Monthly Archives: August 2013

the empirical impact of the humanities

(Washington, DC) I have two major professional interests: civic engagement and the humanities. Thanks to a partnership with the organization Indiana Humanities, I am enjoying an opportunity to bring the two together. Up to now, my arguments for the humanities have been theoretical and philosophical. (They are in my books Reforming the Humanities: Literature and Ethics from Dante through Modern Times, 2009; Living Without Philosophy: On Narrative, Rhetoric, and Morality, 1998; and Nietzsche and the Modern Crisis of the Humanities, 1995.) But there are also empirical questions about what happens when people experience the humanities–and especially when laypeople participate in the “public humanities” in the form of book clubs, museum visits, or maintaining local historical sites. We at CIRCLE are helping Indiana Humanities with a case study of their state’s humanities “ecosystem.” As it says on their website:

Using a survey method, Indiana Humanities (along with leading researchers) will collect data on humanities-related institutions and program opportunities in Indiana, how they are connected to one another, and how people in Indiana participate in the humanities. The goal is to “map” the network of relationships among the various public and academic humanities sectors and between the humanities enterprise and the broader community.

The next stage–if we can pull it off later on–will be to find out whether the strength of the humanities “ecosystem” in a community is related to important social outcomes.

 

the role of political science in civic education

James Ceasar has published an interesting and provocative essay through the American Enterprise Institute entitled “The role of political science and political scientists in civic education.” I disagree with part of it–and with that aspect of Ceasar’s overall thought. He rests a great deal on the idea of a regime (roughly per Montesquieu). The United States is said to have had one regime or deep structure since the founding era, regardless of subsequent changes in policies. The goal of civic education should be to maintain this regime and transmit its values. Political education, on the other hand, aims to transform the regime. Today, “progressivism, multiculturalism, and cosmopolitanism” are “hostile” to the regime and seek to change it.

I think the American regime has changed profoundly several times and has always been a field of debate about its purpose and values. I see progressivism, multiculturalism, and cosmopolitanism as just examples of the usual hurly-burly of public debate in the American republic, not threats to it. Today, purist liberatarianism seems to me the most radical challenge to mainstream civic education. I note that Ceasar offers no  examples of progressivism, multiculturalism, and cosmopolitanism, and I suspect that he would find the actual proponents to be more complex, more varied, and generally less radical than he wants to portray them. Could, for example, a cosmopolitan like Martha Nussbaum or a multiculturalist progressive like Meira Levinson really be described as hostile to the regime?

That said, I cite the paper because I am wholly in agreement that political science ought to be supportive of civic education, and it is not. Ceasar notes:

The current official definition of political science from the American Political Science Association deliberately casts a wide net while avoiding giving undue offense (or providing any focus): ‘Political science is the study of governments, public policies and political processes, systems, and political behavior.’ … Civic education no longer occupies the central place that it did under the Aristotelian conception. The subject is of relatively minor interest in political science today, even allowing for a recovery of some its questions and concerns within the modern subfield known as ‘political socialization.’

Political science aims to be an empirical investigation into institutions and mass behavior, not an inquiry into what citizens should do. Investigating what citizens should do would require a combination of empirical evidence about how the world works, normative theory about how things ought to be, and strategic guidance about how to improve it (given the resources one has). Ceasar emphasizes the study of regimes, describing that as normative as well as empirical. I would agree, except that I am interested in investigating all scales of human action, of which the regime is only one. (Here I draw on the idea of “polycentrism,” developed by Vincent and Elinor Ostrom.)

In any case, I’ll be leading a discussion about the role of political science in civic education at the APSA:

August 29, 2013 @ 8:00 AM
Hilton Chicago

1. Theme Panel: “Power and Persuasion from Below: Civic Renewal, Youth Engagement, and the Case for Civic Studies,” Aug 30, 2013, 4:15 PM-6:00 PM
Chair: Peter Levine, Tufts University. Participants: Paul Dragos Aligica, George Mason University; Carmen Sirianni, Brandeis University; Karol E. Soltan, University of Maryland; Filippo A. Sabetti McGill University; and Meira Levinson, Harvard University

 

Ulrich Beck v Mitt Romney: makers and takers in the Risk Society

Mitt Romney got in trouble by identifying 47% of the population as “takers,” on the basis that they do not pay federal income tax but they receive some kind of government support. Although his formulation of that idea was unpopular, I think it’s quite common to understand the relationship between individuals and society in such a transactional way. It is all about the flow of material resources; one either gives or gets more from the state. It is then natural to see many people as net beneficiaries of the government and to worry about growing “dependency”–if not in the immediate present, then once the Baby Boomers have retired and are drawing federal retirement assistance without paying current taxes.

