Understanding Identity: A Multi-Paradigmatic Approach

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Kavous Ardalan

Understanding Identity A Multi-Paradigmatic Approach

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This work is dedicated to my family.

Contents

Preface

........................................................................................... ix References ...................................................................... xvii

About the Author ...................................................................................... xix Chapter 1

Four Paradigms .................................................................1 I. Functionalist Paradigm.....................................................4 II. Interpretive Paradigm......................................................6 III. Radical Humanist Paradigm ..........................................7 IV. Radical Structuralist Paradigm ......................................9 References .........................................................................11

Chapter 2

Human Nature: Four Paradigmatic Views ...................19 I. Functionalist View .........................................................19 II. Interpretive View ..........................................................26 III. Radical Humanist View ...............................................33 IV. Radical Structuralist View...........................................40 References .........................................................................47

Chapter 3

Identity: Four Paradigmatic Views................................49 I. Functionalist View .........................................................49 I.1. External Social Structure and the Structure of Self 50 I.2. Internal Mechanisms 52 I.3. Putting Together the Two Strands 54 II. Interpretive View ..........................................................56 III. Radical Humanist View ...............................................63 IV. Radical Structuralist View...........................................70 References .........................................................................77

Chapter 4

Place Attachment: Four Paradigmatic Views ...............85 I. Functionalist View .........................................................85 II. Interpretive View ..........................................................89

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Contents

III. Radical Humanist View ...............................................93 IV. Radical Structuralist View...........................................98 IV.1. The Theory of Accumulation 98 IV.2. Annihilation of Space by Time 99 Appendix .........................................................................102 Place Attachment 102 I.1. The Person Dimension: Individual and Collective Place Attachment 105 I.2. The Psychological Process Dimension of Place Attachment 106 I.3. The Place Dimension of Place Attachment 110 References .......................................................................113 Chapter 5

Nationalism: Four Paradigmatic Views.......................123 I. Functionalist View .......................................................123 II. Interpretive View ........................................................130 III. Radical Humanist View .............................................136 IV. Radical Structuralist View.........................................143 References .......................................................................150

Chapter 6

Racism: Four Paradigmatic Views...............................155 I. Functionalist View .......................................................155 II. Interpretive View ........................................................162 III. Radical Humanist View .............................................169 III.1. Critical Race Theory 170 III.2. Neo-Marxism 172 IV. Radical Structuralist View.........................................176 References .......................................................................183

Chapter 7

Feminism: Four Paradigmatic Views ..........................191 I. Functionalist View .......................................................191 II. Interpretive View ........................................................198 III. Radical Humanist View .............................................205 IV. Radical Structuralist View.........................................212 References .......................................................................219

Chapter 8

Discrimination: Four Paradigmatic Views ..................227 I. Functionalist View .......................................................227 I.1. Tastes for Discrimination 228 I.2. Employer Discrimination 229

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I.3. Employee Discrimination 231 I.4. Customer Discrimination 232 I.5. Statistical Discrimination 232 II. Interpretive View ........................................................234 II.1. Essentialism and Social Construction 236 III. Radical Humanist View .............................................241 III.1. Four Modes of Inequality 242 III.2. Four Practices of Inequality 245 III.3. Myths as the Cultural Support of Inequality 246 IV. Radical Structuralist View.........................................248 IV.1. Prevalence of Labor Market Segmentation 249 References .......................................................................256 Chapter 9

Multiculturalism: Four Paradigmatic Views ..............265 I. Functionalist View .......................................................265 II. Interpretive View ........................................................272 III. Radical Humanist View .............................................278 IV. Radical Structuralist View.........................................286 References .......................................................................293

Chapter 10

Paradigm Diversity ........................................................297 I. Remark 1: Multi-Paradigmatic Approach and Scholarly Research ..........................................................297 II. Remark 2: Multi-Paradigmatic Approach and Monoculturalism-Multiculturalism ...........................301 II.1. Dual-Process Social Psychology 302 II.2. Monoculturalism and Multiculturalism 306 III. Remark 3: Multi-Paradigmatic Approach and Identity Politics .........................................................313 III.1. A Comprehensive Approach to Social Change 314 References .......................................................................318

Index

.........................................................................................325

Preface

This book is the eleventh book that reflects the change in how I think about the world, and in writing it I hope that it will do the same for others. I began writing my first book1 a few years after receiving my terminal degree in Finance from York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. However, its origins date back to my days as a graduate student, when I took a course in “Philosophy and Method” with Professor Gareth Morgan. At that time, I was exposed to ideas which were totally new to me. They occupied my mind and every day I found them more helpful than the last in explaining what I experienced in my daily, practical, and intellectual life. I grew up overseas while in high school, and I was raised to appreciate mathematics and science at the expense of other fields of study. In college, I was exposed only to Economics in studying for my bachelor of arts. Afterwards, in order to obtain my master’s degree and my terminal degree in Economics, I attended University of California, Santa Barbara and received specialized training in Economics. My further specialized studies in Finance at York University ended in a second terminal degree. As is clear, throughout the years of my education, I was trained to see the world in a special, narrow way. Among all courses which I took during all these years of training, one course stood out as being different and, in the final analysis, as being most influential. It was the “Philosophy and Method” course which I took with Professor Gareth Morgan at York University. It was most influential because none of the other courses gave me the vision that this one did. While all the other courses trained me to see the world from the same narrow perspective, this course taught me that the world can be seen from different vantage points, each of which is insightful in its own way. Over the years, the constant application of this idea in my daily, practical, and intellectual life proved quite an eyeopener for me, such that I naturally converted to this new way of

1

Ardalan (2008).

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thinking about the world. This happened despite the fact that my entire education had almost exclusively trained me to perceive the world in a limited way. Since then, I have been writing based on this new approach, this latest book represents what has been accumulated since the publication of my first ten books.2 This book crosses two existing lines of literature; social philosophy on the one hand and identity on the other hand. More specifically, its frame of reference is Burrell and Morgan (1979) and Morgan (1983); and applies their ideas and insights to various dimensions of identity. Clearly, a thorough treatment of all the relevant issues referred to in this work is well beyond the scope of a single book. Within such limits, this book aims at only to provide an overview, a review, a taxonomy, or a map of the key topics, leaving further discussions of all the relevant issues to the references cited herein. In other words, the aim of this work is not so much to create a new piece of puzzle as it is to fit the existing pieces of puzzle together in order to make sense of it. To achieve this aim – and given the specialized and abstract nature of the philosophy of social science – this book first discusses the framework of Burrell and Morgan (1979); within this context, the following chapters bring some of the important dimensions of identity into focus. The choice of what to be included in the book and what to be excluded was a difficult one. On numerous occasions, it was decided to refer to some major topics only briefly. In any case, this book is only an overview; but a comprehensive set of references is provided to avoid some of its shortcomings. The main theme of the book is that social theory can usefully be conceived in terms of four key paradigms: functionalist, interpretive, radical humanist, and radical structuralist. These four paradigms are founded upon different assumptions about the nature of social science and the nature of society. Each generates theories, concepts, and analytical tools that are different from those of the other paradigms. These four paradigms are not airtight compartments into which all theories must be squeezed. They are heuristic devices which are created to make sense of the messy reality of any real-life phenomenon. They are merely useful constructs to aid understanding. They are not claimed to be the only constructs to aid understanding. They are not claimed to be the best constructs to aid understanding. They are merely certain constructs, among many different possible constructs, to aid understanding. They provide an analytically clear and compelling map of the terrain. They help in 2

Ardalan (2008, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2019a, 2019b, 2020, 2021, 2023a, 2023b).

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distinguishing the various perspectives that exist with respect to a given phenomenon. Their purpose is to help understand differences, not to make invidious comparisons. There is no one paradigm that can capture the essence of reality. Paradigm diversity provides enhanced understanding. In intellectual as well as natural environments, diversity is a sine qua non of robust good health. There is no singular approach that, in its universality, can apprehend the totality of reality. Since academic models are inevitably the product of a partial viewpoint, they will always be biased; and hence a multiplicity of perspectives is required to represent the complexity and diversity of phenomena and activities. The four paradigms provide a full-circle worldview. The mainstream in most academic fields of study is based upon the functionalist paradigm; and for the most part, mainstream scholars are not always entirely aware of the tradition to which they belong. An understanding of different paradigms leads to a better understanding of the multifaceted nature of their academic field of study. Although a researcher may decide to conduct research from the point of view of a certain paradigm, an understanding of the nature of other paradigms leads to a better understanding of what one is doing. Knowledge of any phenomenon is ultimately a product of the researcher’s paradigmatic approach to that multifaceted phenomenon. Viewed from this angle, the pursuit of knowledge is seen as much as an ethical, moral, ideological, and political activity as a technical one. Each paradigm can gain much from the contributions of the other paradigms. The ancient parable of the six blind scholars and their experience with the elephant illustrates the benefits of paradigm diversity. These six blind scholars did not know what an elephant looked like and had never even heard of one. They decided to obtain a mental picture – that is, knowledge – by touching the animal. The first blind scholar felt the elephant’s trunk and argued that the elephant was like a lively snake. The second bind scholar rubbed one of the elephant’s enormous legs and likened the animal to a rough column of massive proportions. The third blind scholar took hold of the elephant’s tail and insisted that the elephant resembled a large, flexible brush. The fourth blind scholar felt the elephant’s sharp tusk and declared it to be like a great spear. The fifth blind scholar examined the elephant’s flapping ear and was convinced that the animal was some sort of fan. The sixth blind scholar, who occupied the space between the elephant’s front and hid legs, could not touch any parts of the elephant and consequently asserted that there was no such a beast as an elephant at all and accused his colleagues of making up fantastic stories about non-existing things. Each of the six blind scholars held firmly to

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his understanding of an elephant, and they argued and fought about which story captured the correct understanding of the animal. As a result, their entire community was torn apart, and suspicion and distrust became the order of the day. This parable contains many valuable lessons. First, reality is probably too complex to be fully grasped by imperfect human beings. Second, although each person might correctly identify one aspect of reality, each may incorrectly attempt to reduce the entire phenomenon to their own partial and narrow experience. Third, maintaining communal peace and harmony might be worth much more than stubbornly clinging to one’s understanding of the world. Fourth, it might be wise for each person to return to reality and exchange positions with others to better appreciate the whole of the reality.3 This book – like its nine predecessors – advocates a multi-paradigmatic approach that juxtaposes heterogeneous viewpoints in order to illuminate more comprehensively the phenomenon under consideration. The multiparadigmatic approach uses a systematic and structured method to explain the phenomenon from the viewpoint of each paradigm, and juxtaposes them in order to transcend the limitations of each of the worldviews. My first book, entitled “On the Role of Paradigms in Finance,” applied the multi-paradigmatic approach to the following phenomena: (1) development of the academic field of finance, (2) mathematical language of the academic field of finance, (3) the mathematical method of the academic field of finance, (4) money, (5) corporate governance, (6) markets, (7) technology, and (8) education. My second book, entitled “Understanding Globalization: A MultiDimensional Approach,” applied, within the context of globalization, the multi-paradigmatic approach to the following phenomena: (1) world order, (2) culture, (3) the state, (4) information technology, (5) economics, (6) production, (7) development, and (8) Bretton Woods Institutions. My third book, entitled “Paradigms in Political Economy,” applied the multi-paradigmatic approach to the following phenomena: (1) the state, (2) justice, (3) freedom, (4) democracy, (5) liberal democracy, (6) the media, and (7) the great recession. These applications of the multi-paradigmatic approach show that the multi-paradigmatic approach is very versatile, in the sense that it can be applied to almost any phenomenon; and that the multi-paradigmatic approach can be applied not only to categorical concepts such as the state, justice, freedom, and the media, but also to categorical and sub-categorical 3

This parable is taken from Steger (2002).

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concepts such as democracy and liberal democracy, as well as practical categories such as the great recession. My fourth book, entitled “Case Method and Pluralist Economics: Philosophy, Methodology, and Practice,” applied the multi-paradigmatic approach to education and economics, and noted that both the case method and pluralist economics emanate from the same foundational philosophy which views the world as being socially constructed, and that both advocate pluralism. Therefore, the case method seems to be compatible and congruent with pluralist economics. To this end, the book discussed the philosophical, methodological, and practical aspects of the case method through their comparisons with those of the lecture method, which is commonly known and experienced by most people. The book also discussed pluralist economics through the exposition of the philosophical foundations of the extant economics schools of thought, which is the focal point of the attention and admiration of pluralist economics. My fifth book, entitled “Global Political Economy: A Multi-Paradigmatic Approach,” applied, in the context of global political economy, the multiparadigmatic approach to the following phenomena: (1) the driving force of globalization, (2) governance, (3) modernity, (4) finance, (5) regionalization, (6) war, and (7) democracy. These seven applications of the multiparadigmatic approach continued to show that the multi-paradigmatic approach is very versatile in the sense that it can be applied to almost any phenomenon, both national or international, as well as local and global. My sixth book, entitled “Equity Home Bias: A Place-Attachment Perspective,” introduced “place attachment” as a new explanation for the “equity home bias” puzzle – the empirical finding that people overinvest in domestic stocks relative to the theoretically optimal investment portfolio. For this purpose, Chapter 1 provided a comprehensive review of the extant literature on the equity home bias puzzle. Chapter 2 provided an overview of the literature on place attachment. Chapter 3 crossed the two lines of research to present place attachment as a new explanation for the equity home bias puzzle. Chapter 4 considered the future of place attachment and its effect on the home bias. At first sight, this book might not seem to have any relationship with the multi-paradigmatic approach. However, it should be noted that: (1) the qualitative methodology, rather than the quantitative methodology of mainstream finance, which is used in this book stems from the teachings of the multi-paradigmatic approach – that is, there are paradigmatically diverse research methodologies, and (2) the review of the literature on place attachment which is provided in Chapter 2 applies a multi-paradigmatic

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approach – that is, there are paradigmatically diverse views on place attachment. My seventh book, entitled “Understanding Revolution: A MultiParadigmatic Approach,” aimed to show how a multi-paradigmatic approach can be used in order to better understand social revolution. The book started with the discussion of four broad worldviews, or paradigms. It then discussed several major social phenomena from the viewpoints of the four paradigms: (1) culture, (2) religion, (3) revolution, (4) the Iranian Revolution, (5) ideology, and (6) the ideology of the Iranian Revolution. The intention was to present the benefits and characteristics of the multi-paradigmatic approach. The book also showed how the multi-paradigmatic approach facilitates a better and more comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon under consideration. Finally, it illustrated how the multi-paradigmatic approach substantively improves the analysis and understanding of social revolution and rectifies many extant controversies. Against this background, the book introduced a comprehensive approach to the understanding of revolution. My eighth book, entitled “Understanding Feminist Theories and Feminist Economics: A Multi-Paradigmatic Approach,” aimed to provide an understanding of feminist theories and feminist economics through a multiparadigmatic approach. To this end, Chapter 1 discussed the four paradigms. Chapters 2 through 7, in turn, applied the four-paradigmatic framework to the extant literature on six relevant dimensions of social life: human nature, feminist theories, family, patriarchy, discrimination, and feminist economics. Chapters 8 through 11 then applied the four-paradigmatic framework to four relevant scholarly subjects of research: feminist research, feminist education, economics versus sociology, and men versus women. Chapter 12 concluded by recommending paradigm diversity. In this way, the book showed, among other things, that the four-paradigmatic framework can be used not only as a classificatory device, but also as an analytical tool. My ninth book, entitled “History: A Multi-Paradigmatic Approach,” aimed to provide an understanding of history. For this purpose, Chapter 1 discussed the four paradigms. Chapters 2 through 5 then applied the fourparadigmatic framework to the extant literature on four relevant dimensions of history: histography, grand narratives, progress, and time. Chapters 6 through 8 went on to apply the four-paradigmatic framework to three historical events: the French Revolution, the American Civil War, and the Iranian Revolution. Chapter 9 concluded by recommending paradigm diversity. My tenth book, entitled “On the Methodology of Financial Economics: A Multi-Paradigmatic Look at Bias in the Mainstream,” critically discussed the

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scientific methodology of mainstream financial economics, and made suggestions for its improvement. It used a multi-paradigmatic approach as its frame of reference in discussing 11 biases of the scientific methodology of mainstream financial economics: intellectual bias, local bias, fad bias, ideological bias, automaticity bias, confirmation bias, cultural bias, stereotyping bias, under-productivity bias, homogeneity bias, and isolation bias. These biases mean that the knowledge produced via the scientific methodology of financial economics is biased, and therefore partial. Consequently, the book suggested the use of the multi-paradigmatic approach as a way to improve the methodology of mainstream financial economics, as it provides a broader and a balanced understanding of the multi-faceted phenomenon under consideration and overcomes such biases. This latest book, entitled “Understanding Identity: A Multi-Paradigmatic Approach,” is about understanding identity through a multi-paradigmatic approach. For this purpose, the book starts with a discussion of four most diverse worldviews or paradigms (i.e., functionalist, interpretive, radical humanist, radical structuralist). Then, it discusses identity and several aspects of it (i.e., human nature, identity, place attachment, nationalism, racism, feminism, discrimination, multiculturalism) from the viewpoints of the four most diverse worldviews or paradigms. The book recommends paradigm diversity. This book is unique because the other books in the market do not share its especial features, which are listed as follows: 1) It is systematic and methodic: It discusses each of the eight aspects of identity from the same four paradigmatic viewpoints. This multiparadigmatic method of analysis can be applied to any phenomenon, i.e., each phenomenon can be viewed from these four perspectives. This method is, indeed, versatile, and resilient. 2) It is fundamental and applied: It applies four fundamental viewpoints to each of the eight aspects of identity. 3) It is fair and unbiased: In each chapter, it allocates the same number of pages of the book to each paradigmatic viewpoint. 4) It is multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary: It is based on philosophy, incorporates sociology and humanities, and goes on to include discussions about economics, culture, politics, and social class structure. 5) It is enlightening: In each chapter, it provides four different views with respect to a given phenomenon, and therefore, it provides a

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broader and a balanced understanding of the phenomenon under consideration. 6) It is multi-dimensional and multi-perspectival: It regards and treats any phenomenon as being multi-dimensional, and in addition, it looks at each dimension of the phenomenon from four different paradigmatic perspectives. There are other books written on identity, but they are specialized and have tunnel vision; in contrast, this book regards all disciplines as inseparable, and therefore, discusses them within a multi-paradigmatic approach. Furthermore, other books focus on a particular aspect of identity and their explanations are made from a specific viewpoint. But this book discusses as many aspects of identity as a book’s space allows, and, in this way, proposes a comprehensive approach to the understanding of identity. Moreover, the approach used in this book, when learned, can be applied to any other phenomenon. This book will be useful to everyone in society. As a textbook, it can be used in upper-level undergraduate and master-level courses in a variety of disciplines because the book discusses various fundamental aspects/dimensions of human social life. Especially, this book will be useful to students in Social Studies, Political Science, Liberal Studies, Sociology, Humanities, and Philosophy. This book can be used as either the main text or a supplementary reading. This book is about fundamental aspects/dimensions of human social life, and therefore, it can be used in any country. The writing of the chapters of this book involved extensive work over several years. It required peace of mind and extended uninterrupted research time. My deepest expressions of gratitude go to my wife Haleh, my son Arash, and my daughter Camellia for their prolonged patience, unlimited understanding, sustained support, constant cooperation, and individual independence during all these long years. I hold much respect for my late parents (Javad and Afagholmolouk), who instilled in their children (Ghobad, Golnar, Alireza, and Kavous) the grand Ardalan family’s values of respect, openness, and love of learning, among others. I sincerely appreciate the heartfelt support of my in-laws (Farideh, Parviz, and Houman), who have always been in close contact with us since the formation of my immediate family. The ideas expressed in this work are based on the teachings, writings, and insights of Professor Gareth Morgan, to whom the nucleus of this work is owed. Needless to say, I stand responsible for all the errors and omissions. I

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would like to thank Professor Gareth Morgan, who taught me how to diversely view the world, and accordingly inspired my work. I am also thankful to the Marist College library staff for their timely provision of the requested literature, which they obtained from various sources. I would additionally like to thank the publishers, referenced in the footnotes, which allowed me to use their materials. Certainly, I would like to thank the respectable people who work at Nova Science Publishers for their recognition of the significance of my work, and for their publication of the book with utmost professionalism. Kavous Ardalan, PhD Professor of Finance School of Management Marist College Poughkeepsie, New York USA

References Ardalan, Kavous, 2008, On the Role of Paradigms in Finance, Aldershot, Hampshire, Britain: Ashgate Publishing Limited, and Burlington, Vermont, U.S.A.: Ashgate Publishing Company. Ardalan, Kavous, 2014, Understanding Globalization: A Multi-Dimensional Approach, Piscataway, New Jersey, U.S.A.: Transaction Publishers. Ardalan, Kavous, 2016, Paradigms in Political Economy, New York, New York, U.S.A.: Routledge. Ardalan, Kavous, 2018, Case Method and Pluralist Economics: Philosophy, Methodology, and Practice, New York, New York, U.S.A.; and Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing AG. Ardalan, Kavous, 2019a, Global Political Economy: A Multi-Paradigmatic Approach, New York, New York, U.S.A.; and Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing AG. Ardalan, Kavous, 2019b, Equity Home Bias in International Finance: A Place-Attachment Perspective, Abingdon, Oxon, U.K.; and New York, New York, U.S.A.: Routledge. Ardalan, Kavous, 2020, Understanding Revolution: A Multi-Paradigmatic Approach, New York, New York, U.S.A.; and Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing AG. Ardalan, Kavous, 2021, Feminist Theories and Feminist Economics: A Multi-Paradigmatic Approach, Lanham, Maryland, U.S.A.: Lexington Books (Rowman and Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.).

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Ardalan, Kavous, 2023a, A Multi-Paradigmatic Approach to Understanding History, Newcastle Upon Tyne, England, U.K.: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Ardalan, Kavous, 2023b, On the Methodology of Financial Economics: A MultiParadigmatic Look at Bias in the Mainstream, Cheltenham, England, U.K.: Edward Elgar Publishing. Burrell, Gibson and Morgan, Gareth, 1979, Sociological Paradigms and Organizational Analysis, Hants, Britain: Gower Publishing Company Limited. Morgan, Gareth, 1983, Beyond Method: Strategies for Social Research, Beverley Hills, California, U.S.A.: Sage Publications. Steger, Manfred B., 2002, Globalism: The New Market Ideology, New York, New York, U.S.A.: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

About the Author

Kavous Ardalan is a professor of finance at Marist College, Poughkeepsie, New York, U.S.A. He holds Ph.D.s in both Economics and Finance. His research interests are in the theoretical, practical, educational, social, and philosophical aspects of Economics and Finance. He has written ten books and more than ninety journal articles. Some of his research papers have received awards at international conferences, have been regarded very highly by publishers, have been referenced in the “Handbook of Finance,” journal articles, and books, and have been used as course reading materials at top universities. He teaches finance in both undergraduate and graduate programs.

Chapter 1

Four Paradigms Social theory can usefully be conceived in terms of four key paradigms: functionalist, interpretive, radical humanist, and radical structuralist. The four paradigms are founded upon different assumptions about the nature of social science and the nature of society. Each generates theories, concepts, and analytical tools which are different from those of other paradigms.4,5 All theories are based on a philosophy of science and a theory of society. Many theorists appear to be unaware of, or ignore, the assumptions underlying these philosophies. They emphasize only some aspects of the phenomenon and ignore others. Unless they bring out the basic philosophical assumptions of the theories, their analysis can be misleading; since by emphasizing differences between theories, they imply diversity in approach. While there appear to be different kinds of theory, they are founded on a certain philosophy, worldview, or paradigm. This becomes evident when these theories are related to the wider background of social theory.

4

For the basic literature on the four paradigmatic framework, see Bottomore (1975), Burrell (2002), Burrell and Morgan (1979), Clark (1985), Denisoff (1974), Eckburg and Hill (1979), Effrat (1973), Evered and Louis (1981), Friedheim (1979), Gioia and Pitre (1990), Goles and Hirschheim (2000), Guba (1985), Guba and Lincoln (1994), Hassard (1988, 1991a, 1991b, 1993, 2013), Holland (1990), Jackson and Carter (1991), Jackson and Carter (2008), Jennings, Perren, and Carter (2005), Jick (1979), Kirkwood and Campbell-Hunt (2007), Knudsen (2003), Kuhn (1962, 1970a, 1970b, 1974, 1977), Lammers (1974), Lehmann and Young (1974), Lewis and Grimes (1999), Lincoln (1985), Martin (1990), Maruyama (1974), Masterman (1970), McKelvey (2008), Mir and Mir (2002), Morgan (1990), Okhuysen and Bonardi (2011), Parsons (1967), Ritzer (1975), Romani, Primecz, and Topcu (2011), Schultz and Hatch (1996), Shapere (1971), Siehl and Martin (1988), Snizek (1976), Steinle (1983), van de Berge (1963), White (1983), and Willmott (1990, 1993). 5 For more recent discussions and applications of the four paradigmatic framework, see Ardalan (2008, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2019a, 2019b, 2020, 2021), Arora and Chakraborty (2020), Bleijenbergh, Booysen, and Mills (2018), Cerin (2003), Deetz (1996), Hoque, Covaleski, and Gooneratne (2015), Ismail and Zainuddin (2013), McGregor (2019), McPhail and Cordery (2019), Mkansi and Acheampong (2012), Nemetz and Christensen (1996), Nielsen and Lassen (2011), Pellegrinelli and Murray-Webster (2011), Romani, Mahadevan, and Primecz (2018), Silva and Santos (2022), Watkins-Mathys and Lowe (2005), and Willmott (2005).

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The functionalist paradigm has provided the framework for current mainstream academic fields, and accounts for the largest proportion of theory and research in these respective academic fields. In order to understand a new paradigm, theorists should be fully aware of assumptions upon which their own paradigm is based. Moreover, to understand a new paradigm, one must explore it from within, since the concepts in one paradigm cannot easily be interpreted in terms of those of another. No attempt should be made to criticize or evaluate a paradigm from the outside. This is self-defeating since it is based on a separate paradigm. All four paradigms can be easily criticized and ruined in this way. These four paradigms are of paramount importance to any scientist, because the process of learning about a favored paradigm is also the process of learning what that paradigm is not. The knowledge of paradigms makes scientists aware of the boundaries within which they approach their subject. Each of the four paradigms implies a different way of social theorizing. Before discussing each paradigm, it is useful to look at the notion of “paradigm.” Burrell and Morgan (1979)6 regard the: ... four paradigms as being defined by very basic meta-theoretical assumptions which underwrite the frame of reference, mode of theorizing and modus operandi of the social theorists who operate within them. It is a term which is intended to emphasize the commonality of perspective which binds the work of a group of theorists together in such a way that they can be usefully regarded as approaching social theory within the bounds of the same problematic. The paradigm does ... have an underlying unity in terms of its basic and often “taken for granted” assumptions, which separate a group of theorists in a very fundamental way from theorists located in other paradigms. The “unity” of the paradigm thus derives from reference to alternative views of reality which lie outside its boundaries, and which may not necessarily even be recognized as existing. (pp. 23-24)

Each theory can be related to one of the four broad worldviews. These adhere to different sets of fundamental assumptions about; the nature of 6

This work borrows heavily from the ideas and insights of Burrell and Morgan (1979) and Morgan (1983) and applies them to financial economics. Burrell and Morgan (1979) state “The scope for applying the analytical scheme to other field of study is enormous … readers interested in applying the scheme in this way should find little difficulty in proceeding from the sociological analyses ... to an analysis of the literature in their own sphere of specialised interest” (page 35).

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science (i.e., the subjective-objective dimension), and the nature of society (i.e., the dimension of regulation-radical change) as in Figure 1.1.7

The Sociology of Radical Change

S U B J E C T I V E

Radical Humanist

Radical Structuralist

Interpretive

Functionalist

O B J E C T I V E

The Sociology of Regulation Figure 1.1. The Four Paradigms. Each paradigm adheres to a set of fundamental assumptions about the nature of science (i.e., the subjective-objective dimension), and the nature of society (i.e., the dimension of regulation-radical change).

Assumptions related to the nature of science are assumptions with respect to ontology, epistemology, human nature, and methodology. The assumptions about ontology are assumptions regarding the very essence of the phenomenon under investigation – that is, the extent to which the phenomenon is objective and external to the individual or is subjective and the product of individual’s mind. The assumptions about epistemology are assumptions about the nature of knowledge – that is, assumptions about how one might go about understanding the world, and communicate such knowledge to others. For example, what constitutes knowledge and to what extent it is something which can be acquired or which must be personally experienced? The assumptions about human nature are concerned with human nature and, in particular, the relationship between individuals and their environment, which is the object and subject of social sciences – that is, the extent to which 7

This can be used as both a classificatory device, or more importantly, as an analytical tool.

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human beings and their experiences are the products of their environment or human beings are creators of their environment. The assumptions about methodology relate to the way in which one attempts to investigate and obtain knowledge about the social world – that is, the extent to which the methodology treats the social world as being real, hard, and external to the individual, or as being of a much softer, personal, and more subjective quality. In the former case, the focus is on the universal relationship among elements of the phenomenon; whereas in the latter case, the focus is on the understanding of the way in which the individual creates, modifies, and interprets the situation which is experienced. The assumptions related to the nature of society are concerned with the extent of regulation of society or radical change in society. Sociology of regulation provides an explanation of society based on the assumption of its unity and cohesiveness. It focuses on the need to understand and explain why society tends to hold together rather than fall apart. Sociology of radical change provides an explanation of society based on the assumption of its deepseated structural conflict, modes of domination, and structural contradiction. It focuses on the deprivation of human beings, both material and psychic; and it looks towards alternatives rather than the acceptance of the status quo. The subjective-objective dimension and the regulation-radical change dimension together define four paradigms, which all share common fundamental assumptions about the nature of social science and the nature of society. Each paradigm has a fundamentally unique perspective for the analysis of social phenomena.

I. Functionalist Paradigm The functionalist paradigm assumes that society has a concrete existence and follows a certain order. These assumptions lead to the existence of an objective and value-free social science which can produce true explanatory and predictive knowledge of the reality “out there.” It assumes scientific theories can be assessed objectively by reference to empirical evidence. Scientists do not see any roles for themselves, within the phenomenon which they analyze, through the rigor and technique of the scientific method. This attributes independence to the observer from the observed – that is, an ability to observe “what is” without affecting it. It assumes there are universal standards of science, which determine what constitutes an adequate explanation of what is observed. It assumes there are external rules and regulations governing the

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external world. The goal of scientists is to find the orders that prevail within that phenomenon. The functionalist paradigm seeks to provide rational explanations of social affairs and generate regulative sociology. It assumes a continuing order, pattern, and coherence, and tries to explain what is. It emphasizes the importance of understanding order, equilibrium, and stability in society and the way in which these can be maintained. It is concerned with the regulation and control of social affairs. It believes in social engineering as a basis for social reform. The rationality which underlies functionalist science is used to explain the rationality of society. Science provides the basis for structuring and ordering the social world, similar to the structure and order in the natural world. The methods of natural science are used to generate explanations of the social world. The use of mechanical and biological analogies for modeling and understanding social phenomena are particularly favored. Functionalists are individualists – that is, the properties of the aggregate are determined by the properties of its units. Their approach to social science is rooted in the tradition of positivism. It assumes that the social world is concrete, meaning it can be identified, studied, and measured through approaches derived from the natural sciences. Functionalists believe that the positivist methods which have triumphed in natural sciences should prevail in social sciences, as well. In addition, the functionalist paradigm has become dominant in academic sociology. The social world is treated as a place of concrete reality, characterized by uniformities and regularities which can be understood and explained in terms of causes and effects. Given these assumptions, the individuals are regarded as taking on a passive role; their behavior is rather determined by the social environment. Functionalists are pragmatic in orientation and are concerned about understanding society so the knowledge thus generated can be used in society. Functionalism is problem orientated in approach, as it is concerned to provide practical solutions to practical problems. In Figure 1.1, the functionalist paradigm occupies the southeast quadrant. Schools of thought within this paradigm can be located on the objectivesubjective continuum. From right to left they are: objectivism, social system theory, integrative theory, interactionism, and social action theory.8 8

For classics in this literature see Blau (1955, 1964), Buckley (1967), Comte (1953), Durkheim (1938, 1947), James (1890), Mead (1932a, 1932b, 1934, 1938), Merton (1968), Pareto (1935), Simmel (1936, 1955), Skinner (1953, 1957, 1972), and Spencer (1873).

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II. Interpretive Paradigm The interpretive paradigm assumes that social reality is the result of the subjective interpretations of individuals. It sees the social world as a process which is created by individuals. Social reality, insofar as it exists outside the consciousness of any individual, is regarded as a network of assumptions and intersubjectively shared meanings. This assumption leads to the belief there are shared multiple realities which are sustained and changed. Researchers recognize their role within the phenomenon under investigation. Their frame of reference is one of participant, as opposed to observer. The goal of the interpretive researchers is to find the orders that prevail within the phenomenon under consideration; however, they are not objective. The interpretive paradigm is concerned with understanding the world as it is, at the level of subjective experience. It seeks explanations within the realm of individual consciousness and subjectivity. Its analysis of the social world produces sociology of regulation. Its views are underwritten by assumptions that the social world is cohesive, ordered, and integrated. Interpretive sociologists seek to understand the source of social reality. They often delve into the depths of human consciousness and subjectivity in their quest for the meanings in social life. They reject the use of mathematics and biological analogies in learning about society, and their approach places emphasis on understanding the social world from the vantage point of the individuals who are actually engaged in social activities. The interpretive paradigm views the functionalist position as unsatisfactory for two reasons. First, human values affect the process of scientific enquiry – that is, scientific method is not value free, since the frame of reference of the scientific observer determines the way in which scientific knowledge is obtained. Second, in cultural sciences, the subject matter is spiritual in nature – that is, human beings cannot be studied by the methods of the natural sciences, which aim to establish general laws. In the cultural sphere, human beings are perceived as free. An understanding of their lives and actions can be obtained by the intuition of the total wholes, which is bound to break down by atomistic analysis of the functionalist paradigm. Cultural phenomena are seen as the external manifestations of inner experience. Cultural sciences, therefore, need to apply analytical methods based on “understanding,” through which the scientist can seek to understand human beings, their minds, and their feelings, and the way these are expressed in their outward actions. The notion of “understanding” is a defining characteristic of all theories located within this paradigm.

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The interpretive paradigm believes that science is based on “taken for granted” assumptions and, like any other social practice, must be understood within a specific context. Therefore, it cannot generate objective and valuefree knowledge. Scientific knowledge is socially constructed and socially sustained; its significance and meaning can only be understood within its immediate social context. The interpretive paradigm regards mainstream social theorists as belonging to a small and self-sustaining community, who believe that social reality exists in a concrete world. They theorize about concepts which have little significance to people outside the community, who practice social theory, and the limited community whom social theorists may attempt to serve. Functionalist social theorists tend to treat their subject of study as a hard, concrete, and tangible empirical phenomenon which exists “out there” in the “real world.” Interpretive researchers are opposed to such structural absolution. They emphasize that the social world is no more than the subjective construction of individual human beings who create and sustain a social world of intersubjectively shared meaning, which is in a continuous process of reaffirmation or change. Therefore, there are no universally valid social rules. Interpretive social research enables scientists to examine social behavior together with ethical, cultural, political, and social issues. In Figure 1.1, the interpretive paradigm occupies the southwest quadrant. Schools of thought within this paradigm can be located on the objectivesubjective continuum. From left to right they are: solipsism, phenomenology, phenomenological sociology, and hermeneutics.9

III. Radical Humanist Paradigm The radical humanist paradigm provides critiques of the status quo and is concerned to articulate, from a subjective standpoint, the sociology of radical change, modes of domination, emancipation, deprivation, and potentiality. Based on its subjectivist approach, it places great emphasis on human consciousness. It tends to view society as anti-human. It views the process of reality creation as feeding back on itself, such that individuals and society are prevented from reaching their highest possible potential – that is, the

9

For classics in this literature see Berkeley (1962), Dilthey (1976), Gadamer (1965), Garfinkel (1967), Hegel (1931), Husserl (1929), Schutz (1964, 1966, 1967), Winch (1958), and Wittgenstein (1963).

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consciousness of human beings is dominated by the ideological superstructures of the social system, resulting in their alienation or false consciousness. This, in turn, prevents true human fulfillment. Social theorists regard the orders that prevail in the society as instruments of ideological domination. Their major concern is with the way this occurs and how human beings can release themselves from constraints which existing social arrangements place upon realization of their full potential. They seek to change the social world through a change in consciousness. Radical humanists believe that everything must be grasped as a whole, because the whole dominates the parts in an all-embracing sense. Moreover, truth is historically specific, relative to a given set of circumstances, so that one should not search for generalizations for the laws of motion of societies. Radical humanists believe the functionalist paradigm accepts purposive rationality, logic of science, positive functions of technology, and neutrality of language, and uses them in the construction of “value-free” social theories. Radical humanist theorists intend to demolish this structure, emphasizing its political and repressive nature. They aim to show the role that science, ideology, technology, language, and other aspects of the superstructure play in sustaining and developing the system of power and domination, within the totality of the social formation. Their function is to influence the consciousness of human beings for eventual emancipation and formation of alternative social formations. Radical humanists note that functionalist sociologists create and sustain a view of social reality which maintains the status quo, and which forms one aspect of the network of ideological domination of the society. The focus of radical humanists upon the “superstructural” aspects of society reflects their attempt to move away from the economism of orthodox Marxism and emphasize the Hegelian dialectic. It is through the dialectics that the objective and subjective aspects of social life interact. The superstructure of society is believed to be the medium through which the consciousness of human beings is controlled and molded to fit the requirements of the social formation as a whole. The concepts of structural conflict, contradiction, and crisis do not play a major role in this paradigm, because these are a more objectivist view of social reality – that is, one which falls within the radical structuralist paradigm. In the radical humanist paradigm, the concepts of consciousness, alienation, and critique form the key concerns. In Figure 1.1, the radical humanist paradigm occupies the northwest quadrant. Schools of thought within this paradigm can be located on the

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objective-subjective continuum. From left to right they are: solipsism, French existentialism, anarchistic individualism, and critical theory.10

IV. Radical Structuralist Paradigm The radical structuralist paradigm assumes that reality is objective and concrete, as it is rooted in the materialist view of the natural and social world. The social world, similar to the natural world, has an independent existence – that is, it exists outside the minds of human beings. Sociologists aim to discover and understand the patterns and regularities which characterize the social world. Scientists do not see any roles for themselves in the phenomenon under investigation. They use scientific methods to find the order that prevails in the phenomenon. This paradigm views society as a potentially dominating force. Sociologists working within this paradigm have an objectivist standpoint and are committed to radical change, emancipation, and potentiality. In their analysis, they emphasize structural conflict, modes of domination, contradiction, and deprivation. They analyze the basic interrelationships within the total social formation, and emphasize the fact that radical change is inherent in the structure of society and that radical change takes place through political and economic crises. This radical change necessarily disrupts the status quo and replaces it with a radically different social formation. It is through this radical change that the emancipation of human beings from the social structure is materialized. For radical structuralists, an understanding of classes in society is essential for understanding the nature of knowledge. They argue that all knowledge is class specific – that is, it is determined by the place one occupies in the productive process. Knowledge is more than a reflection of the material world in thought; it is determined by one’s relation to that reality. Since different classes occupy different positions in the process of material transformation, there are different kinds of knowledge. Hence, class knowledge is produced by and for classes, and exists in a struggle for domination. Knowledge is thus ideological – that is, it formulates views of reality and solves problems from class points of view.

10

For classics in this literature see Bookchin (1974), Fichte (1970), Goldmann (1969), Gouldner (1954a, 1954b, 1970, 1973, 1976), Gramsci (1971), Habermas (1970a, 1970b, 1971, 1972, 1974, 1976), Horkheimer (1972), Lukacs (1971), Marcuse (1954, 1964, 1966, 1968), Marx (1975), Meszaros (1970, 1971), Sartre (1966, 1974, 1976), and Stirner (1907).

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Radical structuralists reject the idea that it is possible to verify knowledge in an absolute sense through comparison with socially neutral theories or data; but they emphasize that there is the possibility of producing a “correct” knowledge from a class standpoint. They argue that the dominated class is uniquely positioned to obtain an objectively “correct” knowledge of social reality and its contradictions. It is the class with the most direct and widest access to the process of material transformation that ultimately produces and reproduces that reality. Radical structuralists’ analysis indicates that the social scientist, as a producer of class-based knowledge, is a part of the class struggle. Radical structuralists believe truth is the whole, and emphasize the need to understand the social order as a totality rather than as a collection of small truths about various parts and aspects of society. The economic empiricists are seen as relying almost exclusively upon a number of seemingly disparate, data-packed, problem-centered studies. Such studies, therefore, are irrelevant exercises in mathematical methods. This paradigm is based on four central notions. First, there is the notion of totality. All theories address the total social formation. This notion emphasizes that the parts reflect the totality, not the totality the parts. Second, there is the notion of structure. The focus is upon the configurations of social relationships, called structures, which are treated as persistent and enduring concrete facilities. The third notion is that of contradiction. Structures, or social formations, contain contradictory and antagonistic relationships within them which act as seeds of their own decay. The fourth notion is that of crisis. Contradictions within a given totality reach a point at which they can no longer be contained. The resulting political and economic crises indicate the point of transformation from one totality to another, in which one set of structures is replaced by another of a fundamentally different kind. In Figure 1.1, the radical structuralist paradigm occupies the northeast quadrant. Schools of thought within this paradigm can be located on the objective-subjective continuum. From right to left they are: Russian social theory, conflict theory, and contemporary Mediterranean Marxism.11 This chapter briefly discussed social theory, its complexity, and diversity. It indicated that theorists are not always entirely aware of the traditions to which they belong. The diversity of theories presented in this chapter is vast. 11

For classics in this literature see Althusser (1969, 1971), Althusser and Balibar (1970), Bukharin (1965), Colletti (1972, 1974, 1975), Dahrendorf (1959), Marx (1973, 1976), Marx and Engels (1965, 1968), Plekhanov (1974), and Rex (1961, 1974).

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While each paradigm advocates a research strategy that is logically coherent, in terms of underlying assumptions, these vary from paradigm to paradigm. The phenomenon to be researched is conceptualized and studied in many different ways, each generating distinctive kinds of insight and understanding. There are many different ways of studying the same social phenomenon, and given that the insights generated by any one approach are at best partial and incomplete, the social researcher can gain much by reflecting on the nature and merits of different approaches before engaging in a particular mode of research practice. Social knowledge is ultimately a product of the researcher’s paradigmatic approach to this multifaceted phenomenon. Viewed from this angle, the pursuit of social knowledge is seen as much as an ethical, moral, ideological, and political activity as a technical one. Researchers can gain much by exploiting the new insights coming from other paradigms.

