Monthly Archives: March 2012

blaming the individual, blaming the war

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“The government is going to want to blame this on an individual rather than blame it on the war” — John Henry Browne, defense attorney for the US staff sergeant accused of murdering 16 Afghans [NY Times].

I have lately been dwelling on the question of human agency versus social context or structure. It is a major theme in Cathy J. Cohen’s book, Democracy Remixed: Black Youth and the Future of American Politics, which I am in the midst of reviewing. And it came up explicitly in committee work last weekend.

We were discussing standards for civic education, and the question arose whether to make “agency” (probably not by that name) a core educational value. In practice, this would play out in settings like a history class on slavery. The older historiography emphasized structure: slavery as an overwhelming influence on the victims. Recent historiography has recovered the agency and creativity of slaves. The danger in a k-12 classroom would be teaching kids that slavery was basically OK because the victims were still agents and made choices.

The staff sergeant accused of the Afghanistan massacre made a choice that vast numbers of other US soldiers have not made and would not make. To deny his responsibility for what he allegedly did is to deny his agency and that of his fellow soldiers–it would make them all seem like automata or victims instead of responsible professionals. At the same time, he wouldn’t have done what he did if he hadn’t been sent for the third time, against his will, into a bloody counter-insurgency war halfway around the world. So the context or structure matters.

That is an extreme case, for which the word “evil” seems appropriate, but the same logic arises when kids drop out of high school or have  unprotected sex. These are acts that involve both context and agency. How we weigh the two will affect how we respond.

In my view, we should not simply aim to make structures better (e.g., get out of Afghanistan or improve schools). Those are valid goals, but people should also have agency. Institutions and policies will turn out better if we all help shape them; also, actively shaping the world is an aspect of a flourishing human life. In concrete terms, that would mean not only reforming education so that kids have better outcomes, but enlisting youth in reforming education. At our best, we now strive to enhance the human capital or market power of young people. We rarely even try to enhance their political agency.

We should also recognize agency wherever it does emerge. Even in extreme cases, like prisons and war zones, people are agents as well as objects. Dismissing their action as the mere product of structure or context diminishes them. On the other hand, to assess the limits and constraints on their agency is a precondition of enhancing it. If you think that kids are simply choosing to drop out of high school and are not in any sense being pushed out, you will diagnose their situation wrong. Likewise, it’s naive to think that American soldiers in Afghanistan have been placed in situations where they are free to do a lot of good.

new report on voter mobilization from the Black Youth Project

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The Black Youth Project has released an important report entitled “Youth, Race, and Voter Mobilization” (PDF). Some points that caught my eye:

Being contacted about an election strongly predicts voting. Young people who are contacted are 15%-30% more likely to turn out. (This statistic is consistent with our own research. Part of the reason may be that people who are already registered or who are socioeconomically advantaged are more likely to be contacted. But randomized experiments have also found that being encouraged to vote has a positive impact on turnout.)

The Republican Party has historically been much more likely to contact young people than the Democratic Party, although the  gap favored the Republicans by only two points (within the margin of error) in 2008.

Both parties have become more likely to contact young people, and  both parties are most likely to contact African American youth. Thus African American youth were the most contacted racial/ethnic group in 2008–and had the highest turnout rate that year.

The fact that 30% of young African Americans reported being contacted by the GOP is surprising, especially because they voted overwhelmingly for the Democrats. The most widely reported examples of the GOP “contacting” Black youth were negative: robocalls designed to suppress turnout. Perhaps the Republicans deserve more credit than those stories imply, or perhaps some of the GOP contacts that young African Americans reported were negative.

I was under the impression that political activity was channeled through the Obama campaign to an extraordinary degree in 2008, to the detriment of independent grassroots political groups. In fact, 18 percent of youth were contacted about the election by non-party organizations, the same rate as in 2004 and much more than a any time in the previous two decades. Of those who were contacted by non-party organizations, young African Americans were especially likely to receive contacts from churches (21%), friends (21%), and neighborhood and community organizations (17%). The finding about friends is consistent with our research that political discussion is particularly common among working-class, urban African Americans.

The Black Youth Project draws a clear conclusion from its research. Black youth will vote if contacted. Their 2012 turnout will depend on whether the parties, campaigns, and independent groups choose to talk to them. In turn, that could affect the outcome of the election.

Dickens and the right to be loved

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It’s a philosopher’s cliché that every right implies a “correlative duty.” If I have a right to live, you have a duty not to kill me. If my kid has a right to an education, someone has a duty to pay for it–whether that’s me or the people of my town, state, or nation.

One of our greatest needs as human beings is to be especially loved by someone else: first as a child, then as a partner or a close friend. The need for partial or exclusive love may vary somewhat, but it is strong and widespread.