But that view seems wildly wrong. The problem is not growing dependency but growing exposure to all kinds of risk. People stand increasingly alone in the face of various threats. To understand how that can be, one needs a theory of risk (“bads”) to complement a theory of money and other “goods.” This is where the very influential German sociologist Ulrich Beck is directly relevant.

According to Beck, before and during the industrial revolution, the basic problem was meeting human material needs. Progress meant harnessing nature to produce what people needed, distributing the products fairly (e.g., through taxes and welfare), and not degrading the workers who produced the goods. But production and the control of nature also generated risks–pollution, accidents, surfeits (like obesity), unemployment, and tools that could be turned into weapons. As our productive capacity met and then exceeded our material needs, the problem of scarcity diminished but the problem of manufactured risk grew. The risks became worse–nuclear annihilation, global warming–and the ways that they were distributed became more complex and problematic.

Beck acknowledges that life has always been risky, but he argues that the present is different:

Anyone who set out to discover new countries and continents–like Columbus–certainly accepted ‘risks.’ But these were personal risks, not global dangers like those that arise for all humanity from nuclear fission or the storage of radioactive waste. In that earlier period, the word ‘risk’ had a note of bravery and adventure, not the threat of self-destruction of all life on Earth (Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, Sage, 1992 p. 21).

Beck’s invocation of Columbus raises a serious issue. After all, Columbus’ arrival in the New World led to mass slaughter, slavery, disease, and environmental destruction–not for him but for the people who already lived there. The Amerindian population faced plague, cholera, malaria, smallpox, typhoid, relocation to reducciones, enslavement or forced labor, and the auto-da-fe if they didn’t convert. It is not clear to me that the scale of risk is worse today, nor that the risks brought by smallpox or cultural imperialism involved bravery.

But Beck makes good points about the changing nature of risk and its rising importance relative to dearths:

  • Risks in the middle ages or the 19th century “assaulted the nose or the eyes and were thus perceptible to the senses, while the risks of civilization today typically escape perception and are localized in the sphere of physical and chemical formulas (e.g., toxins in the foodstuffs or the nuclear threat)” (p. 21).
  • “In the past, the hazards could be traced to an undersupply of hygenic technology. Today they have their basis in industrial overproduction.” The major risks today are caused by modernization, not by nature or human nature.
  • Risks are distributed unequally, but it is not always the case that the people who have the least goods or power suffer the most risk. “Risk positions are not class positions” (p. 39). The links between inequality of wealth and inequality of risk are complex, not direct and straightforward. And risk has a different logic from property. For one thing, it can be “contagious” (p. 44). Risks assigned to the poor can spread to the rich.
  • Because of the shift to imperceptible risks, the control of knowledge (especially science and technology), is increasingly important, and the control of material resources is becoming less so.

Science is both powerful and problematic. One problem is the appearance of simple objectivity. “Statements on hazards are never reducible to mere statements of fact. As part of their constitution, they contain both a theoretical and a normative component. The findings ‘significant concentrations of lead in children’ or ‘pesticide substances in mothers’ milk’ as such are no more risk positions of civilization than the nitrate concentration in the rivers or the sulfur dioxide content of the air. A causal interpretation must be added …” (p. 27). Whoever decides on the causal interpretation has power.

Because harms can be traced to causes that, in turn, have other causes, we tend to think of “systems” (economies, governments) as the sources of risk. But that way of thinking suppresses responsibility and agency. “Corresponding to the highly differentiated division of labor, there is general complicity, and the complicity is matched by a general lack of responsibility. Everyone is cause and effect, and thus non-cause. The causes dribble away into a general amalgam of agents and conditions, reactions and counter-reactions, which brings social certainty and popularity to the concept of system.”

Indeed, when we attribute causality to something we call a “system”:

one can do something and continue doing it without having to take personal responsibility for it. It is as if one were acting while being personally absent. One acts physically, without acting morally or politically. The generalized other–the system–acts within and through oneself: this is the slave morality of civilization, in which people act personally and socially as if they were subject to a natural fate, the ‘law of gravitation’ of the system. (p. 33)

To come back to Mitt Romney: we may indeed have a problem of irresponsibility, and it does involve blaming “society” for problems that should be attributed to individuals. But irresponsibility doesn’t play out as Romney implied. People are not taking excessive material resources from the state. In fact, the reason that something like 47% of Americans don’t pay federal taxes is that federal taxes have been cut–along with spending. The “takers” are getting very small amounts of support compared to people in other countries and in our own past, and the government provides relatively weak insurance, oversight, and prevention. All this is seen as a natural outgrowth of the laws of markets and technology, not anyone’s fault. The problem of irresponsibility involves the allocation of risk. We are endangering others, both living and not yet born. There are vast inequalities in who creates and suffers risks, although those disparities don’t map neatly onto traditional class distinctions. Overall, people are fearful, and increasingly we face our fears alone.

the Nehemiah story: on the pros and cons of walls

In writing yesterday about the Palestinian city, Rawabi, that is rising not far from Jerusalem, I thought of the Book of Nehemiah in the Bible. It tells a good and relevant story–but also a problematic one. It is a step-by-step primer in how to build a community, but also an illustration of how communities shut people out. It is about a wall–and walls can be both good and bad.