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Nemetz, Patricia L. and Christensen, Sandra L., 1996, “The Challenge of Cultural Diversity: Harnessing a Diversity of Views to Understand Multiculturalism,” Academy of Management Review, 21:2, 434-462. Nielsen, Suna Lowe and Lassen, Astrid Heidemann, 2011, “Images of Entrepreneurship: Towards a New Categorization of Entrepreneurship,” International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, 8:1, 35-53. Okhuysen, G. and Bonardi, J. P., 2011, “Editors’ Comments: The Challenge of Building Theory by Combining Lenses,” Academy of Management Review, 36, 6-11. Pareto, Vilfredo, 1935, The Mind and Society, 4 Volumes, New York, New York, U.S.A.: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich. Parsons, T., 1967, “A Paradigm for the Analysis of Social Systems and Change,” in Demerath, N. and Peterson, R., (eds.), System, Change, and Conflict, New York, New York: Free Press. Pellegrinelli, Sergio and Murray-Webster, Ruth, 2011, “Multi-Paradigmatic Perspectives on a Business Transformation Program,” Project Management Journal, 42:6, 4-19. Plekhanov, G., 1974, Selected Philosophical Works, Vol. I, Moscow, Russia: Progress. Rex, J., 1961, Key Problems in Sociological Theory, London, England: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Rex, J., 1974, Approaches to Sociology, London, England: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Ritzer, G., 1975, Sociology: A Multiple-Paradigm Science, New York, New York: Allyn and Bacon. Romani, Laurence, Mahadevan, Jasmin, and Primecz, Henriett, 2018, “Critical CrossCultural Management: Outline and Emerging Contributions,” International Studies of Management and Organization, 48:4, 403-418. Romani, L., Primecz, H., and Topcu, K., 2011, “Paradigm Interplay for Theory Development: A Methodological Example with the Kulturstandard Method,” Organizational Research Method, 14, 432-455. Sartre, Jean-Paul, 1966, Being and Nothingness, New York, New York, U.S.A.: Washington Square Press. Sartre, Jean-Paul, 1974, Between Existentialism and Marxism, London, England: Pantheon. Sartre, Jean-Paul, 1976, Critique of Dialectical Reason, Vol. I, London, England: New Left Books. Schultz, M. and Hatch, M. J., 1996, “Living with Multiple Paradigms: The Case of Paradigm Interplay in Organizational Culture Studies,” Academy of Management Review, 21, 529-557. Schutz, Alfred, 1964, Collected Papers II: Studies in Social Theory, The Hague, The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff. Schutz, Alfred, 1966, Collected Papers III: Studies in Phenomenological Philosophy, The Hague, The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff. Schutz, Alfred, 1967, Collected Papers I: The Problem of Social Reality, Second Edition, The Hague, The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff. Shapere, D., 1971, “The Paradigm Concept,” Science, 17, 706-709. Siehl, C. and Martin, J., 1988, “Measuring Organizational Culture: Mixing Qualitative and Quantitative Methods,” in Jones, M., Moore, D., and Snyder, R., (eds.), Inside Organizations, Beverly Hills, California: Sage.

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Silva, Patricia Araujo and Santos, Ana Cristina Batista dos, 2022, “Epistemological Possibilities of Public Administration Theories: From Paradigms to Epistemic Matrices,” Organizacoes and Sociedade, 29:101, 277-296. Simmel, Georg, 1936, The Metropolis and Mental Life, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A., University of Chicago Press. Simmerl, Georg, 1955, Conflict and the Web of Group Affiliations, Glencoe, Illinois, U.S.A.: Free Press. Skinner, B. F., 1953, Science and Human Behavior, New York, New York, U.S.A.: Macmillan. Skinner, B. F., 1957, Verbal Behavior, New York, New York, U.S.A.: Appleton-CenturyCrofts. Skinner, B. F., 1972, Beyond Freedom and Dignity, New York, New York, U.S.A.: Alfred Knopf. Snizek, W., 1976, “An Empirical Assessment of ‘Sociology: A Multi-Paradigm Science,’” American Sociologist, 1:2, 217-219. Spencer, Herbert, 1873, The Study of Sociology, London, England: Kegan Paul and Tench. Steinle, C., 1983, “Organization Theory and Multiple Plane Analysis,” Management International Review, 23, 31-46. Stirner, Max, 1907, The Ego and His Own, New York, New York, U.S.A.: Libertarian Book Club. van de Berge, P., 1963, “Dialectics and Functionalism: Toward a Theoretical Synthesis,” American Sociological Review, 28:5, 695-705. Watkins-Mathys, Lorraine and Lowe, Sid, 2005, “Small Business and Entrepreneurship Research: The Way through Paradigm Incommensurability,” International Small Business Journal, 23:6, 657-677. White, O., 1983, “Improving the Prospects for Heterodoxy in Organization Theory,” Administration and Society, 15:2, 257-272. Willmott, Hugh, 1990, “Beyond Paradigmatic Closure in Organizational Inquiry,” in Hassard, J. and Pym, D., (eds.), The Theory and Philosophy of Organizations, London, England: Routledge. Willmott, Hugh, 1993, “Breaking the Paradigm Mentality,” Organization Studies, 14, 681719. Willmott, Hugh, 2005, “Theorizing Contemporary Control: Some Post-structuralist Responses to Some Critical Realist Questions,” Organization, 12:5, 747-780. Winch, P., 1958, The Idea of a Social Science, London, England: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Wittgenstein, L., 1963, Philosophical Investigations, Oxford, England: Blackwell.

Chapter 2

Human Nature: Four Paradigmatic Views Any explanation of human nature is based on a worldview. The premise of this book is that any worldview can be associated with one of the four broad paradigms: functionalist, interpretive, radical humanist, and radical structuralist. This chapter takes the case of human nature and discusses it from the four different viewpoints. It emphasizes that the four views expressed are equally scientific and informative; they look at the phenomenon from their certain paradigmatic viewpoint; and together they provide a broader and a balanced understanding of the phenomenon under consideration. In this chapter, Sections I through IV present the four perspectives.

I. Functionalist View The “economic” approach can be used to understand human behavior in a variety of contexts and situations. The intention here is to spell out the principal attributes of the economic approach that distinguishes it from sociological, psychological, anthropological, political, and genetical approaches to the understanding of human behavior.12 It is helpful to start with the definitions of different fields. For economics, there are at least three definitions, which are conflicting. Economics is defined as the study of: (l) the allocation of material goods to satisfy material wants; (2) the market sector, and (3) the allocation of scarce means to satisfy competing ends. The definition of economics which is based on material goods is the narrowest and the least satisfactory. This is because it does not adequately describe the market sector. For instance, recently in the United States, the production of tangible goods has provided less than half of all the market employment, and the intangible outputs of the service sector have been larger in value than the outputs of the goods sector. In addition, economists have 12

For this literature see Alhadeff (1982), Crouch (1979), Doucouliagos (1994), Friedman (1953), Jaggar (1983), Kaufman (1989), Simon (1957), Steen (1996), Thaler (2000), Vyverberg (1989), and Wilson (1978). This section is based on Becker (1976).

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been as successful in understanding the supply and demand for retail trade, films, or education as they have been for those of autos or meat. The persistence of the definition of economics which is based on material goods might be due to a reluctance to subject certain types of human behavior to the “frigid” calculus of economics. The definition of economics which is based on scarce means and competing ends is the most general one. It defines economics with reference to the nature of the problem to be solved, and goes far beyond the market sector. Scarcity and choice characterize all resource allocation problems faced by the politicians (e.g., which industries to tax, how fast to increase the money supply, and should a war be initiated); by the family (e.g., decisions about a marriage mate, family size, the frequency of church attendance, and the allocation of time between sleeping and waking hours); by scientists (e.g., decisions about allocating their thinking time, and allocating mental energy to different research problems); and many others. These most common definitions of economics simply define the scope of economics, and none of them specify what the “economic” approach is. For instance, they do not specify whether the “economic” approach stresses tradition and duty, impulsive behavior, maximizing behavior, or any other human behavior when analyzing the market sector or the allocation of scarce means to competing ends. Similarly, definitions of sociology and other social sciences do not distinguish their approaches from others. For instance, the definition of sociology as “the study of social aggregates and groups in their institutional organization, of institutions and their organization, and of causes and consequences of changes in institutions and social organization” distinguishes neither the subject matter nor the approach of sociology from other social sciences, such as economics. Or the definition of comparative psychology as being “concerned with the behavior of different species of living organisms” is as general as the definitions of economics and sociology. Therefore, the focus of attention should be turned away from definition and be placed on approach. This is because what most distinguishes the discipline of economics from other disciplines in the social sciences is not its subject matter but its approach. As a matter of fact, various types of behavior are studied by several disciplines. For instance, fertility behavior falls within the subject matter of sociology, anthropology, economics, history, and politics. The unique power of the economic approach is that it can integrate a wide range of human behavior.

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The economic approach assumes maximizing behavior, and consequently maximizes the utility or wealth function of the household, firm, union, and government bureau. In addition, the economic approach assumes that markets exist, and that with varying degrees of efficiency they coordinate the actions of different market participants – individuals, firms, and nations – such that their behavior becomes consistent. Moreover, since economists are not aware as to how preferences are formed, they assume that preferences are stable, i.e., preferences do not change substantially over time, preferences are not very different between wealthy and poor persons, and preferences are not very different among persons raised in different societies and cultures. Prices and other market instruments that allocate the scarce resources within an economy act as a constraint on the desires of participants and coordinate their actions. In the economic approach, these market instruments perform most, if not all, of the functions that “structure” performs in sociological theories. The assumed stable preferences are not defined with respect to market goods and services – e.g., oranges, automobiles, or medical care – but are defined with respect to underlying objects of choice that each household produces by the use of a combination of their own time, market goods and services, and other inputs. These underlying preferences are defined with respect to fundamental aspects of life – e.g., health, prestige, sensual pleasure, benevolence, or envy – that do not always hold a stable relation to market goods and services. The assumed stable preferences provide a stable foundation for making predictions about human responses to various changes, and help the analyst avoid postulating a shift in preferences to “explain” apparent contradictions to his predictions. The economic approach relentlessly uses the combination of the following three assumptions: maximizing behavior, market equilibrium, and stable preferences. The economic approach uses these assumptions in order to produce many of its theorems. Some such theorems are: (1) an increase in price, decreases quantity demanded, e.g., an increase in the market price of eggs decreases the quantity demanded for eggs; an increase in the “shadow” price of children decreases the quantity demanded for children; and an increase in the office waiting time for physicians – which is one of the constitutive components of the full price of physician services, decreases the quantity demanded for their services; (2) an increase in price, increases the quantity supplied, e.g., an increase in the market price of beef increases the number of cattle raised and slaughtered; an increase in the wage rate offered to married women increases their labor force participation; and a decrease in “cruising” time increases the effective price received by taxicab drivers and

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thereby increases the supply of taxicabs; (3) competitive markets satisfy consumer preferences more effectively than monopolistic markets, e.g., in the market for aluminum; and in the market for ideas; and (4) a tax on the output of a market decreases that output, e.g., an excise tax on gasoline decreases the use of gasoline; punishment of criminals (which is a “tax” on crime) decreases the amount of crime; and a tax on wages decreases the labor supplied to the labor market. The economic approach is not restricted to either material goods and wants, or the market sector. Prices – whether they are the money prices of the market sector or the “shadow” imputed prices of the non-market sector – represent the opportunity cost of using scarce resources, and the economic approach predicts the same type of reaction to shadow prices as to market prices. For instance, a utility-maximizing person whose only scarce resource is his limited amount of time can use this time to produce various commodities that enter his preference function. In the absence of a market sector, each commodity has a marginal “shadow” price, i.e., the time required to produce an additional unit of that commodity. In equilibrium, the ratio of these “shadow” prices must equal the ratio of the marginal utilities of the corresponding goods or services. Most importantly, as per the prediction of the economic approach, an increase in the relative price of any commodity – i.e., an increase in the time required to produce a unit of that commodity – decreases the consumption of that commodity. The economic approach does not assume that all market participants necessarily have complete information or engage in costless transactions. The economic approach has led to a theory of the optimal or rational accumulation of costly information that implies, for instance, that market participants make greater investment in information when they undertake major decisions – e.g., when they intend to purchase a house or enter into marriage versus when they intend to purchase a sofa or bread. When a firm, worker, or household does not exploit an apparently profitable opportunity, the economic approach does not resort to irrationality, contentment with wealth already acquired, or shift in values (i.e., preferences). Instead, the economic approach postulates the existence of monetary or psychic costs – costs that are not easily observable by outsiders – of taking advantage of these opportunities that eliminate the apparent profitability of such opportunities. In fact, postulating the existence of costs closes or “completes” the economic approach in the same way that postulating the existence of (sometimes unobserved) uses of energy “completes” and

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preserves the law of the conservation of energy. Systems of analysis in chemistry, genetics, and other fields are completed similarly. The economic approach does not necessarily assume that decision-makers either are conscious of their maximization efforts, or can describe the reasons for their systematic patterns of behavior. Thus, the economic approach is consistent with both modern psychology – that emphasizes the subconscious – and sociology – that distinguishes between manifest and latent functions. Furthermore, the economic approach does not distinguish between major and minor decisions – e.g., decisions with respect to life and death versus decisions with respect to a brand of coffee – or between decisions involving strong emotions and decisions involving little emotions – e.g., decisions with respect to choosing a mate or the number of children versus decisions with respect to buying paint – or between decisions made by persons with different income, education, or family background. The economic approach is a comprehensive approach because it is applicable to all human behavior, e.g., the behavior involving money prices or imputed shadow prices; repeated or infrequent decisions; large or minor decisions; emotional or mechanical ends; rich or poor persons; men or women; adults or children; brilliant or stupid persons; patients or therapists; businessmen or politicians; and teachers or students. The applications of the economic approach are as broad as the scope of economics as defined by the allocation of scarce means to competing ends. The economic approach to human behavior has a long history. Adam Smith frequently used the economic approach to understand political behavior. Jeremy Bentham explicitly expressed his belief that the pleasure-pain calculus is applicable to all human behavior. According to Bentham, pleasure and pain are two sovereign masters that govern mankind. They determine what man ought to do, as well as what man shall do. They govern man in all he does, says, and thinks – without restriction to monetary decisions, repetitive choices, unimportant decisions, etc. Bentham applied his pleasure-pain calculus to a wide range of human behavior, e.g., criminal sanctions, prison reform, legislation, usury laws, and jurisprudence, as well as the markets for goods and services. The economic approach has been applied to understand racial discrimination, fertility, education, use of time, crime, marriage, child-rearing, labor force participation, social interactions, evolution of language, church attendance, capital punishment, legal system, extinction of animals, incidence of suicide, and other “sociological,” “legal,” and “political” problems. The

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rapid growth of the related work has shown that the economic approach is indeed applicable to all human behavior. For example, with respect to intellectual and artistic career, the economic approach reasons that people choose to follow scholarly or other intellectual or artistic pursuits only if they expect the benefits – both monetary and psychic – would exceed those of alternative occupations. Since the criterion that people apply to the choice of intellectual and artistic career is the same as the criterion that they apply to the choice of other occupations, there is no reason to believe that intellectuals would be less concerned with personal rewards, be more concerned with social well-being, or be more honest than others. Furthermore, according to the economic approach, when there is an increase in demand by different interest groups or constituencies for particular intellectual arguments and conclusions, then there would be an increase in the supply of these types of arguments. This reasoning is based on the economic theorem that an increase in price leads to an increase in quantity supplied. Similarly, the economic approach predicts that a flow of funds from a foundation or government into particular research topics – even “ill-advised” topics – would generate more proposals for research on those same topics. This reasoning, again, is based on the economic theorem that an increase in price leads to an increase in quantity supplied. As for another example, good health and a long life are important aims for most persons, but they are not the only aims. Therefore, somewhat better health or somewhat longer life may be given up in exchange for other aims. According to the economic approach, a person has an “optimal” expected length of life, at which the utility of an additional year of life is less than the utility foregone by using time and other resources to obtain that year. For instance, a person may continue his heavy smoking habit because the lifespan forfeited is not worth the cost to him of quitting smoking. The economic approach recognizes that many non-economic variables also significantly affect human behavior. For instance, the laws of mathematics, chemistry, physics, and biology tremendously affect human behavior through their effect on preferences and production possibilities. The economic approach acknowledges that the human body ages, that the rate of population growth equals the birth rate plus the migration rate minus the death rate, that children of more intelligent parents tend to be more intelligent than children of less intelligent parents, that people need to breathe to live, that a hybrid plant has a particular yield under one set of environmental conditions and a very different yield under another set, that gold and oil are located only in certain parts of the world and cannot be made from wood, that an assembly

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line operates according to certain physical laws, etc. The economic approach recognizes that all of these and many more factors influence choices, the production of people and goods, and the evolution of societies. This does not mean, for instance, that the rate of population growth is “non-economic” because birth rate, migration rate, and death rate cannot be analyzed by the economic approach. Similarly, the above does not mean that the rate of adoption of new hybrid corn is “non-economic” because it cannot be examined by the economic approach. As a matter of fact, the application of economic approach has had useful implications about the number of children in different families by assuming that families maximize their utility from stable preferences subject to prices and their resources. Where, prices and resources are partly determined by the gestation period for pregnancies, the abilities of children, and other non-economic variables. Similarly, the rate of adoption of hybrid corn in different parts of the United States has been explained by assuming that farmers maximize profits. That is, the new hybrid corn was more profitable and was adopted earlier in some parts of the country because weather, soil, and other physical conditions were more favorable. The economic approach not only uses many non-economic variables for understanding human behavior, but also benefits from the contributions of other fields, such as sociology, psychology, socio-biology, history, anthropology, political science, and law. The economic approach provides a useful framework for understanding all human behavior, but it does not intend either to downgrade the contributions of other social scientists, or to suggest that the contributions of economists are more important. For instance, the economic approach assumes that preferences are both given and stable, and on this basis makes predictions. It recognizes that such preferences are analyzed by the sociologist, psychologist, and the socio-biologist. How preferences are formed, and how slowly they evolve over time, are obviously important in predicting and understanding behavior. The economic approach provides a useful unified framework for understanding all human behavior. According to the economic approach, all human behavior can be viewed as involving utility maximization based on a stable set of preferences that would lead to the accumulation of an optimal amount of information and other inputs in a variety of markets. Of course, much behavior has not yet been explained by the economic approach. Furthermore, non-economic variables and the techniques and findings from other fields contribute significantly to the understanding of human behavior. That is, although the economic approach has provided a comprehensive

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framework, many of the important concepts and techniques are provided and will continue to be provided by other disciplines.

II. Interpretive View The Enlightenment viewed man as wholly of a piece with nature and complying with the general uniformity of composition which Baconian and Newtonian natural science had discovered there. That is, there is a human nature which is regularly organized, thoroughly invariant, and marvelously simple as Newton’s universe. Some of its laws may be different, but there are laws; some of its regularities may be obscured by the trappings of local fashion, but it is regular. Men are men under any guise and against any backdrop.13 According to the Enlightenment view, all the differences among men, in beliefs and values, in customs and institutions, both over time and across place, do not play any role in defining human nature. These differences are nothing but mere accretions, distortions, overlaying, and obscuring the true in human nature: the constant, the general, and the universal. In general, anything of which the intelligibility, verifiability, or actual affirmation is limited to men of a special age, race, temperament, tradition, or condition lacks truth, value, or importance to a reasonable man. In contrast to the Enlightenment type of view, a constant human nature independent of time; place; circumstance; studies and professions; transient fashions and temporary opinions, does not exist. What man is, indeed, depends on where he is, who he is, and what he believes, because man is so entangled with them and so is inseparable from them. These considerations have given rise to the cultural view of man, which stands in contrast to the uniformitarian view of man. The former strongly believes that men unmodified by the customs of their particular places do not exist, have never existed, and cannot exist. To use the metaphor of performing actors, there is, and there can be, no backstage where one can go to see the “real persons” who are relaxing in their casual clothes, and are disengaged from their profession, displaying their spontaneous desires and unprompted passions. This is because they only

13

For this literature see Brown (1988), Cooley (1992), Coutu (1949), Dewey (1957), Granovetter (1985), Jensen (1987), Midgley (2002), Montagu (1957), Sperry (1965), and Thomas (1997). This section is based on Geertz (1973).

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change their roles, their styles of acting, and their play’s drama; i.e., they are always performing. This makes the distinction between what is natural, universal, and constant in man and what is conventional, local, and variable extraordinarily difficult. Any attempt to make such a distinction falsifies the human situation. What can one conclude about human nature from thousand peculiar things that people in different cultures do, which anthropologists discover, investigate, and describe. That people living in a specific culture are peculiar? That they are just the same as other people living in totally different cultures, but with some peculiar and incidental customs? That they are innately different or instinctively led in certain directions rather than others? Or, that human nature does not exist; and men are pure and they are simply what their culture makes them? All of these interpretations are unsatisfactory. A more viable concept of man would take into account not only culture and the variability of culture, but also the basic unity of mankind. This more viable concept of man would not totally leave the uniformitarian view of human nature. It, at the same time, would not adhere to the idea that the diversity of custom across time and space is not a mere matter of garb and appearance, of stage settings and comedic masques, because such adherence would mean that human nature is as various in its essence as it is in its expression. Attempts to locate man within his customs have taken several directions and have followed diverse tactics. But, almost all of them, have proceeded along a single over-all intellectual strategy, which may be called the “stratigraphic” conception of the relations between biological, psychological, social, and cultural factors in human life. In this conception, man is composed of several “levels,” each of which is superimposed upon those beneath it, and, at the same time, is underpinning those above it. In the analysis of man, these layers are peeled off one after another. Each of these layers is complete and irreducible in itself. After one layer is peeled off, underneath it is another layer, which is of a quite different type. Beneath the layer designated for the motley forms of culture, there is the layer designated for structural and functional regularities of social organization. After these two layers are peeled off, there is the layer designated for the underlying psychological factors – i.e., “basic needs” – that support them and make them possible. After the layer for psychological factors is peeled off, there is the layer designated for the biological foundations – i.e., anatomical, physiological, and neurological – of the whole edifice of human life.

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This type of conceptualization not only has guaranteed the independence and sovereignty of established academic disciplines, but also has avoided stating that man’s culture is all there is to him, and has stated that culture is an essential, irreducible, and paramount ingredient in his nature. According to this type of conceptualization, cultural facts can be interpreted against the background of non-cultural facts, such that without either dissolving cultural facts into that background, or dissolving that background into the cultural facts. In this conceptualization, man is a hierarchically stratified being and at each of his various levels – organic, psychological, social, and cultural – he has an assigned and incontestable place. In order to see what he really is, it is necessary to superimpose findings from the various relevant sciences – anthropology, sociology, psychology, biology – upon one another. When this is done, the cultural level, which is distinctive to man, would contribute, in its own right, to the understanding of what man really is. In this way, the eighteenth-century image of man as pure “reasoner” – i.e., when he took off his cultural costumes – was replaced, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – by the image of man as the stratified being – i.e., when he put on his cultural costumes. This grand strategy, at the level of concrete research and specific analysis, translates into two steps. First, a search for universals in culture, i.e., for empirical uniformities that, despite the diversity of customs across time and space, can be found everywhere in almost the same form. Second, relating such universals in culture to the established constants of human biology, psychology, and social organization. If some customs can be found as common to all local variants of it, and if these can then be related in a determinate manner with certain invariant points of reference on the subcultural levels, then progress can be made toward specifying which cultural traits are essential to human existence and which are merely adventitious, peripheral, or ornamental. In this way, cultural dimensions of a concept of man can be determined such that they are commensurate with dimensions similarly determined by biology, psychology, and sociology. Of course, this is not a new idea. It is the notion of a “consensus gentium” (a consensus of all mankind), which states that there are some things that all men agree upon as right, real, just, or attractive, and, therefore, in fact, these things are right, real, just, or attractive. This notion was present in the Enlightenment and perhaps, some form of it has been present in all ages. The question is whether this research project would work? The answer depends on whether it is possible to establish and sustain the dualism between empirically-universal aspects of culture rooted in subcultural

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realities, on the one hand, and empirically-variable aspects of culture not rooted in subcultural realities, on the other hand. This requires: (1) that the universals can be found and that they be substantial; (2) that they be closely and directly intertwined with particular biological, psychological, or sociological processes; and (3) that they can be defended as core elements in the characterization of human nature such that the much more numerous cultural particularities be of secondary importance. On all of these three counts the “consensus gentium” approach fails. That is, rather than moving closer to the essentials of human nature, it moves away from it. The major reason for the search for universals, and shying away from cultural particularities, in defining human nature is that the enormous variation in human behavior haunts them by a fear of historicism, of becoming lost in cultural relativism that deprives them of any fixed bearings at all. The notion that only an empirically universal cultural phenomenon can reflect something about the nature of man is not logical. This is because this notion has the same logic as the notion that because sickle-cell anemia is, fortunately, not universal it cannot tell us anything about human genetic processes. In science, what is critically important is not whether phenomena are empirically common, but, whether phenomena can reveal the enduring natural processes that underlie them. For instance, this is why Becquerel had been so interested in the peculiar behavior of uranium. Therefore, there should be a search for systematic relationships among diverse phenomena, instead of a search for substantive identities among similar ones. For this purpose, the “stratigraphic” conception of the relationships among the various aspects of human existence should be replaced with a synthetic one. In this one, biological, psychological, sociological, and cultural factors are treated as variables within unitary systems of analysis. This does not mean that the establishment of a common language in the social sciences is either a matter of co-ordination of terminologies or of creating new ones; or it is a matter of imposing one set of categories upon the whole area. But it is a matter of integrating different types of theories and concepts in order to formulate meaningful propositions embodying findings which are now compartmentalized in separate fields of study. In order for such an integration to provide a more accurate image of man, it would be useful to account for the following two ideas. The first idea is that culture should be viewed not as complexes of concrete behavior patterns – customs, usages, traditions, habit clusters – as has been done up to now, but as a set of control mechanisms – plans, recipes, rules, instructions (or

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“programs,” as in parlance of computer engineers) – for the governing of behavior. The second idea is that man is most desperately dependent upon such cultural programs that would act as extra-genetic, outside-the-skin control mechanisms for ordering his behavior. The “control mechanism” view of culture assumes that the foundation of human thought is both social and public. That is, the natural habitat of human thought is the house yard, the marketplace, and the town square. Thinking does not consist of “happenings in the head,” although what happens in the head and elsewhere are necessary for thinking to occur. Thinking consists of traffic in “significant symbols” – i.e., words (for the most part), gestures, drawings, musical sounds, mechanical devices (e.g., clocks), or natural objects (e.g., jewels). These significant symbols are, indeed, composed of anything that is disengaged from its mere actuality and used to impose meaning upon experience. Each individual takes such symbols as given. When the individual is born, he finds such symbols already current in the community. During his life, some of the existing symbols remain in place, some of the existing symbols are partially altered, some of the existing symbols are discarded, and some new symbols are added. The individual may or may not have had a role in these changes. After the individual dies, these symbols remain in circulation with their relevant changes. During his life, the individual uses some or all of the symbols either deliberately and with care, or spontaneously and with ease. The individual always uses the symbols to put a construction upon the events of his life, and to orient himself with respect to his life experiences. Man needs these symbolic sources of illumination in order to find his bearings in the world. This is because the non-symbolic sources, which are constituted in his body, provide only a diffused light. For lower animals, their behavior patterns, to a much larger extent, is given to them by their physical structure. Their genetic sources of information order their behavior within much limited ranges of variation. The narrower and more completely their behavior are determined by the genetic sources, the lower the animal. For man, on the other hand, genetic sources provide only extremely general-response capacities. Although, these innately given capacities allow for far greater plasticity, complexity, and effectiveness of behavior (under certain perfect conditions), they leave human behavior much less precisely regulated. Therefore, if man’s behavior is undirected by culture patterns – i.e., organized systems of significant symbols – it would be virtually ungovernable. There will be a mere chaos of pointless acts and exploding emotions, such that man’s experience will be virtually shapeless. Culture, the accumulated totality of such symbolic patterns, is not merely an ornament of human existence, but the

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principal basis of the specificity of human existence, i.e., culture is an essential condition for human existence. The most crucial support for such cultural position comes from recent advances in knowledge and evidence with respect to the emergence of “Homo sapiens” out of his general primate background. Of these advances three are most important: (l) the replacement of a sequential view of the relations between the physical evolution and the cultural development of man with an overlap or interactive view; (2) the discovery that the major biological changes that produced modern man out of his most immediate progenitors took place in his central nervous system and most especially in his brain; (3) the understanding that, in physical terms, man is an incomplete and an unfinished animal; that what distinguishes him most graphically from non-men is not so much his sheer ability to learn (great as that is), but how much and what specifically he has to learn before he is enabled to function. Let me take each of these points in turn. The traditional view of the relations between the biological and the cultural advance of man was that at some point in time the biological development was completed and exactly at that time the cultural development began. According to the evidence, such a moment in time did not exist. The transition to the cultural mode of life took the genus Homo more than one million years to accomplish. Over such a long period of time, complex and closely ordered sequences of genetic changes took place. In the current view, the evolution of “Homo sapiens” – i.e., modern man – from his immediate pre-sapiens counterpart started nearly two million years ago with the emergence of Australopithecines – i.e., the ape men of southern and eastern Africa – and culminated with the appearance of sapiens himself one to two hundred thousand years ago. Thus, as at least basic forms of cultural, or proto-cultural, activity (e.g., simple toolmaking, hunting, etc.) were present among some of the Australopithecines. There was an overlap of more than one million years between the beginning of culture and the appearance of the current man. This overlap was an extended one. The final phases (i.e., final as of today) of the phylogenetic development of man took place in the same grand geological era – i.e., Ice Age – as the initial phases of his cultural development. This means that culture was not added to a finished animal, but was a crucial ingredient in the production process of that animal itself. The slow and steady growth of culture through the Ice Age played a major directive role in man’s evolution. The development of tools, the adoption of organized hunting and gathering practices, the beginnings of true family organization, the

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discovery of fire, and the increasing use of systems of significant symbols (language, art, myth, ritual) for orientation, communication, and self-control, all created a new environment for man, who had to adapt to them. As culture slowly accumulated and developed, an advantage was given to those individuals in the community who were most able to benefit from it – e.g., the effective hunter, the persistent gatherer, the adept toolmaker, and the resourceful leader – until the small-brained, proto-human “Homo Australopithecus” became the large-brained fully-human “Homo sapiens.” Among the cultural pattern, the body, and the brain, a feedback system came to being such that each shaped the progress of the other. For instance, in this system, the interaction among increasing tool use, the changing anatomy of the hand, and the expanding representation of the thumb on the cortex represents how the feedback system worked. By adopting symbolically mediated programs for producing artifacts, organizing social life, or expressing emotions, man determined, perhaps unknowingly, the final stages of his own biological development. Quite literally, but quite inadvertently, man created himself. This suggests that human nature is not independent of culture. As man’s central nervous system – and most particularly its crowning curse and glory, the neo-cortex – developed in great part in interaction with culture, it cannot direct man’s behavior or organizing his experience without the guidance generated by systems of significant symbols. In the Ice Age, man was obliged to replace the regularity and precision of detailed genetic control over his conduct with the flexibility and adaptability of a more generalized genetic control over his conduct. To receive the additional information, which was necessary to be enabled to act, man was forced to increasingly rely on cultural sources – i.e., the accumulated significant symbols. Thus, such symbols are not mere expressions, instrumentalities, or correlates of man’s biological, psychological, and social existence; but, they are prerequisites for it. Without men, there is no culture; and without culture, there are no men. Men are incomplete animals who complete themselves through culture, and they complete themselves not through culture in general but through highly particular forms of it. Men’s ideas, values, acts, emotions, and nervous system are cultural products, products which are manufactured out of tendencies, capacities, and dispositions with which men were born, but manufactured, nonetheless.

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III. Radical Humanist View Man is a recognizable and ascertainable being. Man has an entity that is not only biological, anatomical, and physiological, but also psychological. Human nature is not identical with the specific expression of human nature that is prevalent in the society in which he lives. That is, human nature in general is not identical with human nature which is modified in each historical period. The concept of human nature is not an abstraction. The essence of man is not identical to the various forms of his historical existence. The essence of man is not an abstraction and is inherent in each individual.14 In line with this distinction between the general human nature and the specific expression of human nature in each culture, a distinction can be made between two types of human drives and appetites: (1) the constant or fixed appetites – e.g., hunger and sexual urge – that are an integral part of human nature, and only their form and direction can be changed in various cultures; and (2) the “relative” appetites, that are not an integral part of human nature, but their origin is in specific social structures and specific conditions of production and communication. For instance, in the capitalistic structure of society, the need for money is the need created by the modern economy, and it is the only need which it creates. This is a subjective matter, partly due to the fact that the expansion of production and of needs becomes an ingenious and always calculating subservience to inhuman, depraved, unnatural, and imaginary appetites. Man’s potential is a given potential. Man has always been the human raw material which cannot be changed. However, man changes in the course of history. Man develops himself. Man transforms himself. Man is the product of history. Because man makes his history, he is his own product. History is, indeed, the history of man’s self-realization. History is man’s self-creation through the process of his work and his production. The world history is the creation of man by human labor, and the emergence of human nature. Therefore, man has the evident and irrefutable proof of his self-creation, and of his origins. The concept of man is rooted in the insight that appearance and essence do not coincide. A dialectical thinker needs to distinguish between the essential and the apparent processes of reality; and to grasp their relationship,

14

For this literature see Habermas (2003), Held (2004), Horkheimer (1974), Jaggar (1983), Kellner (1977), Lewontin, Rose, and Kamin (1984), Sayers (1998), and Williams (1999). This section is based on Fromm (2004).

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i.e., the relationship between essence and existence. The process of existence entails the realization of the essence, while existing means a return to the essence. When man gains self-consciousness, he learns about the truth of himself and his world. His learning of truth leads to his action, which makes the world what it essentially is, i.e., the fulfillment of man’s selfconsciousness. Knowledge is not obtained in the context of the subject-object split, in which the object of learning is treated as separate from and opposed to the thinker. Man and things are in a constant flux. Therefore, a thing is for itself only when it has expressed all its characteristics and made them moments of its self-realization. Thus, in all changing conditions, it is always returning to itself, i.e., its essence. This essence is the unity of being, and is the identity throughout change. In this process everything deals with its inherent contradictions and unfolds as a result. Thus, the essence is both historical and ontological. Things realize their essential potential in the same process that they establish their existence. The essence can “achieve” its existence when the potentialities of things are realized in and through the conditions of reality. This is the process of transition to actuality. Man is characterized by the “principle of movement.” This principle is not mechanical, but it is a man’s drive, creative vitality, energy for his object. This emphasizes the active process within man, i.e., man’s productivity. A productive man is an individual who is himself because he is not passive-receptive, but is actively related to the world. This man, through this process, grasps the world productively, and thus makes it his own. The development of an individual’s powers, capacities, and potentialities is possible only by continuous action, but not by mere contemplation or receptivity. In this productive process, man realizes his essence, and returns to his essence. The concept of productivity, in contrast to that of receptivity, can be understood more easily when it is applied to the phenomenon of love. Assume man is man and his relation to the world is a human one. Accordingly, love can only be exchanged for love, trust for trust, etc. If a man wishes to influence other people, he must have a stimulating and encouraging effect upon others. Each of his relations to other humans and to nature must correspond to the object of his will, i.e., of his real individual life. If his love does not invoke love in return, then his love is impotent and a misfortune. What is of central significance is that the love between man and woman should be regarded as the immediate relationship of human being with human being. If the relationship with woman is expressed as the prey and the handmaid of communal lust, it shows the infinite degradation of man that he has created for

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himself. This is because the conception of the relation of man to woman underlies the way in which natural species relationship is conceived. The immediate, natural, and necessary relation of human being to human being is no different from the relation of man with woman. In this natural species relationship, man’s relation with nature is reflective of his relationship with man, and his relation with man is reflective of his relation with nature, i.e., with his own natural function. From this relationship, man’s extent of development can be assessed. This relationship shows how far man has become, and to what extent he has understood himself as human being, i.e., a species-being. The relation of man with woman is a natural relation that mirror-images that of human being with human being. It shows, therefore, to what extent man’s behavior has become human, and to what extent his human essence has become a natural essence for him, and to what extent his human nature has become nature for him. It also indicates to what extent man’s needs have become human needs, and consequently to what extent other humans, as humans, have constituted his needs, and to what extent his individual existence is congruent with his social being. To understand the concept of activity, it is of utmost importance to understand the relationship between subject and object. Man’s senses, to the extent that they are crude animal senses, have only a limited meaning. For a starving man, the human form of food does not exist, but either the abstract character of food or the crudest form of food exists. And this feeding activity would most likely be very similar to the feeding of animals. The needy man, who is burdened with cares, cannot appreciate the most beautiful spectacle. Man’s senses need to be formed by the objects outside of them. Any object can only be the confirmation of one of the faculties of man. This is because in addition to the five senses, there are spiritual senses, the practical senses (e.g., desiring, loving, etc.). For a human, the character of his senses comes into being through the existence of an object, i.e., through humanized nature. The objects confirm and realize man’s individuality. The specific characterization of objects by man’s senses depends on the nature of the object and the nature of his corresponding faculty. The distinctive character of each faculty constitutes both its characteristic essence and its characteristic mode of objectification, of its objectively real, living being. Therefore, it is not only in thought, but also through all the senses that man is affirmed in the objective world. Communism entails the abolition of private property, which means the abolition of human self-alienation, and leads to the real appropriation of human nature through and for man. It is the complete and conscious return of

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man as a really social human being, who assimilates all the wealth of previous development. Communism as a fully developed naturalism is humanism and as a fully developed humanism is naturalism. It is the complete resolution of the antagonism between man and nature, on the one hand, and between man and man, on the other hand. It is the definitive solution of the conflict between existence and essence, between objectification and self-affirmation, between freedom and necessity, between individual and species. It is the solution of the puzzle of history, and it is aware that it is the solution. This active relationship to the objective world is called “productive life,” which is life creating life. In the productive life resides the whole character of a species, i.e., its speciescharacter. For human beings, free and conscious activity is the speciescharacter. Where, the “species-character” means the essence of man. It represents that which is universally human, and which is realized by man through his productive activity in the process of history. This concept of human self-realization leads to a new concept of wealth and poverty. In contrast to the wealth and poverty defined in political economy, there is wealthy man who has plenitude of human needs. The wealthy man is in need of a complex of human manifestations of life, and whose inner necessity and need is his self-realization. In a socialist perspective, both the wealth and the poverty of man acquire a human meaning that translates into a social meaning. Poverty is the passive bond that leads man to feel a need for the greatest wealth, i.e., the other person. Man’s passion reflects both the expression of the objective entity within him, and the sensuous outbreak of his life-activity that becomes the activity of his being. The existence of what a man truly loves – e.g., freedom of the press – gives him a feeling of necessity and need, without which his essence cannot be fulfilled, satisfied, and complete. It is the society that at its beginnings finds – through the development of private property that entails wealth and poverty (both intellectual and material) – the materials necessary for the cultural development of the fully-constituted society – that produces man in all the plenitude of his being and the wealthy man endowed with all the senses – as an enduring reality. Society is the only context in which subjectivism and objectivism; spiritualism and materialism; and activity and passivity, cease to remain as antinomies. Theoretical contradictions can be resolved only through practical means, i.e., only through the practical energy of man. They cannot be resolved through knowledge because they are real problems of life. Philosophy was unable to resolve such problems precisely because it viewed them as purely theoretical problems.

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Closely related to the concept of the wealthy man is the conceptual difference between man’s sense of having and man’s sense of being. Private property has made people so nonsensical and partial that an object is theirs only when they have it, when they use it as capital, or when they directly utilize it, e.g., eat it, drink it, wear it, inhabit it, etc. Private property conceives these forms of possession as means of life, but the life for which they serve as means is the life of private property, i.e., labor and the creation of capital. Private property alienates the physical and intellectual senses, and replaces these senses with the sense of having. The human being has been reduced to this absolute poverty in order to be enabled to gain access to all his inner wealth. The science of capitalistic economy, which is a worldly and pleasureseeking science, is a truly moral science, which can be regarded as the most moral of all sciences. Its principal thesis is the renunciation of human life and human needs. It states that the less man eats, drinks, buys books, goes to the theatre, goes to balls, goes to bars, thinks, loves, theorizes, sings, paints, fences, etc., the more he will be able to save, and the greater will become his treasure, i.e., his capital. The less man is, the less he expresses his life, and the more he has, the greater is his alienated life and the greater is the saving of his alienated being. What the economist takes away from man in the way of human life and humanity, he returns to man in the form of money and wealth. Everything which man is unable to do his money can do for him: it can eat; drink; go to the ball; go to the theatre; travel; and acquire art, learning, historical treasures, and political power. Money can appropriate all these things for man, and it can purchase everything for man, therefore, according to the economist, it is the true opulence. But the point is: although money can do all this for man, its only desire is to create itself and to buy itself; and everything else is subservient to it. When one owns the master, one also owns the servant, but one no longer needs the master’s servant. This means that all human passions and activities must be directed toward avarice. The worker must have just what is necessary for him to want to live, and he must want to live only in order to have this. The aim of society is not the production of useful things as an aim in itself. In other words, maximum production and consumption are not the unquestionable goals of society. This is because the production of too many useful things results in too many useless people. The contradictions between prodigality and thrift, luxury and abstinence, wealth and poverty, are only apparently different, because all these antinomies are truly equivalent. A distinction has to be made between the aim of overcoming the abysmal poverty that interferes with a dignified life, and the aim of an ever-increasing

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consumption that carries the supreme value for capitalism. The proper position favors the conquest of poverty, and is equally against consumption as a supreme end. Man’s independence and freedom are based on his act of self-creation. A man does not regard himself to be independent unless he is his own master, which is when he owes his existence to himself. A man does not regard himself to be independent when he lives by the favor of another man, which is when he owes the other man not only the continuance of his life, but also its creation, i.e., when the other man is the source of man’s life. Man’s life has necessarily a source of life outside itself if it is not his own creation. A man is independent only if he affirms his individuality in each of his relations to the world: seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, thinking, willing, and loving. A man is independent only if he affirms and expresses all organs of his individuality. When he is independent, he is not only free from but also free too. The aim of socialism is the emancipation of man. The emancipation of man is his selfrealization which takes place in the process of productive relatedness and oneness with man and nature. The aim of socialism is the development of the personality of the individual. The concept of the self-realization of man can be fully understood only in connection with the concept of work. Labor and capital are not only economic categories, but also anthropological categories, which are imbued with value judgment rooted in humanistic position. Capital, which represents what has already been accumulated over time, represents the past. In contrast, labor is, or ought to be, free, and is the expression of life. In bourgeois society, the past dominates the present. In communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois society, capital is independent and has individuality, while man is dependent and has no individuality. Labor is the act of man’s self-creation. Labor is an activity, not a commodity. Man’s function is “self-activity,” not labor. Indeed, the abolition of labor is the aim of socialism. Alienated labor through the “emancipation of labor” becomes free. Labor is the process of participation of both man and nature that man starts, regulates, and controls the material reactions between himself and nature. He treats nature as one of his own forces, and utilizes arms and legs; head and hands; and the natural forces of his body, in order to make nature’s productions suitable for his wants. When man acts on the nature to change it, at the same time he changes his own nature. He develops his influential powers and compels nature to act in accordance with his will. At the current stage of man’s development, he has far passed those primitive instinctive forms of labor that are similar to those of animals. An immeasurable interval of time

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separates the current state of human life – in which a man sells his labor power as a commodity in the market – from the primitive state of human life – in which human labor was still in its first instinctive stage. The concept of labor refers to man’s activity which is exclusively human. A spider’s operational conducts resemble those of a weaver, and a bee performs much better than many architects in the construction of her cells. But the distinguishing aspect of the worst architect from the best bees is that the architect raises the structure in his imagination before he erects it in reality. That is, the end result of a typical labor process already existed in the imagination of the laborer at the commencement of the labor process. Man not only changes the form of the material on which he works, but also he realizes his own purpose, that sets his modus operandi, and his will is subjected to it. And this subjection is not a momentary phenomenon. The labor process demands not only the exertion of the bodily organs, but also that the man’s will be steadily in accordance with his purpose during the whole operation. This requires man’s close attention. More specifically, the less man is attracted by the nature of the work and the mode of carrying such work, and, therefore, the less he enjoys the work as something that gives play to his bodily and mental powers, the closer his attention is forced to be. Labor is the process of the self-expression of man. Labor is the process of the expression of man’s individual physical and mental powers. Labor is a process of genuine activity, in which man develops himself and becomes himself. Work is not only a means to an end – i.e., the product – but also an end in itself. Work is the meaningful expression of human energy; therefore, work is enjoyable. The central criticism of capitalism is not the inequality in the distribution of wealth, but it is the perversion of labor into forced, alienated, meaningless labor, that transforms man into “crippled monstrosity.” The concept of labor as the self-expression of man leads to the vision of the complete abolition of the lifelong subjection of man to one occupation. Because the aim of the development of man is the development of the total, whole human, man must be emancipated from the crippling effects of specialization. In all previous societies in the history, man has been a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic; and he has to continue doing so in the future in order to maintain his means of livelihood. However, in communist society, nobody has one exclusive area of activity, and each man can excel in any field he wishes. Furthermore, society regulates the general production, and accordingly makes it possible for each man to do one thing today and another tomorrow. It is even possible for each man to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, and criticize after

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dinner, without anyone ever becoming a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critic.