Alas, in many cases, no one has a duty to love a particular person. If you have a serious need but no one is required to meet it, you do not have a right. When people have unmet needs without rights, that is a genuine tragedy. It is an example of a problem that may not be solvable politically, i.e., that might still trouble an ideal society.

Dickens’ Great Expectations (which I just finished reading to my aforementioned child) provides an extraordinary number of cases in which it is debatable or problematic whether A has a duty to love B. For instance:

  • Pip is orphaned and raised by his sister, who does not love him and perhaps resents the obligation. But her husband loves Pip–despite having a questionable obligation to do so–and later Pip fails to reciprocate. Presumably, Mrs. Joe acquired a duty to love Pip against her inclination, and Pip is obliged to love Joe just because Joe loved him beyond duty.
  • Compeyson has an obligation to Mrs. Havisham to love her because he wooed and promised to marry her, but he has no intention of fulfilling his duty.
  • Estella is orphaned as a baby and given (with her assent) to Mrs. Havisham, who does not love her and who teaches her to be unable to give love.
  • Magwitch loves Pip (or the idea of Pip as a gentleman) in a way that puts Pip under a most unwelcome obligation. But Pip comes to love Magwitch because of the latter’s need.
  • Pip loves Estella, and she acknowledges a kind of right to be loved in return, but she insists she cannot give it.
  • Mrs. Havisham’s family becomes Pip and Estella, yet she does not love either until late in the novel.
  • Pip and Herbert love one another (Platonically) as friends, even though they begin by physically fighting over Estella. Pip secretly assists Herbert in order to love him without conferring an obligation.
  • Pip assumes that Biddy will love him as a wife once he settles for her, but he has no right to marriage. His willingness to accept her friendship indicates his moral progress.

In Dickens’ original ending, harmony was restored among Pip, Joe, Biddy, and Herbert, but Estella and Pip were never united. I assume that was because they had no right to each others’ love, having acted badly. Bulwer-Lytton persuaded Dickens to change the ending so that they were united, although the last sentence is slightly ambiguous as to their future. Presumably, Dickens was persuaded that they deserved each other. But even with its more conventional happy ending, the novel still makes one wonder: Who has a right to the love of whom?

a plea-bargaining strike?

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In Sunday’s New York Times, Michelle Alexander advocates a kind of plea-bargaining strike to address the incarceration crisis. She writes:

The system of mass incarceration depends almost entirely on the cooperation of those it seeks to control. If everyone charged with crimes suddenly exercised his constitutional rights, there would not be enough judges, lawyers or prison cells to deal with the ensuing tsunami of litigation.

I have argued that incarcerating 2.3 million people is unconscionable; that if we are going to put all those people in jail, we should do it as jurors; that an underlying reason for the incarceration crisis is public disengagement from civic life; and that we tolerate the vast prison-industrial complex because we are able to ignore it, since we don’t have to participate in, or even read about, jury trials. (Only about one in 40 felony charges go to trial nowadays.)

If many defendants started demanding trials, that would put us back in the jury room until we hollered for sentencing reform. I would regard that as a good result, but it seems awfully unlikely. They call it the “Prisoner’s Dilemma” for a reason. People always have difficulty coordinating high-stakes behavior, but the situation of a criminal defendant makes it harder. Since the middle ages, they have been separated to bargain individually with prosecutors precisely to prevent them from coordinating. Defendants would be better off if they all demanded trials. Each individual would be worse off if he alone demanded a trial and it yielded a “Three Strikes” conviction that he could have avoided if he’d bargained.

civic institutes this summer

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People interested in various aspects of civic education and civic renewal have a whole range of summer institutes to consider in 2012.

  • At Tufts, we offer a Summer Institute of Civic Studies (a seminar with a strong focus on theory) followed by a larger public conference. The Institute  will take place from July 9-19, 2012. The conference will run from July 19 at 6 pm – July 21 at 3 pm. The Institute is selective, and applications are due (for best consideration) this Friday.
  • John Gaventa now leads the Coady Institute in Nova Scotia, an international leader in education for social change. Coady offers a three-credit summer course from May 7 until 25, 2012. Click here for more information on this certificate program, fees and how to apply.
  • An Institute entitled “What Civil? What Society” is being offered by the Centre for Citizenship, Civil Society and Rule of Law (CISRUL) at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. It is a Workshop followed by a PhD summer school. Participants will “examine the concept of ‘civil society’ not just in contemporary Europe and North America but historically and in contexts across the world as well as across academic disciplines. We will seek not to define ‘civil society’ but to identify the consequences – political, legal, social, moral, epistemological – of particular ways in which ‘civil’ and ‘society’ have been defined in different times and places.”
  • The National School Climate Center is pleased to announce its 15th annual Summer Institute from July 10-13th in New York City.