At the beginning of the chapter, the Jews are subjects of Persia; their own former capital lies in ruins. “The remnant that are left of the captivity there in the province are in great affliction and reproach: the wall of Jerusalem also is broken down, and the gates thereof are burned with fire” (1:1).

Nehemiah interprets this situation as a just punishment for the Jews’ sins. He is a Jew himself, but he has found a role as a cup-bearer or eunuch to the Persian King Artaxerxes. He recalls:

I took up the wine, and gave it unto the king. Now I had not been beforetime sad in his presence.

Wherefore the king said unto me, Why is thy countenance sad, seeing thou art not sick? this is nothing else but sorrow of heart. Then I was very sore afraid,

And said unto the king, Let the king live for ever: why should not my countenance be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers’ sepulchres, lieth waste, and the gates thereof are consumed with fire? (2:1-3)

Moved by Nehemiah’s plea, the king and queen allow and assist him to rebuild Jerusalem. Nehemiah organizes each of the clans and guilds to work on a section of the wall. The people labor for 52 days until the whole ring is complete. Much of the Book of Nehemiah records and honors the names of the builders and the sections of the wall they worked on.

While the work proceeds, divisions arise among the Jews, some of whom get rich at the expense of others. This makes Nehemiah “very angry,” and he institutes social reforms, including a ban on usury. Importantly, he personally eschews special treatment, “not eat[ing] the bread of the governor” (5:14), but working with his bare hands.

A wall benefits everyone inside it once it is whole and complete. The Jews sanctify this common good and the space it encloses. The sanctified and complete wall then becomes a framework within which individuals can construct private property. “Now the city was large and great: but the people were few therein, and the houses were not builded.” (7:4).  The people come with their servants and personal property (horses, mules, camels, asses), and some give gold and silver to the city for common purposes.

The community needs not only a framework and a mix of common and collective goods, but also rules to guide the interactions of its members. So the people gather and listen to the Law as narrated by Ezra. “The ears of all the people were attentive unto the book of the law” (8:3). Finally, they celebrate a common ritual that consists of each household’s building its own small booth of “live branches, and pine branches, and myrtle branches, and palm branches” (8:15) until the whole city is a place of “mirth” (8:12) and “solemn assembly” (8:18).

All of this is exemplary of civic work:

  1. Nehemiah’s interactions with Persia and the local peoples are “political,” in the narrow sense of that word. He negotiates an arrangement favorable to his people. The deal may also benefit Artaxerxes by creating a loyal subject city near the frontier with Egypt. (Nehemiah’s enemies accuse him of plotting to rebel against Babylon, but he insists they are lying: “There are no such things done as thou sayest, but thou feignest them out of thine own heart.” [6:8])
  2. Next, Nehemiah concentrates on building an essential common resource, in this case, a wall.
  3. He is attentive to questions of justice within the group.
  4. He applies all restraints and restrictions to himself as well as others.
  5. He creates a space for individual initiative and freedom; but at the same time …
  6. He leads the people in shared rituals that reinforce their commonality.

But a wall also has another aspect. It shuts some people out even as it protects those within. The desire to distinguish between the Jews and their “heathen” enemies is a consistent theme throughout the book of Nehemiah. From the first time that the neighbors “Sanballat the Horonite, and Tobiah the servant, the Ammonite, and Geshem the Arabian, heard [about the plan to rebuild Jerusalem], they laughed us to scorn, and despised us, and said, What is this thing that ye do? will ye rebel against the king? / Then answered I them, and said unto them, The God of heaven, he will prosper us; therefore we his servants will arise and build: but ye have no portion, nor right, nor memorial, in Jerusalem” (2:19-20).

Note that Geshem is an Arab/Arabian, which makes the story particularly problematic for the case of Rawabi. Later, the same people mentioned as scoffing at Nehemiah’s project become serious about it. They “conspired all of them together to come and to fight against Jerusalem, and to hinder it. /Nevertheless we made our prayer unto our God, and set a watch against them day and night, because of them. (3:9)” Indeed, the Jews must work with spears at the ready and on 24-hour guard. They are successful, nevertheless, in finishing the wall. “And it came to pass, that when all our enemies heard thereof, and all the heathen that were about us saw these things, they were much cast down in their own eyes: for they perceived that this work was wrought of our God” (6:16).