IV. Radical Structuralist View The purpose here is to correctly explain the essence of man, and scientifically deal with the interrelationships between man and nature. The essence of man, and the interrelationships between man and nature, can be understood only on the basis of a materialistic philosophy. Nature can be interpreted as meaning the universe, which is matter in all its diversity of manifestations. It is the objective reality that exists outside, and it is independent of consciousness, and it had existed before any consciousness appeared.15 Man is a product of nature. Man is nature’s highest manifestation and creation. Man is the highest stage of living organisms on the Earth. Man appeared on the earth due to the self-development of nature based on the natural laws of evolution. In this sense, it can be said that in man and through man nature seems to gain knowledge about itself. Man subdues nature and adapts it to his goals. Man subordinates nature to his conscious activity on the basis of his knowledge of the laws of the development of nature. At the same time, man remains part of nature, i.e., a profoundly natural creature. In the process of the development of society, man increasingly becomes more separate from nature, increasingly becomes more independent of natural conditions, but increasingly attains closer ties and harmony with nature. Man “harmonizes” nature, and improves the conditions of his life. Man lives in a natural environment, and uses its products in his life. He actively affects it, changes it, and transforms it. Only man succeeded in leaving his impress on nature. The consequences of his activities can disappear only with global extinction. Man derives the means of his existence only from nature. This underlies the most fundamental understanding of the mutual relations of man and nature. These mutual relations are of the same nature as the metabolism between man and nature. Man’s labor is considered to be the process of metabolism between man and nature. In this process, man appropriates to himself the matter of nature; and he uses nature for his own

15

For this literature see Berry (1986), Fromm and Xirau (1968), Geras (1983), Jaggar (1983), Kupperman (2010), Marx (1969), Plamenatz (1975), Stevenson (1981), Stevenson and Haberman (2008), and Venable (1966). This section is based on Mitin (1966).

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aims and interests; and he uses nature to support and reproduce himself, his life, and his life’s conditions. Thus, production becomes an important connection between man and nature. It becomes the basic driving force for human progress. The real essence of man is in social labor, in a productive relation with nature, in social relations with other men, and in the cognition of objective reality. The more man becomes knowledgeable about the secrets of nature, the more successfully he will be able to regulate nature’s processes based on a plan which he has made in advance, the more man will feel and know themselves to be with nature, and the more meaningless becomes the idea of a contradiction between mind and matter; man and nature; and soul and body. Man, animals, and plants use the substances of nature. Whereas animals use only those products of nature that exist in ready form; man not only uses the substances of nature, but also remakes them and adapts them to his aims and needs. Man’s work distinguished him from animals and made him a human being. In this sense, it can be said that work created man. It is only due to his labor applied in the work process that man gradually became transformed into a human being in the real sense of the word. Man’s labor developed his body, enriched his mind, and improved his intellect. Work is an eternal and natural need of man. Production is a permanent condition for the existence of man. Without production, neither the metabolism between man and nature, nor the human life would be possible. The metabolism between man and nature should not be regarded as a onesided process. That is, not all the phenomena of nature should be considered only from the viewpoint of man’s needs. This view is very limited and regards the history of man as a list of needs that arise and those that are satisfied. This view evaluates the activities of man as constantly exhausting the sources of nature, and regressing nature’s development. This view that depicts man only as an exploiter of nature, loses sight of an important concept: that the history of man is both an integral part of the history of nature, and the formation of nature by man. That is, man himself, his social organization, and the rest of nature should be regarded as the context in which man’s productive activity imparts new motion to it. The creation of qualitatively new forms of bodies, new processes – both for man and for nature – reflects the progress of both man and nature. The character and degree of man’s effect on nature are different in the different historical epochs. This is because people organize themselves differently – in socio-economic terms – in different epochs for their struggle with nature. The form and character of these socio-economic relations are

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determined not by the wishes of people, but by the objective conditions of their life. The objective conditions of human life depend most crucially on the level of the development of the productive forces in the given epoch and consequently on the dominant method of production. The different socioeconomic structures that have existed in the history of mankind are characterized by the manner in which goods were produced, i.e., by the character of the means of production and by the implements of labor. In the history of human society, there have been many technical revolutions, which constituted turning points and significant landmarks, that have affirmed the domination of man over nature. The transformation from the stone axe to implements of labor made of bronze, the transition to agriculture, the invention of the steam engine, the discovery of electricity and its application in industry, and the use of atomic energy must be regarded as great technical revolutions. These technical revolutions provided new opportunities for human advancement and for the development of his culture. The process of subordinating nature to man has been in effect throughout man’s history. However, due to the historically established social relations that have involved exploitation (i.e., slavery, feudalism, capitalism) man became dependent on the elemental forces of social development. On the one hand, man has become increasingly stronger and powerful ruler of nature; on the other hand, as a result of the consequent social relations, man has become the slave of blind necessity, i.e., the elements dominating his society. The laborers have created all material values, but have not enjoyed equal rights and have been subjected to exploitation. This tragedy of men of labor is the greatest of all known tragedies in the history of mankind. The archaic and unorganized nature of the social structure of capitalism has resulted in the lack or deficiency in the use of technical advances for the improvement of the well-being of people. In contrast, under socialism, all social production takes place for the sake of man and for the benefit of the whole society. Under socialism, production is not made for the sake of production, but for the sake of man. In a socialist society, the highest goal is the welfare of the people, which shows the truly humanist content of socialist social relations. The public ownership of the means of production creates the context for the development of the creative activity of personality and for its initiative. It is in the collective and through the medium of the collective that personality finds and attains real freedom. In a society where the private ownership of the means of production is dominant, the scope of activity is in the monopoly of the person who possesses the means of production. Consequently, such a

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person finds himself in a position against society. In a society where the social ownership of the means of production is dominant, the interests of the collective are harmonized with the interests of the individuals; and the necessary conditions are created for the complete emancipation of personality, i.e., for the manifestation of the talents and abilities of each individual. The harmony between man and nature requires the equality of conditions for all people in using the benefits of nature, and the right to participate in the collective endeavor to affect nature. This means no privileged social groups should exist in society. This is because, if some individuals or social groups have the opportunity to appropriate the products of the labor of other people, then the outcome is not only unjust, but also rests in the consolidation of their privileges by political means. This prevents the harmony between the personal and the social. The social organization should be such that every individual gets the opportunity to take part in labor, to work in his specialty, and to reveal his abilities and talents. When all people are involved in creative work, the life of each will be better, richer, and more joyful. The scientific solution of the problem of man and society can be founded on the theory of historical materialism. According to this theory, the social aspect of society is based on the material production aspect of the society that follows its own specific laws. According to historical materialism, the socalled natural and eternal needs of man that in anthropological analysis are used as a measure for evaluating existing social relations, and also used as a criterion for subsequent social development, are indeed a product of the existing level of the development of production and the material relation that already exist. Thus, historical materialism does not support the idea that human nature is universal. It does not support the idea that the nature of man is a passive, because it explains the real definition of man by his objectpractical activity. Historical materialism does not mean that man presents to society a list of his eternal and natural needs that reflect his wretched and insignificance state of being, to which he has been brought by the existing social system. Historical materialism states that man does not need philanthropy. He can be the master of his destiny, he can create marvels, he can set gigantic forces into motion, if his labor and creative energy are liberated. This requires the exploitation of labor be ended. The prerequisite for an understanding of man and the point of reference for real humanism is an analysis of the objective process by means of which man distinguishes himself from nature, i.e., an analysis of work and material production. When in the attempt to understand human nature the focus in placed on the analysis of work and material production, the purpose

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is not to ignore man’s individuality, man’s inner world, man’s spiritual potentials, and man’s moral qualities, but the purpose is to reveal man’s real, and not illusory, essence. In the study of human man, it is necessary to study the concrete conditions of his existence, and more importantly, to study how to change the conditions of man’s existence, both the natural and the social, in order to create real possibilities for the harmonious development of human personality. The study of how to change the conditions of man’s existence leads to a theory of revolution, which is a program for the transformation of social relations, the program for the building up of communism. This program is aimed towards exalting man; towards creating normal living conditions for his existence, conditions under which his personal individuality and his essence can be genuinely revealed. The source of all existing calamities lies in the current labor process. Man is potentially omnipotent, and with his energetic forces he has brought life to the labor process, which has many-sided social consequences, the most important of which is the opposition to man as alien forces. Behind the existing poverty and misery of the masses, and their future resolution, is the tremendous latent force and the constructive principle of history. Over the course of the history, the development of productive forces, which are created by man, greatly excel everything that he needs. In any era in history, the tools and forms of the social combination of labor, which are created for the production of one particular product, contain many more possibilities than the creation of just the given type of product. In this process, it can metaphorically be said that the plough is much more important than the grain that is produced with its aid. In addition, the liberation of all the internal possibilities of material production and the full development of man’s creative and active forces would constitute the basis on which the diversity of man’s personality and the richness of his needs and tendencies can be developed. The focus should be placed on the man-the-creator, the man-the-worker, and investigate the ways of liberating his active, creative, constructive potentialities. This means that the man of the future is not something ready, given naturally, available within the limits of the existing society, and isolated from that society. The historical process of the transition from the present to the future is subject to objective laws. It this process, man enters in an active struggle for the reorganization of the world. The understanding of man’s personality and man’s consciousness is inseparably connected with the concrete sociohistorical process of the decomposition of the old and the birth of a new social

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formation. This is in contrast to the idea that there is abstract, timeless, natural essence of man. The role of the active historical action of the masses is the real basis for a correct understanding of man’s personality and his freedom, i.e., the understanding of the all-round development of man. The starting point for the understanding of man is to consider a live, concrete person living and working in a definite historical environment. This starting point is real people, who are involved in their real, vital, active process, based on which they develop their ideological reflections. This regards the spiritual aspect of man’s activity as man’s consciously and purposefully transforming the world. Human nature is not an abstraction inherent in each single individual, but it is the ensemble of the social relations. The individual is a social creature. Any manifestation of the individual’s life is a manifestation and affirmation of social life. Even those manifestations of the individual’s life that do not appear to be directly related to collective life, i.e., accomplished jointly with others, are nevertheless manifestations and affirmations of social life. The individual and the social life of a person are not separate things, despite the fact that they have different forms of expression. They are two sides of man’s life, and they are interconnected, and each of them is manifested in the other to some higher or lower extent. Based on the proceeding idea, it can be concluded that the personality of man can achieve full development only in the collective. It is only in the collective that the individual receives the means that enable him to develop his inclinations in every respect, and, therefore, it is only in the collective that the individual achieves his real freedom. In the substitutes for collectivity – i.e., divided society – that has existed until now, personal freedom has been enjoyed by individuals who belonged to the dominating class. Sham collectivity has pretended that it is independent of its members; and as a union of one class against another, it is regarded by the subordinated class as not only absolutely illusory collectivity, but also new fetters. In a real collectivity, the individuals gain their freedom in their association with the collectivity and through it. Man can settle down only in society, and his individuality can be revealed only in society and in accordance with the social conditions. In the entire historical development of human society, three stages in the mutual relations of society and the person have unfolded: (1) Personal dependence (primitive) is the first major form of society in which the productivity of people develops only very slowly and only in certain places. (2) Personal independence, which is based on eternal dependence, is the second major form of society in which there is a system of universal metabolism, of universal relations, of

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comprehensive needs and universal abilities. (3) Free individuality, based on the universal development of individuals, based on individuals’ subordination to the collective, and based on regarding social productivity as their social property. Under communism – in contrast to the bourgeois society, in which there are classes and class antagonisms – there is harmony between personal and social, such that the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all. In other words, society cannot free itself without having freed every individual person. The harmonious union of the individual and the social, of the person and the collective, entails the flourishing of the spiritual side of the individual and society. This organic interaction leads to the high level of development of the material productivity of man. There is exceptionally great role for the consciousness, thought, ideas, and spiritual life of man. The significance of social consciousness in the development of human society cannot be exaggerated. There is inspiring role for progressive ideas in the life of man and human society, and in their development. Spiritual life exists and the basis of the spiritual life is objective, material existence. That is, first there is matter and then consciousness. Consciousness is the other side of matter, but it is its derivative. This chapter briefly discussed four views expressed with respect to human nature. The functionalist paradigm believes that humans are maximizers. The interpretive paradigm believes that what man is depends on where he is, who he is, and what he believes, because man is so entangled with them and so is inseparable from them. The radical humanist paradigm believes that man has an entity that is not only biological, anatomical, and physiological, but also psychological. The radical structuralist paradigm believes that the real essence of man is in social labor, in a productive relation with nature, in social relations with other men, and in the cognition of objective reality. Each paradigm is logically coherent – in terms of its underlying assumptions – and conceptualizes and studies the phenomenon in a certain way, and generates distinctive kinds of insight and understanding. Therefore, different paradigms in combination provide a broader understanding of the phenomenon under consideration. An understanding of different paradigms leads to a better understanding of the multi-faceted nature of the phenomenon.

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References Alhadeff, David A., (1982), Microeconomics and Human Behavior: Toward a New Synthesis of Economics and Psychology, Berkeley, California: University of California Press. Becker, Gary S., (1976), The Economic Approach to Human Behavior, Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press. Berry, Christopher J., (1986), Human Nature, Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press International. Brown, Donald E., (1988), Hierarchy, History, and Human Nature: The Social Origins of Historical Consciousness, Tucson, Arizona: University of Arizona Press. Cooley, Charles Horton, (1992), Human Nature and the Social Order, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. Coutu, Walter, (1949), Emergent Human Nature: A Symbolic Field Interpretation, New York, New York: A. A. Knopf. Crouch, Robert L., (1979), Human Behavior: An Economic Approach, North Scituate, Massachusetts: Duxbury Press. Dewey, John, (1957), Human Nature and Conduct: An Introduction to Social Psychology, New York, New York: Random House. Doucouliagos, Chris, (1994), “A Note on the Evolution of Homo Economicus,” Journal of Economic Issues, 28:3, September, 877-883. Friedman, Milton, (1953), Essays in Positive Economics, Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press. Fromm, Erich, (2004), Marx’s Concept of Man, New York, New York: Continuum. Fromm, Erich and Xirau, Ramon, (ed.), (1968), The Nature of Man, New York, New York: Macmillan. Geertz, Clifford, (1973), “The Impact of the Concept of Culture on the Concept of Man,” in Geertz, Clifford, The Interpretation of Cultures, New York, New York: Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, Chapter 2, pp. 33-54. Geras, Norman, (1983), Marx and Human Nature: Refutation of a Legend, London, England: NLB and Verso. Granovetter, Mark, (1985), “Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness,” American Journal of Sociology, 91:3, November, 481-510. Habermas, Jurgen, (2003), The Future of Human Nature, Cambridge, England: Polity. Held, David, (2004), Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to Habermas, Cambridge, England: Polity Press. Horkheimer, Max, (1974), Critique of Instrumental Reason: Lectures and Essays since the End of World War II, New York, New York: Continuum. Jaggar, Alison M., (1983), Feminist Politics and Human Nature, Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman and Allanheld Publishers. Jensen, Hans E., (1987), “The Theory of Human Nature,” Journal of Economic Issues, 21:3, September, 1039-1073. Kaufman, Bruce E., (1989), “Models of Man in Industrial Relations Research,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 43:1, October, 72-88.

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Kellner, Douglas, (1977), “Adam Smith and Karl Marx on Capitalism and Human Nature,” in Schwartz, Jesse, (ed.), The Subtle Anatomy of Capitalism, Santa Monica, California: Goodyear Publishing Company, Inc. Kupperman, Joel J., (2010), Theories of Human Nature, Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. Lewontin, Richard C., Rose, Steven, and Kamin, Leon J., (1984), Not in our Genes: Biology, Ideology, and Human Nature, New York, New York: Pantheon Books. Marx, Karl, (1969), “Theses on Feuerbach,” in Marx and Engels Selected Works, Volume One, Moscow, USSR: Progress Publishers, pp. 13 – 15. Midgley, Mary, (2002), Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature, New York, New York: Routledge. Mitin, Mark, (1966), “The Concept of Man in Marxist Thought,” in Radhakrishnan, S. and Raju, P. T., (eds.), The Concept of Man, Lincoln, Nebraska: Johnsen Publishing Co., Chapter 8, pp. 476-535. Montagu, Ashley, (1957), Anthropology and Human Nature, Boston, Massachusetts: Porter Sargent Publishers. Plamenatz, John, (1975), Karl Marx’s Philosophy of Man, New York, New York: Oxford University Press. Sayers, Sean (1998), Marxism and Human Nature, New York, New York: Routledge. Simon, Herbert A., (1957), Models of Man: Social and Rational, New York, New York: John Wiley and Sons. Sperry, Roger W., (1965), “Mind, Brain and Humanist Values,” in Platt, John Rader, (ed.), New Views of the Nature of Man, Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, Chapter 4, pp. 71-92. Steen, R. Grant, (1996), DNA and Destiny: Nature and Nurture in Human Behavior, New York, New York: Plenum Press. Stevenson, Leslie, (ed.), (1981), The Study of Human Nature, New York, New York: Oxford University Press. Stevenson, Leslie and Haberman, David L., (2008), Ten Theories of Human Nature, Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Thaler, Richard H., (2000), “From Homo Economicus to Homo Sapiens,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 14:1, Winter, 133-141. Thomas, Robert Murray, 1997, Moral Development Theories – Secular and Religious: A Comparative Study, Westport, Connecticut, U.S.A.: Greenwood Press. Venable, Vernon, (1966), Human Nature: The Marxian View, Cleveland, Ohio: Meridian Books. Vyverberg, Henry, (1989), Human Nature, Cultural Diversity, and the French Enlightenment, New York, New York: Oxford University Press. Williams, David, (1999), “Constructing the Economic Space: The World Bank and the Making of Homo Oeconomicus,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 28:1, 79-99. Wilson, Edward O., (1978), On Human Nature, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Chapter 3

Identity: Four Paradigmatic Views Any explanation of identity is based on a worldview. The premise of this book is that any worldview can be associated with one of the four broad paradigms: functionalist, interpretive, radical humanist, and radical structuralist. This chapter takes the case of identity and discusses it from the four different viewpoints. It emphasizes that the four views expressed are equally scientific and informative; they look at the phenomenon from their certain paradigmatic viewpoint; and together they provide a broader and a balanced understanding of the phenomenon under consideration. In this chapter, Sections I through IV present the four perspectives.

I. Functionalist View Identity theory has evolved in two somewhat different but closely related directions. Both are instantiations of a theoretical and research program labeled structural symbolic interactionism, whose goal is to understand and explain how social structures affect self and how self affects social behaviors. The first aspect concentrates on examining how social structures affect the structure of self and how the structure of self influences social behavior. The second aspect concentrates on the internal dynamics of self-processes as these affect social behavior. Thus, relatively speaking, the first neglects internal dynamics of self-processes, while the second neglects ways in which external social structures impinge on the internal processes. By explicitly articulating the relation between these two bodies of work, it is possible to refine and expand the scope of the structural symbolic interactionist frame.16 16

For this literature, see Abrams and Hogg (1990), Brown (2000), Burke (1980, 1991a, 1991b), Deaux (1993), Gecas (1982), Gegas and Burke (1995), Hogg, Terry, and White (1995), Honess and Yardley (1987), Kuhn (1964), Kuhn and McPartland (1954), McCall and Simmons (1978), Metzler and Petras (1970), Monroe, Kankin, and van Vechten (2000), Moya and Hames-Garcia (2000), Owens (2003), Owens, Robinson, and Smith-Lovin (2010), Ramarajan (2014), Robinson and Smith-Lovin (1992), Roccas and Brewer (2002), Sarbin and Scheibe (1983), Serpe and Stryker (2011), Stets and Burke (2000), Stets and Burke (2014), Stryker (1968, 1980, 1987, 2007, 2008), Stryker and Burke (2000), Stryker

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I.1. External Social Structure and the Structure of Self Identity theory traces its roots to George Herbert Mead’s writings, which present a framework underwriting the analyses of numerous sociological and social psychological issues. In themselves, however, they do not present a testable theory of any issue. Many observers believe that this situation is due to the ambiguity of central concepts and to the attendant difficulty of operationalizing such concepts. In highly simplified form, Mead’s framework asserted a formula: Society shapes self, and self shapes social behavior. Identity theory began by attempting to specify and make researchable the concepts of “society” and “self” in Mead’s frame, and to organize these as explanations of specified behaviors; such putative explanations could be tested in systematic empirical research. This specification accepts the utility of Mead’s framework, but departs from Mead to adopt a view consistent with contemporary sociologist’s imagery. That is, society is seen as a mosaic of relatively durable patterned interactions and relationships, differentiated yet organized, embedded in an array of groups, organizations, communities, and institutions, and intersected by crosscutting boundaries of class, ethnicity, age, gender, religion, and other variables. In addition, persons are seen as living their lives in relatively small and specialized networks of social relationships, through roles that support their participation in such networks. The embeddedness of patterned interactions and relationships implies a structural symbolic interactionist argument: the probability of entering into the concrete (and discrete) social networks in which persons live their lives is influenced by larger social structures in which those networks are embedded. That is, social structures outside given social networks act as boundaries affecting the probability that persons will enter those networks. These considerations led to the initial identity theory specification of Mead’s formula. Mead’s “social behavior” became “role choice behavior.” The theory sought to answer this quintessential question: Given situations in which there exist behavioral options aligned with two (or more) sets of role expectations attached to two (or more) positions in networks of social relationships, why do persons choose one particular course of action?

and Terpe (1982), Tajfel (1981, 1982), Thoits and Virshup (1997), Parsons (1964, 1968), Turner (1985), Waterman (2011), Wilder (1986), Wiley and Alexander (1987), and Yost, Strube, and Bailey (1992). This section is based on Stryker and Burke (2000).

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Acceptance of Mead’s “self reflects society” dictum implies that the self is multifaceted, made up of interdependent and independent, mutually reinforcing and conflicting parts. Identity theory thus adopts the vision that persons possess as many selves as groups of persons with which they interact. To refer to each group-based self, the theorists chose the term identity, asserting that persons have as many identities as distinct networks of relationships in which they occupy positions and play roles. In identity theory usage, social roles are expectations attached to positions occupied in networks of relationships; identities are internalized role expectations. The theory asserts that role choices are a function of identities so conceptualized, and that identities within self are organized in a salience hierarchy reflecting the importance of hierarchy as an organizational principle in society. Identity salience is defined as the probability that an identity will be invoked across a variety of situations, or alternatively across persons in a given situation. Borrowing from cognitive social psychology, theorists understand identities as cognitive schemas – internally stored information and meanings serving as frameworks for interpreting experience. As such, they are cognitive bases for defining situations, and they increase sensitivity and receptivity to certain cues for behavior. With self thus specified, identity theorists hypothesized that the higher the salience of an identity relative to other identities incorporated into the self, the greater the probability of behavioral choices in accord with the expectations attached to that identity. The building of identity theory also required specification of the concept of “society.” Theorists found such specification in the concept of “commitment.” Persons, as stated above, tend to live their lives in relatively small, specialized networks of social relationships. Commitment refers to the degree to which a person’s relationships to others in their networks depend on possessing a particular identity and role; commitment is measurable by the costs of losing meaningful relations to others, should the identity be forgone. The theory hypothesized that the salience of an identity reflected commitment to the role relationships requiring that identity. Thus, one arrives at identity theory’s specification of Mead’s formula: commitment shapes identity, and salience shapes role choice behavior. Various researchers have examined such specifications. The general conclusion is that the propositions of identity theory are supported reasonably well. Accomplished research, however, also suggests the need for refinements of concept and measurement for amplifications of the theory. Thus, for example, research demonstrates that the salience of religious identities predicts time spent in religious activities, and the salience of

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religious identities is predicted by commitment to role relationships based on religion. Another research also shows that the salience of a donor identity predicts the frequency of blood donations; this research also presents evidence that commitment to others in the blood donor community affects the salience of the donor identity. Still another research provides evidence that the salience of the mother identity among first-time mothers explains (although to a limited degree), whether they accept the burdens of motherhood and make sacrifices for their child. The identity theory conceptions of identity and identity salience suggest stability in identities and their salience across time and situations. Such stability is demonstrated by research in a longitudinal study of new students who move from home to a university in a small city. At the same time, the research shows that students experience changes in prior commitments by entering new social relationships at the university, and these changes in commitments have the expected effects on the salience of identities. Related research finds that on entering university, students seek new relationships by joining organizations that provide opportunities to behave in accord with highly salient identities held before entrance. When they succeed in doing so, their self-structures remain stable; changes in the salience of their identities occur when they are unable to find or use such opportunities.

I.2. Internal Mechanisms Identity theory began with questions about the origins of differential salience of identities in persons’ self-structures and why identity salience may change over time. These questions led to the development of theory concerning ways in which people are tied into social structure and the consequences of these ties for their identities. The theory then asserted a link between identity salience and behaviors tied to roles underlying the identities. Theorists argue that expectations attached to roles were internalized and acted out. This last link, later strengthened by conceptualizing identities as cognitive schemas, remained theoretically underdeveloped. Another side to the study of identities remained, one concerning the nature of identities and how they operate within the contexts in which they are held. The problem required a clearer understanding of the way in which identities produced behaviors expressing the identities. The solution was based on the traditional symbolic interactionist ideas that identities are self-meanings and that self-meanings develop in the context of meanings of roles and counter

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roles. From a symbolic interactionist perspective, behaviors also can be characterized as meaningful; that is, the link between identity and behavior existed in the meanings they shared. Implementation of these ideas required measurement procedures applicable to both identities and behaviors. Researchers use the semantic differential measurement procedure that regards meaning as internal, bipolar responses to stimuli. This idea was incorporated into earlier work on self and is fundamental to the evolution of affect control theory, which also has symbolic interactionist roots. Research showed that self-meanings, as reflexive responses to self-in-role, could be measured reliably with semantic differential scales. Using the semantic differential to measure college students’ identities and behaviors along the same dimensions, researchers found that shared meanings was the link between identity and behavior: identities predicted behavior only when the meaning of the identity corresponded to the meaning of the behavior. For example, students’ self-view as sociable (one dimension of the student identity) did not predict college plans, because sociability and the student identity did not share meaning. In contrast, students’ self-views of academic responsibility (another dimension of the student identity) were a strong predictor of college plans. The question “How do self-meanings relate to meanings of one’s behavior?” was elaborated later in a cybernetic model of perceptual control. Affect control theory and similar theories developed along similar lines. For identity theory, the model consists of four central components: the identity standard, or the set of (culturally prescribed) meanings held by the individual which define his or her role identity in a situation; the person’s perceptions of meanings within the situation, matched to the dimensions of meaning in the identity standard; the comparator or the mechanism that compares the perceived situational meanings with those held in the identity standard; and the individual’s behavior or activity, which is a function of the difference between perceptions and standard. Behavior, in this model, is organized to change the situation, and hence the perceived self-relevant meanings, in order to bring them into agreement with those in the identity standard. Bringing situationally perceived selfrelevant meanings into agreement with the identity standard is selfverification. This is accomplished by altering the current situation or by seeking and creating new situations in which perceived self-relevant meanings match those of the identity standard.

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This model clarifies several processes, nonunique to the model, which now are brought together in a common framework. First, by seeing behavior as a function of the relationship between what a person perceives in the situation and the self-meanings held by the individual one can view behavior as goal-directed: behavior changes the situation in order to match meanings perceived in the situation with meanings held in the standard. This view gives agency to the individual. Second, emotion can be incorporated directly into the model. The model views emotion as due in part to the relationship between perceived selfmeanings in the situation and the self-definitional meanings held in the identity standard. A mismatch or an increasing discrepancy (i.e., problems in self-verification) results in negative emotion; a match or a decreasing discrepancy (self-verification) results in positive emotion. For example, research finds that the intensity and duration of anger are functions of the kinds of interruptions of the self-verification process. Yet, in addition to emotion and affect as outcomes of self-processes, emotions are recognized as having their own consequences, both directly on the individual who experiences them and on others as outward expressions of the individual’s state. Emotions signal to self and to others what that state is, making the state part of the situation to which all parties, including the self, respond. For example, research finds that depression and distress, which result from problems in verifying the spousal identity, lead to reduced commitment to that identity.

I.3. Putting Together the Two Strands It is time to move towards integrating the two parts of identity theory: one emphasizes the social structural sources of identity and the relations among identities, and the other focuses on internal, cognitive identity processes. The two meet at behavior that expresses identities, often in interaction with others. The former arrives at behavior by moving from social structures to commitments to relationships through the consequent salience of the identity to behavior. The latter moves from internalized identity standards and perceptions of self-relevant meanings, through a comparison of the two that either verifies the identities or indicates a discrepancy, to behavior that repairs the discrepancy by altering the situation or creating new situations. This description suggests that these lines of theorizing developed independently of one another. In fact, however, they did not. The structural

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approach conceived identity in cognitive terms and understood that identities sought confirmation by finding or creating situations in which they could be expressed. The cognitive approach understood that identities were embedded in and affected by social structural contexts. Both understood self as partially a structure of multiple identities. Both understood identities as linked to roles and to behavior through meanings. In the first approach, it is argued that salient identities are cognitive schemas affecting how persons define situations and making them more sensitive to cues calling for identity-relevant behavior. This argument is given greater force and precision by the argument of the second approach: that the tie between identity and behavior exists in their common meaning. One can see the complementary nature of structural and cognitive identity theory by examining how these two emphases fit together. The concept of identity salience implies that persons are more likely to define situations they enter, or in which they find themselves, in ways that make a highly salient identity relevant; this process enables them to enact that identity. Situations, however, involve relations to others; the extent to which persons can verify their identities depends on the identities of those others, on how the others respond to identity claims, and on whether behaviors that could alter the situation to align perceptions with standards of self-meanings in fact are viable. Thus, identities may or may not be confirmed in situationally based interaction. Again, if the identity confirmation process is successful, the salience of the identity will be reinforced; if the process is unsuccessful, the salience of the identity is likely to diminish, perhaps considerably. Relevant to further elaboration of the links between the two parts of identity theory is a view of social structures in which identities exist. Identity theory generally has focused on role identities. That term implies a duality. Role is external; it is linked to social positions within the social structure. Identity is internal, consisting of internalized meanings and expectations associated with a role. From this perspective, social structure is made up of interconnecting positions and associated roles, each linked through the activities, resources, and meanings that are controlled mutually or sequentially. In addition to the roles themselves, each role or set of roles is embedded in one or more of a variety of groups that provide context for the meanings and expectations associated with the role. Examples include groups and networks, as well as organizations, classes, unions, and other social units (insofar as these units involve concrete relationships and interactions). The

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structure or connectedness of the roles and groupings provides the first level of social structures’ impact on identities. One component of commitment is the number of others to whom one is connected by possessing a particular identity. This aspect of commitment reflects density of ties, a characteristic of the social structure in which an identity is embedded. Connectedness increases the salience of the identity, making it more likely that the identity will be activated in a given situation: persons occupying densely connected positions and holding related roles will have identities associated with those position and roles that are more salient. This increased salience is reflected in role performances that accord more closely with the meanings and expectations attached to that identity. Research found that the ability to predict from identity meanings to performances was greater for those with more strongly committed identities. Students with a more strongly committed student identity work more effectively to verify and maintain that identity – that is, to keep perceptions of self-relevant meanings in the situation in line with self-meanings in their identity standard.

II. Interpretive View The human quest to answer the seminal question “What is a human being that we are mindful of ourselves and of one another?” demands constant attention. Thinkers try to answer the question from the symbols historically available to them. Traditionally, answers came from mythical, religious, theological, humanistic, philosophical, and everyday worldviews. In the past century, the rise of psychological and social sciences provided yet other symbols and models for addressing this question. After World War II, the English-speaking world formulated the seminal question in terms of “individual identity” from the psychological tradition, and “social identity” from the sociological tradition. “Identity” became the translation of this era’s answer to the seminal question.17 17

For this literature, see Alexander and Knight (1971), Alexander and Wiley (1981), Bamberg, de Fina, and Schiffrin (2011), Baumeister (1987), Becker (1964), Berger and Luckmann (1966), Berzonsky (2011), Billig (1987), Blumer (1969), Blumstein (1973), Butler (1990, 1993), Cohen (1994), Collier (1998), Collier and Thomas (1988), Cote and Levine (2002), Geerts (1973), Gergen (1971, 1984, 1989, 1991), Gergen and Gergen (1983, 1988), Goffman (1959, 1963, 1967), Harre (1987), Hewitt (1989, 2000), Hitlin (2003), Hogg, Terry, and White (1995), Jaspal (2011), Markus (1977), Mead (1934), Novotny (1998), Perinbanayagam (1991), Rosenau (1992), Shotter (1985), Shotter and Gergen (1989), Snyder (1987), Soenens and Vansteenkiste (2011), Stone (1962), Strauss (1959, 1978),

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Although identity emerged as a concept that spans psychological, sociological, historical, theological, and philosophical disciplines, this section focuses on human identity as a construct within a sociological social psychology. In this section, identity is seen as a social reality; indeed, as a social reality that is continually produced within and by the experience and interaction of individuals. The specific object of analysis is identity as a human social production. As a totally social production, identity is a humanly constructed, defined, and sustained meaningful object. To be recognizably human, an organism must be interpreted as a meaningful identity; that is, as an object. An “object” is any reality toward which humans symbolically organize their responses and thus give it a meaning. The object is socially meaningful to the extent that responses by others and by self fit together to reach the goals and embody the intentions of interacting individuals, as well as to represent the group’s collective action. Yet, human identity is a special meaningful object: It is both totally social and uniquely personal; it results from varying degrees of appropriation by self and/or bestowal by others. The dramatic quality of life flows in part from the endless negotiations of identities as self-attempts to appropriate identities that others do not bestow, or others attempt to bestow identities that self does not appropriate. How is it that identities are selves as “meaningful objects” that individuals can bestow or withhold, and appropriate or reject? The answer to this question derives from the particular reality of human identity. Identity is a definition that transforms a mere biological individual into a human person. It is a definition that emerges from and is sustained by the cultural meanings of social relationships activated in interaction. At the everyday empirical level, identity is available through language, the systems of codes by which humans define self and other. An empirically adequate treatment would have to include the myriad forms available in each historical period for defining selves. The word “definition,” in a broad sense, means to include nominal as well as qualifying terms. Indeed, the “languages” of gestures and appearances are also included. “Who am I?” is the seminal identity question that operationalizes the generic issue: How do we define a human being? Derived identity questions mirror its structure and point us toward the complex array of identities that constitutes a meaningful social world. An answer to the question “Who am I?” Tedeschi (1981), Turner (1962), Weigert, Teitge, and Teitge (1986), Wood and Zurcher (1988), Young (1997), and Zurcher (1977). This section is based on Weigert, Teitge, and Teitge (1986).

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is an identity, a definition of an organism as a meaningful object of action within the category of human being. Answers to identity questions must be interpreted as meanings that define an individual as a social actor in the situation. To fill out the possibilities of the seminal question, self is experienced in two modes: spontaneously as a source and subject of action, an “I”; and reflexively as the object of action or the defined result of the responses of self and others, a “Me.” Furthermore, the experience of “I” carries a concomitant sense of sameness and unity, a “substantival” sense of self. The experience of “Me,” on the other hand, carries a sense of difference, a plural sense of self, since many others address us differently at different times. Answers to the identity question are both uniquely individual and totally social. Trying to define identity, we rediscover the perennial antinomies of the “one and the many,” of public understanding and private experience, of personal appropriation and social imposition. One empirically available starting point is the sense of identity in a normally competent member of society who poses the seminal identity question, “Who am I?,” for him- or her-self. The order of analysis in this section, however, proceeds according to the socially real interactional arrangements available to normally competent adults. The primary and relatively unmediated datum of self-awareness that individuals take as the center of all that happens to them or that they do must be balanced against the mediated reality of the social order. Within the broad limits of a sociological psychology, the opposite ontological pole from the unmediated immediacy of self-awareness is the opaquely mediated and derived reality of social structures that variously constrain and objectify personal experience, from unknown rules of language to public laws and bureaucratic organizations. The personal and social forms of identity are mutually constitutive, but in different modes. The constitution of identity parallels that of human social reality, in which self and society are mutually constitutive. The order of analysis here does not recapitulate the order of personal development over the life course, nor the order of existential, situational awareness. Nor does the order of analysis reflect a sociologistic ontology that sees human reality determined completely by the forces and structures of society, language, or other a priori social realities. Personal developmental and existential issues, however, are illuminated by the analysis, since they are part of the total social fact of identity as a social production. Likewise, the a priori social structures are made intelligible as processes and objectivations

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constitutive of immediate experience defined as an identity to be validated in interaction. A fundamental paradigm has emerged for conceptualizing identity: Identity is a socially constructed definition of an individual. As socially constructed, the definition of an individual makes use of culturally available meanings and distributes them according to rules of interaction and patterns of stratification. The meaning of an individual, then, derives from these socially constructed definitions – that is, his or her identities. A broad tradition exists for developing this paradigm from the work of “interpretive” sociologists such as symbolic interactionists, ethnomethodologists, and neophenomenologists. Central to a sociological psychology approach is the proposition that society is prior to the individual in every way. We are concerned with the fundamental human issue of “ontogenesis,” or the origin of individual persons as meaningful objects in socio-historical contexts. A general agreement to focus on ontogenesis brings otherwise diverse theoretical orientations together for a brief but fundamentally important shared starting point. The formal, phenomenological type of analysis in the tradition of Simmel, the functional analysis of Parsons and contemporary followers, the conflict analysis of the power-oriented theorists, and the realist-oriented interactionists and social behaviorists in the tradition of George H. Mead all come together in their concern for what we may call the “societal imperative” – namely, society is prior to and shapes the individual. The societal imperative focuses attention on the processes of socialization that shape the raw material of the organism into a recognizably human person. We are never sure how much of personhood is due to societal forces, or to purely biogenetic or environmental factors, or to unique imaginative constructions of the individual in later phases of socialization. The societal imperative, however, teaches us to scrutinize symbolic action and the sociocultural meanings enacted in such action as the appropriate subject matter of a sociological psychology perspective on identity. Symbolic action is always action within an already ongoing social life process. The social life process, furthermore, is one of interaction: mutually meaningful responses made by one actor to another such that each individual action is oriented in a larger and irreducible course of action which is intelligible to each actor and to a larger public. The generic assumptions that make the mutual orientation of interaction possible are constituted in the assumptive order of social structures and in the taken-for-granted world which appears real to each interactor individually and/or collectively. We see the

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most general and relevant assumptive structures to be those of power – which is widely studied though incompletely understood – and trust, which is relatively underdeveloped within the sociological enterprise. Power and trust as assumptive structures provide deep interpretive procedures for making sense out of life. Cognitive forms and definitions of human action are seen as patterned and as sharing in some kind of larger meaning. Power and trust reduce the uncertainty generated by complexity, and underwrite the social and moral inferences by which persons link behavior and intention, as well as appearances and self. In other words, meanings are realized – that is, become known and behaviorally real – in mutually oriented responses according to the taken-for-granted structures of society, especially power and trust. From this general starting point, we move directly into the symbolic interaction tradition. In spite of common origin in the work of Mead, the symbolic interaction paradigm – in contrast to social behaviorism – moves the central theoretical and empirical concerns from merely observable behavior to the symbolic transformation of that behavior through meanings, and the cognitive processes of interpretation through which the transformation takes place and is integrated into human interaction. The first step in the symbolic interaction enterprise is to transform all brute “things” of the mutely given environment into meaningful “objects” formed out of that environment by the selective and abstracting attention of human interactors. The meanings, in turn, are not taken from a Platonic heaven of timeless forms or a Kantian structure of a priori faculties. They emerge out of the give and take of the living interactional process itself. Each actor is an interactor mutually indicating meanings both to self and other. Out of self and other indications, persons shape joint lines of action into emergent collective action and generate shared meanings that provide the socalled empirical structures of social life. The meanings, collective action, and structures that emerge are grasped by members of society through a process of interpretation according to the rules and organizing ideas which underlie that society. That is, humans act toward things as objects on the basis of the meanings these objects (including humans) have for them. Meanings emerge from symbolic interaction. Meanings are grasped and applied through processes of learned interpretations. This sounds almost “creationist”; that is, persons seem to create objects, meanings, and courses of action out of whole cloth every time they interact. This world is continuously created and recreated, like a spontaneous world of pure play. This creationist view of human social life flies in the face of the a priori reality of society stated earlier in this section, i.e., there is a dialectical

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tension. Priority of social structure applies immediately to the empirical instances of each person’s life. Society is prior in every way to what we may call “personogenesis,” or the emergence of the biological individual as person through the process of socialization. The message of the priority of the social structure is to affirm the ineluctable truth of a “social realist” position with reference to a central issue for understanding the human condition: What is the relationship between the individual and society? As such, the priority of social structure grounds identity theory in the original paradigm contained in the classical writings of the founders of sociology who, whatever their differences, in one way or another saw society as emergent and causative vis-a-vis the individual. Social creationism, on the other hand, presents the process of what we may call “societogenesis,” or the continual constitution and reproduction of society through the actions, interpretations, and experiences of individuals. This represents the “social nominalist” position for understanding the relationship between the individual and society. Theoretical reflection on identity must keep both the nominalist and realist positions in real tension, since both are needed for an adequate grasp of the total social fact of identity that incorporates individual existence as defined and meaningful persons. Now we must address the process whereby merely individual behavior emerges as social action that continually reconstitutes the a priori reality of society. Empirical study of humans living together easily finds patterns of mutually oriented responses. Empirical sociology documents endless examples of such action. These patterns are seen as “typical;” that is, as representative of the kind of action itself and as intelligible within the belief systems of those who enact the patterns and of those who observe or respond to these patterns through interpretations of them. The social life process, in other words, is selectively seen through the typifications persons have of objects in the meaningful environment, including other persons. The typifications are organized into the institutional order that makes up the society at this point in history. The institutional order is grounded in the empirically available objective structures of meaning, such as language, procedures for interpreting actions and objects, taken-for-granted patterns of power and trust, rules for appropriate action, and rules governing how one is to feel and to interpret what one feels. The rather recent formulation of “feeling rules” enables us to understand how individuals come to believe that even their raw feelings constitute meaningful objective emotions through which they are related to the public order. Emotions, as defined feelings, enable individuals to feel at home

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in public domains varying from the most self-conscious and rationalized processes, such as bureaucracies, occupations, and educational experiences, to the most intimate and massively real existential encounters. The mutual display and enactment of the institutional order provide the ontological foundation for what humans take to be existentially real and cognitively certain in their everyday lives. Structures of meaning confront individuals in a complex contemporary society. Typical responses and meanings are formally and differentially objectivated in social institutions. The institutional order of society reproduces itself, as it were, through the attitudes and actions of its members. Members of human society, in contrast to other animal societies, are conceptualized as “selves,” and human society is organized by the symbolic constructions that simultaneously re-create society and socialize individuals. A human self is an organism that has the capacity for being simultaneously subject and object in a single act. Self is characterized by concomitant awareness both of acting and simultaneously of knowing that it is self who is acting. The full development of concomitant awareness apparently depends on the acquisition of symbolic competence. As humans come to use symbols, their consciousness acquires the capacity in critical situations to become self-conscious; that is, the individual reflexively becomes part of the symbolically transformed environment to which that individual responds. At the same time, the social environment is constituted by the responses of other selves, each in turn with the capacity for reflexively activating his or her own self-consciousness. Individuals emerge as human selves through the responses of others. Although born to human parents, a totally and permanently isolated individual does not acquire the necessary means for existing humanly. These means are socially transmitted systems of public gestural and oral symbols. The process of “becoming” involves dimensions such as modeling, calculating rewards and punishments, and learning desirable social arrangements. Individuals acquire, as part of their symbolic relationship to the social environment, internalized sets of rules, symbols, and interpretive procedures that enable them to live a life in terms of the meaning structures of that society, whether for good or ill. The organism becomes a human person in the very process of activating and acquiring the modes of its self as social. That is, individuals become human as social selves by internalizing the institutionalized structures of meaning, such as language, interpretive procedures, action and feeling rules, social class perspectives, and so on. The institutionalization of human selfhood is never complete. There is always the dialectic between “impulse” and “institution,” or body and self,

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which marks the range of self orientation. In addition, as philosophical reflection from the sophists to the existentialists teaches us, the potentialities of the human imagination for thought and feeling, and the experience of concomitant awareness, defy reduction to, or total determination by, any social order. The experience of an impulse-institution or body-self dialectic and the potentialities of imagination are within our intentional reach through the power of symbols and reflexivity. Identity is a “typified” or socially expressed dimension of self. An individual has one self that becomes situationally typified through a variety of identities. Identities constitute the “social self,” or self in the context of social action, which can be described as the “performed self” that is presented to others in the social actions of everyday life. This can be referred to as the “image,” the set of identities and expectations that are structured by the social context or implied by the behaviors of others. Identity may be further subdivided into “personal” identity, based on characteristics presumably unique to the individual, such as style, organic markers, and so on; and “social” identity, based on broad social categories having general social acceptance. Putting these elements together, we see that identity is a system based on one’s reflective view of self, perceptions of the expectations or response of others (reflected images), and subsequent reactions to shared reality.

