of beliefs indicate that one belief is a reason for another. This is a belief-network.

Reciprocal links are possible in both the social network and the belief networks.

Before analyzing the network data, I will also be able to derive some statistics that are not directly observed. For example, each node in both the social network and the belief networks has a certain amount of centrality, which can be measured in various standard ways. I can also run factor analysis on the responses about beliefs to see whether they reflect larger “constructs.” (Again, as a hypothetical example, it might turn out that several specific responses are consistent with an underlying concern for youth, and that construct could be measured for each member.)

I plan to test several hypotheses about this organization. These hypotheses are not meant to be generalizations. On the contrary, I expect that for any given organization, most of the hypotheses will turn out to be false. The purpose of testing them is to provide a description of the specific group that is useful for diagnosis and planning. Over time, it may also be possible to see which of these phenomena are most common under various circumstances.

Hypotheses to test

H1: The group is unified

H1a: The group is socially unified to the extent that its members belong to one network connected by interpersonal influences. The denser the ties within the connected network, the more the group displays social unity.

H1b: The group is epistemically epistemically unified to the extent that members endorse the same beliefs, and to the extent that these shared beliefs are central in their belief networks.

H2: The group is polarized.

H2a: The group is socially polarized if many members belong to two separate subgroups that are connected by interpersonal influences but are not connected to each other, as depicted by the red and blue clusters in my hypothetical image.

H2b: The group is epistemically polarized if many members endorse belief A, and many other members endorse B, but very few or no members endorse both A and B. If A and/or B also have high network centrality for the people who endorse them, that makes the epistemic polarization more serious. (Instead of examining specific beliefs, I could also look at constructs derived from factor analysis.)

H3: The group is fragmented

H3a: The group is socially fragmented if many members are connected by influence-links to zero or just one other member.

H3b: The group is epistemically fragmented if no specific beliefs are widely shared by the members.

H4: The group is homophilous if individuals who are connected by influence-ties are more likely to endorse the same beliefs, or have the same central beliefs, or reflect the same constructs, compared to those who are not connected. If the opposite is true–if socially connected people disagree more than the whole group does–then the group is heterophilous.

H5: There is a core and a periphery

H5a: There is a social core if some members are linked in a relatively large social network, while most other members are socially fragmented.

H5b: There is an epistemic core if many (but not all) members endorse a given belief, or a given belief is central for them, or they share the same constructs, while the rest of the organization does not endorse that belief.

H6: Certain members are bridges

H6a: A person is a social bridge if the whole group would be socially polarized without that person.

H6b: A person is an epistemic bridge if the whole group would be epistemically polarized without that person.

H7: Members tend to hold organized views: This is true if the mean density of individuals’ belief networks (the mean number of links/nodes) is high, indicating that people see a lot of logical connections among the things they believe.

Our survey respondents will answer demographic questions, so we will be able to tell whether polarized subgroups or core groups have similar demographic characteristics. Hypothetically, for example, a group could polarize epistemically or socially along gender lines. And we will ask general evaluative questions, such as whether an individual feels valued in the association, which will allow us to see whether phenomena like social- connectedness or agreement with others are related to satisfaction.

What to do with these results?

Although the practical implications of these results would depend on the organization’s goals and mission, I would generally expect polarization, fragmentation, the existence of cores, and homophily to be problematic. These variables may also intersect, so that an organizations that is socially polarized, epistemically polarized, homophilous, and reflects highly organized views is especially at risk of conflict. A group that is fragmented and reflects disorganized belief-networks at the individual level may face a different kind of risk, which I would informally label “entropy.”

Being unified can be advantageous, unless it reflects group-think or social exclusivity that will prevent the organization from growing.

Once an organization knows its specific challenges, it can use appropriate programming to make progress. For instance, if the group is socially fragmented, maybe it needs more social opportunities. If it is polarized, maybe a well-chosen discussion could help produce more bridges. If it displays entropy, maybe it needs a formal strategic plan.

I would generally anticipate that bridges are helpful and should be supported and encouraged. In our study, all the data will be anonymous, so our partner will not know the identity of any people who bridge gaps. But a different application of this method could reveal that information.

Although I am focused on this study now, I remain open to partnerships with other organizations so that I can continue this research agenda. Let me know if you lead an organization that would like to do a similar study a bit later on.

Reference: Dalege, J., Galesic, M., & Olsson, H. (2023, April 12). Networks of Beliefs: An Integrative Theory of Individual- and Social-Level Belief Dynamics. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/368jz. See also: Analyzing Political Opinions and Discussions as Networks of Ideas; Mapping Ideologies as Networks of Ideas; seeking a religious congregation for a research study

Graph: Web of Science citations by language, data from Bordon ans Gomez 2004

English dominance in academia

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On a recent quick trip to a smallish European country (Czechia), I was reminded of the dominance of English in broad reaches of academic life.