Then, once the wall is complete and the “heathen” are shut out, Nehemiah institutes legal reforms that separate Jews from gentiles. “And the seed of Israel separated themselves from all strangers, and stood and confessed their sins, and the iniquities of their fathers.” (9:2) The people also tell a story of their own past that emphasizes their conquests. They recall that they “subduedst … the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites” and took “their hands, with their kings, and the people of the land, that they might do with them as they would. And they took strong cities, and a fat land, and possessed houses full of all goods, wells digged, vineyards, and oliveyards, and fruit trees in abundance: so they did eat, and were filled, and became fat, and delighted themselves in thy great goodness”(9:24).

Here we see the two aspects of citizenship neatly combined. It is about building a safe and supportive common framework for a whole people–and about shutting other people out. It is about celebrating common bonds–and memorializing the enemies’ defeat.

But I would resist the idea that citizenship must always have losers as well as winners. Citizens can build bridges as well as walls, and even when they concentrate on walls, they can benefit the people who live on both sides. Although some read the poem differently, I take Robert Frost and his neighbor to be constructing a common good when they silently stack New Hampshire granite along their shared dividing line:

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each. …

And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

Rawabi, the planned Palestinian city

In yesterday’s New York Times, Isabel Kirshner reports from Rawabi, the planned city that’s rising on a hill between Jerusalem and Nablus. She describes Rawabi’s struggles with the Israelis over permits and water, limited support from the Palestinian Authority, and criticism from the “Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee, which opposes any normal ties with Israel. The committee has accused Mr. [Bashar] Masri [Rawabi’s developer] of promoting his private interests at the expense of Palestinian rights and of whitewashing the Israeli occupation.”
DSC00146

I am not sure what to conclude about the politics. But I have been to Rawabi, where I received the official promotional tour, designed mainly for prospective investors and residents. One of my colleagues took this snapshot as we approached.

Rawabi is an impressive place from the perspective of planning and development. It is environmentally friendly, aligned with the new urbanism, and yet–at least to my naive eyes–also consistent with the traditions of the region. Terraces of stone houses will line the hill, creating streets and squares for pedestrian traffic and shopping. Many residents are likely to commute, and their cars will be accommodated in underground garages. Ample attention is being paid to common or public amenities, including the central mosque and a church.

The politics are complicated because this is a Palestinian project that does not challenge the Israeli occupation. Indeed, I think Rawabi is good for Israel, creating a nice new Palestinian town on land that Israel does not officially contest, and thus potentially relieving pressure on the Jerusalem area. The kind of state that it invokes–orderly, prosperous, high-tech–would be easy for Israelis to live next to. Rawabi also brings business to Israel, which provides the town’s only port and airport and supplies many of its materials.

The fact that Rawabi is good for Israel does not make it bad for Palestinian aspirations. I am confident that the motivations for building it are nationalistic. It is about creating autonomy and prosperity within the Palestinian territory. Bashar Masri is an international businessperson who could make more money in other countries, including the US, where he lived for 25 years. He sees himself as investing in the Palestinian nation.

But this a classic situation in which choosing a win/win strategy could possibly undermine your side’s bargaining position in the inevitable zero-sum struggle for finite resources (land and water). That is essentially what the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee seems to be saying–and I am not surprised by their view.

Meanwhile, the Israelis show only grudging tolerance for Rawabi. When we were there, the developers were struggling to get permits for an access road. Apparently, not all Israelis see this development as good for their side. I do not know whether that is because they hold a purely zero-sum view of the geopolitical conflict (anything good for the Palestinians must be bad for Israel), because some influential Israelis actually want the land on which Rawabi is built, or because red tape is just pervasive. In any event, the obstacles seem foolish to me.

Again, I do not know enough to make an overall judgment of Rawabi from a Palestinian perspective. But I have a bias in its favor, based on the general premise that building things confers power. I am fully aware of the radical disparities in the situation. The Israelis possess the main cities, all the ports, the contiguous population centers, access to water–and jets, tanks, and the bomb. The Palestinians do not. I would favor substantial changes in that balance. But the question is how to get a just outcome while also developing Palestinian nationhood.

On the same day that we visited Rawabi, we had met with representatives of the Palestinian Authority, who emphasized the many ways in which they were being victimized by Israel and misunderstood by Americans. I did not disagree with their position, but it was hard to be impressed or to see a path to success. It was very easy to be impressed by Bashar Masri in Rawabi. Maybe he is impressive because he is an international businessperson, hence a representative of the ascendent “neoliberal” order, whereas the Palestinian Authority is a Third World bureaucracy running on borrowed cash. In that case, ideologically, I should be more sympathetic to the PA than to Masri. But another interpretation is that Masri is creating a reality while the PA is asking for something akin to pity. Also, Masri has a strategy (offering a win/win opportunity for his side and the side that has the tanks), whereas I couldn’t detect a strategy in the PA office in Ramallah. Rawabi represents productive, constructive power that can only help the Palestinian cause.