III. Radical Humanist View Alienation underlies much of the suffering and decay of our society. Many people find themselves suffering without being able to articulate their suffering or knowing how to deal with it. Much that is amiss is due to alienation in its different embodiments. Alienated are not themselves, because their identities, having been imposed on them, are not their own. Hence, they are always at odds with and strangers to themselves.18 One who is fully free and developed contemplates oneself in a world that one has created. Alienation is finding oneself in a world which one has not created, in a world which one not only does not recognize oneself, but is 18

For this literature, see Alcoff (2003), Balibar and Wallerstein (1991), Calhoun (1994, 1995), Collier (2005), Craib (1998), Goldberg (1993), Habermas (1974), Hall (1985, 1990, 1993, 1995, 1996), Hall and du Gay (1996), Hollinger (1994), Jaeggi (2014), Kim (2007), Lukacs (2003), Ollman (1971), Sarup (1996), Schmitt and Moody (1994), Scott (1995), and West (1982). This section is based on Schmitt (1994).

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constantly reminded that one does not really belong. This is the alienation of the victims of sexism, racism, ageism, and class prejudice. What is missing is the ability to participate in shaping one’s world. In shaping a world, one defines the identities of the persons in it, i.e., their roles, their obligations, their rights. Unable to shape our world, we are unable to define our identities, but rather live our lives prescribed to us by others. We are, in that sense, not ourselves. The existentialist tradition echoes various aspects of alienation. Alienation is an injury to the self – alienated selves are powerless, unhappy. Neither their lives nor their persons are their own. Alienation is an inability to act or to commit oneself. Alienated selves are too indecisive, too vague and unfocused to say: “This is who I am; this is what I want; this is what I am going to do.” Furthermore, their desires are flaccid, and their wills corrupted, as well as they lack the courage to engage in risky projects, or to pursue their goals through difficulties and conflicts. Alienation results in our unwillingness to strike out for ourselves, being anxious, instead, to follow the latest fashion, to wear, say, or do whatever everyone else wears, says, and does. Alienation creates an inevitable distance between oneself and what one does: we are always pretending to be someone, but we never fully are that particular person because a part of us is always standing aside, observing our own performance of a role. Different descriptions of alienation emphasize different aspects of the experience. That should not worry us; after all alienation is experienced in many different ways. It appears to different people in different guises, and therefore it is described in somewhat different ways. A profound sense of alienation emerges when the hostility of the dominant opinions and dominant groups in the society becomes one’s own and thus one’s own self becomes loathsome, defective, or insignificant to oneself. One is estranged from ever being oneself. Nothing illustrates that better than the experience of women who have, in fact, been able to develop their talents but who end up feeling that the work they do is not really theirs, that their lives do not belong to them, because they grew up in a world hostile to them, especially if they are intelligent and well-educated. Alienation consists of self-estrangement from one’s innermost self. Living in a world that does not accept one, one is unable to be fully unified because one cannot fully affirm oneself. Even when someone is able to develop fully, he or she is vulnerable to alienation to the extent that he or she cannot make that development his or her own, cannot “feel at home” in the accomplishments and recognition such development brings.

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The person one is becomes invisible behind the derogatory definition. Nor would one be less alienated were the stereotype that conceals one’s individual uniqueness purely laudatory. There are those among us, persons of goodwill, who think that Black persons are in some way superior, enabled by racism and suffering, or that prisoners are all innocent victims of an unjust society. There are men who, genuinely, put women on a pedestal. But such stereotypes are, in the end, no less hurtful than the negative stereotypes, because in either case the person must fit into a ready-made identity. They are robbed of the opportunity to define themselves and it is for that reason that their selves are felt to be not their own because, indeed, they are not, but are imposed from the outside. What results is clearly alienation in a broad sense: alienation attacks the very center of one’s being because one is always at once removed from oneself and one’s acts. Alienation is being deprived of a profound and important ability: to take part in defining who one is, as Black, as woman, as old person, or as worker. An alien identity is imposed from the outside. But how is this alien self-imposed? And by whom? The answers to these questions are complex. Alienation is imposed in different ways, by individuals or by groups, by others and, even, by oneself. It is avoidable in some cases, and not in others. The alienated find themselves in a world not of their making, a world in which they are not active participants but the victims of impersonal forces. Hence the alienated do not feel themselves to be at the center of their lives. In order to get a clear view of that sort of alienation we need to go back into history for many centuries and look at the life of a medieval peasant. You can imagine a medieval peasant getting up to do the daily routine. His universe is God’s creation; He has assigned roles and places to everyone, and everyone is expected to do his or her job as assigned. Sometimes that job is enjoyable; often it is hard and bitter. But there is no choice but to do well, to work hard and do one’s assigned task. In that respect, our situation is different and more complicated. While we all recognize that we live in a society which makes (sometimes) justified demands on us and assigns us certain obligations, we also think of ourselves as distinct individuals with our own life plans and values. Each person has, or should have, an identity that is self-created and self-maintained. We differ from the imaginary medieval peasants in thinking very differently about ourselves. Each of us has his or her own life to lead as he or she sees fit within the limitations imposed by others’ rights to the same sort of self-determination. We have personal identities, all our own, which the medieval peasants did not

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have. He was content to be known as his father’s son, and to do the work his father did. He did not insist that he have his own name, or choose an occupation that suited him particularly. Hence, we are capable of being alienated – we can find ourselves in a world not of our own making – while that was a problem he could not and did not have. For us it is possible to live in a world that we did make; failing in that we are alienated. For him, world making was not a possibility, neither, therefore, was alienation. Our sense of ourselves as deserving a life of our own, as self-determining individuals, is an important ingredient of alienation. There are very different sorts of alienation depending on the different ways in which one’s self is not of one’s own making, or one’s self-determination is compromised by oneself, or by others, or by events not under anyone’s control. Some alienation is imposed by ordinary life changes. Aging produces bodily changes that one adjusts to only with effort. I look in the mirror and realize that I think of myself as a much younger man. My mental image of myself does not have as many wrinkles as I do. Here is a perfectly straightforward sort of alienation: it is specific, usually temporary, where I do not recognize myself in the mirror and have difficulties living with ease in my changing body. Some women go through similar experiences during their pregnancy. Some alienation is imposed by naked coercion. Slaves, prisoners, whole populations moved forcibly to a new location, far away from their familiar land, where they must live under unfamiliar conditions and find new strategies for survival. They experience alienation. Examples of that are very common, from the removal of Native Americans from their tribal lands to reservations to moving people out of their houses to make way for a highway or some other edifice in the name of “urban renewal.” One finds oneself in an unfamiliar place where one does not know one’s way around. There are different trees and plants, and the familiar cues about impending weather, or the changing seasons are missing. One lives in an unfamiliar world, and to that extent is powerless. Here alienation is imposed from the outside by a hostile group. One is forced into a world, not of one’s own making, in which one does not recognize oneself. Other kinds of alienation are imposed from the outside in similar ways, but the imposition is not as obvious because it seems well-meaning and benign. The “gentleman” who opens the door for a woman, the man who takes a chair out of a woman’s hand to carry it for her – there are many acts of apparent kindness which reinforce the lesson that women’s bodies are weak, or that women forever need protection and help. Teachers advise minority

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students not to aim for college, or steer working-class students towards vocational training. They appear well-meaning, and perhaps they genuinely are, but the effect is to hamper the expansion of the student’s power, as male politeness has the effect of restricting women to roles of weakness and dependence. These actions force people into worlds made by others. They impose definitions of the self, of what a person can do, which women or minorities had no hand in shaping. In these different ways, alienated people find themselves living in a society which has already determined who they are: a black man, a woman, an old person. With each of these labels comes a series of harsh prejudgments: of lacking enterprise or intelligence, of lacking rationality, of being generally useless. These stereotypes are enforced in a multitude of informal and more formal ways: Men whistle at women and make sexual comments, touch them, make sexual advances. They are just being “friendly.” Such established and accepted practices define a situation and the persons in it, by restricting what one, as a woman, can do. She can play along and thus be in the traditional role as sex object. If she protests, a different set of traditional responses come into play to punish or reject her as either overly emotional, frigid, or “bitchy.” Thus, there are a limited number of ways in which she can act. But one is how one acts. Restricting one’s scope of actions makes one be who one is, or defines one. Many other sorts of informal practices give women a certain sort of social identity: The way they are, or are not, listened to, how men talk to them, and about what, what sorts of things one expects them to be good at, or to be interested in, etc. And each of these definitional practices has its appropriate enforcement practice: Women who insist on using their intelligence will be isolated socially, etc. As a result, large numbers of people in our society lack autonomy. Their lives, their values and projects are not their own, because they are predefined by others, without consulting the persons whose lives and persons are thus defined. This is not merely a matter of being deprived of opportunities, but of not being oneself, of not being at one with oneself. What one would like, what one would choose is forbidden because it conflicts with the prevailing preconceptions of what is fitting for such as oneself: no, women cannot be president; no, black people cannot claim that their way of speaking English is as legitimate as that of white people, etc. More insidious even are the many cases where people are given inconsistent definitions: allowed into professions, women or people of color are made to feel out of place, and thus can never feel fully that their professional projects are theirs. In all these examples, particular individuals cannot say: This is who I am, this is what I

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do, this is what I stand for, because their particularity, their uniqueness, is concealed by the prevailing conception of what “women,” “Blacks,” etc., are like. Thus, the socially imposed definition prevents the individual from defining who he or she is. Whatever ends up being his or her occupation, or way of life, is thus in a very profound way not their own, because it is imposed, not chosen. This is alienation, much of which is imposed without one’s noticing it at the time, often by people who are friends and whose motives are of the best. This often becomes alienation with which one willingly cooperates. Living long enough in a world not of one’s own making, one adjusts. One begins to believe that one is a weak woman, a not quite trustworthy person, not meant for great deeds, or forever condemned to be an outsider. One internalizes the identities that others have concocted for one from their own greed and interests, or from their own fears. Everyone is, to use a different example, afraid of death, or serious impairment. We try to evade that fear; we do not want to be reminded that everyone will die; most of us will grow old and lose some of our powers; many will be seriously impaired before we die. These are facts, but they are uncomfortable, and we do not want to be reminded of them. Thus, we pretend that old people and people with disabilities are different. They belong to a different race. What makes them inferior will not happen to us. We transmute our fear for ourselves into derogatory stereotypes about others. But for most of us that evasive strategy will backfire. The day comes when you are old enough to retire and you will think that you are “over the hill,” and the jokes you made about others are now jokes about yourself. You have become an agent in your own alienation. We are complicit in our own alienation. In our culture alienation is not a central concern. In order to understand why that is so, we need to understand the dominant outlook in our society. Liberalism dominates our thinking about politics, and, more generally, about the ways we fashion our social life. Liberalism is a response to the underlying conditions that make alienation possible: the acceptance that each of us is entitled and, indeed, should lead his or her life as he or she chooses. But it interprets this self-determination in such a narrow way that it cannot understand alienation and, in fact, must conceal it. Why does it do that? Liberalism arose in opposition to and as a critique of the sort of communal society which was previously characterized in the description of the imaginary medieval peasant. That was a society where individual life choices counted for little, for life was governed by community standards, by traditions, and by the Church. In such a society the project of having a life of one’s own, of living

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in a world one has created, is not a possibility because one’s life is determined by the choices of the group as embodied in the traditions, in the ways in which “we” have always done things. In reaction to this collectivist society, liberalism adopted a very individualistic stance. What makes my life mine is that I determine it, by myself, that I make my choices, all by myself, that no one can tell me what to do, and I can tell anyone who tries to leave me alone. Living in a world one has created came to mean that one’s world was one’s own, alone. Human beings, in this view, are quite separate from one another. Each runs his or her life as he or she sees fit; each defines who he or she is. Rights specify the ways in which each of us must leave the other be. But in the real world we are not separate, and we are not alone. Our lives are intertwined in immensely complex ways. How we talk to each other, what we say, and in what tone of voice affects who we each separately are. We each have a hand in who each of us is. The conflicts over those sorts of influences on each other are conflicts over alienation, but they are not conflicts over rights. For rights belong to us insofar as we are separate; alienation affects us insofar as we are not separate. We are always enmeshed in complex social interactions that shape our very individualities. Insofar as liberalism overlooks that, it must ignore the effect of social forces on the individual. Liberalism overlooks alienation – the destruction of selves whose social identity is prescribed without their being allowed to participate in defining it. But by concealing alienation, liberalism actively perpetuates alienation. Alienation is useful for those who are powerful in this society. For instance, it allows men, who enforce alienation on women, to blame women for not being like men. More importantly, alienation made it difficult even to state women’s discontent, or that of other oppressed groups, because the only kinds of causes of discontent in the individualist’s vocabulary are deprivations of rights, extreme material deprivation, or personal inadequacy. The powerlessness of the oppressed groups is reinforced by blaming their condition on them themselves by defining them as inadequate. The extreme consequence of alienation, of being unable to participate in defining one’s identity, is the inability to articulate one’s own alienation. By excluding that concept of alienation from their vocabulary, liberal philosophers have done their part in maintaining existing power relations. The concept of alienation is indispensable for describing accurately the condition of oppressed groups in our society and for pointing to their causes.

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All of us, in one respect or another, find ourselves saddled with social identities that we had no hand in shaping. Wherever we go we find that we are defined as women, as persons of color, Jews, handicapped, old, homosexual, as students, as middle class, etc., and that to the extent that we are defined by those characteristics, others know us by just looking at us, know what we want, what we are likely to do, what our life goals are or should be, and what we are capable of. If we depart from the stereotype imposed on us, we encounter outrage or wariness. No effort is expended to find out who that woman, that black person, that old man are. They are just that: female, black, old; and that is all they are. Not surprisingly, finally, there are a wide range of suggestions of what we need to do in order to reduce, if not remove, all traces of alienation from the world. There is a good deal of talk about self-examination in order to become more aware of one’s own biases that serve to alienate others as well as to perpetuate one’s own. But there are also suggestions for social change in order to diminish alienation at work, the old, etc.

IV. Radical Structuralist View Marx developed his theory of alienation in Capital. In this connection, Marx uses two terms and he uses them in an interchangeable manner. These two terms are: alienation and reification. These two concepts are not so difficult to explain, and this section clarifies their meanings.19 Let us start this analysis with a definition of economic alienation. It must immediately be noted that in the comprehensive Marxist theory of alienation, economic alienation is only one part of a much more general phenomenon that covers practically all fields of human activity in class society. But it is the most decisive element. So let us start with economic alienation. We will approach it in successive stages. The first and most striking feature of economic alienation is the separation of people from free access to the means of production and means of subsistence. This is a rather recent development in human history. As late as the nineteenth century free access to the means of production in agriculture survived in some countries of the world, among others, in the United States and Canada. Until after the American Civil War, 19

For this literature, see Balibar and Wallerstein (1991), Burawoy (1979), Harvey (2018), Hobsbawm (2003), Israel (1971), Mandel (1979), Mandel and Novack (1979), Marx (1973/1857, 1964, 1976/1867), Marx and Engels (1989/1947), Meszaros (1970), Raekstad (2018), Schwalbe (1985), and Steinberg (1981). This section is based on Mandel (1979).

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it was not impossible for masses of people to find some unpreempted spot of land and to establish themselves on that acreage as free farmers, as homesteaders. In Europe, that possibility had ceased to exist for two hundred years, and in some countries there was even three or four hundred years earlier. That historical factor is the starting point for any theory of alienation. This is because the institution of wage labor, in which people are forced to sell their labor power to another person, i.e., to their employer, can come into existence on a large scale only when and where free access to the means of production and subsistence is denied to an important part of society. Thus, the first precondition for the alienation of labor occurs when labor becomes separated from the basic means of production and subsistence. This is a historically new phenomenon. A brief explanation may illuminate this more sharply. The classical historical criticism made by liberal thought in the nineteenth century about the society of the Middle Ages, i.e., feudal society, was the lack of freedom of the cultivators of the soil. This section would not take exception to that criticism which this section takes to be correct. The direct producers in that society, i.e., the peasants and serfs, were not free people. They could not move about freely; they were tied to the land. But what the bourgeois liberal critics of feudal society forgot was that tying people to the land was a two-sided phenomenon. If a person was tied to the land, the land was also tied to the person. Furthermore, because the land was tied to the person, there was not any important part of the people living within feudal relations who could be forced to become wage laborers and sell their labor power to owners of capital. They had access to the land, and they could produce their own means of subsistence and keep part of it for themselves. Only people outside organized feudal society – in reality outlaws, because that is what they were originally – could become the starting point for new social classes – wage laborers on the one hand, merchants on the other. The second stage in the alienation of labor came about when part of society was driven off the land, no longer had access to the means of production and means of subsistence, and, in order to survive, was forced to sell its labor power on the market. That is the main characteristic of alienated labor. In the economic field, it is the institution of wage labor, the economic obligation of people who cannot otherwise survive to sell the only commodity they possess, i.e., their labor power, on the labor market. What does it mean to sell your labor power to a boss? In Marx’s analysis, behind this purely formal and legal contractual relation – you sell your labor power, part of your time, to another for money to live on – is in reality

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something of deep-going consequence for all human existence and particularly for the life of the wage laborer. It implies that you lose control over a large part of your waking hours. All the time which you have sold to the employer belongs to him, not to you. You are not free to do what you want at work. It is the employer who dictates what you will and wil1 not do during this whole time. He or she will dictate what you produce, how you produce it, where you produce it. He or she will be the master over your activity. The more the productivity of labor increases and the shorter the workweek becomes; the stricter will be the control of the employer over every hour of your time as a wage laborer. In time and motion studies – the ultimate and most perfect form of this control – the boss even tries to control every second, literally every second, of the time that you spend in his employ. Alienation thereupon acquires a third form. When a wage earner has sold his labor power for a certain part to his employer, the products of his labor are not his own. The products of his labor become the property of the employer. The fact that the modern wage earner owns none of the products of his own labor – obvious as it may appear to people who are accustomed to bourgeois society – is not at all so self-evident from the viewpoint of human history as a whole. It was not like that for thousands upon thousands of years of human existence. Both the medieval handicraftsman and the handicraftsman of antiquity were the proprietors of their own products. The peasant, and even the serf of the Middle Ages, remained in possession of at least 50 per cent, sometimes 60 and 70 per cent, of the output of their own labor. Under capitalism, not only does the wage earner lose possession of the product of his or her labor, but also these products can function in a hostile and injurious manner against him or her. This happened with the machine. This remarkable product of human ingenuity becomes a source of tyranny against the worker when the worker serves as an appendage of the machine and is forced to adapt the cadence of his or her life and work to the operation of the machine. This can become a serious source of alienation in shift work, when part of the working class has to work during the night or at odd hours in conflict with the normal rhythm of human life between day and night. Such an abnormal schedule causes all sorts of psychological and nervous disorders. Another aspect of the oppressive nature that the products of labor can acquire, once society is divided into hostile classes of capitalists and wage workers, are the crises of overproduction, depression, or, as it is nowadays more prudently put, recessions. Then people consume less because they

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produce too much. They consume less, not because their labor is inadequately productive, but because their labor is too productive. We come now to a final form of alienated labor in the economic field that derives from the conclusions of the points that were noted above. The alienation of the worker and his or her labor means that something basic has changed in the life of the worker. What is it? Normally everybody has some creative capacity, certain talents lodged in him or her, untapped potentialities for human development that should be expressed in his or her labor activity. However, once the institution of wage labor is prevalent, these possibilities become nullified. Work is not a means of self-expression for anybody who sells his or her labor time. Work is just a goal. That goal is to get money, some income to be able to buy the consumer goods necessary to satisfy your needs. In this way, a basic aspect of human nature, i.e., the capacity to perform creative work, becomes thwarted and distorted. Work becomes something that is not creative and productive for human beings but something that is harmful and destructive. Catholic priests and Protestant pastors who have worked in factories in Western Europe, the so-called “worker-priests,” who have written books about their experiences, have arrived at conclusion on this point that are absolutely identical with those of Marxism. They declare that a wage earner considers the hours passed in factories or in offices as time lost from his or her life. He or she must spend time there in order to get freedom and capacity for human development outside the sphere of production and of work. Ironically, this hope for fulfillment during leisure time turns out to be an illusion. Many humanitarian and philanthropic reformers of liberal or socialdemocratic persuasion in the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries thought that men could become liberated when their leisure time would increase. They did not understand that the nature of leisure was likewise determined by the nature of wage labor and by the conditions of a society based on commodity production and wage labor. Once socially necessary labor time became shorter and leisure time greater, a commercialization of leisure took place. The capitalist society of commodity production – the so-called “consumer society” – did its utmost to integrate leisure time into the totality of economic phenomena at the basis of commodity production, exploitation, and accumulation. At this point, the notion of alienation is extended from a purely economic to a broader social phenomenon. The first bridge to this wider application is the concept of alienation of the consumer. Thus far we have spoken only about the consequences of alienated labor. But one of the cardinal characteristics of

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capitalist society, as Marx understood as early as 1844, is its built-in contradiction regarding human needs. On the one hand, each capitalist entrepreneur tries to limit the human needs of his or her own wage earners as much as possible by paying as little wages as possible. Otherwise, he or she would not make enough profit to accumulate. On the other hand, each capitalist sees in the work force of all the other capitalists not wage earners but potential consumers. He or she would therefore like to expand the capacity of consumption of these other wage earners to the limit or otherwise he or she cannot increase production and sell what his or her own workers produce. Thus, capitalism has a tendency to constantly extend the needs of people. Up to a certain point, this expansion can cover genuine human needs, such as the elementary requirements of feeding, housing, and clothing everybody in more or less decent circumstances. Very quickly, however, capitalism in its efforts to commercialize everything and sell as many gadgets as possible, goes beyond any rational human needs and starts to spur and stimulate artificial needs in a systematic, large-scale manner. Some of these are absurd and grotesque. Let us look at the example of morticians who seek to induce people to buy more expensive coffins so that the beloved dead can rest not only peacefully, but lightly, on foam mattresses. The sales pitchmen say this satisfies, not the corpse, but the feelings of the consumer. Is it necessary to observe that no real need is involved in this grotesque attempt of the burial business to make money. It is scandalous to feed in this mercenary manner upon the feelings of grief of people who have lost members of their family. Such alienation is no longer purely economic but has become social and psychological in nature. For what is the motivation of a system for constantly extending needs beyond the limits of what is rational? It is to create, purposely and deliberately, permanent, and meretricious dissatisfactions in human beings. Capitalism would cease to exist if people were fully and healthily satisfied. The system must provoke continued artificial dissatisfaction in human beings because without that dissatisfaction the sales of new gadgets which are more and more divorced from genuine human needs cannot be increased. A society that is turned toward creating systematic frustration of this kind generates the bad results recorded in the crime pages of the daily newspapers. A society which breeds worthless dissatisfaction will also breed all kinds of antisocial attempts to overcome this dissatisfaction. Beyond this alienation of human beings as consumers, there is a very important aspect of alienation: the alienation of human activity in general.

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What is meant by the extension of the concept of alienation to human activity in general? We live in a society based on commodity production and a social division of labor pushed to the limits of overspecialization. As a result, people in a particular job or doing a certain type of activity for a living will incline to have an extremely narrow horizon. They will be prisoners of their trade, seeing only the problems and preoccupations of their specialty. They will also tend to have a restricted social and political awareness because of this limitation. Along with this shut-in horizon will go something that is much worse, the tendency to transform relations between human beings into relations between things. This is that famous tendency toward “reification,” the transformation of social relations into things, into objects, of which Marx speaks in Capital. This way of looking at phenomena is an extension of this theory of alienation. Here is an example of this transformation that is witnessed in daily life in many industrial countries. The waiters and waitresses in restaurants are poor working people who are the victims and not the authors of this process of reification. They are even unaware of the nature of their involvement in this phenomenon. While they are under heavy pressure to serve the maximum number of customers on the job imposed upon them by the system and its owners, they look upon the customers solely under the form of the orders they put in. We have heard one waiter or waitress addressing herself to a person and say, “Ah, you are the corned-beef and cabbage.” You are not Mr. or Mrs. Brown, not a person of a certain age and with a certain address. You are “corned beef and cabbage” because the waiter or waitress has on his or her mind the orders taken under stress from so many people. This habit of reification is not the fault of inhumanity or insensitivity of the workers. It results from a certain type of human relation rooted in commodity production and its extreme division of labor where people engaged in one trade tend to see their fellows only as customers or through the lenses of whatever economic relations they have with them. The discussion of alienation draws a very dim picture. But this grim situation is not at all without hope. Our optimism comes from the fact that, after all this analysis of the roots of the alienation of labor and the specific expressions of the alienation of man in bourgeois society is completed, there emerges the inescapable conclusion that a society can be envisaged in which there will be no more alienation of labor and alienation of human beings. This is a historically produced and man-made evil, not an evil rooted in nature or human nature. Like everything else that has been made by man, it can also be unmade by man. This condition is a product of history, and it can be destroyed by history or at least gradually overcome by further progress.

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Thus, the Marxist theory of alienation implies and contains a theory of dis-alienation through the creation of conditions for the gradual disappearance and eventual abolition of alienation. I stress “gradual disappearance” because such a process or institution can no more be abolished by fiat or a stroke of the pen than commodity production, the state, or the division of society into classes can be eliminated by a government decree or proclamation. Marxists understand that the social and economic preconditions for a gradual disappearance of alienation can be brought about only in a classless society ushered in by a world socialist revolution. Here, classless socialist society does not mean the societies that exist in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, or China. In the best cases, these are transitional societies somewhere between capitalism and socialism. Though private property has been abolished, they have not yet abolished the division of society into classes, they still have different social classes and different social layers, division of labor, and commodity production. As a consequence of these conditions, they still have alienated labor and alienated men and women. The prerequisites for the disappearance of human alienation, of alienated labor and the alienated activities of human beings, can only be created precisely through the continuation of the following processes: the withering away of commodity production, the disappearance of economic scarcity, the withering away of social division of labor through the disappearance of private ownership of the means of production, and the elimination of the difference between manual and intellectual labor, between producers and administrators. All of this would bring about the slow transformation of the very nature of labor from a coercive necessity in order to get money, income, and means of consumption into a voluntary occupation that people want to do because it covers their own internal needs and expresses their talents. This transformation of labor into all-sided creative human activity is the ultimate goal of socialism. Only when that goal is attained will alienated labor and all its pernicious consequences cease to exist. This chapter briefly discussed four views expressed with respect to identity. The functionalist paradigm believes that identity is determined by social structure. The interpretive paradigm believes that identity is determined through the dialectical relationship between self and society. The radical humanist paradigm believes that identity is defined and imposed by a social group on other social groups. The radical structuralist paradigm believes that identity is class determined. Each paradigm is logically coherent – in terms of its underlying assumptions – and conceptualizes and studies the phenomenon in a certain

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way, and generates distinctive kinds of insight and understanding. Therefore, different paradigms in combination provide a broader and a balanced understanding of the phenomenon under consideration. An understanding of different paradigms leads to a better understanding of the multi-faceted nature of the phenomenon.

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Chapter 4

Place Attachment: Four Paradigmatic Views Any explanation of place and place attachment20 is based on a worldview. The premise of this section is that any worldview can be associated with one of the four broad paradigms: functionalist, interpretive, radical humanist, and radical structuralist. This section takes the case of place and place attachment and discusses it from the four different viewpoints. It emphasizes that the four views expressed are equally scientific and informative; they look at the phenomenon from their certain paradigmatic viewpoint; and together they provide a broader and a balanced understanding of the phenomenon under consideration. In this chapter, Sections I through IV present the four perspectives.

I. Functionalist View Existing attempts to measure “sense of place” (SOP) are open to a number of different interpretations, some of which are well established in attitude research. Attitude theory can provide a basis for conceiving of SOP as cognitive, affective, and conative relationships with human environments. “Sense of place” may be defined as a multidimensional construct comprising: (1) beliefs about the relationship between self and place; (2) feelings toward the place; and (3) the behavioral exclusivity of the place in relation to alternatives. A 12-item SOP scale, consistent with a multidimensional theoretical prescription, is developed and subsequently tested in the field with a sample of lakeshore property owners in northern Wisconsin (n = 282). A number of measurement models based on attitude structure were posed as potential explanations of the scale’s construct validity. Results suggest that the SOP scale measured a general “sense of place” dimension that gained expression in property owners’ thoughts, feelings, and behavioral commitments for their lakeshore properties. This general evaluative 20

For background information on “place attachment,” please see the appendix at the end of this chapter.

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dimension is more explanatory of observed responses than are the three univariate dimensions having interpretations consistent with place identity, place attachment, and place dependence. The dominance of the SOP factor over the narrower dimensions is prevalent in three different measurement models that posited both general and specific factors. Future research in this vein could be oriented towards reflecting the domains of attitude more closely, rather than being organized around the domains of sense of place as described in the literature.21 There are a plethora of concepts describing the relationship between people and spatial settings, but “sense of place” (SOP) is perhaps the most general. In this research, an attitude framework is used to assess whether SOP encompasses place concepts commonly addressed in environmental psychology: Attachment, Identity, and Dependence. It is useful to consider sense of place as an attitude towards a spatial setting especially since the constructs noted above share strong similarities to the affective, cognitive, and conative components of attitude, respectively. An attitude approach offers place research a number of benefits: (1) organization of rather disorganized constructs, (2) linkage to established literature, and (3) established research methods. “Sense of place” has been referred to as an over-arching concept which subsumes other concepts describing relationships between human beings and spatial settings. In general, SOP is the meaning attached to a spatial setting by a person or group. A place can be regarded as a center of meaning or field of care that emphasizes human emotions and relationships. In addition, a place is much more than a point in space, but takes in the meanings which people assign to that landscape through the process of living in it. Accordingly, SOP is not imbued in the physical setting itself, but resides in human interpretations of the setting. Places can be represented as a confluence of cognitions, emotions, and actions organized around human agency. This recognizes that places can be conceptualized as an integrated system comprising three attitude domains. It can be further ventured that developing an understanding of the processes involved in the integration of these domains would enable stronger theoretical coherence between various threads of environmental psychology theory (e.g., 21

For this literature, see Anderson, Basilevsky, and Hum (1983), Cuba and Hummon (1993), Gieryn (2000), Jorgensen and Stedman (2001), Kaltenborn (1998), Krupat (1983), Lalli (1992), McAndrew (1998), Pretty, Chipuer, and Bramston (2003), Rudzitis (1993), Shamai (1991), Shields (1991), Shumaker and Taylor (1983), Stedman (1999, 2002, 2003a, 2003b), and Vorkinn and Riese (2001). This section is based on Jorgensen and Stedman (2002).

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environmental cognition and environmental evaluation). Similarly, greater coherence might be obtained across different place constructs by considering them within a tripartite framework comprising cognitive, affective, and conative processes. Three place constructs appear in the environmental psychology literature with some regularity: place identity, place attachment, and place dependence. There is a considerable degree of overlap among these concepts, but they have distinctive characteristics, also. Place identity involves those dimensions of self that define the individual’s personal identity in relation to the physical environment by means of a complex pattern of conscious and unconscious ideas, beliefs, preferences, feelings, values, goals and behavioral tendencies and skills relevant to this environment. As a cognitive structure, “place identity” is a substructure of a more global self-identification in the same way that one might consider gender identity and role-identity. Place attachment is described as a positive bond that develops between groups or individuals and their environment. It explicitly contains emotional content. Attachment can be regarded as the affective relationship between people and the landscape that goes beyond cognition, preference, or judgement. Alternatively regarded, attachment involves an interplay of affect and emotions, knowledge and beliefs, and behaviors and actions in reference to a place. Finally, place dependence can be defined as an occupant’s perceived strength of association between him- or her-self and specific places. This strength of association is not necessarily positive, based on “comparison level/comparison level for alternatives” model. This process involves a comparison of the current outcomes to those that would be obtained by selecting an alternative course of action. Each option may be negative; the chosen option may simply be the best among poor alternatives. In literature, there is hardly universal agreement on the relationships among concepts. For example, place attachment subsumes or is subsumed by a variety of analogous ideas, including topophilia, place identity, insideness, genres of place, sense of place or rootedness, environmental embeddedness, community sentiment and identity. This research seeks to bring clarity to these relationships by testing the hypothesis that they can be represented as specific dimensions of the more general “sense of place.” The conceptual confusion noted above may in part be due to the diversity of approaches utilized in understanding SOP. The overall SOP theory and research can be divided into phenomenological and positivistic approaches. Positivistic research on SOP is characterized by researcher-defined variables,

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quantitative methods, and traditional hypothesis testing. In contrast, phenomenological approaches to understanding SOP address the intentional interaction between person and environment: the world of things, persons, and events as experienced by the individual. In phenomenology, concepts are treated holistically, and dissecting a multidimensional concept is a perilous business that may lead to losing the essence of the overall concept. Perhaps owing in part to the phenomenological emphasis, empirical investigations of SOP utilizing quantitative methods have been relatively few in number until recently. However, these attempts have not reflected theoretical imperatives well, specifically the multidimensionality of the sense of place concept, as they range from unidimensional conceptions to those that explore potential multidimensionality. Here it is suggested that empirical measures that attempt to incorporate multiple dimensions of SOP are more consistent with the theoretical strands of SOP. In addition, they should incorporate some theoretical imperative of how the different place concepts (identity, attachment, and dependence) interrelate. Place-related constructs can be regarded as attitudes. Attitude theory can therefore provide a theoretical framework for organizing the relationships between place components. The multidimensional foundation of SOP can correspond to different dimensions or components of attitude. Place attachment is equated with the affective (or emotional) component of attitude; place identity as the cognitive domain whereby a place is part of the social actor’s sense of self; and, place dependence represents the conative domain of attitude in which the dependence expressed for one’s setting is relative to the behaviors performed there. The question for the statistical test is whether the interrelationship between these components corresponds to conventional models of attitude structure. An attitude can be defined as a response to an exogenous event, object, or stimulus. Therefore, spatial settings may themselves serve as attitude objects. Further, affect, cognition, and behavior are three distinguishable components of response to an attitude object. Affect refers to emotional responses or activity in the sympathetic nervous system, as reflected in heart rate, galvanic skin response, or verbal self-reports. Beliefs, knowledge structures, percepts, and thoughts are all representative of the cognitive component of attitude. The conative component, in a tripartite view of attitude, includes reports of behavioral intentions and behavioral commitments, but not actual behavior. Like attitude, SOP is a hypothetical construct that is not accessible to direct observation, but can be inferred on the basis of measured responses.

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When conceived as an individual’s favorable or unfavorable attitude toward spatially demarcated object, SOP can be inferred from responses of a cognitive, affective, or conative nature. When each of these classes of response is regarded as being mediated by a distinct construct, the place concepts of identity, attachment, and dependence are evoked, respectively. Depending on how the components of a model are related to each other, alternative models can be constructed and tested. Data were collected through questionnaires which were sent to the residents of Eight Lakes in Vilas County (situated in the Northern Highlands Lake District of North Central Wisconsin). The three sense of place components were measured with twelve self-report items and 5-point Likert response scales ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.” A variance-covariance matrix was computed with bootstrapping so as to obtain the best estimates given the relatively small sample size. The inclusion of the asymptotic variances-covariances allowed the model parameters to be estimated without an assumption of multivariate normality. This method enabled the calculation of robust chi-squares and standard errors. Results suggest that the scale measures a general “sense of place” dimension that is expressed in property owners’ thoughts, emotions, and behavioral beliefs regarding their lakeshore properties. The dominance of the SOP factor over the narrower dimensions was prevalent in three different measurement models that posited both general and specific factors.

II. Interpretive View A theoretical framework is provided here to understand a cultural group’s definition of and relationship with place, in general, and the nature and the environment, in particular. The framework defines “landscape” as the symbolic environment created by a human act of conferring meaning on nature and the environment. This landscape reflects the self-definitions of the people within a particular cultural context. The transformation of the physical environment into landscape reflects people’s definitions of themselves and on how these landscapes are reconstructed in response to people’s changing definitions of themselves.22 22

For this literature, see Alexander (2002), Alkon and Traugot (2008), Brandenburg and Carroll (1995), Burley (2007), Buttimer (1980), Eisenhauer, Krannich, and Blahna (2000), Fishwick and Vining (1992), Franck (1987), Freudenburg, Frickel, and Gramling (1995), Greider and Garkovich (2010), Gustafson (2001), Kunstler (1993), Lewis (1979), Milligan

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Every river is more than just one river. Every rock is more than just one rock. Why does a real estate developer look across an open field and see comfortable suburban ranch homes nestled in quiet cul-de-sacs, while a farmer envisions endless rows of waving wheat, and a hunter sees a five-point buck cautiously grazing in preparation for the coming winter? The open field is the same physical thing, but it carries multiple symbolic meanings that emanate from the values by which people define themselves. The real estate developer, the farmer, the hunter are definitions of who people are, and the natural environment – the physical entity of the open field – is transformed symbolically to reflect these self-definitions. These symbolic meanings and definitions are sociocultural phenomena, not physical phenomena, and they transform the open field into a symbolic landscape. “Landscapes” are the symbolic environments created by human acts of conferring meaning to the nature and the environment of giving the environment definition and form from a particular angle of vision and through a special filter of values and beliefs. Every landscape is a symbolic environment. These landscapes reflect our self-definitions that are grounded in culture. Our understanding of nature and of human relationships with the environment are really cultural expressions used to define who we were, who we are, and who we hope to be at this place and in this space. Landscapes are the reflection of these cultural identities, which are about us, rather than the natural environment. When attempting to identify and understand the potential human consequences of changes in the natural environment, it is imperative that these consequences arc understood from the many cultural definitions that create landscapes. Is the landscape created by the real estate developer, the farmer, or the hunter? Any physical place has the potential to embody multiple landscapes, each of which is grounded in the cultural definitions of those who encounter that place. Every river is more than just one river. Every rock is more than just one rock. Cultural groups transform the natural environment into landscapes using different symbols that bestow different meanings on the same physical object or condition. These symbols and meanings are sociocultural phenomena; they are social constructions, and they result from ongoing negotiations in a cultural context. Of course, humans reside in a natural world that is “there,” but this world is meaningless. Meanings are not inherent in the nature of things. (1998), Norberg-Schultz (1979), Peet (1999), Relph (1970, 1976, 1997), Sack (1980), Seamon (1980, l982, 1987, 1993, 2000, 2002), Tuan (1974, 1975, 1977), and Williams (2000). This section is based on Greider and Garkovich (2010).

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Instead, the symbols and meanings that comprise landscapes reflect what people in cultural groups define to be proper and improper relationships among themselves and between themselves and the physical environment. An example may help illustrate how landscapes are the reflection of sociocultural symbols and meanings that define what it means to be a human being in a particular culture. In Lexington, Kentucky, the great thoroughbred estate of Calumet Farm had fallen on hard times. The estate had been the home of many world champions and had come to symbolize the place of Lexington in the international world of the “sport of kings.” Local people expressed great concern that the estate would be subdivided and developed as a residential housing or a shopping mall. The local government began to consider expensive schemes to save this locally important site. Every major metropolitan newspaper in the country reported that Calumet Farm – the home of internationally famous thoroughbreds and the heart of the Bluegrass horse country – would be put on the auction block. A collective sigh of relief and a standing ovation greeted the new owner of Calumet when he proclaimed that he intended to change not a single blade of grass. For many people of the Bluegrass and thoroughbred breeders, something much more, something qualitatively different from just a farm, was saved that day. The symbolic representation of a collective local history – the essence of a collective selfdefinition that has dominated the region for generations and was embodied in the landscape of Calumet Farm – had been saved. What this and other landscape examples suggest is that the definitions of nature and environment are grounded in various symbols through which cultural groups transform the nature and the world that is “there” into meaningful subjective phenomena. To understand human relationships with the natural environment, the subjective symbols and meanings through which a group of people socially construct the landscape must be described. Natural phenomena are sociocultural phenomena in the sense that they are constructed through social interactions among members of a culture as they negotiate the meanings of the nature and the environment. Various conceptions of nature are created from different social and cultural contexts and the nature then becomes indistinguishable from that context. Each culture constructs its own world out of the infinite variety of nature. Nature is socialized, reorganized, and made into a material manifestation of social structure. The natural environment is transformed into culturally meaningful phenomena and then is viewed from the perspective of these cultural definitions. A sociocultural group constructs a landscape from the nature and the environment through culturally meaningful symbols and then reifies it.

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Shared, taken-for-granted, and reified symbols and meanings that emerge through processes of negotiation thus define social and natural phenomena and the situations in which they are located. These intersubjective definitions of the situation, rather than the situations per se, constitute reality for the group of people. Cultural groups continue to reconstruct and redefine their realities – past, present, and future – through ongoing social interactions, which may be thought of as negotiations over meaning, that reinforce and change the symbols, meanings, and definitions of the situation. Symbols and their meanings change over time, but they have a persistence that gives them long-term continuity. Human societies have experienced natural and social calamities – earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, wars, riots – since the beginning of time, but with a core of continuity, survival, and reconstruction evident. It is the use of systems of symbols that makes this core possible. Thus, understanding symbol systems is essential to understand relationships between human societies, nature, and the environment. How can a landscape persist and sustain a core understanding of humannatural environment relations among a group of people in the face of technological, economic, and other changes? Lying beneath what is the relatively observable worldview of a culture is a structure of beliefs that is shared in a community. These are shared convictions of what is the proper form of a system of values. This structure of beliefs is comprehensive and is so taken for granted, so implicitly obvious to the individual, that it is indistinguishable from the person’s self-definition. It is here, then, in the structure of beliefs that the most tenacious, most significant symbols are embedded and maintained. Overlaying this structure are superficial manifestations of the structure of beliefs and these manifestations are quite changeable. New technologies or other externally introduced changes may represent such superficial manifestations and may be voluntarily incorporated into the lives of people in ways that enhance or, at a minimum, do not contradict their self-definitions and taken-for-granted relationships to each other and to their landscapes. The belief structure is something that people bring to a new situation that needs definition and provides a context within which negotiations over the meaning of the situation occur. Thus, the more durable traditional symbols and beliefs provide people with an interpretive framework – a familiar context – within which they can construct the meanings of new technologies and other changes.

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Cultural groups use symbols to define the natural environment and fit it into their ongoing, everyday, taken-for-granted worlds within which they organize both their relationships to each other and their relationships with the environment. The natural environment is transformed through symbols and concepts that organize peoples’ relationships in the social world. The natural environment as a symbolic social construction is reified by the sociocultural group. Reification implies that humans are capable of forgetting their own authorship of the human world. Human meanings are no longer understood as world-producing but as being, in their turn, products of the “nature of things.” As such, the symbolic social constructions – and here the landscape is included – become part of the world taken for granted. Members of the group act with the intuitive knowledge that their relationships to the natural environment could be no other way. Ideas and the realities they inform are naturally and indissolubly bound up together. Cultural groups socially construct landscapes as reflections of themselves. In the process, the social, cultural, and natural environments are meshed and become part of the shared symbols and beliefs of the groups. Taken together, these perspectives suggest that individuals perceive and categorize that which is given – the social and natural environment – in terms of intersubjective, taken-for-granted symbols and meanings and thereby define the situations in which they are located. These definitions of the situations constitute reality for those who share these meanings. As the context changes – as environmental change occurs, for example – there is no inherent meaning to the change. Instead, people negotiate the meaning of contextual or environmental change as a reflection of their changing definitions of themselves. In this sense, then, the nature and the environment are socially and culturally constructed through these social processes and become landscapes through social interaction and negotiation.