We Anglophones have the privilege of being able to travel almost anywhere and enjoy rich discussions in our native tongue. This also means that English idioms and conceptual schemas are hugely influential, while specialized vocabulary can lag in other languages. And most of the world’s people face an additional burden when they try to use research: it’s mostly in English. As a Quebecois scholar writes (Lord 2023):

«Cette internationalisation de l’enseignement présente également quelques défis, importants notamment celui de préserver une culture nationale en recherche et un accès à la recherche scientifique dans les communautés locales.» (“This internationalization of education also presents some important challenges, notably preserving a national research culture and access to scientific research in local communities.”)

In many countries, citation counts are used to assess individual scholars and whole universities. That method is always problematic, but an additional problem in most of the world is that papers published in English–and in English-language journals–almost always have higher counts. In fact, controlling for other factors, English is statistically related to the number of times an article is cited (Di Bitetti & Ferreras 2017).

Two Spanish scholars (writing, not surprisingly, in English) calculate the trends captured by the Web of Science from 1980 to 2000. I present their data in the graph with this post. Overall, English represented 84.5% of all articles in 1980, rising very smoothly to 95.9% in 2000. Spanish–which has more than half a billion native speakers–is invisible on my graph, with 0.3% of all articles in 2000. (Bordons & Gomez 2004). The authors don’t calculate Chinese or Hindi.

In countries whose languages were never widely spoken, university life was always conducted in one or more foreign languages. Latin yielded to French or German, before shifting to English after WWII. But even languages that have hundreds of millions of speakers and/or international prestige seem endangered today in academia. Bordons and Gomez calculate that 59% of articles by French authors, and 62% by German authors, were written in English in 1980, rising to 89% and 90% (respectively) by 2000. I haven’t found more recent statistics, but that trend would lead to an English monopoly if it continued.

These data come from Web of Science. Although that database includes humanities, social sciences, and law, it tilts to the STEM fields, as do all citation counts. My own humanities and social science articles from the last few years are sole-authored publications that required many weeks of my work, and they will not receive any citations for quite a while. Being cited requires another scholar to read the piece, write an article that cites it, and then navigate a publication process that can take years. In contrast, I was part of two public health publications in 2022, along with co-authors. Each required hours of work from me. Just months after appearing, they already have 19 published citations between them. STEM simply involves a much higher volume and faster pace, basically swamping the humanities in numerical terms.

I mention this point about STEM because any data about publications will likely underestimate the humanities, where the written languages are probably more diverse. I find that when I want to know about specific works of art or literature, Google Scholar will often yield results in languages other than English. Nevertheless, English is dominant in academia as a whole, and its share appears to be growing.

References: Lord, F. R. (2023). La communauté universitaire sous tensions: analyse des dynamiques de communication et de gestion entourant la création d’une université (Doctoral dissertation, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières); Di Bitetti, M. S., & Ferreras, J. A. (2017). Publish (in English) or perish: The effect on citation rate of using languages other than English in scientific publications. Ambio, 46, 121-127; Bordons M and Gomez I. 2004. Towards a single language in science? A Spanish view. Serials 17: 189–195

a clearinghouse to make political contributions anonymous

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At the Institute H21 symposium last week in Prague, Stein Ringen described his proposal for a campaign finance clearinghouse. I gather Ringen also defends this idea in How Democracies Live: Power, Statecraft, and Freedom in Modern Societies (Chicago, 2022), which I have not yet read. My summary is based on his talk alone.

The idea is that you could give money (up to the legal limit) to candidates, but you would have to make your contributions through a clearinghouse that would transmit the funds to your chosen recipients without telling them who gave them the money.

Normatively, this proposal accepts that individuals have a right to support communications by their favored candidates. Like Ringen, I am unsure I agree with this premise, but it has been upheld by the US Supreme Court since 1971 (in Buckley v Valeo). Also, there are times when being able to support insurgent candidates with many smallish contributions increases competition and challenges incumbents.

At the same time, the proposal denies that candidates should be able to tell who gave them money, because contributions should never purchase access, goodwill, or influence.

Ringen said that he would allow contributors to inform candidates that they had given money. That’s a form of speech that would probably be protected by the US Supreme Court (and I am generally skeptical about banning speech and then policing the ban). However, the clearinghouse would make such communications quite noisy. Many donors would not take the trouble to inform candidates that they had given, and some would lie about having done so. They might even falsely tell both sides that they were financial supporters. As a result, candidates would have a much more ambiguous picture of who was supporting them financially. And that ambiguity would be good.

The secret ballot has a similar rationale. You can might want to bribe or coerce other voters, but you can never tell how they actually voted, because you cannot see their ballots. Privacy blocks the emergence of markets for votes. The same could happen to campaign finance if the money flowed through a clearinghouse.