III. Radical Humanist View The concept of “sense of place” typically is used to refer to an individual’s ability to develop feelings of attachment to particular settings based on combinations of use, attentiveness, and emotion. Despite the assumed positive values of a sense of place, critics point out that places are more than simply geographic sites – they are also fluid, changeable, dynamic contexts of social interaction and memory, and they “contain” overt and covert social practices

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that embed in place-making behaviors notions of ideology, power, control, conflict, dominance, and distribution of social and physical resources. This section traces emerging scholarship about sense of place as a social construction, and offers examples from leisure, outdoor recreation, and tourism development. Place and sense of place are seen as socially constructed, always in the process of being created, always provisional and uncertain, and always capable of being discursively manipulated towards desired (individual or collective) ends. A research program about leisure and the politics of place awaits development, but should focus on language and discourse, and should begin with the question: how are leisure places socially constructed with political consequences?23 We must be insistently aware of how space can be made to hide consequences from us, how relations of power and discipline are inscribed into the apparently innocent spatiality of social life, how human geographies become filled with politics and ideology. There is a need to refer to the broadest possible range of overt and covert social practices that embed in place-making behaviors notions of ideology, power, control, conflict, dominance, and distribution of social and physical resources. Interpretive and critical scholars in all disciplines charge that traditional approaches cannot account for sites that are not physically present. For example, how should place be defined when technological advances allow the creation of cyber and hyper “sites” that are invisible or even imaginary, where power relations between and among participants are unclear, and where rules of social engagement are uncertain? Many other questions about place and sense of place are introduced: How are place meanings incorporated into management decisions? What are the social and political consequences of different versions of place realities? Which spokespersons are allowed to define place boundaries, or tell the histories of place, or interpret the meanings of place? How do different conceptions of place exert influence on people and groups? How is place manipulated for social good or evil? With these types of

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For this literature, see Cheng, Kruger, and Daniels (2003), Cowley (1989), Cresswell (2004), Davis and Henley (1990), Freudenburg and Gramling (1992), Gibbs (1990), Greider and Garkovich (1994), Greider and Little (1988), Harvey (1996), Jorgensen (1984), Lewis (1989), Massey (2004), Mitchell (2003), Mitchell, Force, Carroll, and McLaughlin (1993), Petrzelka (2004), Ridington (1982), Salamon (1980, 1984, 1985a, 1985b), Salamon and O’Reilly (1979), Schroeder (2000), Soja (1989, 1996), Stoffle, Halmo, Olmsted, and Evans (1990), Stoffle, Traugott, Stone, McIntyre, Jensen, and Davidson (1991), Stokowski (2002), Tuan (1991), Whittemore (1992), Williams (2002), and Williams and Van Patten (1998). This section is based on Stokowski (2002).

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questions, the politics of place assume dimensions that go well beyond basic managerial concerns. Because the significance of place emerges through interaction with others, language is central in formation of a sense of place. Place affiliations are sustained by rhetorical (i.e., persuasive) uses of language, with participants using stylistic devices such as icons, imagery, argumentation, symbols, and metaphors, among others. The derived symbols of place are formalized through use into coherent language structures and appear to people as narratives, myths, fables, and the like. One of the most common of these forms is the place narrative. The social and cultural values of a place become sustained in the language, culture, and history collectively experienced, imagined, and remembered across groups and communities of people. The tasks of place-making – opening the dialogic space, confirming and interrogating contexts, and framing action – are inherently political and moral acts. While any given text may appear to be logical and convincing to some groups of people, others may be offended or unmoved by its claims. Thus, texts also function symbolically to distance groups or individuals from one another. Understanding the social construction of place and sense of place refocuses thinking away from the taken-for-granted physical characteristics of space, and toward the possibility that places are always in the process of being created, always provisional and uncertain, and always capable of being discursively manipulated towards desired (individual or collective) ends. Such conclusions lead directly into analysis of the politics of place. Place structures a normative landscape – the way in which ideas about what is right, just, and appropriate are transmitted across people. But value and meaning are not inherent in any space or place – indeed they must be created, reproduced, and defended from heresy. Each effort to create a place becomes an elaboration of the beliefs and values of some collection of people, expressed and fostered in their promotion of a preferred reality. The act of “making places” appears to be such a natural human function, though, that many of the assumptions and social practices that go into it are unobtrusive, often hidden to most participants. While one should not assume that unobtrusive social practices are inherently subversive or exploitive, no explicit guidelines exist for evaluating the claims of place making. This may be problematic, particularly for activities that involve reconstructing spaces in the “public” interest. One way to deconstruct the activities of place-making is to evaluate the communicative practices used by social actors in advancing their positions.

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These social behaviors include the use of language and non-verbal imagery in bounding, focusing, and limiting discussion topics; the use of verbal or nonverbal strategies to include or deny participation; and the manipulation of symbols to achieve desired ends. These behaviors, and many others, are circumscribed by the levels of power available to social actors. People have differential levels of access and different skills and abilities relative to participation in public debate and discussion. It is not possible to understand the construction of meaning without attention to the means by which local and non-local groups (colonizers, wealthy urban classes, and so forth) can exercise widespread political and economic control over the countryside by separating public and private resources, by managing the issue agendas discussed in public arenas, or by investing economically in certain interests. New models of deliberative democracy emerging in planning, social policy, and critical theory incorporate issues of power as a central concern. Many authors writing about deliberative practices and democratic participation draw from Habermas’ (1987) theory of communicative action, a theory that conceptualizes social action as emerging from interpersonal agreements created in language practices. Discourses – the stable, situated, ritualized languages that arise – reflect the cultural and organizational structures of the social worlds which produce them, and offer seemingly rational perspectives for viewing individual and institutional behaviors. The utility of discursive models of democracy is in their ability to critique language practices, and in the hopes that they may foster less politicized, more civic, and more democratic approaches toward collaborative learning, public participation in environmental affairs, and lessening social conflicts. If place is to be conceived as socially constructed, then new types of research are needed to understand the politics of place in leisure, recreation, and tourism. The prevailing discourses of leisure – formed around notions of freedom, self-expression, and personal enjoyment – serve to encourage individualism, but these also simultaneously camouflage the political agendas and orientations of participants, managers, and legislating bodies. A full research program about leisure and the politics of place awaits development, but should begin with the question: how are leisure places socially constructed with political consequences? The politics of place in tourism tend to be hidden behind a pervasive discourse about the assumed economic benefits of destination development, a point made evident in many tourism case studies. For example, an analysis of the invention of New England as a tourist region, reveals how tourist industries brought natural scenery, leisure time, history, and even childhood memories

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and personal ancestry into the world of market transactions. Tourism development complicates issues of ownership of community history and memory; tourism also reduces all types of interactions to functional exchange values. But not all tourism place issues are cause for cynicism. Ideally, community discussion and public involvement processes can be marshaled to reveal and develop the important social and cultural qualities of place. An example is the tourism development in the island town of Manteo, North Carolina. In an effort to guide tourism development processes there, townspeople engaged in a process of identifying significant community places of social interaction and meaning. It was noted that attentiveness to a town’s “sacred structure” – defined as the most highly valued places in a community’s common landscape – could produce a better plan for tourism design and development. Not all the places listed as sacred were striking, exotic, or quaint; they were, instead, humble places that provided settings for the community’s daily routine. Understanding the role of these settings in forming a communal sense of place – places protected both community and individual identity – reduced the political maneuvering often associated with tourism development. Understanding the politics of place in leisure requires knowledge beyond the objective qualifies of places; it also requires knowledge of foundational processes related to the social construction of place. To understand “one’s own place in the world” requires basic factual knowledge about the physical setting, as well as a more abstract understanding of how place is organized and confirmed socially and culturally. Research about the politics of place must advance into analyses of the presentation, evaluation, and negotiation of divergent place discourses created by people engaged in social interaction. Under this research agenda, it will become clear that what is visible “on the ground” at any given time is only the working out of one version of reality, promoted by a set of social actors who have succeeded in using their power and position to advance their own ideals. Beyond these topics, research is also needed about how groups are successful in making place claims, as well as about the circumstances under which individuals and groups fail in their efforts, and the planning mechanisms that may be employed to ensure justice and equity in place management. Much can also be learned from studying histories of the past – as the past once happened, and as it re-happens in the discourses of retrospection and memory – in terms of how narratives of place have traditionally supported or constrained community affiliation, personal identity

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and civic culture. Such a research agenda has at its heart a critical tendency working towards making a better society for all citizens.

IV. Radical Structuralist View Marx recognizes that capital accumulation takes place in a spatial context and that it in turn creates specific kinds of spatial structures. Marx further develops a novel approach to location theory and shows that it is possible to connect, theoretically, the general processes of economic growth with an explicit understanding of an emergent structure of spatial relationships.24

IV.1. The Theory of Accumulation Marx’s theory of growth under capitalism places accumulation of capital at the center of things. Accumulation is the engine which powers growth under the capitalist mode of production. The capitalist system is therefore highly dynamic and inevitably expansionary; it forms a permanently revolutionary force which continuously and constantly reshapes the world we live in. A stationary state of simple reproduction is, for Marx, logically incompatible with the perpetuation of the capitalist mode of production. The historical mission of the bourgeoisie is accumulation for accumulation’s sake, and production for production’s sake. Yet this historical mission does not stem from the inherent greed of the capitalist; it arises, rather, out of forces entirely independent of the capitalist’s individual will. Economic growth under capitalism is a process of internal contradictions which frequently erupt as crises. Harmonious or balanced growth under capitalism is, in Marx’s view, purely accidental because of the spontaneous and chaotic nature of commodity production under competitive capitalism. Marx’s analyses of this system of commodity production led him to the view that there are innumerable possibilities for crises to occur, and that certain tendencies inherent within capitalism are bound to produce serious stresses within the accumulation process.

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For this literature, see Amin (1973), Baran (1957), Barratt Brown (1974), Emmanuel (1972), Fanon (1967), Frank (1969), Harvey (1975, 2006), Harvey and Chatterjee (1974), Lenin (1963), Luxemburg (1951), Marx (1967a, 1967b, 1968, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973), Marx and Engels (1955), and Smith (1984). This section is based on Harvey (2006).

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IV.2. Annihilation of Space by Time Marx makes the proposition that the circulation of capital realizes value while living labor creates value. Circulation has two aspects; the actual physical movement of commodities from point of production to point of consumption, and the actual or implicit costs that attach to the time taken up and to the social mediations (the chain of wholesalers, retailers, banking operations, and the like) which are necessary in order for the produced commodity to find its ultimate user. Marx regards the former as integral to the production process, and therefore, productive of value. The latter are regarded as necessary costs of circulation which are not, however, productive of value – they are to be regarded, therefore, as necessary deductions out of surplus, because the capitalist has to pay for them. The transportation and communications industry which “sells change in location” is directly productive of value because, economically considered, the spatial condition, the bringing of the product to market, belongs to the production process itself. The product is really finished only when it is on the market. However, the means of transportation and communication, because they are made up almost entirely of fixed capital, have their own peculiar laws of realization – laws which stem from the fact that transportation is simultaneously produced and consumed at the moment of its use. Although the transport industry is potentially a source of surplus value, there are good reasons for capital not to engage in its production except under certain favorable circumstances. The state is often, therefore, very active in this sphere of production. The cost of transportation is important insofar as the expansion of the market and the exchangeability of the product are connected with it. Prices, both of raw materials and finished goods, are sensitive to the costs of transportation and the ability to draw in raw materials over long distances. Furthermore, to dispatch the finished product to a distant market is obviously affected by these costs. The costs of circulation can be reduced by improved, cheaper, and more rapid transportation. One byproduct of this is a cheapening of many elements of constant capital (raw material inputs) and the extension of the geographical market. Viewed from the standpoint of production as a totality, the reduction of the costs of real circulation in space belongs to the development of the forces of production by capital. Placed in the context of accumulation in general, improvements in transportation and communication are seen to be inevitable and necessary. The

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revolution in the modes of production of industry and agriculture made necessary a revolution in the means of communication and transport so that they became gradually adapted to the modes of production of mechanical industry, by the creation of a system of river steamers, railways, ocean steamers and telegraphs. The imperative to accumulate, consequently, implies the imperative to overcome spatial barriers. The capitalist mode of production promotes the production of cheap and rapid forms of communication and transportation in order that the direct product can be realized in distant markets in mass quantities at the same time as new spheres of realization for labor, driven by capital can be opened up. The reduction in realization and circulation costs helps to create, therefore, fresh room for capital accumulation. Put the other way around, capital accumulation is bound to be spatially expansionary and to be so by progressive reductions in the costs of communication and transportation. The opening up of more distant markets, new sources of raw materials and of new opportunities for the employment of labor under the social relations of capitalism, has the effect, however, of increasing the turnover time of capital unless there are compensating improvements in the speed of circulation. The turnover time of a given capital is equal to the production time plus the circulation time. The longer the turnover time of a given capital, the smaller is its annual yield of surplus value. More distant markets tie capital up in the circulation process for longer time periods, and therefore, have the effect of reducing the realization of surplus value for a particular capital. By the same token, any reduction in circulation time increases surplus production and enhances the accumulation process. Speeding up the velocity of circulation of capital contributes to the accumulation process. Under these conditions even spatial distance reduces itself to time: the important thing is not the market’s distance in space, but the speed with which it can be reached. There is, thus, a strong incentive to reduce the circulation time to a minimum for to do so is to minimize the wandering period of commodities. A dual need, both to reduce the cost and the time involved in movement, thus emanates from the imperative to accumulate. Long distance trade, because it separates production and realization by a long time interval, may still be characterized by a long turnover period and a lack of continuity in the employment of capital. This kind of trade, and overseas commerce in general, thus forms one of the material bases and one of the sources of the credit system. The credit system allows for a spatial extension of the market by establishing continuity where there was none

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before. The necessity to annihilate space by time can in part be compensated for by an emerging system of credit. The need to minimize circulation costs as well as turnover times promotes agglomeration of production within a few large urban centers which become, in effect, the workshops of capitalist production. The “annihilation of space by time” is here accomplished by a “rational” location of activities with respect to each other so as to minimize the costs of movement of intermediate products in particular. Along with this concentration of masses of men and capital, thus accelerated at certain points, there is the concentration of these masses of capital in the hands of the few. The ability to economize on circulation costs depends, however, on the nature of the transportation relations established, and, here, there appears to be a dynamic tendency towards concentration. Spatial expansion and spatial concentration are both to be regarded as the product of the same striving to create new opportunities for capital accumulation. In general, it appears that the imperative to accumulate produces concentration of production and of capital at the same time as it creates an expansion of the market for realization. As a consequence, “flows in space” increase remarkably, while the market expands spatially, and the periphery in relation to the center is circumscribed by a constantly expanding radius. Some sort of center-periphery relation is bound to arise out of the tension between spatial concentration and spatial expansion. Since the structure of transport facilities does not remain constant, we find a shifting and relocation of places of production and of markets as a result of changes in their relative positions caused by the transformation in transport facilities. These transformations alter the relative distances of places of production from the larger markets and consequently bring about the deterioration of old and the rise of new centers of production. The drive to overcome spatial barriers and to annihilate space with time is designed to counteract what Marx saw as a pervasive tendency under capitalism for the profit rate to fall. The creation of built environments in the service of capitalism means a growth of that portion of social wealth which, instead of serving as direct means of production, is invested in means of transportation and communication and in the fixed and circulating capital required for their operation. Investment in the means of transportation is bound to increase the organic composition of social capital which tends to generate a fall in the rate of profit at the same time as its effects are supposed to increase the rate of profit. The capitalist development has to negotiate a knife-edge between these two contradictory tendencies.

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The virtue of these analyses lies not in their sophistication. It lies, rather, in the way in which they can be tightly integrated into the fundamental insights into the production of value and the dynamics of accumulation. The Marxian theory commences with the dynamics of accumulation and seeks to derive out of this analysis certain necessities with respect to spatial structures. The landscape which capitalism creates is also seen as the locus of contradiction and tension, rather than as an expression of harmonious equilibrium. And crises in fixed capital investments are seen as synonymous in many respects with the dialectical transformation of space. The Marxian theory teaches us how to relate, theoretically, accumulation and the transformation of spatial structures and ultimately, of course, it provides us with the kind of theoretical and material understanding which will allow us to understand the reciprocal relationships between space and history. This chapter briefly discussed four views expressed with respect to place and place attachment. The functionalist paradigm believes that place has characteristics which can be modeled, measured, and statistically tested. The interpretive paradigm believes that place is socially constructed. The radical humanist paradigm believes that the social construction of place reflects the preferences of interest groups. The radical structuralist paradigm believes that place is class determined. Each paradigm is logically coherent – in terms of its underlying assumptions – and conceptualizes and studies the phenomenon in a certain way, and generates distinctive kinds of insight and understanding. Therefore, different paradigms in combination provide a broader and a balanced understanding of the phenomenon under consideration. An understanding of different paradigms leads to a better understanding of the multi-faceted nature of the phenomenon.

Appendix Place Attachment This appendix discusses the concept of “place attachment” – the bonding that occurs between individuals and their meaningful environments. Place attachment has been examined in many fields of study, and therefore, it has been conceptually defined in various ways and has been methodologically approached in different ways. Some people regard the situation as chaos, and therefore, some organizing frameworks would be helpful.

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It should be noted that interest in people-place relations grows. It represents all branches of social sciences, including environmental psychology, sociology, community psychology, human geography, cultural anthropology, gerontology, demography, urban studies, leisure sciences and tourism, ecology, forestry, architecture and planning, and economics. Since this topic has been researched quite broadly, it has been defined in a variety of ways, applied in a variety of contexts, and various terminologies have been used. The following discussion reflects this fact, which at times might seem confusing. In what follows, we discuss a tripartite framework for organizing definitions. Place attachment has gained much scientific attention in recent years. Part of this interest stems from the awareness that person-place bonds have become fragile as globalization, increased mobility, and encroaching environmental problems threaten the existence of, and our connections to, places important to us. Place attachment is also relevant to the study of environmental perception. Attached individuals experience a heightened sense of safety, even when their place is situated in a war zone. On a smaller scale, attachment to one’s neighborhood is associated with fewer perceived incivilities (e.g., drug dealing, gang activity, traffic, etc.) on one’s block and less fear of neighborhood crime. Place attachment has been researched quite broadly, and so has been defined in a variety of ways. The various definitions of the concept can be synthesized into a three-dimensional, person-process-place, organizing framework. The person dimension of place attachment refers to its individually or collectively determined meanings. The psychological process dimension includes the affective, cognitive, and behavioral components of attachment. The place dimension emphasizes the place characteristics of attachment, including spatial level, specificity, and the prominence of social or physical elements. The framework organizes related place attachment concepts and thus clarifies the term.25 25

For this literature, see Altman (1975), Aronson, Wilson, Akert, and Fehr (2005), Bartlett (1932), Billig (2006), Bonaiuto, Breakwell, and Cano (1996), Brewer (1991), Brown, Perkins, and Brown, (2003), Case (1996), Cuba and Hummon (1993), Deutsch (2005), Dovey (1985), Feldman (1990), Francaviglia (1978), Fried (1963, 2000), Fullilove (1996), Gans (1962), Geipel (1982), Giuliani (2003), Giuliani and Feldman (1993), Hay (1998), Hidalgo and Hernandez (2001), Hummon (1992), Hunter (1974, 1978), Jorgensen and Stedman (2001), Kates, Eriksen, Pijawka, and Bowden (1977), Kasarda and Janowitz (1974), Lalli (1992), Low (1992), Low and Altman (1992), Manzo (2003, 2005), Markus (1977), Mazumdar and Mazumdar (2004), McMillan and Chavis (1986), Mesch and Manor

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Because of the application of place attachment to many perspectives, a plenitude of definitions has accumulated. For the most part, researchers portray place attachment as a multifaceted concept that characterizes the bonding between individuals and their important places. However, variations in this definition are vast. Humanistic geographers argue that a bond with a meaningful space, or “sense of place,” is a universal affective tie that fulfills fundamental human needs. Some authors suggest that sense of place encompasses the sub-concepts of place identity, place attachment, and place dependence, or that it includes ancestral ties, feeling like an “insider,” and a desire to stay in the place. In the immigration and refugee literature, however, the emphasis is typically on displacement, or “diaspora,” such that attachment is defined by the intensity of longing for places that are lost. Urban sociologists and community scientists locate attachment at the city, home, and neighborhood levels. Even within disciplines, models diverge in their definitions of place attachment; for example, place attachment has been said to rely on social features, physical features, or both. By exploring the commonalities across the different permutations of the concept, it is possible to shape, then structure, a coherent understanding of it. Scannell and Gifford (2010) propose a three-dimensional framework of place attachment that usefully structures the varied definitions in literature. This framework proposes that place attachment is a multidimensional concept with person, psychological process, and place dimensions, as in Figure 4.1. The first dimension is the actor: who is attached? To what extent is the attachment based on individually and collectively held meanings? The second dimension is the psychological process: how are affect, cognition, and behavior manifested in the attachment? The third dimension is the object of the attachment, including place characteristics: what is the attachment to, and what is the nature of, this place? This three-dimensional framework of place attachment organizes the main.

(1998), Michelson (1976), Nasar and Julian (1995), Perkins and Long (2002), Pretty, Chipuer, and Bramston (2003), Proshansky (1978), Proshansky and Fabian (1987), Relph (1976), Riemer (2004), Riger and Lavrakas (1981), Riley (1992), Rubenstein and Parmelee (1992), Sanders, Bowie, and Bowie (2003), Scannell and Gifford (2010), Stokols and Shumaker (1981), Tuan (1974), Twigger-Ross and Uzzell (1996), Uzzell, Pol, and Badenas (2002), Virden and Walker (1999), Vorkinn and Riese (2001), Williams, Patterson, Roggenbuck, and Watson (1992), Woldoff (2002), and Young and Willmott (1962). The first section of this chapter is based on Scannell and Gifford (2010).

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Cultural/Group

• •

Religious Historical

Individual

• • •

Experience Realizations Milestones

Affect

• • •

Happiness Pride Love

Cognition

• • • •

Memory Knowledge Schemas Meaning

Behavior

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Proximity-maintenance Reconstruction of place

Social

• •

Social arena Social symbol

Physical

•

Natural built

Person

Place Attachment

Process

Place

Figure 4.1. The Tripartite Model of Place Attachment. The three-dimensional, person-process-place, organizing framework relates place attachment concepts and thus clarifies the term.

I.1. The Person Dimension: Individual and Collective Place Attachment Place attachment occurs at both the individual and group levels, and although definitions of the term tend to emphasize one over the other, the two may overlap. At the individual level, it involves the personal connections one has to a place. For example, place attachment is stronger for settings that evoke personal memories, and this type of place attachment is thought to contribute to a stable sense of self. Similarly, places become meaningful from personally important experiences, such as realizations, milestones (e.g., where I first met my significant other), and experiences of personal growth. At the group level, attachment is comprised of the symbolic meanings of a place that are shared among members. Group-framed place attachment has been examined in different cultures, genders, and religions. For example,

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attachment has been described as a community process in which groups become attached to areas wherein they may practice, and thus preserve, their cultures. Culture links members to place through shared historical experiences, values, and symbols. In a study of landscape perception, forests were perceived to be more threatening for Hispanic Americans, African Americans, and women, and less threatening for European Americans and men. It can be speculated that different meanings arise from historical events, religion, and other experiences common to group members, and that these meanings are transmitted to subsequent generations. In addition, place attachment may be religiously based. Through religion, the meanings of certain places become elevated to the status of sacred. Revered places – such as Mecca or Jerusalem or, on a smaller scale, churches, temples, shrines, burial sites, or divine places in nature – are central to many religions, and their scared meanings are shared among worshippers. Not only do such places seem to bring worshippers closer to their gods, but reverence for, and protection of, these places essentially reflects one’s cultural fealty. Although religions often designate which places are important, religious connections to place can also be individual: a place may gain spiritual significance through personal experiences (e.g., an epiphany). Therefore, the cultural and individual levels of place attachment are not entirely independent. Cultural place meanings and values influence the extent of individual place attachment, and individual experiences within a place, if positive, can maintain and possibly strengthen cultural place attachment.

I.2. The Psychological Process Dimension of Place Attachment The second dimension of place attachment concerns the way that individuals and groups relate to a place, and the nature of the psychological interactions that occur in the environments that are important to them. The three psychological aspects of “place attachment” or, according to some authors, “sense of place,” typically highlighted in its various theoretical and operational definitions are: affect, cognition, and behavior. Some definitions include all three of these components, and others emphasize only one or two of them. This organization of place attachment is common to other social psychological concepts such as attitudes and prejudice, which are also characterized by affective, cognitive, and behavioral components.

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I.2.1. Place Attachment as Affect Person-place bonding undoubtedly involves an emotional connection to a particular place. Humanistic geographers describe place belongingness in emotional terms. For example, some use “topophilia” or “love of place” for this connection, and some others define place attachment as the authentic and emotional bond with an environment that satisfies a fundamental human need. Environmental psychologists similarly assert the central role of affect in person-place bonding. Most often, their definitions portray place attachment in affective terms, such as an emotional investment in a place, or feelings of pride and a general sense of well-being. Some evidence that attachment to a place is grounded in emotion comes from the literature on displacement, when individuals must leave their places such as in the event of a natural disaster or war, immigration, or relocation. Relationships with place can represent an array of emotions from love and contentment to fear, hatred, and ambivalence. For example, one can experience a childhood home as a significant place, but that does not necessarily mean the bond is positive. Rather, unhappy or traumatic experiences in a place may create negative feelings or even aversion toward it. Although strong negatively valenced bonds can form with important places, attachment usually is defined in positive terms; the desire to maintain closeness to a place is an attempt to experience the positive emotions that a place may evoke. I.2.2. Place Attachment as Cognition Person-place bonds also include cognitive elements. The memories, beliefs, meaning, and knowledge that individuals associate with their central settings make them personally important. Place attachment as cognition involves the construction of, and bonding to, place meaning, as well as the cognitions that facilitate closeness to a place. Through memory, people create place meaning and connect it to the self. As noted earlier, one can grow attached to the settings where memorable eras or important events occurred. These can be described as “symbolic communities,” because the attachment is based on the representations of the past that the setting contains. Individuals structure social information so that it is maximally coherent and easy to process. This information is organized into sets of cognitions, or schemas, which include knowledge and beliefs about particular objects, or the self. Schemas may be applied to place attachment. For example, familiarity may be viewed as the cognitive component of place attachment; to be attached is to know and organize the details of the environment. The notion of

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“settlement identity,” or “generic place dependence,” suggests that individuals are attached to certain types or categories of places (e.g., cottages in rural settings, suburban single-family dwellings, or downtowns). For these attachments, the schema contains information about the features common to the types of places to which one may become attached. A favorite place may be a kind of place schema of place-related knowledge and beliefs, which ultimately represents the special character of the place and one’s personal connections to it. In turn, these cognitions can become incorporated into one’s self-concept. The term “place identity” has been used to describe the physical world socialization of the self, or the self-definitions that are derived from places. This occurs when individuals draw similarities between self and place, and incorporate cognitions about the physical environment (memories, thoughts, values, preferences, categorizations) into their self-definitions. Salient features of a place that make it unique (e.g., architecture, historical monuments, a cultural community) can be attached to one’s self-concept, a process that may be called “place-related distinctiveness.” This process is comparable to the development of social identity as described by optimal distinctiveness theory, which asserts that social identity forms when a person seeks a balance of similarity to in-group members, and distinctiveness from out-group members. Place also provides information about one’s distinctiveness or similarity, information that may be based on physical or social features. Similarity would represent a sense of belonging to a place, and could be attained in a neighborhood, for example, from comparisons of the physical appearance of one’s house to the houses of proximal others. Differentiation in place identity would depend on distinguishing features such as climate or landscape and their relevant connotations (e.g., “we are ‘island people’”). In general, individuals may connect to a place in the sense that it comes to represent who they are. Connections to place may be cognitive, and can sometimes be incorporated, at the most personal level, into one’s self-definition.

I.2.3. Place Attachment as Behavior The third aspect of the psychological process dimension of place attachment is the behavioral level, in which attachment is expressed through actions. Like interpersonal attachment, place attachment is typified by proximitymaintaining behaviors and is a positive, affective bond between an individual and a specific place, the main characteristic of which is to maintain closeness to such a place. The idea of place attachment as proximity-maintaining

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behavior is supported in studies that relate place attachment to length of residence and efforts to return. The literature on homesickness shows that some individuals who have been absent from their homes for an extended period of time express a great desire to return to or visit the place, and at times, the return can involve much effort or cost. A religious pilgrimage is another behavior that exemplifies efforts made to be close to one’s significant place. Nevertheless, maintaining proximity to one’s place is not constantly enacted by the securely attached individual; one may be highly attached to a place, and yet depart from it regularly. In fact, place attachment can even become dysfunctional when an individual with a rigid bond to home is reluctant to leave it. For example, these individuals may miss important opportunities, or even put themselves in mortal danger for the sake of remaining in the place. Furthermore, the dialectical process of being at home versus being away from home aids in the development of place meaning. Through journeys away, in combination with proximity-maintaining, individuals are better able to understand and appreciate routine aspects of their place. Together, these behaviors contribute to the construction and expression of the person-place bond. Another interesting behavioral expression of place attachment is the reconstruction of place, as has been observed in post-disaster cities. It has been documented in the literature that the rebuilding of Xenia, Ohio, a town that was devastated by a tornado in 1974. The destruction gave planners the opportunity to rectify planning problems that had existed prior to the disaster, such as the decline of downtown and increased suburbanization. Nevertheless, local residents and businesses used their power to override the post-disaster zoning maps that had been proposed, and ultimately, the new Xenia looked much like it had before the disaster. Recreating a familiar town proved more important than addressing planning flaws. This shows the role of place meaning, nostalgia, and the desire to restore meaningful areas to which residents were attached. Similar acts of reconstruction have been observed, such as those following the 1976 earthquake in Friuli, Italy, and the 1964 earthquake in Anchorage, Alaska. Familiarity and use took precedence over planners’ wishes; residents manifested their attachments by recreating the city to which they were bonded, even if it was flawed. Another form of place reconstruction occurs when individuals must relocate to a new place. Some choose to preserve the bond by selecting locations that are as similar as possible to the old place. This was observed among Boston West Enders who, when forced to relocate, selected areas of Boston reminiscent of their previous neighborhood.

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Place attachment behaviors are not necessarily territorial, although the two may overlap, given that place use is an element of both. Territoriality is based on ownership, control of space, and the regulation of access to self, but attachment to places is an affective, proximity-maintaining bond that can be expressed without an underlying purpose of control, especially for public spaces such as parks or cafes, or sacred spaces. Further, territorial behaviors include marking, personalization, aggression, and territorial defense, whereas place attachment behaviors include pilgrimages, social support, and place restoration. The behavioral level of place attachment, therefore, is founded on the desire to remain close to a place, and can be expressed in part, by proximitymaintaining in concert with journeys away, place reconstruction, and relocation to similar places.

I.3. The Place Dimension of Place Attachment Perhaps the most important dimension of place attachment is the place itself. What is it about the place to which we connect? This dimension has been examined at various geographic scales (e.g., a room in a house, a city, or the world), and has typically been divided into two levels: social and physical place attachment. In a study that measured the social and physical levels of place attachment at three different spatial levels (home, neighborhood, and city), it was found that the strength of the attachment differed depending on the level of analysis: greater place attachment emerged for the home and city levels than for the neighborhood level, and the social dimension of place attachment was stronger than the physical dimension. Nevertheless, it should be stressed that physical and social attachments both influence the overall bond, and that spatial level should be considered when measuring place attachment. Some suggest that social attachment, or “bondedness” consists of social ties, belongingness to the neighborhood, and familiarity with fellow residents and neighborhood children, and that physical attachment, or “rootedness” is predicted by length of residence, ownership, and plans to stay. Nevertheless, much of the research on place attachment (and related concepts) has focused on its social aspect; people are attached to places that facilitate social relationships and group identity. One study was conducted in a neighborhood that was quite dilapidated, but demonstrated that strong neighborhood bonds can stem from interpersonal interactions. In another study, attachment in a London neighborhood was based on the ability to

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frequently interact with relatives. Certain physical features, such as density, proximity, and the presence of amenities and other social arenas influence these interactions, but when the attachment is directed toward others who live in the place rather than to aspects of the place itself, it is considered to be a socially based place bond. According to urban sociologists, place attachment is necessarily social, and as such it is sometimes compared to, or conflated with the “sense of community.” Community is a complex system of friendship and kinship networks and formal and informal associational ties rooted in family life and on-going socialization processes. Two types of community have been distinguished: community of interest, where members are connected through lifestyle and common interests, and community of place, where members are connected through geographical location. Communities of interest are not always place-bound, such as in the case of online, professional, or religious groups that are connected without reference to a place, and so this term is not specific to place attachment. Community of place, however, is more relevant to our framework because it describes social ties rooted in place, such as neighborhoods, coffee shops, or other spaces that support social interaction. Some believe that local sentiments and ties are created by the broader social system of mass society, which dictates status based on class, race, and religion. Individuals of similar status and life-stage select the location and type of dwelling according to their lifestyles and economic constraints. As a result, pockets of relatively homogeneous communities emerge, and within these neighborhoods, interpersonal attachments and networks develop. In a study that investigated whether local community sentiments can persist in mass society (i.e., the systemic model) or erode as population size and density increases (i.e., the linear model), support was found for the systemic model: length of residence was associated with greater social ties, including the number of local acquaintances, friends, and relatives. These social bonds, in turn, predicted local community attitudes and sentiments. Similarly, other community attachment researchers assume that attachment to a place means attachment to those who live there and to the social interactions that the place affords them. They note that spatial bonds become important largely because they symbolize social bonds. Thus, part of social place bonding involves attachment to the others with whom individuals interact in their place, and part of it involves attachment to the social group that the place represents. This latter type of attachment, and the recognition that the place symbolizes one’s social group, is closely aligned with place identity; one is attached to the place because it facilitates “distinctiveness”

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from other places, or affirms the specialness of one’s group. Civic place attachment is an instance of group-symbolic place attachment that occurs at the city level. Nationalism is another example of attachment to, and identification with, a place representative of one’s group, but on a broader scale. These definitions suggest that social place attachment can sometimes center upon the place as an arena for social interactions, or as a symbol for one’s social group. However, attachment obviously can also rest on the physical features of the place. The definition of “place dependence,” for instance, highlights the physical characteristics of a place as central to attachment because it provides amenities or resources to support one’s goals. The types of places that individuals find meaningful represent a broad range of physical settings, from built environments such as houses, streets, certain buildings, and nonresidential indoor settings, to natural environments such as lakes, parks, trails, forests, and mountains. Most likely, place attachment bonds exist because they serve several functions. Of those speculated upon in the literature, the most common include survival and security, goal support, temporal or personal continuity, belongingness, identity, and self-esteem. Implicit in each of these proposed functions is a particular definition of place attachment. In sum, three dimensions of place attachment are postulated: person, psychological process, and place. Given the complexity of person-place bonding, many threads tie individuals to their important places. Some are stronger or more salient than others, several are twisted together and seem inseparable, and few are apparent to outside observers. The tapestry that describes the nature of one’s relationship to a place is unique for each individual. Those new to the study of place attachment have likely struggled with its multitude of terms and varying constructs, as some have warned, there are definitional inconsistencies. The PPP framework, however, showcases the diversity of definitions, and structures them into an organized, coherent framework that is based on empirical works from different disciplines. Thus, the concept of place attachment becomes more coherent, broad, and accessible. Ultimately, the PPP framework portrays the diversity of place attachment definitions that have accrued thus far, and offers a coherent structural alternative to the related concepts that previously remained scattered in the literature. The topic of “place attachment” has been examined in many fields of study, and therefore, it has been conceptually defined and methodologically

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approached in various different ways. Some people regard this situation as chaotic, and some organizing frameworks would be helpful. In this appendix, the first section discussed a tripartite framework for organizing definitions. In the first section, it was noted that place attachment has been researched quite broadly, and so has been defined in a variety of ways. The various definitions of the concept can be synthesized into a three-dimensional, personprocess-place, organizing framework. The person dimension of place attachment refers to its individually or collectively determined meanings. The psychological process dimension includes the affective, cognitive, and behavioral components of attachment. The place dimension emphasizes the place characteristics of attachment, including spatial level, specificity, and the prominence of social or physical elements. The framework organizes related place attachment concepts and thus clarifies the term. The purpose of the main text of this chapter was to further organize the extant diverse research on place through a multi-paradigmatic approach. Patterson and Williams (2005) note that, since the 1990s, numerous authors have expressed concerns about the lack of conceptual clarity in research on place, and some authors have suggested that place research has failed to evolve into a systematic and coherent body of knowledge. Patterson and Williams (2005) believe such critiques do not adequately characterize the state of knowledge in place research, because responding to the issues raised requires investigating epistemological foundations of place research traditions that enables a pluralistic worldview that understands place, not as a single research tradition but as a domain of research informed by many disciplinary research traditions. Patterson and Williams (2005), consequently, introduce a framework for discussing epistemological foundations of research traditions and use it to, among other things, characterize the body of place research, provide a clarifying response to critiques, and make a case for the value of diversity in thought. The aim of the main text of this chapter was to take the insight of Patterson and Williams (2005) one step further through a multiparadigmatic approach.

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Chapter 5

Nationalism: Four Paradigmatic Views Any explanation of nationalism is based on a worldview. The premise of this book is that any worldview can be associated with one of the four broad paradigms: functionalist, interpretive, radical humanist, and radical structuralist. This chapter takes the case of nationalism and discusses it from the four different viewpoints. It emphasizes that the four views expressed are equally scientific and informative; they look at the phenomenon from their certain paradigmatic viewpoint; and together they provide a broader and a balanced understanding of the phenomenon under consideration. In this chapter, Sections I through IV present the four perspectives.

I. Functionalist View Nations do not create nationalism. Rather, nationalist movements define and create nations. Indeed, nationalism is not the awakening of nations to selfconsciousness, nationalism invents nations where they do not exist – but it does need some pre-existing differentiating marks to work on, even if these are purely negative.26 Nationalism is the yearning for, and acceptance of, the norm of the nation, which can be defined as a large, co-cultural, unmediated, anonymous society. People become nationalists out of genuine, objective, practical necessity, however obscurely recognized, because it is the need for growth that generates nationalism, not vice-versa. In this way, nationalism ensures that the world is divided into a system of locks, and acts as a safeguard against a new imperial tyranny. Mass public education systems sustain “high” cultures in modern, industrial societies. This highlights the way in which modern growth-oriented societies required a certain kind of literate culture which could only be forged

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For this literature, see Acton (1996), Gellner (1964, 1983, 1987, 1996a, 1996b, 1997), Mill (1996), and Tamir (1993). This section is based on Smith (1998) which is in turn based on Gellner (1964, 1983, 1987).

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and sustained by “exo-socialization,” a new kind of public, standardized education unlike any to be found in pre-modern societies. The logical starting-point of this view is the definition of the concept of the nation. Neither “will” nor “culture” by themselves can provide useful definitions. The reason is the same: they both bring in far too rich a catch. While nations may be communities that “will” themselves to persist, in a kind of daily, continuous, self-affirming plebiscite, so do many other social groups: clubs, conspiracies, teams, parties, as well as pre-modern religious, political, or private groups that knew nothing of nationalism. Similarly, to define nations in terms of shared “culture,” when there are and have been so many varied and rich cultural differences in the world, will not help us: cultural differences only sometimes coincided with the boundaries of political units, and the fact that they are increasingly doing so only reveals the very special conditions that bring culture and politics together in the modern age. Put another way, of the perhaps 8,000 language groups in the world, only a small proportion (about 200) have constituted themselves as nations with their own states, with a somewhat larger proportion (perhaps 600) of others striving to attain their own states, making some 800 in all. With only one tenth of potential cultures striving to become “nations,” we can hardly use shared culture alone to define the concept. This is why it is necessary to define the concept of the nation in terms of the age of nationalism. Only then, under the peculiar conditions of the age, can we define nations as the product of both “will” and “culture.” Nationalism is a political principle, which holds that the political and national unit should be congruent. It is a theory of political legitimacy, which requires that ethnic boundaries should not cut across political ones, and in particular, that ethnic boundaries within a given state should not separate the power-holders from the rest. National sentiment is the feeling of anger or of satisfaction aroused by the violation or fulfilment of this principle, while nationalist movements are ones actuated by this sentiment. The central proposition of the overall theory here is that nations and nationalism are logically contingent, but sociologically necessary in modern industrial societies. This theory is based on the analysis of the transition from agrarian – or agroliterate – societies to modern, industrial ones. That is, there have been three main stages in history: the pre-agrarian, the agrarian, and the industrial. Each of these resembles a plateau of human civilizations, with steep, step-like transitions from one stage to the next. In the first, the huntergatherer stage, there was no polity or state, hence no possibility of nations and nationalisms, given the definition of nationalism referred to above. The second

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stage saw a variety of types of society, most (but not all) of which had states of their own. In this second stage, there was a possibility for nations and nationalism to emerge, though it was, in fact, never realized. It is only in the third, industrial stage, that the state has become inescapable; every society has, or aspires to, a state of its own, but that is only part of the reason why nationalism becomes so universal an aspiration in modern society. Why are there no nations and nationalism in agroliterate societies? These societies are distinguished, not only by the emergence of the state, but also by the transmission of elite literacy. But they are also highly stratified societies. This means that power and culture are united according to status. At the apex of these societies are a series of small, but powerful, elites, arranged in horizontal strata, including the military, bureaucratic, priestly, and aristocratic castes, who use culture – their culture – to separate themselves from the rest of society. The mass of the population in each state consists of agricultural producers, and they too are separated, but this time into vertical communities, each with its own folk culture and customs. These small communities of peasants are turned inwards by economic necessity, and their local cultures are almost invisible. The members of each such community relate to each other through contextual communication. As a result, culture tends to be either horizontal as social caste, or vertical, defining small local communities. So, in stratified agroliterate societies, there is neither the possibility nor the desire to create a single, homogeneous culture for all the members of a given polity, and hence no possibility of nations or nationalism. Indeed, the only stratum that might have an interest in such cultural imperialism, the clerisy, is either indifferent to seeing its norms and rituals extended throughout society (like the Brahmins) or has neither the resources nor the practical possibility of doing so (as with the Islamic ulema) – since most people must look after the sheep, goats, and camels! For the other elites, the gulf between themselves (and their lifestyles) and the rest of the population (and their folk cultures) must be maintained, and even fortified by theories of “blood” and hallowed descent. The contrast with industrial societies is striking. They do require a homogeneous culture uniting all the members of a state, since in such societies, everyone is mobile, everyone must be a clerk, communication must be context-free, and power-holding must be impersonal. In an age of universalized clerisy and Mamluk-dom, the relationship of culture and polity changes radically. A high culture pervades the whole of society, defines it, and needs to be sustained by the polity. That is the secret of nationalism.

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The central ideas of modern society are those of endless cognitive and economic growth, of ceaseless discovery and innovation. Just as everything has to be analyzed into its constituent parts before causal relationships can be explored, so all persons and activities in modern society are to be treated as equal, commensurable units so that they can then be conjoined in mass societies, or nations. Modern, industrial societies are by their nature fluid, mobile, constantly changing; their mode of production too depends on an everchanging division of labor, in which individuals must meet and communicate with large numbers of people they never knew before, and must be able to move from one activity to another. This is why, unlike hierarchical and stable pre-modern societies, modern societies are necessarily egalitarian, in their ideals, if not always in practice. Work in pre-modern society was essentially manual. In modern society, it is mainly semantic. It is a society with a high degree of specialized labor, but the work is strictly standardized, and its precondition is a degree of literacy on the part of every member. This means that everyone must have a common generic education followed by specialist training for and on the job. The generic education in basic numeracy and literacy enables everyone to be in a position to become specialists; without that generic education in semantic labor, they could not be so trained. This type of education is relatively novel. Unlike the minimal, contextual education given to children in pre-modern societies, usually by the family and village school, education in a modern society is a public affair and of far greater importance to the operation of society. Public, mass education systems, or “exo-socialization,” provide rigorous training in the uses of precise, explicit messages and context-free meanings in a standard written language and script. Unlike its predecessors, the modern education system is a large, complex system – a public, standardized, academy-supervised and diploma-conferring institution for the inculcation of the skills, techniques, and values of modernity. Only a large and complex system could educate great numbers of people to be “clerks,” and only clerks can be useful citizens of a modern state. This means that the size of the mass public education system sets the lower limit for the scale of nations. It also means that mass education alone can endow its citizens with self-respect and a sense of identity. Modern man is not loyal to a monarch or a land or a faith, whatever he/she may say, but to a culture. Size is crucial in another, political, respect. Only the modern state is large and competent enough to sustain and supervise a system of public, mass education, which is required to train everyone to participate in the literate

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“high” culture of an industrial society. The public, mass education system binds state and culture together. In the past, the links between state and culture were thin, loose, and fortuitous. Today, the necessity of exo-socialization means that these links are unavoidable; and that is the reason why we live in an age of nationalism. The transition from an agroliterate to an industrial society is marked by the replacement of “low” by “high” cultures. A nation is defined as a society with a high culture, that is, a specially cultivated, standardized, educationbased, literate culture. These can be called “garden” cultures, to distinguish them from the “wild,” spontaneous, and undirected cultures found normally in agroliterate societies, which require no conscious design, surveillance, or special nutrition. Cultivated or garden cultures, on the other hand, are rich and complex. They are sustained by specialized personnel; and to survive, must be nourished by specialized institutions of learning with numerous, dedicated, full-time professionals. Now, many of the low, “wild” cultures fail to make it into the industrial era. There are simply too many of them for the number of viable states which can populate the world. So, they generally bow out without a struggle and fail to engender nationalism, while those with prospects of success fight it out among themselves for the available state space. That is why, in its own terms, nationalism is weak; only a small proportion of potential linguistic candidates stake a claim to becoming nations, and most remain determined “slumberers.” On the other hand, those that do engender nationalisms and attain states of their own are much stronger than before. They are pervasive and universal within the boundaries of “their” state; everyone must share in the same, standardized, literate culture. What then is the relationship between the “low” and the “high” cultures? Cultures in the sense of systems of norms and communications have always been important, but they were often overlapping, subtly grouped, and intertwined. In general, in pre-modern societies they were confined to elites; indeed, they were used by elites to identify and differentiate themselves from the masses. That is the main reason for the impossibility of nations and nationalism before the onset of modernity. Today, however, cultures are pervasive and homogeneous: and when general social conditions make for standardized, homogeneous, centrally sustained high cultures, pervading entire populations and not just elite minorities, a situation arises in which welldefined educationally sanctioned and unified cultures constitute very nearly the only kind of unit with which men willingly and often ardently identify. The cultures now seem to be the natural repositories of political legitimacy.

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These new, pervasive high cultures are so important for the smooth running of industrial society that they must be constantly sustained and controlled by each state. That is why the modern, industrial world resembles a series of structurally similar giant aquaria or “breathing chambers,” which sport superficial, if unduly emphasized cultural differences. The water and the atmosphere in these tanks are specially serviced to breed the new species of industrial person; the name of the specialized plant providing this service is a national educational and communications system. What happens, typically, is that the successful new high culture of the state is imposed on the population of that state, and uses whatever of the old “wild” cultures that it requires. This is the main role of nationalism. Nations have not existed from eternity, only to be awakened by the call of the nationalists. But cultures have always existed, and nationalism uses their raw materials. Nations as a natural, God-given way of classifying men, as an inherent though long-delayed political destiny, are a myth. Nationalism sometimes takes pre-existing cultures and turns them into nations, sometimes invents them, and often obliterates pre-existing cultures. This is a reality, for better or worse, and in general an inescapable one. Contrary to its folk idiom and romantic self-image, nationalism is, essentially, the general imposition of a high culture on society, where previously low cultures had taken up the lives of the majority, and in some cases the totality, of the population. It means the generalized diffusion of a school-mediated, academy-supervised idiom, codified for the requirements of reasonably precise bureaucratic and technological communication. It is the establishment of an anonymous, impersonal society, with mutually substitutable, atomized individuals, held together above all by a shared culture of this kind. That is what really happens. Further light is thrown on the relationship between the old “low” and the modern “high” cultures when the principle of nationalism (“nationalism-ingeneral”) are separated from the particular manifestations of nationalism (“specific nationalism”). Against those who would argue that nationalism is sociologically, as well as logically, contingent, it should be stated that it has deep roots in the modern condition and will not easily be denied. That is, it is nationalism which engenders nations, and not the other way round. Admittedly, nationalism uses the pre-existing, historically inherited proliferation of cultures or cultural wealth, though it uses them very selectively, and it most often transforms them radically. Dead languages can be revived, traditions invented, quite fictitious pristine purities restored. But this culturally creative, fanciful, positively inventive aspect of nationalist

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ardor ought not to allow anyone to conclude, erroneously, that nationalism is a contingent, artificial, ideological invention. The cultural shreds and patches used by nationalism are often arbitrary historical inventions. Any old shred and patch would have served as well. But in no way does it follow that the principle of nationalism, as opposed to the avatars it happens to pick up for its incarnations, is itself in the least contingent and accidental. Nationalism is not what it seems, and above all it is not what it seems to itself. The cultures it claims to defend and revive are often its own inventions, or are modified out of all recognition. Nationalism may not be so far from the truth when the people are ruled by officials of an alien, high culture, and they must first be liberated. But the new culture imposed on them after liberation bears only a remote resemblance to their own local folk cultures; rather, it revives or invents a local high (literate, specialist-transmitted) culture of its own, though admittedly one that will have some links with the earlier folk styles and dialects. How do most people acquire the new high culture? In the case of Ruritanians, the folk became conscious of their own local culture and tried to turn it into a literate, standardized “high” culture. This was not the result of any material calculations or manipulation by an intelligentsia. The exigencies of the labor market and bureaucracy taught the Ruritanians the difference between dealing with sympathetic co-nationals and hostile aliens. This experience taught them to love (or hate) their own culture, and the culture in which they are taught to communicate becomes the core of their new identity. Here we encounter the first of the two principles of fission in industrial societies: that of barriers to communication. There is a second principle, which can be called the inhibitors of “social entropy.” These are culture traits that resist dispersion throughout the population of an industrial society, even after many decades. This means that it becomes impossible to assimilate individuals who possess the entropy-resistant trait, for example, those with genetic traits like pigmentation or with deeply engrained religious-cultural habits which frequently have a limpet-like persistence – especially peoples with a scriptural religion and a special script, sustained by specialized personnel. In the later phases of industrialization when inequalities are reduced and communication becomes easier, such groups cannot be assimilated even by a mobile, fluid society. They stand on the other side of the great “moral chasms” which open up between groups with counter-entropic traits and the host society, creating the possibility of new nationalisms and nations.

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II. Interpretive View The idea here is that modern nationalism is simply the later politicization of purely cultural or ethnic sentiments in pre-modern periods, and that the distinctive feature of modern nations is their sovereignty as mass political communities. The Middle Ages were full of loose but politically independent communities or “peoples,” each with its own ruler. In addition, cultural or ethnic sentiments were not separate from political type of national sentiment. In the modern world, however, such a separation is much more feasible, as the term “nationalism” is often used to refer to a purely political movement and its capacity for state-making. But such a usage is unduly restrictive. It omits other important dimensions of “nationalism” such as culture, identity, and “the homeland,” and pays little attention to the character of the object of nationalist strivings, the “nation.” The result is a serious underestimation of the scope and power of nationalism, and of its ethnic roots.27 This point does not deny the importance of a political nationalism that has as its aim autonomous state institutions. But it emphasizes that we cannot overlook the recurrent significance of cultural forms of nationalism; despite their much smaller scale and often transient character, we must accord due weight to a cultural nationalism that seeks a moral regeneration of the community. In fact, we often find the two kinds of nationalism alternating in strength and influence; as political nationalism falters and ebbs, cultural nationalists, as it were, pick up the torch and seek to rejuvenate a frustrated and oppressed community. What exactly is the vision of cultural nationalism and how does it differ from that of political nationalism? The latter’s ideal is of a civic polity of educated citizens united by common laws and mores like the polis of classical antiquity. Their objectives are essentially modernist: to secure a representative state for their community so that it might participate as an equal in the developing cosmopolitan rationalist civilization. By contrast, the cultural nationalist perceives the state as an accidental, for the essence of a nation is its distinctive civilization, which is the product of its unique history, culture, and geographical profile. For cultural nationalists, the nation is a primordial expression of individuality and the creative force of nature. Like families, nations are natural 27

For this literature, see Armstrong (1982, 1995), Connor (1994), Geertz (1993), Greenfeld (1992), Hastings (1997), Hutchinson (1987, 1994), Reynolds (1984), Shils (1957), Smith (1986, 1991, 1995, 1998, 1999), Tilley (1997), and Tudjman (1981). This section is based on Smith (1998) which is in turn based on Armstrong (1982) and Hutchinson (1987, 1994).

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solidarities; they evolve in the manner, so to speak, of organic beings and living personalities. Hence the aim of cultural nationalism is always integrative: it is a movement of moral regeneration which seeks to re-unite the different aspects of the nation by returning to the creative life-principle of the nation. Hence the importance of historians who rediscover the national past and chart its destiny, and of artists who celebrate the heroes of the nation and create out of the collective experience of the people. So, the small circles of cultural nationalists form clubs and societies, read poetry, edit journals and engage in rituals, and seek to promote national progress through communal self-help. If popularized by educators and journalists, cultural nationalism can spawn a loose network of language societies, dramatic groups, publishing houses, lending libraries, summer schools, agricultural cooperatives, and political parties. This kind of cultural nationalism took root especially in Eastern Europe, for example among the Czechs and Ukrainians of the mid to late nineteenth century. It could be found both among populations that existed only as ethnic categories, without much self-consciousness, such as the Slovaks, Slovenes, and Ukrainians, who had few ethnic memories, distinctive institutions, or native elites; and among well-defined nations with definite borders, a selfaware population, and rich memories, like the Croatians, Czechs, Hungarians, and Poles; or among peoples with religious memories and institutions like the Greeks, Serbs, and Bulgarians. One may enumerate three aspects of cultural nationalism. The first is the importance of historical memory in the formation of nations. The second is the existence of competing definitions of the nation, and their competition is resolved by trial and error during interaction with other communities. And the third is the centrality of cultural symbols to group creation, which are only significant because of their power to convey an attachment to a specific historical identity. This does not mean that cultural nationalism is a regressive force. It may look back to a presumed glorious past, but it repudiates both traditionalism and modernism. Instead, cultural nationalists should be seen as moral innovators who seek, by reviving an ethnic historicist, vision of the nation to redirect traditionalists and modernists away from conflict and unite them in the task of constructing an integrated, distinctive, and autonomous community, capable of competing in the modern world. Such movements are recurrent. They continually re-emerge in times of crisis even in advanced industrial societies, because they answer to a deep-

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seated conflict between the worlds of religion and science. This is in contrast to the argument that emphasizes the transient nature of cultural nationalism in Eastern Europe based on the misalignment of ethnic and political boundaries there and its socioeconomic backwardness and the conclusion that in Eastern Europe after 1848, cultural nationalism was superseded by a “rational” political nationalism. But this argument, echoes of which reverberate in today’s debate about “civic” and “ethnic” nationalism, fails to acknowledge that the continuing hold of the historic religions suggests that there is no final resolution to the conflict between religion and science. It is better to see cultural and political nationalism as competing responses – communitarian and state-oriented – to this problem. They form typically in alternating cycles, each eliciting the other. Their effect is frequently to reinforce rather than to attenuate religious sentiments. In all ages, most people have had multiple identities and the question we need to ask is: do national identities become primary under certain circumstances in pre-modern periods? This means that, pace the modernists, a politicized ethnicity is neither entirely absent before the eighteenth century nor all-pervasive after it, but may be one of many identities that individuals might simultaneously adopt. There is a reluctance, therefore, to recognize that there may be recurring factors in the relationship between populations (e.g., military and cultural conflict) that may embed ethnicity as a political and cultural force in human history. This means that the pre-modern structure of ethnic groups should have an important bearing on how the modern nation does form. In other words, leaders and elites do not have the autonomy from previous ethnic traditions and cultures in their projects of nation-building that modernist instrumentalists claim for them. They are constrained by beliefs and ideas about the past and by the cultures of particular communities. Memories and symbols play an important role in defining the nature and history of the nation, and in securing the attachment of many people to particular nations. There is a separate realm for culture in the formation of nations, and there is a distinct politics of cultural nationalism. The emphasis on historical memory and historic religion suggests a continual interest in the importance of the process of “reaching back” into the ethnic past and in the revival of older cultural traditions. This implies a rejection of any idea that nations are “invented.” Reaching back into the past and moving forward from it to the present, implies a concern and a method based on a conception of long-term history. The purpose is to explore the emergence of the intense group identification

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that today we term a “nation,” and its basic premise is that the key to the significance of the phenomena of ethnic identification is the persistence rather than the genesis of particular patterns. For this reason, a time dimension of many centuries (similar to the longue duree emphasized by the Annales school of French historiography) is essential for disentangling independent ethnic experiences from the effects of diffusion and mimesis. An extended temporal perspective is especially important as a means of perceiving modern nationalism as part of a cycle of ethnic consciousness. Because the epoch of Absolutism that immediately preceded European nationalism involved, at least for elites, an exceptionally strong rejection of ethnic differentiation, and therefore, nationalism is often seen as utterly unprecedented. A longer look suggests that widespread intense ethnic identification, although expressed in other forms, is recurrent. Here, the terms “ethnic” and “nation” form part of a continuum, and what matters is not the form they take in different epochs, but the persisting group perceptions and sentiments themselves. Although pre-modern persistent group identities, whether labelled “ethnic” or “national,” are distinguished from “nations” after the late eighteenth century, where consciousness of ethnic identity became a predominant force for constituting independent political structures. Here ethnicity and nationhood are regarded as being continuous. The point of departure is ethnic exclusion, the boundary between “us” and “them,” and the universal comparison with the “stranger,” which implies a perception of the human incompleteness of persons who cannot communicate with the ingroup, which constitute the only “real human beings.” The universality of ethnic opposition is important. Whereas previous approaches to ethnicity had started from the unique cultural traits of each group, it is important to focus on the interactions and perceptions of the members of a social group, which is no longer defined by some cultural “essence,” but rather by its self-perceived boundaries. Ethnicity can be regarded as a socially bounded type of category, and one that is both ascribed by others and self-ascribed. In other words, a categorical ascription is an ethnic ascription when it classifies a person in terms of his/her basic, most general identity, presumptively determined by his/her origin and background. To the extent that actors use ethnic identities to categorize themselves and others for the purposes of interaction, they form ethnic groups in this organizational sense. Symbols are crucial to the survival of ethnic identification, because they act as “border guards” distinguishing “us” from “them.” But symbols, such as words, act as signals both to others outside and to the members of the group,

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and so symbolic interaction is always a type of communication, with symbols as the content and communication as the means by which they become effective. The content of symbols, such as linguistic “border guards,” is often established generations before they act as cues to group members; that is why the ethnic symbolic communication is communication over the longue duree, between the dead and the living. As important as symbols are legitimizing myths. Symbols usually persist because they are incorporated in a mythic structure, and over long periods of time the legitimizing power of individual mythic structures tend to be enhanced by fusion with other myths in a mythomoteur defining identity in relation to a specific polity. The recital of myths can engender an intense awareness among group members of their common fate, by which is meant the extent to which an episode arouses intense affect by stressing individuals’ solidarity against an alien force, that is, by enhancing the salience of boundary perceptions. Myth, symbol, and communication, then, are the three major components in any attempt to analyze the persistence of ethnic identities in pre-modern periods. It is impossible to present a single coherent theory of ethnogenesis, and more broadly, ethnic and national identity, except at a purely abstract and very general level. Instead, we can only isolate recurrent cultural, social, political, and economic factors, and try to build up a picture of the patterns of influences which bear on the rise and persistence of such collective cultural identities, proceeding from the broadest and most long-term to the most circumscribed and immediate. Perhaps the broadest of all factors, but also the most general and hence remote, concerns different ways of life. The most striking thing here is not material attributes, but mental attitudes. Of these, the most important are different kinds of nostalgia, defined as a persistent image of a superior way of life in the distant past. Two kinds of nostalgia for a lost “golden age” are historically significant: nomadic attachment for the vast expanses of the desert, typified in the Arab idea of paradise as shady, watered oases with datepalms – despite Islam’s urban setting – or the Central Asian ideal of luxuriant pasture with cool mountain conifers. Compare this with the European, and Christian, peasant ideal of secure, tranquil plots of earth, derived from seminomadic Jewish roots and the pastoral background of Indo-European peoples such as the Greeks and Romans who sought compact territorial settlements. This contrast between nomadic and sedentary lifestyles and nostalgias found its cultural counterpart in the two main principles of social organization: the

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genealogical which was characteristic of the Middle East, and the territorial which was most highly developed in Europe. These contrasts tended to be reinforced, with some variations, by the creeds of medieval Christendom and Islam, which provided legitimizing myths and symbols for two great civilizations. Indeed, their common origins, as well as their geographical proximity, made the Islamic and the Christian civilizations the major negative reference points for one another. In this respect, the two civilizations resembled on a grand scale ethnic groups that commonly define themselves by reference to outgroups. It is important to know the implications of the exploration of the legacies of different types of city and empire and the effect of their legal systems and especially their universal myths, derived ultimately from Mesopotamian models, for the persistence of ethnic identities. As important to these empires as their economic and military power was their legitimizing constitutive political myth, or mythomoteur. The growth of capital cities and centralized administrations has been critical to the diffusion of such mythomoteurs and the penetration of “myth-symbol complexes” in wider populations. Politics, notably state formation, was critical in ethnic evolution, though it could never be a sufficient condition, and care must be taken not to ascribe causal roles to earlier institutions that bear superficial resemblances to those familiar in our own time. As important are religious organizations. This is especially clear in the archetypal diasporas of the Jews and Armenians, with their relatively decentralized ecclesiastical organization, which has been as effective in penetrating the population in symbolic communication as the more hierarchical organizations of the established churches or the Islamic courts and ulema. Heretical sects and diasporas also illustrate the way in which ethnoreligious identities were as crucial for preserving ethnic identities as language. Indeed, the two main diaspora cases demonstrate how sacral language is separable from everyday vernaculars, and how language itself functions as a marker and symbol of ethnicity, at least within the major “fault lines” of language groups (Slav, Latin, and Germanic). Language as a definer of ethnic boundaries may therefore be regarded as a product of the interplay of other factors. In other words, in the long run politics and religion have been the independent variables in the linguistic interaction within each European language family. For somewhat different reasons and with considerably different effects, politics and religion also constituted the principle formative variables in Islam.

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It is important to emphasize the centrality of myths and symbols in cultural history. Whatever the ultimate source of the myths, symbols, and patterns of communication that constituted ethnic identity, their persistence is impressive. Ethnic identity may be regarded as a particular affect phenomenon and a specific value conditioned by the boundary between “us” and “them,” whereas the great religions have been the major sources of a range of values and value differentiation. They have also provided much of the myth-symbol content of ethnic identities in Islam and Christendom. Hence the emergence of national identity involves a complex matrix of factors the influence the rise of national identity, in which religion and the legitimizing myths and mythomoteurs it inspires, plays the central role. This makes a strong case for grounding the emergence of modern national identities on these patterns of ethnic persistence, and especially on the longterm influence of “myth-symbol complexes.” This represents, by implication, a powerful rebuttal of the more extreme modernist views that reject any connections between modern nations and modern nationalism, on the one hand, and earlier ethnic identities, on the other hand. This also puts us on our guard against the temptation to think of ethnicity as something infinitely malleable and “inventible.”

III. Radical Humanist View Nations and nationalism are constructs and cultural artefacts; the task of the analyst is to uncover their forms and contents, in order to reveal the needs and interests of those elites and strata which benefit or use their narratives.28 We need to understand the relationship between invented traditions, national traditions, and the nation. We can best understand the nature and appeal of nations by analyzing national traditions, and that national traditions are one kind of invented traditions. If we understand the genesis and function of invented traditions, we can better explain national traditions, and therefore, nations.

28

Anderson (1991), Balibar (1990), Bauman (1997), Bhabha (1990), Brass (1979, 1991), Breuilly (1993, 1994, 1996), Chatterjee (1986, 1996), Giddens (1985), Gramsci (1971), Hall (1992), Held (1995), Hobsbawm (1990, 1992, 1996), Hobsbawm and Ranger (1983), Kohn (1965), Mann (1996), and Spencer and Wollman (1999, 2002). This section is based on Smith (1998) which is in turn based on Hobsbawm (1990) and Hobsbawm and Ranger (1983).

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“Invented tradition” can be taken to mean a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behavior by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past. In fact, where possible, they normally attempt to establish continuity with a suitable historic past. A striking example is the deliberate choice of a Gothic style for the nineteenth century rebuilding of the British parliament, and the equally deliberate decision after World War II to rebuild the parliamentary chamber on exactly the same basic plan as before. Such references to an historic past imply a continuity that is largely factitious, and therefore, “invented traditions” are responses to novel situations which take the form of reference to old situations, or which establish their own past by quasi-obligatory repetition. Invented traditions must be clearly distinguished from both custom and convention or routine. Traditions, whether old or new, are invariant; the past to which they refer imposes fixed patterns. Custom is more flexible; it sanctions change up to a point through the sanctity of precedent and continuity. Custom is what judges do; “tradition” (in this instance “invented tradition”) is the wig, robe, and other formal paraphernalia and ritualized practices surrounding their substantial action. As for conventions, though they too become invariant, their functions are purely technical, designed to facilitate readily definable practical operations, and they can be changed when practical needs change, as can the rules of a game. Thus, soldiers wearing steel helmets is conventional, whereas the hunting pink and hard hats of fox-hunters is a case of tradition. Of course, traditions adapt to meet new needs, such as those of the Catholic Church or nineteenth-century universities. Furthermore, traditions have been “invented” in past ages. What is notable is that because in the modern age, there has seen such rapid change, one would expect to find the “invention of tradition” occurring most frequently, whether such traditions are invented by a person, such as the Boy Scouts rituals by Baden-Powell, or by a group, such as the Nuremberg rally rituals by the Nazi party. The reason is that a rapid transformation of society weakens or destroys the social patterns for which “old” traditions had been designed, producing new ones to which they are not applicable, or when such old traditions and their institutional carriers and promulgators no longer prove sufficiently adaptable and flexible, or are otherwise eliminated. Now every society accumulates large stores of ancient materials to construct invented traditions of a novel type for quite novel purposes.

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Sometimes new traditions can be grafted onto old ones, and sometimes they can be devised by borrowing from the well-supplied warehouses of official ritual, symbolism, and moral exhortation. For instance, Swiss nationalism that extended, formalized, and ritualized existing customary traditional practices like folksong, physical contests, and marksmanship, combined religious with patriotic elements. Not only did entirely new symbols and devices come into existence with the rise of national states – such as flags, anthems, and emblems of the nation – but also historic continuity had to be invented, for example by creating an ancient past beyond effective historical continuity, either by semi-fiction (Boadicea, Vercingetorix, Arminius the Cheruscan) or by forgery (Ossian, the Czech medieval manuscripts). Even genuinely ancient traditions, like English Christmas carol folksongs are “new” in the sense of being revived in new settings for new purposes in the nineteenth century. But movements that revive the past and invent traditions can never develop or even preserve a living past. On the other hand, where the old ways are alive, traditions need neither be revived nor invented. Modern “invented traditions” belong to three overlapping types. The first type establishes or symbolizes social cohesion or membership of groups, real or artificial communities; the second kind establishes or legitimizes institutions, status, or relations of authority; while a third type aims to socialize, by inculcating beliefs, value systems, and conventions of behavior. The first was the dominant type; other functions flowed from identification with a “community” and its institutions. There is an important difference between old and invented practices. The former are specific and strongly binding, whereas the latter are unspecific and vague in the content of the values and obligations of group membership they inculcate – such as “patriotism,” “loyalty,” “duty,” and “playing the game.” But the practices symbolizing these ideals are specific and compulsory, for example, the flag ritual in American schools. The crucial element is the invention of emotionally and symbolically charged signs of group membership, such as flags and anthems. Even though invented traditions occupy a much smaller part of the social space left by the decline of old traditions and customs, especially in the private domain, these neo-traditional practices remain prominent in the public life of citizens, including mass schooling and the institutions and practices of state; and most of them are historically novel and largely invented – flags, images, ceremonies, and music. The study of “invented traditions” is highly relevant to that comparatively recent historical innovation, the “nation,” with its associated phenomena:

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nationalism, the nation-state, national symbols, histories, and the rest. All these rest on exercises in social engineering which are often deliberate and always innovative, if only because historical novelty implies innovation. Israeli and Palestinian nationalism or nations must be novel, whatever the historic continuities of Jews or Middle Eastern Muslims, since the very concept of territorial states of the currently standard type in their region was barely thought of a century ago, and hardly became a serious prospect before the end of World War I. We should not be misled by the paradox that nationalists claim their nations are rooted in antiquity and self-evidently natural, when they are in fact quite recent and novel constructs. Whatever the historic or other continuities embedded in the modern concept of “France” and “the French” – and which nobody would seek to deny – these very concepts must include a constructed or “invented” component. And just because so much of what subjectively makes up the modern “nation” consists of such constructs and is associated with appropriate and, in general, fairly recent symbols or suitably tailored discourse (such as “national history”), the national phenomenon cannot be adequately investigated without careful attention to the “invention of tradition.” There are case-studies of the relatively recent invention of the Highland tradition in Scotland, the cultural revival in Wales, the British coronation ceremony, the symbolism of authority in Victorian India, the invention of traditions in colonial Africa, and the efflorescence of mass-produced traditions in late nineteenth-century Europe. This last item demonstrates the widespread use of “invented traditions” of all kinds – Boy Scouts rituals, May Day celebrations, sports competitions like the Olympics, alumni organizations, military parades and national days, jubilees, statuomania, the spate of huge public buildings and monuments, mass school manuals, and the like. All these were, to a large extent, state-inspired. That is, they were felt to be socially necessary by state elites intent on controlling rapid social change and managing the influx of enfranchised citizens into the political arena. In France of the Third Republic and Second Empire Germany, the “invention of tradition” reached its climax during the period before the First World War, with a spate of official and local ceremonies, a mania for statuary, monuments and public architecture, and the inculcation of national values and ideals in the textbooks of the mass education system. Some of these new traditions proved ephemeral, others like the mass ceremonies proved more durable. Of course, only those consciously invented traditions which broadcast on a wavelength to which the public was ready to tune in succeeded in the long run.

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It should be noted that nations are the product of nationalism – both conceptually and historically – and that nationalism’s main characteristic and goal, as well as its sole claim to be treated seriously, is its drive to build a “nation-state.” Nationalism is a political program; without the goal of creating a nation-state, nationalism is of little interest or consequence. Nations only exist as functions of a particular kind of territorial state or the aspiration to establish one – broadly speaking, the citizen state of the French Revolution – but also in the context of a particular stage of technological and economic development. Nations are made by nationalists. More than a little artefact, invention, and social engineering enters into the making of nations. Moreover, national loyalty is only one of many allegiances, which are always shifting with circumstances. It is possible to distinguish two types of nationalism and two kinds of analysis of nations and nationalism. The first type is that of mass, civic, and democratic political nationalism, modelled on the kind of citizen nation created by the French Revolution; this type flourished in Europe from about 1830-70, notably in Germany, Italy, and Hungary, and it operated a “threshold principle,” namely that only nations large enough in territory and population to support a large capitalist market economy were entitled to claim selfdetermination as sovereign, independent states. It was swiftly followed by a second type of “ethno-linguistic” nationalism, in which smaller groups asserted their right to separate from large empires and create their own states on the basis of ethnic and/or linguistic ties. This type of nationalism prevailed in Eastern Europe from 1870-1914, and resurfaced in the 1970s and 1980s, after the anti-colonial civic political nationalisms in Asia and Africa had spent their force. Associated with these types, but not entirely, are two kinds of analysis. The first focuses on official or governmental ideas and institutions, and is “top-down” and elite-based. The other is concerned with popular beliefs and sentiments, and so becomes a community-based view “from below.” While nations are constructed essentially from above, they must also be analyzed from below, in terms of the hopes, fears, longings, and interests of ordinary people. In this context, one might introduces the concept of “proto-national” bonds to describe either supra-local regional, religious, or ethnic communities; or political bonds of select groups linked to pre-modern states. But neither should be regarded as the ancestor or progenitor of modern nationalism, because they had or have no necessary relation with the unit of territorial

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political organization which is a crucial criterion of what we understand as a “nation” today. Language can be regarded as in part a product of state formation, and national languages as semi-artificial constructs, only of indirect consequence for modern nationalism. Ethnicity, too, whether in the sense of “race” or culture, is largely irrelevant to modern nationalism, except where visible differences in physique constitute a means to categorize “the other.” Only the memory of having belonged to a lasting political community of some kind had the potential for extension and generalization to the mass of a country’s inhabitants, as in England or France; in Russia or even Serbia with its memories of a medieval kingdom preserved in song and heroic story and in the daily liturgy of the Serbian church which had canonized most of its kings. The crucial phase of nationalism came in the period 1870-1914, when the mass civic-democratic political type was transformed into an ethnic-linguistic type of nationalism. This new type differed in three ways from the earlier “Mazzinian phase of nationalism.” First, it abandoned the “threshold principle” which was so central to nationalism in the Liberal era. Henceforth, any group of people considering themselves a “nation” claimed the right to self-determination which, in the last analysis, meant the right to a separate sovereign independent state for their territory. Second, and in consequence of this multiplication of potential “unhistorical” nations, ethnicity and language became the central, increasingly the decisive or even the only criteria of potential nationhood. Yet, there was a third change which affected not so much the nation-state national movements, but national sentiments within the established nation-states: a sharp shift to the political right of nation and flag, for which the term “nationalism” was actually invented in the last decade(s) of the nineteenth century. The efflorescence of ethno-linguistic nationalisms was the product of a number of factors: the conflation of “race,” language, and nationality during this period; the rise of new classes and the resistance of old classes to modernity; and the unprecedented migrations of peoples in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – all this in the context of the democratization of politics and the massive new powers of centralized states. The new linguistic nationalism centered on the vernacular was, among other things, a vested interest of the lesser examination-passing classes, especially when it became a medium of secondary-school instruction; and these classes veered to the political right, seeing themselves as embattled and endangered, especially by the “menace” represented by foreigners like the Jews. This kind of ethnic nationalism, essentially a politics of fear, led to the

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creation of ethnically homogeneous states and the exclusion and ultimately extermination of minorities. The late twentieth century has witnessed a revival of this fissiparous ethno-linguistic type of nationalism. While there is no denying the dramatic efflorescence and impact of nationalist or ethnic politics, it is no longer a major vector of historical development. Rather, these latter-day ethno-linguistic nationalisms are the successors, or even the heirs, of the Eastern European small-nationality movements of the late nineteenth century. The characteristic nationalist movements of the late twentieth century are essentially negative, or rather divisive. Hence the insistence on “ethnicity” and linguistic differences, each or both sometimes combined with religion. Though operating in the name of a model of political modernity, the nation-state, they simultaneously reject modern modes of political organization, national, and supranational. Time and again they seem to be reactions of weakness and fear, attempts to erect barricades to keep at bay the forces of the modern world, similar in this respect to the resentment of Prague Germans pressed into a corner by Czech immigration rather than to that of the advancing Czechs. Massive economic transformations on a global scale, together with huge population movements, disorientate and frighten many people. Wherever we live in an urbanized society, we encounter strangers: uprooted men and women who remind us of the fragility, or the drying up of our own families’ roots. But the call of ethnicity or language provides no guidance to the future at all. It is merely a protest against the status quo or, more precisely, against the “others” who threaten the ethnically defined group. For nationalism, despite the advantage of its vagueness, excludes all who do not belong to the nation, and is hostile to the real ways of the past or arises on its ruins. It is a reaction to the overwhelmingly non-national and nonnationalist principles of state formation. The central point is that today, nationalism has lost its state-making and economy-forming functions. In the nineteenth century, nationalism was plainly at the center of historical development: it carved out states and constituted territorially bounded “national economies.” But globalization and the international division of labor has removed these functions, and the revolutions in mass communications and international migration have undermined the possibility of territorially homogeneous nation-states. Nationalism is simply irrelevant to most contemporary economic and social developments, and the basic political conflicts have little to do with nationstates.

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Nationalism is a substitute for lost dreams, a reaction to the disappointment of larger hopes and aspirations. Despite its evident prominence today, nationalism is historically less important. It is no longer, as it were, a global political program, as it may be said to have been in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is at most a complicating factor, or a catalyst for other developments.

IV. Radical Structuralist View Two great forces have shaped the modern world, two forces that grew up, side by side, spread around the globe, and penetrated every aspect of contemporary life. These are the forces of capitalism and nationalism. Some of the earliest attempts to provide explanations of nationalism have linked it causally to the rise of capitalism. This is the central thrust of the various socioeconomic variants of classical modernism. The question has always been whether one could convincingly derive the rise and spread of nations and nationalism from the social consequences of capitalism, or more generally from economic motivations and economic change.29 The background is the heritage of classical Marxist interpretations of “the national question.” They tended to define modern nations, in the German Romantic tradition, as communities of “language and natural sympathies,” hence as in some sense “natural,” at least in form. In contrast, the national state and nationalism – the ideological movement – were a peculiar outgrowth of the modern period and especially of the rise of industrial capitalism. The national state was the necessary terrain for the establishment of market capitalism by the bourgeoisie; only a nationally unified territorial state could ensure the free and peaceful movement of the capital, goods, and personnel necessary for large-scale production, market exchange, and distribution of mass commodities. The creation of linguistically homogeneous nations was therefore a prerequisite of market capitalism, and hence it was inevitable that the further progress of capitalism depended upon the political and cultural development of the “leading nations.” Only in highly developed nations was it possible to envisage the social revolution which would lead to the overthrow of the national bourgeoisie within each nation and the establishment of 29

For this literature, see Bauer (1996), Engels (1976, 1977, 1980), Hechter (1975, 1985), Lenin (1970), Luxemburg (1970a, 1970b, 1976), Marx and Engels (1976), and Nairn (1977, 1996, 1997a, 1997b). This section is based on Smith (1998) which is based in turn on Hechter (1975) and Nairn (1977).

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socialist regimes by the proletariat, a class that was not only universal but also the true embodiment of the nation and its culture. It was not thought that nations would wither away along with the state; on the contrary, it was thought that although there would be global cultural convergence, national forms and cultures would persist, albeit with a socialist content. As far as more immediate strategies were concerned, classical Marxists tended to divide nationalisms into “progressive” and “reactionary,” according to whether they were likely to hasten the social revolution and further the socialist development of the “historic” nations. They adopted Hegel’s theory of “historyless peoples” which distinguished between the smaller peoples who had no tradition of statehood, and the larger peoples who had possessed a state or political tradition in the past and would therefore be able to build a national state in the future and should be encouraged to do so. For this reason, they were especially committed to Poland’s independence struggle, and because they believed it would weaken the great bastion of reactionary feudalism, Tsarist Russia. Classical Marxists were forced to devote much greater attention to “the national question,” because of the spate of independence struggles in Eastern Europe and the massive national stirrings within the Habsburg Empire and the Tsarist Empire, “the prison-house of the nationalities.” Several themes were developed in this context, amid heated arguments among the protagonists: 1) The petit-bourgeois nature of nationalism, its locus in an intelligentsia increasingly squeezed between big capital and the great proletarian movements. 2) The use of nationalist ideologies by a triumphant, but nervous bourgeoisie, to induce “false consciousness” and thereby divide and divert the masses who threatened their position. 3) The progressive nature of anti-colonial liberation movements, i.e., of nationalisms led by a nascent colonial bourgeoisie against the exploitation of imperialist capitalists. 4) The right of all genuine nations to secede from larger polities, especially semi-feudal empires, until such time as a socialist regime was established in the area. Apart from the Austro-Marxists, who sought to recognize the role of culture and community as independent variables in the evolution of nations, the classical Marxists adhered to a largely economistic analysis which either explained or reduced nationalist struggles to the workings of the particular

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stage of capitalism (early, late, monopoly, imperialist, etc.) held to be responsible for these political developments. As modern components of the political and ideological superstructure, nations and nationalism had, in principle, to be derived from the economic contradictions of capitalism and to be explicable largely, if not wholly, in terms of its class configurations and struggles. The main postwar Marxist socioeconomic model of nationalism draws on three sources to develop a theory of uneven development and imperialism. These three sources are: (1) the idea of capitalist imperialism and colonial nationalist liberation movements, (2) the theory of historyless peoples, and (3) the dependency model and the notions of “center and periphery,” “underdevelopment,” and “uneven development.” The model starts by placing nationalism within the context of political philosophy. The model regards nationalism as the most ideal and subjective of ideological phenomena, and argues that we can only grasp the extraordinary manifestations and gyrations of this most subjective and romantic of phenomena by locating it firmly within the violent workings of modern world political economy which it faithfully mirrors. The model notes that there have been nationalities and ethnic identities before the modern period, but the model limits its analysis historically by focusing on the specifically modern and global phenomenon of nationalism. To explain why nationalism has spread with such whirlwind force and success across the globe, we need a special theory which derives it from peculiarly modern developments. In this context, the key factor is not capitalism per se, but the uneven development of capitalism. To grasp its effects, we have to adopt the spatial analysis of “center” and “periphery” for the period after 1800. From that date, at least, the world can be divided into capitalist centers in the West, and underdeveloped peripheries outside. On one level, nationalism derives from the unequal encounter between center and periphery. This inequality derives from the uneven, and often violent and discontinuous, imposition of capitalism by Western bourgeoisies on undeveloped and backward regions of the world, and their exploitation and underdevelopment of successive peripheries in the interests of the further development of the centers. Unlike the metropolitan fantasy of an even and progressive development of material civilization and mass culture, characteristic of the European Enlightenment, imperialist development involves not merely the annexation of overseas territory by force, but the exploitation of the cheap labor and resources of peripheral regions of the world by metropolitan capitalists and states.

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On another level, the spread of nationalism can be derived from the class consequences of the uneven diffusion of capitalism. The jagged nature of capitalism’s advance across the globe, its tendency to affect successive areas at different times, rates, and intensities, necessitates the underdevelopment and exploitation of the peripheries, and the consequent relative helplessness of their elites in the face of the massive superiority of the colonial capitalists in technology, wealth, arms, and skills. The peripheral elites possess no such advantages; they are bound in the “fetters” of imperialism and are all too conscious of their helplessness. The only resource left to them is people, masses of people. People are all they have got: this is the essence of the underdevelopment dilemma itself. But the elites may be able to turn the tables and achieve development “in their own way,” if the masses can be mobilized against the exploitation conducted by imperialism. This means the conscious formation of a militant, inter-class community rendered strongly (if mythically) aware of its own separate identity vis-a-vis the outside forces of domination. But, to “turn to the people” means speaking their language, taking a kindlier view of their general “culture,” and coming to terms with the enormous and still irreconcilable diversity of popular and peasant life. This in turn means adopting the program of romanticism which extols a “sentimental culture,” one that is quite remote from Enlightenment rationalism. Politically, as the most aware section of the native bourgeoisie, the new middle-class intelligentsia of nationalism has to invite the masses into history; and the invitation-card has to be written in a language they understand. As a result, nationalism is inevitably Janus-headed, facing backward to a mythical past and forward to a future of development in freedom. It is also inevitably populist as well as romantic. The true nerve center of political nationalism is constituted by a distinctive relationship between the intelligentsia (acting for its class) and the people. The function of this intelligentsia is to construct a national culture out of the “prehistoric” qualities and the “archaic” naturalness of popular cultures, that is, all those customs, myths, folklore, and symbols which an irrational movement, like romanticism, loves to exaggerate. This is what they proceeded to do with such success in nineteenth-century Europe, starting in Germany and Italy, and what they continue to do in the recent “neo-nationalisms” of the West – in Scotland, Catalonia, Quebec, Flanders, and elsewhere. Despite some discontinuities with classic nationalisms, the latter share the same basic situation of relative deprivation vis-a-vis an invasive center, operating through the oil industry, the multinational companies, and the superpowers, and, in

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these cases too, their intelligentsias seek to construct a militant inter-class community with its own separate identity and myths. Some of the same class insights and structural problems can be encountered in a very different variant of socioeconomic modernism, i.e., internal colonialism. These are observed in the recent revival of ethnic sentiments and nationalist movements within the industrialized West. A prime example is the case of the political and economic development of the British Isles from the Tudors until the 1960s. The analysis proceeds at a number of levels. The first is immediate and political, the growing resistance of “the Celtic fringe” to incorporation by the British state in the 1960s, as evidenced in the growth of power of the Scottish National Party and, to a lesser extent, Plaid Cymru, and the early troubles in Northern Ireland. A second level is theoretical, namely a growing dissatisfaction with the Parsonian functionalist and diffusionist paradigm of development, and the need to replace it with a new framework based on the paradigm of peripheral dependency and underdevelopment. A third level is industrial-global: the possibility of explaining the growth of peripheral protest and resistance in the advanced states of the West as the result of the unequal division of labor within an advancing industrial capitalism. To this end, the analysis traces the relations between “center” and “periphery” within Britain to the expansion of the “strong” Tudor state in the early sixteenth century. Under Henry VIII and his successors, first Wales and then Ireland were brought firmly within the jurisdiction of the English state, and this process of geopolitical unification was given further impetus by the union of the two Crowns of England and Scotland in 1603, followed a century later by the Act of Union in 1707 which left a single Parliament in London. This process was always unequal: England was variously preponderant or oppressive in political terms. However, it was only when to political incorporation was added economic exploitation that we may begin to speak of Wales, Ireland, and Scotland as being reduced to the status of Britain’s “internal colonies.” This state of affairs emerged with the spread of industrialization from its English heartlands to the peripheries. Capitalist industrialism created both a new economic dependence of the periphery on the core, and a whole new nexus of social ties as a result of intensified and regular, if unequal, interaction between the peripheries and the center. Until the advent of industrial capitalism, the colonial situation was latent and obscured; thereafter it became clear and manifest. “Internal colonialism” denotes a state of structural dependence. Analogous to relations between the Indian cultural peripheries and the core

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collectivity in Latin American societies, internal colonies in an industrialized Western Europe possess many of the features found in such overseas colonial situations. Thus, commerce and trade among members of the periphery tend to be monopolized by members of the core. Credit is similarly monopolized. When commercial prospects emerge, bankers, managers, and entrepreneurs tend to be recruited from the core. The peripheral economy is forced into complementary development to the core, and thus becomes dependent on external markets. Generally, this economy rests on a single primary export, either agricultural or mineral. The movement of peripheral labor is determined largely by forces exogenous to the periphery. Typically there is great migration and mobility of peripheral workers in response to price fluctuations of exported primary products. Economic dependence is reinforced through juridical, political, and military measures. There is a relative lack of services, lower standard of living, and higher level of frustration – measured by such indicators as alcoholism – among members of the peripheral group. There is national discrimination on the basis of language, religion, or other cultural forms. Thus, the aggregate economic differences between core and periphery are causally linked to their cultural differences. This (internal) colonial situation, as the product of external forces, reveals a further important difference with the endogenous development found in Europe and Japan: the development of a “cultural division of labor.” Thus, colonial development produces a cultural division of labor: a system of stratification where objective cultural distinctions are superimposed on class lines. High status occupations tend to be reserved for those of metropolitan culture; while those of indigenous culture cluster at the bottom of the stratification system. Cultural distinctions have become increasingly important in an age of mass literacy and education; but the social conditions of modernity which encourage individuals to band together as members of ethnic groups are problematic. What is clear is that, in contrast to class relations in the advanced core, the backward periphery is characterized by status group solidarity. The reason for this difference is ultimately political. The persistence of objective cultural distinctiveness in the periphery must itself be the function of an unequal distribution of resources between core and peripheral groups. That unequal distribution of resources is in turn a function of the control exercised by the ethnic core over every aspect of the periphery’s social and economic life, and its refusal to lower the barriers to incorporation and acculturation of the periphery. In which case, the reverse situation may later develop. If at some initial point acculturation (of the periphery) did not occur

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because the advantaged group would not permit it, at a later time acculturation may be inhibited by the desires of the disadvantaged group for independence from a situation increasingly regarded as oppressive. This accounts for the cultural “rebirths” so characteristic of societies undergoing nationalistic ferment. It is not that these groups actually uncover evidence of their ancient cultural past as an independent people; most often such culture is created contemporaneously to legitimate demands for the present-day goal of independence, or the achievement of economic equality. But economic inequalities and cultural differences are not enough to generate ethnic solidarity and ethnic nationalism. What is also required is adequate communication among members of the oppressed group. In the economically backward periphery, occupational stratification is reinforced by residential segregation, and this favors ethnic rather than class solidarity. So the internal colonialism model predicts, and to some extent explains, the emergence of just such a “cultural division of labor,” and therefore the likelihood of ethnic persistence and ultimately of political secession. To this structural model, some explanation can be added for the postwar revival of ethnic nationalism in the Celtic periphery of the United Kingdom. Noting the differences between a more unified Ireland, and a more economically and hence politically divided Scotland and Wales, as a result of more intense and focused industrialization, all three suffered prolonged economic stagnation as internal colonies as well as cultural stratification. This persisting situation sapped people’s faith in the all-British class-based party system so that by the 1960s, nationalism has reemerged in the Celtic periphery largely as a reaction to this failure of regional development. And even more specifically, the most recent crystallization of Celtic nationalism may ultimately be understood as a trenchant critique of the principle of bureaucratic centralism. But, ultimately, it is the structural situation of systematic dependence of the periphery that explains the persistence of regional sectionalism, and thereby encourages its members to resist an incorporation and assimilation that had previously been refused them. This is a powerful and persuasive thesis. It places the revival of nationalism, and the persistence of ethnic ties, firmly within the transformations of the whole social structure, deducing these outcomes from the situations to which those changes give rise. This chapter briefly discussed four views expressed with respect to nationalism. The functionalist paradigm believes that nationalism is developed as a reflection of economic development. The interpretive paradigm believes

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that nationalism is a cultural and ethnic phenomenon. The radical humanist paradigm believes that nationalism is constructed by a social group for their own benefit. The radical structuralist paradigm believes that nationalism is class determined. Each paradigm is logically coherent – in terms of its underlying assumptions – and conceptualizes and studies the phenomenon in a certain way, and generates distinctive kinds of insight and understanding. Therefore, different paradigms in combination provide a broader and a balanced understanding of the phenomenon under consideration. An understanding of different paradigms leads to a better understanding of the multi-faceted nature of the phenomenon.

References Acton, E., 1996, “Nationality,” in Balakrishnan, G., (ed.), Mapping the Nation, London, England: Verso. Anderson, B., 1991, Imagined Communities, London, England: Verso. Armstrong, J., 1982, Nations before Nationalism, Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press. Armstrong, J., 1995, “Towards a Theory of Nationalism: Consensus and Dissensus,” in Periwal, S., (ed.), Nations and Nationalism, Budapest, Hungary: Central European University Press, pp. 34-43. Balibar, E., 1990, “The Nation Form: History and Ideology,” New Left Review, 13:3, 329361. Bauer, O., 1996, “The Nation,” in Balakrishnan, G., (ed.), Mapping the Nation, London, England: Verso. Bauman, Z., 1997, Postmodernity and Its Discontents, Cambridge, England: Polity Press. Bhabha, H., 1990, “Introduction: Narrating the Nation,” in Bhabha, H., (ed.), Nation and Narration, London, England: Routledge. Brass, P., 1979, “Elite Groups, Symbol Manipulation, and Ethnic Identity among the Muslims of South Asia,” in Taylor, D. and Yapp, M., (eds.), Political Identity in South Asia, London, England: Curzon Press, pp. 35-68. Brass, P., 1991, Ethnicity and Nationalism: Theory and Comparison, New Delhi, India: Sage. Breuilly, J., 1993, Nationalism and the State, Manchester, England: Manchester University Press. Breuilly, J., 1994, “Culture, Doctrine, Politics: 3 Ways of Constructing Nationalism,” in Beramendi, J., Maiz, R., and Nunez, X., (eds.), Nationalism in Europe Past and Present, Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela. Breuilly, J., 1996, “Approaches to Nationalism,” in Balakrishnan, G., (ed.), Mapping the Nation, London, England: Verso, 146-174.

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Chatterjee, P., 1986, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? London, England: Zed Books. Chatterjee, P., 1996, “Whose Imagined Community?,” in Balakrishnan, G., (ed.), Mapping the Nation, London, England: Verso, pp. 214-225. Connor, W., 1994, Ethnonationalism: The Quest for Understanding, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Engels, F., 1976, “The Festival of Nations in London,” in Marx and Engels Collected Works, London, England: Lawrence and Wishart. Engels, F., 1977, “The Magyar Struggle,” in Marx and Engels Collected Works, London, England: Lawrence and Wishart. Engels, F., 1980, “Po and Rhine,” in Marx and Engels Collected Works, London, England: Lawrence and Wishart. Geertz, C., 1993, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays, Second Edition, London, England: Fontana. Gellner, E., 1964, Thought and Change, London, England: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Gellner, E., 1983, Nations and Nationalism, Oxford, England: Blackwell. Gellner, E., 1987, Culture, Identity and Politics, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Gellner, E., 1996a, “The Coming of Nationalism and Its Interpretation: The Myths of Nation and Class,” in Balakrishnan, G., (ed.), Mapping the Nation, London, England: Verso, pp. 98-145. Gellner, E. 1996b, “Reply to Critics,” in Hall, J. and Jarvis, I., (eds.), The Social Philosophy of Ernest Gellner, Amsterdam, the Netherlands: Rodopi. Gellner, E., 1997, Nationalism, London, England: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Giddens, A., 1985, The Nation State and Violence, Cambridge, England: Polity Press. Greenfeld, L., 1992, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Gramsci, A., 1971, “The Study of Philosophy,” in Hoare, Q. and Nowell-Smith, G., (eds.), Selections from the Prison Notebooks, London, England: Lawrence and Wishart. Hall, S., 1992, “The West and the Rest,” in Hall, S. and Gieben, B., (eds.), Formations of Modernity, Cambridge, England: Polity Press. Hastings, A., 1997, The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion, and Nationalism, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Hechter, M, 1975, Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development, 1536-1966, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Hechter, M., 1985, “Internal Colonialism Revisited,” in Tiryakian, E. A. and Rogowski, R., (eds.), New Nationalisms of the Developed West, Boston, Massachusetts: Allen and Unwin, pp. 17-26. Held, D., 1995, Democracy and the Global Order, Cambridge, England: Polity Press. Hobsbawm, E., 1990, Nations and Nationalism since 1780, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Hobsbawm, E., 1992, Nation and Nationalism since 1780, Second Edition, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Hobsbawm, E., 1996, “Ethnicity and Nationalism in Europe Today,” in Balakrishnan, G., (ed.), Mapping the Nation, London, England: Verso.

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Hobsbawm, E. and Ranger, T., (eds.), 1983, The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Hutchinson, John, 1987, The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism: The Gaelic Revival and the Creation of the Irish Nation State, London, England: Allen and Unwin. Hutchinson, John, 1994, Modern Nationalism, London, England: Fontana. Kohn, H., 1965, Nationalism: Its Meaning and History, New York, New York: Anvil. Lenin, V., 1970, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Peking, China: Foreign Language Press. Luxemburg, R., 1970a, “The Junius Pamphlet: The Crisis in German Social Democracy,” in Waters, M. A., (ed.), Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, New York, New York: Pathfinder. Luxemburg, R., 1970b, “The Russian Revolution,” in Waters, M. A., (ed.), Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, New York, New York: Pathfinder. Luxemburg, R., 1976, “The National Question and Autonomy,” in Davis, H., (ed.), Selected Writings by Rosa Luxemburg on the National Question, New York, New York: Monthly Review Press. Mann, M., 1996, “The Emergence of Modern European Nationalism,” in Hall, J. and Jarvie, I., (eds.), The Social Philosophy of Ernest Gellner, Amsterdam, the Netherlands: Rodopi. Marx, K. and Engels, F., 1976, “Manifesto of the Communist Party,” in Marx and Engels Collected Works, Volume 6, London, England: Lawrence and Wishart. Mill, J. S., 1996, “On Nationality,” in Woolf, S., (ed.), Nationalism in Europe 1815 to the Present, London, England: Routledge. Nairn, T., 1977, “The Modern Janus,” in Nairn, T., (ed.), The Break-up of Britain: Crisis and Neo-Nationalism, London, England: New Left Books. Nairn, T., 1996, “Internationalism and the Second Coming,” in Balakrishnan, G., (ed.), Mapping the Nation, London, England: Verso. Nairn, T., 1997a, “Introduction: On Studying Nationalism,” in Nairn, T., (ed.), Faces of Nationalism: Janus Revisited, London, England: Verso. Nairn, T., 1997b, Faces of Nationalism: Janus Revisited, London, England: Verso. Reynolds, S., 1984, Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe, 900-1300, Oxford, England: Clarendon Press. Shils, E., 1957, “Primordial, Personal, Sacred, and Civil Ties,” British Journal of Sociology, 8:2, 130-145. Smith, A., 1986, The Ethnic Origins of Nations, Oxford, England: Blackwell. Smith, A., 1991, National Identity, Harmondsworth, England: Penguin. Smith, A., 1995, Nations and Nationalism in a Global Era, Cambridge, England: Polity Press. Smith, A., 1998, Nationalism and Modernism: A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Nations and Nationalism, London, England: Routledge. Smith, A., 1999, “‘Ethno-Symbolism’ and the Study of Nationalism,” in Smith, A., Myths and Memories of the Nation, Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Spencer, P. and Wollman, H., 1999, “Nationalism, Politics, and Democracy in the Development of Post-Communist Societies,” in Sfikas, T. and Williams, C., (eds.), Ethnicity and Nationalism in East-Central Europe and the Balkans, Aldershot, England: Ashgate.

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Spencer, P. and Wollman, H., 2002, Nationalism: A Critical Introduction, Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications. Tamir, Y., 1993, Liberal Nationalism, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Tilley, V., 1997, “The Terms of the Debate: Understanding Language about Ethnicity and Ethnic Movements,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 20:3, 497-522. Tudjman, F., 1981, Nationalism in Contemporary Europe, Boulder, Colorado: Boulder East European Monographs.

Chapter 6

Racism: Four Paradigmatic Views Any explanation of racism is based on a worldview. The premise of this book is that any worldview can be associated with one of the four broad paradigms: functionalist, interpretive, radical humanist, and radical structuralist. This chapter takes the case of racism and discusses it from the four different viewpoints. It emphasizes that the four views expressed are equally scientific and informative; they look at the phenomenon from their certain paradigmatic viewpoint; and together they provide a broader and a balanced understanding of the phenomenon under consideration. In this chapter, Sections I through IV present the four perspectives.

I. Functionalist View The crux of the issue is this: What influence do heredity and environment have upon intelligence? Which of the two factors exerts the greater influence? Finally, how valid are IQ tests as indicators of intelligence?30 Some scholars, who used to constitute the mainstream, believe that race and intelligence are related. That is, genetic differences in intelligence between blacks and whites are real. They believe that since the horrors of Nazi Germany, and Hitler’s persecution of the Jews in the name of his bizarre doctrine of Aryan supremacy, the well-deserved offensiveness of the term “racism” has extended far beyond its legitimate meaning. They believe racism means discrimination among persons on the basis of their racial origins in granting or denying social, civil, or political rights. Racism means the denial 30

For this literature, see Boyd (2003), Brody (1992), Coon, Garan, and Birdsell (1950), Dobzhansky and Ashley (1947), Flynn (1980), Garcia (1986), Garrett (1986), Gobineau (1915/2015), Gould (1986), Herrnstein and Murray (1994), Humphreys (1986), Jensen (1986, 1998), Knox (1850/2015), Lapides and Burrows (1971), Leone (1986), Lewontin (1970), Loehlin, Lindzey, and Spuhler (1975), Lynn (2008, 2015), Lynn and Vanhanen (2006, 2012), Mackintosh (1998), Rushton (2000), Sarich and Miele (2005), Shipman (1994), Spencer (1851, 1852, 1855, 1864-67, 1876-96, 1898, 1904), Thernstrom and Thernstrom (1997), and Williams (1986). This section is based on Boyd (2003) and Jensen (1986).

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of equal opportunity in education or employment on the basis of color or national origin. Racism encourages the judging of persons not each according to his own qualities and abilities, but according to common stereotypes. To them, this is the real meaning of racism. To them, the scientific theory that there are genetically conditioned mental or behavioral differences between races cannot be called racist. It would be just as illogical to condemn the recognition of physical differences between races as racist. They believe many of their critics confuse the purely empirical question of the genetic role in racial differences in mental abilities with the highly charged political-ideological issue of racism. Because of their confusion, they denounce any attempt to study the possible genetic causes of such differences. At the same time, they believe the doctrinaire environmentalists, seeing their own position threatened by such genetic inquiries, righteously and dogmatically scorn the genetic theory of intelligence. They believe that, under fresh scrutiny stimulated by the controversy, many scientists have reexamined the environmentalist explanations of the black IQ deficit and found them to be inadequate. They believe that environmentalist explanations simply do not fully account for the known facts, in the comprehensive and consistent manner one should expect of a scientific explanation. To them, it is a known and uncontested fact that blacks in the United States score, on average, about one standard deviation below whites on most tests of intelligence. On the most commonly used IQ tests, this difference ranges from 10 to 20 points, and averages about 15 points. This means that only about 16 percent of the black population exceeds the test performance of the average white on IQ tests. A similar difference of one standard deviation between blacks and whites holds true for 80 standardized mental tests on which published data exist. They reason that a difference of one standard deviation could hardly be called inconsequential. Intelligence tests have more than proved themselves as valid predictors of scholastic performance and occupational attainment, and they predict equally well for blacks as for whites. Unpleasant as these predictions may seem to some people, their significance cannot be wished away because of a belief in equality. Of course, an individual’s success and self-fulfillment depend upon many characteristics besides intelligence, but IQ does represent an index, albeit an imperfect one, of the ability to compete in many walks of life. For example, many selective colleges require College Board test scores of 600 (equivalent to an IQ of 115) as a minimum for admission. An average IQ difference of one standard deviation between blacks

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and whites means that the white population will have about seven times the percentage of such potentially talented persons (i.e., IQs over 115) as the black population. At the other end of the scale, the 15-point difference in average IQ scores means that mental retardation (IQ below 70) will occur about seven times as often among blacks as among whites. They believe that the IQ difference between blacks and whites clearly has considerable social significance. Yet the environmentalists dismiss this difference as artificial and claim it does not imply any innate or genetic difference in intelligence. They tried to show that the purely environmental explanations most commonly put forth are faulty. Examined closely, in terms of the available evidence, they simply do not sustain the burden of explanation that environmentalists claim. Of course, they may be possible explanations of the IQ difference, but that does not necessarily make them the most probable. In every case for which there was sufficient relevant evidence to put to a detailed test, the environmental explanations have proven inadequate. They do not claim that environmentalists have been proven 100 percent wrong, only that they do not account for all of the black IQ deficit. Of course, there may be other possible environmental explanations that are not yet formulated and tested. They believe that the genetic hypothesis, on the other hand, has not yet been put to any direct tests by the standard techniques of genetic research. It must be seriously considered, however, for two reasons: (1) because the default of the environmentalist theory, which has failed in many of its most important predictions, increases the probability of the genetic theory; (2) since genetically conditioned physical characteristics differ markedly between racial groups, there is a strong a priori likelihood that genetically conditioned behavioral or mental characteristics will also differ. Since intelligence and other mental abilities depend upon the physiological structure of the brain, and since the brain, like other organs, is subject to genetic influence, how can anyone disregard the obvious probability of genetic influence on intelligence? They believe that we should consider some of the genetically conditioned characteristics that we already know to vary between major racial groups: body size and proportions; cranial size and shape; pigmentation of the hair, skin, and eyes; hair form and distribution; number of vertebrae; fingerprints; bone density; basic-metabolic rate; sweating; consistence of ear wax; age of eruption of the permanent teeth; blood groups ; chronic diseases; frequency of twinning; male-female birth ratio; visual and auditory acuity; color-blindness; taste; length of gestation period; physical maturity at birth. In view of so many

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genetically conditioned traits that do differ between races, would it not be surprising if genetically conditioned mental traits were a major exception? They believe a child’s intelligence is influenced more by the genes he/she inherits than by the environment in which he/she is reared. In a study, they have found that the IQ levels of adopted children more closely resemble those of their biological mothers (whom the children never knew) than those of the adoptive mothers who have brought them up. This study, which focuses on the single-born, verifies earlier studies made elsewhere on twins that indicate that heredity is more important to IQ than environment. They ask: What about the purely cultural and environmental explanations of the IQ difference? The most common argument claims that IQ tests have a built-in cultural bias that discriminates against blacks and other poor minority groups. Those who hold this view criticize the tests as being based unfairly on the language, knowledge and cognitive skills of the white “Anglo” middle class. They argue that blacks in the United States do not share in the same culture as whites, and therefore acquire different meanings to words, different knowledge, and a different set of intellectual skills. However commonly and fervently held, this claim that the black IQ deficit can be blamed on culture-based, or “culture-loaded” tests does not stand up under rigorous study. First of all, the fact that a test is culture-loaded does not necessarily mean it is culture-biased. Of course, many tests do have questions of information, vocabulary, and comprehension that clearly draw on experiences which could only be acquired by people sharing a fairly common cultural background. Reputable tests, called “culture-fair” tests, do exist, however. They use nonverbal, simple symbolic material common to a great many different cultures. Such tests measure the ability to generalize, to distinguish differences and similarities, to see relationships, and to solve problems. They test reasoning power rather than just specific bits of knowledge. They argue that, surprisingly, blacks tend to perform relatively better on the more culture-loaded or verbal kinds of tests than on the culture-fair type. For example, on the widely used Wechsler Intelligence Scale, comprised of 11 different subtests, blacks do better on the culture-loaded subtests of vocabulary, general information, and verbal comprehension than on the nonverbal performance tests such as the block designs. Just the opposite is true for such minorities as Orientals, Mexican Americans, Indians, and Puerto Ricans. It can hardly be claimed that culture-fair tests have a built-in bias in favor of white, Anglo, middle-class Americans when Arctic Eskimos taking the same tests perform on a par with white, middle-class norms. They tested

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large numbers of Chinese children who score well above white norms on such tests, despite being recent immigrants from Hong Kong and having parents who hold low-level socioeconomic occupations. If the tests have a bias toward the white, Anglo, middle-class, one might well wonder why Oriental children should outscore the white Anglos on whom the tests were originally standardized. Their tests of Mexican Americans produced similar results. Mexican Americans do rather poorly on the culture-loaded types of tests based on verbal skills and knowledge, but they do better on the culture-fair tests. The same holds true for American Indians. All these minorities perform on the two types of tests much as one might expect from the culture-bias hypothesis. Only blacks, among the minorities whom they have tested, score in just the opposite manner. They show that a host of other environmental variables do not behave as they ought to according to a strictly environmentalist theory of the black IQ deficit. For example, on practically all the socioeconomic, educational, nutritional, and other health factors that sociologists point to as causes of the black-white differences in IQ and scholastic achievement, the American Indian population ranks about as far below black standards as blacks do below those of whites. The relevance of these environmental indices can be shown by the fact that within each ethnic group they correlate to some extent in the expected direction with tests of intelligence and scholastic achievement. Since health, parental education, employment, family income, and a number of more subtle environmental factors that have been studied are all deemed important for children’s scholastic success, the stark deprivation of the Indian minority, even by black standards, ought to be reflected in a comparison of the intelligence and achievement-test performance of Indians and blacks. But in a nationwide survey, Indians scored higher than blacks on all such tests, from the first to the 12th grade. On a nonverbal test given in the first grade, for example, before schooling could have had much impact, Indian children exceeded the mean score of blacks by the equivalent of 14 IQ points. Similar findings occur with Mexican Americans, who rate below blacks on socioeconomic and other environmental indices, but score considerably higher on IQ tests, especially on the nonverbal type. Thus, the IQ difference between Indians and blacks, and between Mexican-Americans and blacks, turns out opposite to what one would predict from purely environmental theory, which of course, assumes complete genetic equality of intelligence. No testable environmental hypothesis has as yet been offered to account for these findings. They ask: How much of the variation among persons in a given population is attributable to the differences in their environments and how

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much is due to differences in their genetic endowments? They point to numerous studies conducted by psychologists and geneticists over the last 40 or 50 years that provide an answer to this question. The answer is unambiguous and is generally agreed upon by all scientists who have considered all the evidence. This evidence strongly supports the conclusion that genetic factors are much more important than environmental influences in accounting for individual differences in IQ. How much more important? The evidence indicates that genetic factors account for at least twice as much of the variation in IQs as environmental factors. As a result of advances in molecular biology and genetics, most scientists now reject the concept of race as a valid way to divide human beings into separate groups. Contrary to public opinion, most researchers say they no longer believe races are distinct biological categories created by differences in the genes that people inherit from their parents. Genes vary, they say, but not in ways that correspond to the popular notion of black, white, yellow, red, or brown races. In the social sense, race is a reality; in the scientific sense, it is not. The characteristics that we see with the naked eye that help us to distinguish individuals from different continents are, in reality, skin-deep, as whenever we look under the veneer, we find that the differences that seem so conspicuous to us are really trivial. Scientists conceded that people do look different, primarily because of the varied environment in which their ancestors lived. They agree, as a social concept, race matters a great deal. The color of a person’s skin, the texture of his hair, or the shape of her eyes can be sources of love, pride and partnership – or fear, hatred, and injustice. The idea that races are not the product of human genes may seem to contradict common sense. The average citizen reacts with frank disbelief when told that there is no such thing as race. The new understanding of race draws on work in many fields. Vast new data in human biology, prehistory, and paleontology have completely revamped the traditional notions. This is a switch from the prevailing scientific dogma of the 19th and much of the 20th century. Most scientists then believed humans could be sorted into inherited racial types distinguished primarily by skin color. Government policies were based on alleged racial inequalities, e.g., U.S. immigration laws were designed to screen out “inferior” foreign stocks, and banned interracial marriage. As recently as 1985, anthropologists split 5050, when asked in a survey if they believe in separate biological races. A dwindling number of scholars still cling to notions of gene-based racial superiority. In his controversial 1994 book, “The Bell Curve,” Charles Murray, a political scientist, asserted that African Americans inherit lower

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intelligence than persons of Asian or European descent. The response of most anthropologists was that differentiating species into biologically defined “races” has proven meaningless and unscientific as a way of explaining variation, whether in intelligence or other traits. Indeed, most anthropology textbooks published in the 21st century have stopped teaching the concept of biological race. The revised concept of race also reflects recent scientific work with DNA, the complex molecule that contains the genes in every living cell. DNA supports the concept that you cannot draw boundaries around races. It informs that there is actually more genetic variation within a single African population than in all non-African peoples put together. That is because those Africans that stayed in place gradually accumulated tiny variations in their DNA over thousands of generations. About 100,000 years ago, a few tribes emigrated to Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, taking only a small subset of those genes with them. Since the migration, these travelers have not developed as many variations out of their smaller gene pool. Genetically, one is more similar to someone from China or the Amazon Basin than two Africans living in the same village are to each other. This substantiates the point that there is no such thing biologically as race. According to scientific consensus, physical traits such as skin color, eye shape, and susceptibility to disease vary gradually between neighboring populations. Instead of abrupt changes, there are almost imperceptible shadings. Only when people travel rapidly over great distances – as when slaves were brought from West Africa to America, or a Londoner jets to Tokyo – do the differences become distinct. This is especially true in the United States, which is occupied by immigrants from Europe, Africa, and Asia, as well as Native Americans. When you sharply juxtapose populations that have been separated so long, of course they look different, but it does not last long. Soon they fall in love, marry, have kids, and everybody looks the same. Researchers say differences in skin color – the most common marker for race – arose from a combination of environmental pressures and random genetic mutations. Most scientists have come to accept the evolutionary theory, based on DNA evidence, that modem humans (the species homo sapiens) originated in equatorial Africa about 200,000 years ago. Our primitive ancestors’ genes were programmed to produce dark skin. Their pigment protected them from the tropical sun’s ultraviolet rays, which can cause cancer. The group of Africans who migrated north into Europe benefited from more sunlight, rather than less, because ultraviolet rays also make vitamin D, preventing rickets and other diseases. By a flip of the genetic dice,

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some of the newcomers had a variant gene that gave them slightly lighter skin. These tended to get more vitamins, live longer, and have more children, who in turn passed the trait on to their descendants. The trend continued for generation after generation, eventually producing Anglo-Saxons, Swedes, and other fair-skinned northern Europeans. Skin color genes are turned off and on very quickly in evolution. People can go from black to white, or white to black, in 10,000 years. Significantly, populations who live near the equator – in southern India, New Guinea, or northern Australia – are just as dark as natives of West Africa, demonstrating that black skin depends more on environment than heredity. Meanwhile, controversy continues over the possible link between race and intelligence. Most scholars contend that intelligence is the only human trait that does not seem to vary from one population to another. Instead, basic intellectual capacity is distributed equally among all peoples, regardless of their skin color.

II. Interpretive View Theory and research in cultural psychology highlight the need to examine racism not only “in the head” but also “in the world.” Racism is often defined as individual prejudice, but racism is also systemic, existing in the advantages and disadvantages imprinted in cultural artifacts, ideological discourse, and institutional realities that work together with individual biases. Here, we highlight examples of historically derived ideas and cultural patterns that maintain present-day racial inequalities. We discuss three key insights on the psychology of racism derived from utilizing a cultural-psychology framework. First, one can find racism embedded in our everyday worlds. Second, through our preferences and selections, we maintain racialized contexts in everyday action. Third, we inhabit cultural worlds that, in turn, promote racialized ways of seeing, being in, and acting in the world. This perspective directs attempts at intervention away from individual tendencies and instead focuses on changing the structures of mind in context that reflect and reproduce racial domination.31 31

For this literature, see Adams, Edkins, Lacka, Pickett, and Cheryan (2008), Alland (2002), Allport (1954), Augoustinos, Tuffin, and Every (2005), Banton (1998), Barkan (1992), Bhavnani, Mirza, and Meetoo (2005), Brown, Carnoy, Currie, Duster, Oppenheimer, Shultz, and Wellman (2003), Coates (2011), Devos and Banaji (2005), Dikotter (1998), Eberhardt (2005), Feagin (2010), Gaertner and Dovidio (1986), Goff, Eberhardt, Williams,

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The term racism is often used synonymously with prejudice (biased feelings or affect), stereotyping (biased thoughts and beliefs, flawed generalizations), discrimination (differential treatment or the absence of equal treatment), and bigotry (intolerance or hatred). This practice implicitly conceptualizes racism as a set of basic social-psychological processes underlying the psychologies of individuals (i.e., stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination) merely applied to the context of race. Though sometimes specified, the context of race is not necessarily treated as distinctive in socialpsychological research; instead, the psychological consequences and antecedents for racism are typically extrapolated from minority (vs. majority), low-status (vs. high status), subordinate (vs. dominant), and out-group (vs. ingroup) research paradigms. This approach can obscure the particular role that race, which is embedded in historical and cultural contexts, has played in organizing which persons and identities recurrently compose marginalized and dominant groups. Conventional understandings of racism typically locate the driving force in the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of biased and prejudiced individuals. Individualist ideologies that prevail in Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) settings inform both laypersons’ (particularly White Americans in this case) and psychological science’s conception of racism as individual-level phenomena. Without denying the role of individuals in the psychology of racism, there are limitations when racism is exclusively explained as rooted inside individual minds. Discussing racism beyond the individual may be particularly challenging to conventional understandings because one cannot easily dismiss racism as due to “a few bad apples” or as a problem relegated to the past. Critics within psychology have referred to this individualizing construction of racism as the “prejudice problematic” and have identified significant problems with it. Decreases in overt expressions of racial bias might suggest that racial prejudice (and therefore racism) is less extreme in modern America; however, many psychologists suggest that racial bias has gone underground, and they have mounted substantial evidence that it instead thrives in subtle forms. However, whether it is old-fashioned and hostile, more subtle (e.g., micro-

and Jackson (2008), Goodman and Rowe (2014), Graves (2004), Guthrie (2004), Hannaford (1996), Henrich, Heine, and Norenzayan (2010), Jhally and Lewis (1992), Lentin (2016), Nelson (2015), Omi and Winant (2015), Rocchio (2000), Salter and Adams (2013, 2016), Salter, Adams, and Perez (2018), Salter, Hirsch, Schlegel, and Thai (2016), Seltzer and Johnson (2009), Shweder (1990), Sommers and Norton (2006), Sue (2010), van Dijk (1987), and Yip (2018). This section is based on Salter, Adams, and Perez (2018).

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aggressions), ambivalent (e.g., aversive racism), unconscious, or suppressed for fear of social sanctions, the problem with restricted focus on individual bias is that it obscures the institutional, systemic, and cultural processes that perpetuate and maintain race-based hierarchies. Taken together, the empirical evidence suggests that measuring racism only as overt individual bias may systematically understate the ongoing significance of racism. A culturalpsychology approach adds to this discussion by considering racism as a set of ideas, practices, and materials embedded in the structure of everyday cultural worlds. In contrast to the individualist conception of racism that prevails in mainstream U.S. society, our conception is that it is a quintessentially culturalpsychological and socioeconomic phenomenon consisting of patterns of historically derived and selected ideas and their material instantiation in institutions, practices, artifacts, and other manifestations of ‘mind-in-context.’ Racism as mind in context draws on foundational cultural-psychological writings that define cultural psychology as the study of mutual constitution: the idea that psyche and culture are inseparable outgrowths of one another. This perspective suggests that there is a dynamic relationship between psychological manifestations of racism in the mind and psychological manifestations of racism in the world. In one direction (i.e., culture shapes psyche), people live in cultural worlds that promote and facilitate contextspecific ways of seeing and being in the world. This direction emphasizes that tendencies of racism are not simply the natural outgrowth of some innate disposition, but instead, emerge as people interact with cultural worlds that promote and facilitate racialized experiences and racist habits of mind. In the other direction (i.e., psyche shapes culture), people shape and maintain the context via selected preferences, practices, and actions. The racist realities that people inhabit (and inherit from previous generations) arise and persist through everyday action, as people selectively reproduce some features of the social context and fail to reproduce others. When racism is theorized through this framework, racism is simultaneously the budding product of psychological subjectivity and the structural foundation for dynamic reproduction of racist action. Three key insights on the psychology of racism are derived from utilizing a culturalpsychology framework: (a) Dynamic reproduction of racist action can be found embedded in the structure of everyday worlds, (b) people inhabit cultural worlds that afford or promote particular racialized ways of processing and seeing the world, and (c) people shape, produce, and maintain racialized contexts through their selected preferences, practices, and actions. While

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cultural psychologists have applied these cultural-psychological concepts to understand diversity and social inequality broadly, few have utilized this framework to understand racism specifically. Not only is culture crucial to understanding racism according to this framework, but race and racism are fundamental phenomena in understanding American culture. To say that racism is located in the structure of everyday worlds is to acknowledge the extent to which racism constitutes modern society. The racism of modern society not only is a function of its distant origins, but also refers to manifestations embedded in practices, artifacts, discourse, and institutional realities (e.g., legal, educational, and economic systems). Rather than being extraordinary or rare, racism is akin to the water in which fish swim. For instance, representations of race, ethnicity, and nationality have never been just reflections of neutral categories; rather, they are historically derived ideas about superiority and inferiority. Contemporary racial categories and understandings of those concepts have their cultural-psychological roots in colonization and the transatlantic slave trade. Europeans constructed their identity as “White” and imagined themselves as more developed and more human in comparison with the darker-skinned “others” (whether African or indigenous) whom they dominated. Such ideologies of human evolution not only persist in contemporary representations (e.g., associations between people of African descent and apes), but also serve to justify violence against racialized others. Ideologies regarding race are not just beliefs but instead are realized (i.e., made real) in such foundational institutions as the U.S. Constitution, which limited the full benefits of U.S. citizenship to people construed as White males. The legacy of this material association is evident in the observation that White Americans apply the category “American” more strongly to the people of European descent than to racial minorities in the United States. Empirical and statistical realities indicate that Black Americans face disparities in education, employment, health, and income; yet many White Americans believe that the average Black American fares about the same or better than most White Americans. White Americans also tend to see less racism in contemporary U.S. society than do people from many racial minority groups. A cultural-psychological account of why this perceptual difference exists suggests that there are cultural-psychological tools that make it easier to acknowledge racial realities. For example, research indicates that White American students perceive little racism in U.S. society because they are

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relatively ignorant about critical historical knowledge (i.e., concerning past racism). Follow-up research has considered the cultural tools that promote ignorance about racism. The focus of research work in this regard has been representations of history. One study explored displays for Black History Month from either predominantly White or predominantly Black high schools in the United States. Displays from predominantly White schools either tended to highlight abstract conceptions of diversity or focused on individual achievements while ignoring the racial barriers that made such achievements extraordinary. In contrast, displays from predominantly Black schools made more explicit reference to racism. Results of subsequent studies indicated that exposure to representations of history from predominantly Black schools afforded greater perceptions of racism and support for antiracist policy than did exposure to representations of history from predominantly White schools. Another tool for the production of ignorance about racism is colorblind ideology, which mandates that one should proceed without seeing race and act accordingly. Claims that “race doesn’t matter” strategically afford denial of current realities regarding racial inequalities. Without explicitly advocating overtly racist ideologies, people in dominant groups can deploy individualist, egalitarian, meritocratic, or otherwise colorblind-laden discourses that appear to be “race neutral” but have racism-legitimizing consequences (e.g., opposition to affirmative action). In particular, these ideologies afford the possibility for people in positions of dominance to attribute their advantages to their own hard work while attributing disadvantages of racialized others to personal irresponsibility. In other words, individualist ideologies of colorblind meritocracy serve to rationalize inequality and make it possible for people to accept racist injustice that they would otherwise find difficult to swallow. It is not surprising, then, that American participants prefer messages about social inequalities that emphasize individual blame (vs. systemic blame). This preference is especially strong when the audiences for those messages are racial minorities whom participants perceive to be in greater violation of, and therefore, in greater need of lessons about, meritocratic ideals. Representations of history, themselves, are not only illustrative of how context can shape our view of the world, but they are also an example of racism reproduced through preference and selection. Because the timeline of events transcends the individual life span, memory of the collective past necessarily requires mediation by cultural tools (e.g., schools, textbooks, museums, national holidays, and other commemoration practices). Thanksgiving, for example, commemorates the triumph of the Pilgrims – with

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the help of friendly Indians – over cold, hunger, and impending death, along with several invented traditions (e.g., parades, football). Thanksgiving commemorations, though, are largely silent about historical wrongdoing perpetuated by early American settlers against indigenous peoples. This silence is embedded and reproduced in cultural practice: Annual presidential speeches for the “first American Thanksgiving” are saturated with national glorification themes (e.g., American exceptionalism, manifest destiny) and minimize the experiences of indigenous peoples. These cultural tools are not neutral, but instead, arise and persist in attunement with popular beliefs and desires. Hegemonic commemoration practices – those that through the exercise of power acquire a status of commonsense truth – tend to achieve prominence because they resonate with powerful interests. However, our concern here is the more dynamic process by which ordinary people in the course of everyday action shape collective memory by selecting or reproducing some features of the past while deselecting or omitting others. For example, when surveyors asked White Americans to select a proclamation for commemoration of the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, participants preferred and recommended representations that were silent about both the participation of indigenous societies and their subsequent destruction as a result of colonial violence. A similar pattern emerged in a research on representations for Black History Month, in which White American participants (who were unaware of the source of stimuli) preferred relatively sanitized representations from predominantly White schools over more critical representations from predominantly Black schools. In both studies, patterns of preference were strongest among participants who strongly identified as American or White. Overall, these studies illustrate how people preferentially select some representations of the past and decline to select others, thereby investing in racism-affording constructions of reality that serve interests of maintaining White racial dominance. Taking a cultural-psychology approach has important implications for understanding the topic of racism beyond individual bias. Consider one of the most robust demonstrations of bias as a basic psychological phenomenon: the minimal-group paradigm. Dividing people into groups on the basis of arbitrary distinctions and dimensions – coin flips, dot estimation, and artistic preferences – is enough to guide resource allocations such that people show in-group favoritism. Importantly, while we can create or manufacture bias, these biases do not necessarily resonate outside of the laboratory. In minimalgroup paradigms, once participants leave that context, there are few cues

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identifying individuals who were arbitrarily assigned to a group on the basis of their tendency to overestimate dots, for example, or the consequences associated with conferring advantages or disadvantages to them. The power undergirding racism is that although race, too, is manufactured, there is constant cultural reinforcement and selection of “race” as a meaningful construct in American society. Outside of the laboratory, there are many historical and contemporary cues conferring advantages and disadvantages to various racial groups. Interventions could be aimed at these real-world, societal cues. Rather than attempt to control expression of culturally constituted, individual bias, a more effectual use of personal agency may be to reconstruct worlds that promote antiracist tendencies. Given research work on representations of history and their corollaries with social consciousness, recent examples of antiracism, such as reclaiming Columbus Day for indigenous peoples, dismantling prominent Confederate monuments in New Orleans, and enacting new ethnic-studies requirements in Nevada, are promising directions. To return to the metaphor that racism is like the water in which fish swim, a cultural-psychological approach suggests that the solution to the problem of racism is not to change the fish so that it can survive in toxic water, but instead to change the water the fish has to live in. It may do little good to address racism by changing people’s dispositions if they will return to the same racist worlds that constituted those dispositions in the first place. Regardless of personal intention, unwitting engagement with racist affordances – for example, holidays that celebrate accomplishments of European settlers using forced labor from enslaved Africans to work land stolen from indigenous peoples – can direct a person to act in the service of continued racial domination. Importantly, focusing on the context does not absolve people from the responsibility to resist or counteract racism interpersonally. Instead, it suggests an additional channel for people’s intentional, agentic activity. This departs from conventional understandings that direct efforts for remedy toward changing hearts and minds or intergroup tolerance, insisting “Can’t we all just get along?” Instead, this perspective suggests that energies should be directed toward identifying and dismantling the cultural-psychological structures that are the source of injustice and promote individual bias in the first place. In contrast to the prevailing conception of racism as individual bias (i.e., prejudice or bigotry), people in many oppressed groups are likely to endorse a conception of racism as a cultural force embedded in structures of everyday society. This conception affords the perception of racism as a broader social problem than the more limiting conception of racism as individual bias

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affords. Rather than the dominant-group perspective that focuses attention on individual mental states – in particular, whether a person’s behavior is evidence of racism – a view from the perspective of the oppressed suggests a greater focus on the consequences of an action: specifically, whether the action constituted differential treatment (i.e., discrimination) as a function of racialgroup membership. Moreover, this perspective extends the focus of consideration beyond individual acts of differential treatment to consider cases of institutional racism/discrimination (i.e., housing patterns, employment, educational systems, and criminal justice) that can occur in the absence of “racists.” For example, discrimination in the absence of racist intention may occur when a white employer relies on the use of preexisting personal networks for recruitment and hiring purposes. The applicant pool may be limited to the employer’s mostly white neighbors, friends, and family members, thereby excluding ethnic minorities from the employment opportunity. Critics within the field of psychology have referred to the atomistic construction of racism as the prejudice problematic and have identified significant problems with it. One problem is that the restriction of focus to embodied individual processes obscures the material instantiations of “mindin-context” that perpetuate and maintain race-based advantage and disadvantage. A related problem with atomistic constructions of racism is that they direct antiracism efforts toward the exercise of reeducating hearts and minds while ignoring broader structural and cultural realities that continually (re)tune individual minds. Another problem is that an atomistic conception of racism as hostile individual bias systematically understates the ongoing significance of racism because it limits the problem of racism to a problem of biased individuals and neglects material instantiations of racism. These material manifestations of racism can be sufficient to reproduce racist oppression in the absence of racist individuals.

III. Radical Humanist View “Race” is a social construct. Existing data show that 85 per cent of human genetic diversity occurred within rather than between populations, and only 610 per cent of diversity is associated with the broadly defined “races.” Whatever arbitrary boundaries one places on any population group for the purposes of genetic research, they do not match those of conventionally defined races. The popular political slogan “one race, the human race” would

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appear to be accurate. The idea of “race” is a historical reality, and the origin, development, and use of that idea can be researched.32 If “race” is a social construct, racism is a frighteningly real, burning, and omnipresent issue. It is directed at people because of a number of perceived “identities”: “race,” ethnicity, nationality, religion, or a combination of these. In addition, contemporary racism is multifaceted. For these reasons, it is important to adopt a broad concept of racism, rather than a narrow one, i.e., based on notions of overt biological inferiority, as it was the case in the days of the British Empire in India, Africa, and elsewhere, under slavery and its legacy in the United States, and as was the case with indigenous Americans and Australians dating back centuries. In these historical scenarios, notions of cultural inferiority coexisted with perceptions of biological inferiority. In the contemporary world, biological racism is less acceptable in the mainstream than is cultural racism. In what follows, two schools of thought within the radical humanist paradigms are discussed: (1) critical race theory, and (2) neo-Marxism.

III.1. Critical Race Theory Critical race theory (CRT) consists of a number of defining elements and conceptual tools, as follows: III.1.1. CRT Believes That Racism as Endemic “Normal” Is Deeply Ingrained Legally and Culturally Racism goes far beyond crude, obvious acts of race hatred to include the more subtle and hidden operations of power that have the effect of disadvantaging one or more minority ethnic groups.

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For this literature, see Althusser (1971), Ashe and McGeever (2011), Balibar (1991), Bhattacharyya (2009), Bonilla-Silva (2014), Brown, Carnoy, Currie, Duster, Oppenheimer, Shultz, and Wellman (2003), Chadderton (2015), Coben (1999), Cole (2016), Crenshaw (1989), Crenshaw, Gotanda, Peller, and Thomas (1995), Dale (1999), Daniels (2009), Delgado and Stefancic (1997, 2000, 2001), Fine, Weis, Powell, and Mun Wong (1997), Gillborn (2006, 2008), Gramsci (1978), Guess (2006), Hacker (2003), Hall (1978, 1992), Ioanide (2015), Kovel (1984), Lipsitz (2006), Massey and Denton (1993), McClintock (1995), Memmi (2000), Miles (1982, 1989, 1993), Miller and Garran (2017), Mills (1997, 2003), Omi and Winant (2015), Preston (2007, 2010), Rattansi (1992), Rattansi, Ali, 2007, Rattansi and Westwood (1994), Smith (2013/14), Tate (1997), Taylor (2011), West (1993), and Wolpe (1988). This section is based on Cole (2016).

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III.1.2. CRT Crosses Epistemological Boundaries CRT’s theoretical eclecticism allows it to bring various insights together in new and challenging ways that raise deeply troubling questions. III.1.3. CRT Criticizes Civil Rights Laws as Fundamentally Limited CRT argues that the laws to remedy racial inequality are often undermined before they can be fully implemented. III.1.4. CRT Criticizes Liberalism’s Claims of Neutrality, Objectivity, Color-Blindness, and Meritocracy as Camouflages CRT portrays dominant legal claims of neutrality, objectivity, color blindness, and meritocracy as camouflages for the self-interest of powerful entities of society. Critical race theorists not only criticize the inability of traditional legal discourse to deal with complex and comprehensive racism, they go further, by viewing legal discourse as one of the prime means by which such a critical perspective is denied legitimacy and the status quo is defended. III.1.5. CRT Calls to Context, Challenges Ahistoricism, and Recognizes Experiential Knowledge of the People of Color “Call to context” is a concept that insists on the importance of context and the detail of the lived experience of minority peoples as a defense against the color-blind and sanitized analyses generated via universalistic discourses. Given CRT’s roots in critical legal studies and the legal profession, the call to context is essential to understand the full background to any major dispute or issue. Critical race theorists hold that color blindness will allow us to redress only extremely egregious racial harms, ones that everyone would notice and condemn. But, if racism is embedded in our thought processes and social structures as deeply as many critical race theorists believe, then the “ordinary business” of society – the routines, practices, and institutions that we rely on to affect the world’s work – will keep minorities in subordinate positions. Only aggressive, color-conscious efforts to change the way things are will do much to ameliorate misery. III.1.6. CRT Advocates Storytelling and Counter-Stories Myths, assumptions, and received wisdoms can be questioned by shifting the grounds of debate or presenting analyses in ways that turn dominant assumptions on their head.

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III.1.7. CRT Emphasizes Interest Convergence “Interest convergence” refers to the fact that white elites will tolerate or encourage racial advances for blacks only when such advances also promote white self-interest. III.1.8. CRT Promotes Critical White Studies “Critical white studies” is a wide-ranging field of study which focuses on white people and their sense of self, their interests, and their concerns. But, since the mid-1980s, there has been a significant increase in the amount of critical scholarship on the nature of “whiteness,” work that is deconstructing the taken-for-granted myths and assumptions that circulate about what it means to be, and not be, a “white” person. Critical scholarship on whiteness is not an assault on white people per se: it is an assault on the socially constructed and constantly reinforced power of white identifications and interests.

III.2. Neo-Marxism From a Marxist perspective, social class is fundamental to capitalism, since capitalism relies for its very existence on the extraction of surplus value from workers: capitalists pay workers less than the value they produce, with the value added by workers’ labor appropriated as profit by and for the capitalist when goods are sold (this is the labor theory of value, LTV). The objective interests of the capitalist and the worker are thus incompatible, and therefore generate not a tendency to permanent hostility and open warfare, but a permanent tendency towards such actions. Because of the cyclical instability of capitalism, periodic crises in capitalism mean that social revolution is always a possibility. However, the early socialists’ prognosis that social revolution and socialism were inevitable and imminent has been undermined by subsequent historical developments, which are best explained by neoMarxist theory. If the LTV is one basis of Marxism, the other is the materialist conception of history. The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure. The economic base, or the capitalist economy, generates the legal and political levels of society. These are not neutral or objective, but reflect the needs of the capitalist economy and capitalists. We tend to think the way we do because

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of the type of economic system in which we live. Thus, in order to understand social, political, legal, and intellectual life, which form the terrains of racism, and which have a massive effect on how we think and act, we need to make connections with the capitalist economy. Marx was well aware of the importance of race in the genesis of the industrial capitalism. He noted that the discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement, and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black skins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. Marx was also aware of three important features of capitalism, with respect to racialization. First, capitalism promotes competition between workers for jobs, housing, education, health care, and so on, as we are told there is not enough to go round. Workers fighting over these items to better themselves or their families are often willing to believe the worst about other workers to justify why they should have something and others should not. The second feature of capitalism is that the ruling class uses racist ideology to divide workers against each other, and racialization is the perfect tool for this. Capitalism can thrive as long as workers blame other (racialized) workers, rather than capitalists and capitalism for their structural location in societies. Third, when one group of workers are super-exploited, it negatively impacts the working class as a whole. Thus, if capitalists can get away with paying very low wages to migrant workers (who often have migrated from capitalist economies with still lower wages, or no work at all), thereby generating greater surplus value and thereby profit, this lowers the wage level for all workers, racialized or not. The development of neo-Marxism (the “neo” – “new” – in Neo-Marxism refers to theoretical developments in Marxism, post-Marx) needs to be seen in the light of the fact that inevitability and imminence of a general transition to socialism proved to be over-optimistic, and severely compromised. This fact meant that some aspects of Marxism had to be rethought. Specifically, what needed to be understood was the role of capitalist institutions in maintaining their power base. The common element in theories designated as “neo”-Marxist is a concern with the role of capitalist states’ welfare institutions in retarding rather than advancing socialism. The defining features of neo-Marxism are a concern with culture (as in the notion of the forging of a hegemonic culture as elaborated by prominent Italian neo-Marxist Antonio Gramsci) and with ideology (ideas

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that work in the interests of the ruling class, as in the concept of ideological state apparatuses outlined by French neo-Marxist Louis Althusser). NeoMarxist analysis should be seen as a supplement to rather than a replacement of Marxism. Neo-Marxism can be divided into humanist Marxism and structuralist Marxism. The fundamental difference between the two is that the former emphasizes the power of the human will in breaking through the structures of capitalist society, while the latter reminds us of how powerful these constraining structures are. Both forms of Marxism are in fact predated by Marx’s famous dictum that stressed both the power of the structures of capitalist society and the power of workers to change history. One of Gramsci’s key concepts is “common sense.” Gramsci made a distinction between “common sense” and good sense. “Common sense” refers to thoughts and reflections that are felt to be the product of years of knowing about what is right and necessary, but really mirror the interests of the ruling class. “Common sense,” then, is based on surface appearances and information, and does not reach deeper to give a systemic explanation for the disparities that exist in society. “Common sense” connects racialization with popular consciousness. Thus, we might pick up in the street, read in a tabloid, or hear from a politician: “it’s only common sense to restrict immigration to this small island,” or “become an official member of the Common-sense Campaign and win back America,” or “it’s common sense that we should put jobs for Australian workers first and keep Asian workers out.” “Common sense” also works to reinforce racist stereotypes. An example can be given for African Americans (although this can usually be applied to racialized groups in general) who, because of their worse housing, schooling, shorter life span, and generally worse conditions are perceived to be inferior – “they caused all this themselves” – which reinforces racism and racialization. Good sense, on the other hand, for Gramsci, is informed by a real political and economic awareness of capitalism, exemplified by Marxism and obtained by reading Marx. Good sense may be created out of common sense through an educative Marxist politics. Good sense then would reveal that racialized groups are living in worse conditions because of racism, racialization, and their structural location in capitalist society. It is also useful to employ in our understanding of racism the concept of interpellation, as developed by Althusser. Interpellation is the process via which the politicians and the media, for example, claim to be speaking on behalf of the people: “what the British have had enough of,” “what the

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American people want,” or “what Australians are sick and tired of.” Althusser stressed that it is individuals rather than classes or groups that are interpellated or hailed. For Althusser, the interpellation of subjects – the hailing of concrete individuals as concrete subjects, as in “Hey, you there!” – provides the absolute guarantee that everything really is so, and that on condition that the subjects recognize what they are and behave accordingly, everything will be all right: Amen – “So be it.” Althusser notes that it is a peculiarity of ideology that it imposes, without appearing to do so, “obviousnesses as obviousnesses.” Interpellation is the process by which ideologies function through concrete social institutions. This means that individuals as bearers of structures are transformed ideologically into subjects; that is, they live the relation of their real conditions of existence as if they autonomously determined that relation. In other words, we tend to think and act in the interests of the ruling class, as if it was solely our choice to do so, and it is fully in our interests to do so. To give an example pertaining to racism, in the 2015 UK general election there was universal agreement about immigration among all establishment political parties, whose spokespersons could say with confidence that of course the British people want to restrict it. More generally, this leads to the claim that there is no point in workers questioning their social class position under capitalism, let alone considering alternative ways of running the world, such as democratic socialism, or even social democracy: “socialism’s been tried, and it doesn’t work. Anyway, people are basically selfish, and we need businesses and free enterprise to create wealth.” Interpellation is thus a fundamental process inserted within the ideological apparatus of the state, Althusser having made a distinction between the ideological apparatuses of the state (ISAs) (religion, education, family, law, politics, trade unions, communication, culture) and repressive state apparatuses (RSAs) (government, administration, army, police, courts, prisons). Within the ISAs, subjects “recognize” the existing state of affairs: “it really is true that it is so and not otherwise.” Over time, the interpellation process passes into common sense. It is when it becomes “just how things are” that it wins consent and enters common sense. At that point, the political regime or philosophy has achieved a more settled, long-term, deeper form of control. To reiterate, what is critical and crucial to the capitalist class and its supporters is that, in their stark determination to maintain hegemony, they make every effort to ensure that workers retain a belief that (racialized)

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capitalism is the best thing on offer, and do not look to antiracist or socialist alternatives. The Gramscian concepts of hegemony and counter-hegemony are important complements to interpellation. Hegemony, as theorized by Gramsci, is the fusion of economic, political, intellectual, and moral leadership that is brought about by one fundamental group, and groups allied to it through ideology. Thus a “consensus” culture develops in which the working class identifies its own good with the good of the bourgeoisie, and helps to maintain the status quo rather than opposing it. However, crucially for Gramsci, hegemony is a process of contestation, and counter-hegemonic struggle is always possible. Hegemony has to be constantly worked for by both the bourgeoisie and the workers. Even bourgeois hegemony is not automatic but achieved through conscious political action and organization.’ Thus, in order to understand racism in capitalist societies, we must focus on the ISAs and RSAs and the way in which they racialize and exploit different groups of people in different historical periods, and in different geographical locations, though often for the same reasons – the appropriation of more surplus value from racialized groups, and thereby more surplus from all workers, and/or to divide the working class and maintain hegemony.

IV. Radical Structuralist View The modern world, we have long been told, is the first to reach beyond the bounds of narrow, local loyalties and to proclaim the universal brotherhood of man. Or so we were told up to the 1970s. Since that time, we have been made conscious that the very terminology of universalist doctrine, as for example the phrase “the brotherhood of man,” belies itself, since this phrase is masculine in gender, thereby implicitly excluding or relegating to a secondary sphere all who are female. It would be easy to multiply linguistic examples, all of which reveal an underlying tension between the continuing ideological legitimation of universalism in the modern world and the continuing reality (both material and ideological) of racism and sexism in this same world. It is this tension, or more precisely this contradiction, that we wish to discuss. For contradictions not only provide the dynamic force of historical systems; they also reveal their essential features.33 33

For this literature, see Aptheker (1971), Bakan and Dua (2014), Bennett (1970), Cox (1948), Dowdall (1974), Geschwender (1978), Guardian (1978), Nearing (1929), Perlo (1975),

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It is one thing to ask whence universalist doctrine, and how widely it is shared; or to ask why racism and sexism exist and persist. It is quite another to inquire into the origins of the pairing of the two ideologies, indeed what one might argue has been the symbiotic relationship of these presumed opposites. We start with a seeming paradox. The major challenge to racism and sexism has been universalist beliefs; and the major challenge to universalism has been racist and sexist beliefs. There are two main ways of explaining the origins of universalism as an ideology of our present historical system. One is to see universalism as the culmination of an older intellectual tradition. The other is to see it as an ideology particularly appropriate to a capitalist world-economy. The two modes of explanation do not necessarily contradict each other. The argument that it is the outcome, or the culmination of a long tradition has to do precisely with the trio of monotheistic religions. The crucial moral leap, it has been argued, occurred when humans (or some humans) ceased to believe in a tribal god and recognized the unicity of God, and therefore, implicitly the unicity of humanity. To be sure, the argument continues, the three monotheistic religions pursued the logic of their position only partway. Judaism carved out a special position for the people chosen of God and was reluctant to encourage membership by adoption. Christianity and Islam both lifted the barriers to entry into the group of the chosen, and indeed went in the other direction with proselytization. But both Christianity and Islam normally required an affirmative act of allegiance (which one could make as a formerly non-believing adult by formal conversion) in order to gain full access to the kingdom of God. Modem Enlightenment thought, it is said, simply took this monotheistic logic one step further, deriving moral equality and human rights from human nature itself, a characteristic with which we are all born, and as a result of which our rights become entitlements rather than earned privileges. There were many de facto omissions in Enlightenment thought – most notably those of non-Whites and women. But as time went on, these omissions and others have been rectified by explicitly including these groups under the rubric of universalist doctrine. Today, even those social movements whose raison d’etre is the implementation of racist or sexist policies tend to pay at least lip service to the ideology of universalism. It is not hard, therefore, to derive from the history of ideas a sort of secular upward curve of the acceptance of universalism.

Reich (1972a, 1972b), Sales (1978), Scott (2004), Virdee (2019), Wallerstein (1991), and Willhelm (1980). This section is based on Wallerstein (1991).

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The claim, however, that since universalism has only been seriously pursued as a political doctrine in the modern world, its origins must be sought in the particular socioeconomic framework of this world also seems very strong. The capitalist world-economy is a system built on the endless accumulation of capital. One of the prime mechanisms that makes this possible is the commodification of everything. These commodities flow in a world market in the form of goods, of capital, and of labor-power. Presumably, the freer the flow, the greater the degree of commodification. Anything that prevents goods, capital, or labor-power from being a marketable commodity serves to restrain such flows. Anything that uses as criteria for evaluating goods, capital, or labor-power something other than their market value and then gives these other valuations priority makes the item to that extent non-marketable, or at least less marketable. Hence, by a sort of impeccable logic, particularisms of any kind whatsoever are said to be incompatible with the logic of a capitalist system, or at least an obstacle to its optimal operation. It would follow, then, that within a capitalist system it is imperative to assert and carry out a universalist ideology as an essential element in the endless pursuit of the accumulation of capital. Thus, it is that we talk of capitalist social relations as being a “universal solvent,” working to reduce everything to a homogeneous commodity form denoted by a single measure of money. This is said to have two principal consequences. It is said to permit the greatest possible efficiency in the production of goods. Specifically, in terms of labor-power, if we have a “career open to talents” (one of the slogans born out of the French Revolution), we are likely to place the most competent persons in the occupation roles most suitable for them in the world division of labor. We have indeed developed whole institutional mechanisms – the state school system, the civil service, anti-nepotism rules – that are designed to establish what today we call a “meritocratic” system. Furthermore, it is said, not only is meritocracy economically efficient, but it is also politically stabilizing. To the extent that there are inequalities in the distribution of reward in historical capitalism (as in prior historical systems), resentment of those who receive greater rewards by those who receive fewer is less intense, it is argued, is justified on the bases of merit and not on the basis of tradition. That is, it is thought that privilege earned by merit is somehow more acceptable, morally and politically, to most people than privilege earned by inheritance. This is dubious political sociology. The exact opposite is true in fact. While privilege earned by inheritance has long been at least marginally

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acceptable to the oppressed on the basis of mystical or fatalistic beliefs in an eternal order, which belief at least offers them the comfort of certainty, privilege earned because one is possibly smarter and certainly better educated than someone else is extremely difficult to swallow, except by the few who are basically scrambling up the ladder. The meritocratic system is politically one of the least stable systems. It is precisely because of this political fragility that racism and sexism enter the picture. The presumed upward curve of universalist ideology has long been thought theoretically to be matched by a downward curve of the degree of inequality generated by race or gender, both as ideology and as fact. This, however, has simply not been the case empirically. We could even perhaps make the inverse argument that the curves of race and gender inequalities have actually been going up in the modern world, or at least have not been going down – certainly in fact, possibly even as ideology. To see why this might be so, we should look at what the ideologies of racism and sexism actually assert. Racism is not simply a matter of having an attitude of disdain for or fear of someone of another group as defined by genetic criteria (such as skin color) or by social criteria (religious affiliation, cultural patterns, linguistic preference, and so on). Racism normally includes such disdain and fear, but it is far more than that. Disdain and fear are quite secondary to what defines the practice of racism in the capitalist world economy. Indeed, it could even be argued that disdain and fear of the other (xenophobia) is an aspect of racism that entails a contradiction. Xenophobia in all prior historical systems had one primary behavioral consequence: the ejection of the “barbarian” from the physical locus of the community, the society, the in-group – death being the extreme version of ejection. Whenever we physically eject the other, we gain the “purity” of environment that we are presumably seeking, but we inevitably lose something at the same time. We lose the labor-power of the person ejected, and therefore, that person’s contribution to the creation of a surplus that we might be able to appropriate on a recurring basis. This represents a loss for any historical system, but it is a particularly serious one in the case of a system whose whole structure and logic are built around the endless accumulation of capital. A capitalist system that is expanding (which is half the time) needs all the labor-power it can find, since this labor is producing the goods through which more capital is produced, realized, and accumulated. Ejection out of the system is pointless. But, if one wants to maximize the accumulation of capital, it is necessary simultaneously to minimize the costs of production (hence the

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costs of labor-power) and minimize the costs of political disruption (hence minimize – not eliminate, because one cannot eliminate – the protests of the labor force. Racism is the magic formula that reconciles these objectives. Let us look at one of the earliest and most famous discussions about racism as an ideology. When Europeans came to the New World, they encountered peoples whom they slaughtered in large numbers – either directly by the sword or indirectly by disease. A Spanish friar, Bartolome de Las Casas, took up their cause, arguing that Indians had souls which needed to be saved. Let us pursue the implications of the Las Casas argument that won the formal assent of the church, and eventually of the states. Since Indians had souls, they were human beings, and the rules of natural law applied to them. Therefore, one was not morally permitted to slaughter them indiscriminately (eject them from the domain). One was obliged instead to seek to save their souls (convert them to the universalist value of Christianity). Since they would then be alive and presumably en route to conversion, they could be integrated into the work force – at the level of their skills, of course, which translated into meaning at the bottom level of the occupational and reward hierarchy. Racism operationally has taken the form of what might be called the “ethnicization” of the workforce, by which we mean that, at all times, there has existed an occupational-reward hierarchy that has tended to be correlated with some so-called social criteria. But, while the pattern of ethnicization has been constant, the details have varied from place to place and time to time, according to what part of the human genetic and social pools were located in a particular time and place and what the hierarchical needs of the economy were at that time and place. That is to say, racism has always combined claims based on continuity with the past (genetic and/or social) with a present-orientated flexibility in defining the exact boundaries of these reified entities we call races or ethnonational-religious groupings. The flexibility of claiming a link with the boundaries of the past combined with the constant redrawing of these boundaries in the present takes the form of the creation and constant recreation of racial and/or ethno-national-religious groups or communities. They are always there and always ranked hierarchically, but they are not always exactly the same. Some groups can be mobile in the ranking system; some groups can disappear or combine with others; while still others break apart and new ones are born. But, there are always some who are “niggers.” If there are no Blacks or too few to play the role, one can invent “White niggers.” This kind of system – racism constant in form and in venom, but somewhat flexible in boundary lines – does three things extremely well. It

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allows one to expand or contract the numbers available in any particular spacetime zone for the lowest paid, least rewarding economic roles, according to current needs. It gives rise to and constantly re-creates social communities that actually socialize children into playing the appropriate roles (although, of course, they also socialize them into forms of resistance). It provides a nonmeritocratic basis to justify inequality. This last point is worth underlining. It is precisely because racism is anti-universalistic in doctrine that it helps to maintain capitalism as a system. It allows a far lower reward to a major segment of the work force than could ever be justified on the basis of merit. But if capitalism as a system begets racism, does it need to beget sexism as well? Yes, because the two are, in fact, intimately linked. The ethnicization of the work force exists in order to permit very low wages for whole segments of the labor force. Such low wages are in fact only possible because the wage earners are located in household structures for which lifetime wage-income provides only a relatively small proportion of total household income. Such households require the extensive input of labor into the so-called subsistence and petty market activities – in part by the adult male to be sure, but in much larger part by the adult female, plus the young and the aged of both sexes. In such a system, this labor input in non-wage work “compensates” the lowness of the wage-income, and therefore, in fact, represents an indirect subsidy to the employers of the wage laborers in these households. Sexism permits us not to think about it. Sexism is not just the enforcement of different, or even less appreciated, work roles for women, no more than racism is just xenophobia. As racism is meant to keep people inside the work system, not eject them from it, so sexism intends the same. The way we induce women – and the young and the aged – to work to create surplus-value for the owners of capital, who do not even pay them a little bit, is by proclaiming that their work is really non-work. We invent the “housewife” and assert she is not “working,” merely “keeping house.” Thus, when governments calculate the percentage of the so-called active labor force who are employed, “housewives” are neither in the numerator nor in the denominator of the calculation. With sexism goes, automatically, ageism. As we pretend that the housewife’s work is not creating surplus-value, so we pretend that the multiple work inputs of the non-waged young and aged do not do so either. None of this reflects working reality. But it does all add up to an ideology which is extremely powerful, and which all fits together. The combination of universalism-meritocracy serving as the basis by which the cadres or middle strata can legitimate the system, and racism-sexism serving to structure the

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majority of the work force works very well. But only to a point, and that for a simple reason – the two ideological patterns of the capitalist world-economy stand in open contradiction to each other. This delicately poised combination threatens always to get out of hand, as various groups start to push the logic of universalism on the one hand and of racism-sexism on the other too far. We know what happens when racism-sexism goes too far. Racists may try to eject the out-group totally – swiftly, as in the case of the Nazi slaughter of the Jews; less swiftly, as in the pursuit of total apartheid. Taken to this extreme, these doctrines are irrational and, because they are irrational, they are resisted. They are resisted, of course, by the victims, but they are also resisted by powerful economic forces who object, not to the racism, but to the fact that its primary objective – an ethnicized but productive work force – has been forgotten. We can also imagine what happens when universalism goes too far. Some people may seek to implement a truly egalitarian allocation of work roles and work rewards in which race (or its equivalent) and gender genuinely play no part. Unlike taking racism too far, there is no swift way one can take universalism too far, for one has to eliminate not merely the legal and institutional barriers to universalism, but the internalized patterns of ethnicization, and this inevitably requires at the very least a generation. So, it is rather easy to resist universalism’s going too far. In the name of universalism itself, one merely has to denounce the so-called reverse racism wherever steps are taken to dismantle the institutionalized apparatus of racism and sexism. What we see, therefore, is a system that operates by a tense link between the right dosage of universalism and racism-sexism. There are always efforts to push one side or the other of this equation “too far.” The result is a sort of zigzag pattern. This could go on forever, except for one problem. Over time, the zigs and zags are getting bigger, not smaller. The thrust towards universalism is getting stronger. So is the thrust towards racism and sexism. The stakes go up. This is for two reasons. On the one hand, there is the informational impact of the accumulation of historical experience by all participants. On the other hand, there are the secular trends of the system itself. For the zigzag of universalism and racismsexism is not the only zigzag in the system. There is also the zigzag of economic expansion and contraction, for example, with which the ideological zigzag of universalism and racism-sexism is partially correlated. The economic zigzag is also getting sharper. Why that is so is another story. Yet as the general contradictions of the modern world-system force the system into

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a long structural crisis, the most acute ideological-institutional locus of the search for a successor system is in fact located in the sharpening tension, the increased zigs and zags, between universalism and racism-sexism. It is not a question of which half of this antinomy will in some sense win out, since they are intimately and conceptually tied to each other. It is a question of whether and how we shall invent new systems that will utilize neither the ideology of universalism nor the ideology of racism-sexism. That is our task, and it is not an easy one. This chapter briefly discussed four views expressed with respect to racism. The functionalist paradigm believes that the judgment about racism should be left to scientific research. The interpretive paradigm believes that racism is socially constructed. The radical humanist paradigm believes that racism is socially and economically constructed. The radical structuralist paradigm believes that racism is class based. Each paradigm is logically coherent – in terms of its underlying assumptions – and conceptualizes and studies the phenomenon in a certain way, and generates distinctive kinds of insight and understanding. Therefore, different paradigms in combination provide a broader and a balanced understanding of the phenomenon under consideration. An understanding of different paradigms leads to a better understanding of the multi-faceted nature of the phenomenon.

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Kovel, Joel, 1984, White Racism: A Psychohistory, New York, New York: Columbia University Press. Lapides, Frederick R. and Burrows, David, (eds.), 1971, Racism: A Casebook, New York, New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company. Lentin, Alana, 2016, “Racism in Public or Public Racism: Doing Anti-Racism in ‘PostRacial’ Times,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 39:1, 33-48. Leone, Bruno, (ed.), 1986, Racism: Opposing Viewpoints, St. Paul, Minnesota: Greenhaven Press. Lewontin, Richard C., 1970, “Race and Intelligence,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March. Lipsitz, G., 2006, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Temple University Press. Loehlin, John C., Lindzey, Gardner, and Spuhler, J. N., 1975, Race Differences in Intelligence, London, England: W. H. Freeman. Lynn, Richard, 2008, The Global Bell Curve: Race, IQ, and Inequality Worldwide, Washington, DC: Washington Summit Publications. Lynn, Richard, 2015, Race Differences in Intelligence: An Evolutionary Analysis, Arlington, Virginia: Washington Summit Publishers. Lynn, Richard and Vanhanen, Tatu, 2006, IQ and Global Inequality, Washington, DC: Washington Summit Publishers. Lynn, Richard and Vanhanen, Tatu, 2012, Intelligence: A Unifying Construct for the Social Sciences, Ulster Institute for Social Research. Mackintosh, Nicholas J., 1998, IQ and Human Intelligence, Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Massey, Douglas S. and Denton, Nancy A., 1993, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. McClintock, Anne, 1995, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest, New York, New York: Routledge. Memmi, Albert, 2000, Racism, Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. Miles, Robert, 1982, Racism and Migrant Labor: A Critical Text, London, England: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Miles, Robert, 1989, Racism, London, England: Routledge. Miles, Robert, 1993, Racism after “Race Relations,” London, England: Routledge. Miller, Joshua and Garran, Ann Marie, 2017, Racism in the United States: Implications for Helping Professionals, New York, New York: Springer. Mills, Charles W., 1997, The Racial Contract, New York, New York: Cornell University Press. Mills, Charles W., 2003, From Class to Race: Essays in White Marxism and Black Radicalism, Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield. Nearing, Scott, 1929, Black America, New York, New York: Vanguard. Nelson, Jacqueline K., 2015, “‘Speaking’ Racism and Anti-Racism: Perspectives of Local Anti-Racism Actors,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 38:2, 342-358. Omi, Michael and Winant, Howard, 2015, Racial Formation in the United States, New York, New York: Routledge. Perlo, Victor, 1975, Economics of Racism, U.S.A., New York, New York: International.

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Preston, John, 2007, Whiteness and Class in Education, Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Preston, John, 2010, “Concrete and Abstract Racial Domination,” Power and Education, 2:2. Rattansi, Ali, 1992, “Changing the Subject?,” in Donald, J. and Rattansi, A., (eds.), “Race,” Culture, and Difference, London, England: Sage, pp. 11-48. Rattansi, Ali, 2007, Racism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Rattansi, A. and Westwood, S., (eds.), 1994, Racism, Modernity, and Identity, Cambridge, England: Polity. Reich, Michael, 1972a, “Economic Theories of Racism,” in Carnoy, Martin, (ed.), Schooling in a Corporate Society, New York, New York: David McKay, pp. 80-92. Reich, Michael, 1972b, “The Economics of Racism,” in Edwards, Richard C., Reich, Michael and Weisskopf, Thomas E., (eds.), The Capitalist System, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, pp. 309-321. Rocchio, Vincent F., 2000, Reel Racism: Confronting Hollywood’s Construction of AfroAmerican Culture, New York, New York: Routledge. Rushton, J. Phillipe, 2000, Race, Evolution, and Behavior: A Life History Perspective, Ostara Publications. Sales, William, 1978, “Capitalism without Racism: Science or Fantasy,” Black Scholar, 9, 23-34. Salter, P. S. and Adams, G., 2013, “Racism: Overview,” in Mason, P. L., (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Race and Racism, 2nd Edition, Volume 2, New York, New York: Macmillan, pp. 413-418. Salter, P. S. and Adams, G., 2016, “On the Intentionality of Cultural Products: Representations of Black History as Psychological Affordances,” Frontiers in Psychology, 7, Article 1166. Salter, Phia S., Adams, Glenn, and Perez, Michael J., 2018, “Racism in the Structure of Everyday World: A Cultural-Psychological Perspective,” Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27:3, 150-155. Salter, P. S., Hirsch, K. A., Schlegel, R. J., and Thai, L. T., 2016, “Who Needs Individual Responsibility? Audience Race and Message Content Influence Third-Party Evaluations of Political Messages,” Social Psychological and Personality Science, 7, 29-36. Sarich, Vincent and Miele, Frank, 2005, Race: The Reality of Human Differences, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. Scott, Helen, 2004, “Was There a Time Before Race? Capitalist Modernity and the Origin of Racism,” in Bartolovich, Crystal and Lazarus, Neil, (eds.), Marxism, Modernity, and Postcolonial Studies, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, Chapter 9, pp. 167-182. Seltzer, Richard and Johnson, Nicole E., 2009, Experiencing Racism: Exploring Discrimination through the Eyes of College Students, New York, New York: Lexington Books. Shipman, Pat, 1994, The Evolution of Racism: Human Differences and the Use and Abuses of Science, New York, New York: Simon and Schuster.

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Shweder, R. A., 1990, “Cultural Psychology – What Is It?,” in Stigler, J. W., Shweder, R. A., and Herdt, G., (eds.), Cultural Psychology: Essays on Comparative Human Development, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1-46. Smith, Sharon, 2013/14, “Black Feminism and Intersectionality,” International Socialist Review, 91. Sommers, S. R. and Norton, M. I., 2006, “Lay Theories about White Racists: What Constitutes Racism (and What Doesn’t),” Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 9, 117-138. Spencer, Herbert, 1851, Social Statics, London, England: Robert Schalkenbach Foundation. Spencer, Herbert, 1852, “The Development Hypothesis,” The Leader, 20, March. Spencer, Herbert, 1855, The Principles of Psychology, London, England: Wentworth Press. Spencer, Herbert, 1864-67, The Principles of Biology, 2 Volumes, London, England: Wentworth Press. Spencer, Herbert, 1876-96, The Principles of Sociology, 3 Volumes, London, England: University Press of the Pacific. Spencer, Herbert, 1898, “What Is Social Evolution,” Nineteenth Century, 44. Spencer, Herbert, 1904, An Autobiography, 2 Volumes, London, England: Ulan Press. Sue, D. W., 2010, Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation, Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons. Tate, Williams F., 1997, “Critical Race Theory and Education: History, Theory, and Implications,” in Apple, M. W., (ed.), Review of Research in Education, 22, Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association. Taylor, Keenga-Yamahtta, 2011, “Race, Class, and Marxism,” SocialistWorker.org, 4 January. Thernstrom, Stephan and Thernstrom, Abigail, 1997, America in Black and White: One Nation Indivisible, New York, New York: Simon and Schuster. van Dijk, Teun A., 1987, Communicating Racism: Ethnic Prejudice in Thought and Talk, Newbury Park, California: Sage Publications, Inc. Virdee, Satnam, 2019, “Racialized Capitalism: An Account of Its Contested Origins and Consolidation,” Sociological Review, 67:1, 3-27. Wallerstein, Immanuel, 1991, “The Ideological Tensions of Capitalism: Universalism versus Racism and Sexism,” in Balibar, Etienne and Wallerstein, Immanuel, Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities, London, England: Verso, Chapter 2, pp. 29-36. West, C., 1993, Keeping Faith, New York, New York: Routledge. Willhelm, Sidney M., 1980, “Can Marxism Explain America’s Racism?,” Social Problems, 28:2, December, 98-112. Williams, Robert L., 1986, “IQ Tests Do Not Help Prove Intellectual Racial Differences,” in Leone, Bruno, (ed.), Racism: Opposing Viewpoints, St. Paul, Minnesota: Greenhaven Press, pp. 125-131. Wolpe, H., 1988, Race, Class, and the Apartheid State, London, England: James Currey. Yip, Tiffany, 2018, “Ethnic/Racial Identity – A Double-Edged Sword? Association with Discrimination and Psychological Outcomes,” Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27:3, June, 170-175.

Chapter 7

Feminism: Four Paradigmatic Views Any explanation of feminism is based on a worldview. The premise of this book is that any worldview can be associated with one of the four broad paradigms: functionalist, interpretive, radical humanist, and radical structuralist. This chapter takes the case of feminism and discusses it from the four different viewpoints. It emphasizes that the four views expressed are equally scientific and informative; they look at the phenomenon from their certain paradigmatic viewpoint; and together they provide a broader and a balanced understanding of the phenomenon under consideration. In this chapter, Sections I through IV present the four perspectives.

I. Functionalist View Liberal feminists follow an equal rights tradition which predates modern feminism and is based on a very different ideology. Although most forms of secular feminism may be considered as sharing a similar point of departure, the direction chosen by the liberal feminists is somewhat different from that chosen by other feminists, such as the Women’s Liberation Movement.34 Liberal feminists have been historically concerned with political rights, as defined in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century liberalism. This is in contrast to the historical concerns of socialist feminists with economic rights, as defined by the nineteenth- and twentieth-century socialist theory; and is also in contrast to the concerns of radical feminists with sexual rights, as outlined in the twentieth-century sexual liberation theory. As a consequence to this broad distinction, liberal feminists, in contrast to radical feminists, have been actively supporting legal reforms as an important part of their strategy.

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For this literature, see Assiter (1996), Banks (1993), Catt and Shuler (1923), Chunn, Boyd, and Lessard (2007), Derr, MacNair, and Naranjo-Huebl (2005), DuBois (1978), Evans (1979), Flexner (1968), Gabin (1990), Gerhard (2001), Gilmore (2008), Grimes (1967), Harlan (1998), Kraditor (1965), O’Neill (1969), Osborne (2001), Paulson (1973), Rymph (2006), Scott and Scott (1975), Stanton, Anthony, Gage, et al. (1881), Storkey (1985), and Walters (2005). This section is based on Storkey (1985).

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Furthermore, liberal feminists, in contrast to Marxist feminists, have been content to work within the existing system with the hope that a sounder nonsexist educational program, together with new legislation, eventually brings about a new era that provides women more freedom. This reflects the fact that liberal feminists share an optimism which some other feminists do not share. Liberal feminists thinking can be said to go back to the work of John Stuart Mill (1806-1873). Harriet Taylor, after the death of her husband, married John Stuart Mill. She influenced the feminism of Mill, and together they wrote a series of essays and pamphlets that demanded a reappraisal of the position of women. However, Mill’s main work in this area was written by himself alone, and after Harriet Taylor’s death. His work, which was entitled “On the Subjection of Women,” was published in 1869, and within a year it became available in twelve countries and in eight languages. It soon became the center of attention of feminists such that educated women throughout the world read and discussed it. It became the focal point of women’s discussion groups all over Europe as they found it irresistible. It is instructive to examine Mill’s position as it well spells out the difference between liberal feminists and radical feminists. Mill was a prominent liberal theorist and was committed to Enlightenment, which emphasized the autonomy of the individual and the faith in human reason. He, then, combined this individualism with the nineteenth-century admiration of self-help, self-discipline, laissez-faire, and morality. Liberalism was against the “divine right” of monarchs or aristocrats to rule, although it was not in favor of the rule of masses. Mill believed that the majority was mediocre, and that social collectivities would enforce conformity and mediocrity on the whole society and on the individual. He, therefore, disliked social collectivities. He preferred the activities of the state to be reduced to a minimum so that the sovereignty of the individual would receive full political and economic recognition. In this way, all artificial inequalities and all barriers to the free competition of free individuals would be destroyed. In consequence, the leaders who emerge would have a good foundation in justice, ability, and morality, who would use their power not to usurp or dictate but in the interests of all the people. Mill’s Utilitarian maxim can be summarized in his dictum: “The greatest happiness of the greatest number.” Mill had some reservations about the possibility of combining the sovereignty of the individual with the maximization of happiness for all the people. This was because happiness for the majority of people means their freedom from poverty, their good health, and their sound diet. Indeed, liberals believe in laissez-faire in the sense that they contest state interference; they

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endorse private property and inheritance; and they advocate unregulated freedom of production and exchange. Mill was hesitant on this point, and through his reading of Saint-Simon he became appreciative of socialism, but, of course, a socialism within liberalism. That is, Mill advocated limitations on the system of distribution, but left almost all other aspects of capitalist society intact, i.e., he did not challenge the fundamental capitalist system. This is inherited as the hallmark of liberal feminism. Mill believed that in a society individuals should be free, citizens should have fundamental rights, and exceptional people should have the opportunity to transcend mediocrity and provide strong and firm leadership. Mill found Victorian England as the society that came closest to his liberal utopia. However, Mill recognized that even in Victorian England the liberal utopia was not realized. This was because he noticed that there was one major exception to the freedom of the individual. He noticed that the higher social functions are closed to women who constitute half of the human race, i.e., women were subjected to a fatality by birth which no exception and no change of circumstances can overcome. Women were denied access to the higher social functions without regard to their merit or ability. Mill believed that the transition of women from subjection to full equality would constitute the final stage in the development of a perfectly liberal and reasonable society. It is interesting to note that the Victorian England which Mill so greatly endorsed with his one exception, was the same Victorian England which earlier Engels had described in his “Condition of the Working Classes.” Mill viewed and judged society from the position of an able, educated, and affluent gentleman. Even the women whom Mill envisioned were similarly middleclass, privileged women who would profit from education, entry into the professions, the right to retain an inheritance, and so on. Mill’s concept of equality would not affect the working-class women who provide domestic service or perform factory work. Mill believed that legal constraints handicapped women. He concluded that with the removal of legal constraints women would begin to experience freedom, would become self-sufficient, and would gain the ability to direct their own lives. Thus, the emancipation or liberation of women required changing the law, providing women with employment opportunities, allowing women to own property after marriage, and granting women suffrage and full citizenship. This did not involve the discussion of social classes. However, Mill believed that it was not individual women who were denied true citizenship and its consequent equality, but it was women as a social group or, as later feminists have claimed, a “sexual” class. His belief in structural

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inequality separates him from traditional liberals and brings his radical stance more in line with Engels or Saint-Simon. Of course, as noted earlier, his radicalism did not involve any challenge to capitalism or of patriarchy – two systems that underlie and define liberalism. Mill thoroughly believed in patriarchy, in terms of women’s “natural” role. He thought, in the end, women were more likely to be happiest at home with children and domestic life. He held such beliefs even though he denied that women had any “innate nature,” and even though he made reference to the “legal slavery of marriage.” He believed that a woman should not actually support herself because she would be able to do so, and that as a matter of practice she would not decide to support herself. Ideally, the husband should be able to earn enough for the whole family such that there would be no need for the wife to take part in providing what is merely needed to support life. It would be for the happiness of both that wife’s occupation should be to adorn and beautify it. Mill did not believe that men and women were the same. He noted that perhaps women had quite different psychological needs and faculties from men, although he believed their mental and creative powers are equal. However, this was not Mill’s main concern. It was that women should be given the choice of developing all their abilities and discovering for themselves their limitations. In the end, it would be left to her, and in the context of the free play of market forces (the liberal dream), to do what she is best fitted for. If women wished to work, then the law should not hinder it. Indeed, the free play of competition provides strongest incentives for women to perform those services which are most wanted from women. Mill was more than a theorist. He was a Member of Parliament, and he was active in reforms which reflected his liberal faith and commitment, especially the legal equality of women. He started fighting for women’s suffrage in 1865, which was sixty-four years before it was fully granted. He even joined the Christian campaigner Josephine Butler in 1871 with the hope of repealing the Contagious Diseases Act that fully endorsed the Victorian “double standard” of sexual morality. Mill, of course, joined the campaign based on his response to the threat against individual liberty rather than based on the Christian position of the campaign leader. Mill’s attitude toward Christianity was interesting. He generally approved of Protestantism, but he stayed distanced from Christianity and stayed close to the Unitarian circles in which he was active. He endorsed the vital importance of religion and conscience in the development of morality, which would be socially and theologically tolerant of all others. Therefore, the “repressive” tendencies of some creeds and churches must be kept at bay. He brought

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Calvinism into sharp focus as a repressive and harsh system that limits human options and threatens individuality. This is because the emphasis on obedience, even to God, stifles human character. Mill’s harsh comments on Calvinism indicates that his own tolerant liberal faith was not tolerant enough towards those with whom he did not agree. Although Mill’s liberal theoretical contributions to feminism and his legal reformer activities on behalf of women have had a long-lasting effect on liberal feminists, his particularly Victorian liberal emphasis has not endured. Nowadays, few, if any, feminists accept liberalism as laissez-faire, self-help, and self-determination. In other words, liberal feminist politics have outlived their own theory. The “freedom of the individual” loses its original meaning when it is removed from its original context which was the well-tuned nineteenth-century liberal philosophy. As a result, today, liberal feminism does not have any theory to use as a basis for its political strategy and policies. Liberal feminists have maintained the basic tenets: freedom of choice, equality of opportunity, freedom of competition, and the rights of the individual. But, nowadays, this has become the status quo, as liberal values are so comprehensively embedded in our Western societies. In other words, nowadays, since liberalism has become the establishment ideology, it is difficult to be reflective and self-conscious about it. Consequently, liberal values have lost their original identity, and currently they constitute the neutral starting-point, and are the hidden assumptions behind much political strategy. For this reason, these days, liberal feminists seldom discuss a theory of individuality, and they most likely take for granted the ideology of individualism and competition. Liberal feminists today believe that emancipation can be fully achieved without any major change to the economic structures of contemporary capitalist democracies. They do not challenge in any major way the patriarchal system either. They do not see any problem with systems per se – neither class nor patriarchy. They are deeply committed to individual freedom. They believe that freedom can be denied in any economic or political system, and therefore, measures need to be introduced to counter it. The fact that liberalism has not yet produced a “society of equals,” as envisioned by Mill, does not mean that liberalism has failed, but it means that liberalism has not yet been fully implemented. Customarily, the historically recent feminist activity is divided into two periods. By the 1920s, strong efforts by women’s pressure groups produced enormous changes in the legal, political, and educational status of women. Most people regard this period as the heyday of liberal feminism. In a two-

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year period, from 1918 to 1920, women were enfranchised in Britain, Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Poland, the United States, and the USSR. By 1925, in Britain and the US, women were admitted to jury and magistrate service, joined the police force, entered the British parliament, were admitted to the professions, formed part of the delegation at the League of Nations, were granted degrees at Oxford University, and were given maintenance after divorce as well as equal guardianship of infants. In 1922, a woman was elected to the judiciary of the Ohio State Supreme Court. In 1923, for the first time, the ERA was introduced into the American Congress, and the British Trade Union Congress was chaired by a woman. Women made a lot of progress and the liberal dream seemed realizable. However, from 1930 to 1960 the activities of liberal feminists with respect to the campaign for women’s equality were lean. This period started with the Great Depression, which was not a suitable time for women to focus on their rights. Then, the Second World War erupted, which complicated women’s issue. Suddenly, there was an increasing demand for women’s work. Massive propaganda campaigns, in both Britain and the US, encouraged women to prioritize their country over themselves. The home was no longer regarded as the only place to raise a family. Government-sponsored day nurseries were viewed as happy an environment for a small child as any living room or kitchen. Women were thought to be able to adapt themselves to munitions work as easily as to a sewing machine. Thus, many women joined the war effort and started to experience the advantages of earning a wage and contributing to their nation’s security. However, these newly developed work roles for women abruptly vanished when men returned home at the end of the War. The propaganda was reversed that blamed the neglectful working mother who overlooked the fact that her place was in the home. Day nurseries were closed, and women’s skills were no longer found desirable. Of course, many women, who had been required to work for their country, liberation meant having the freedom to stay home to enjoy their domestic role. However, other women felt that they had been used by the government machinery. That is, the government dragged them into the labor force when the country needed them, but discarded them without compensation as soon as those needs no longer existed. Then, in the 1950s, many feminists became complacent, as it was the decade of the domestic woman, the decade of rebuilding, the decade of population growth, and the decade of affluence. In the 1960s, after the calmness of the 1950s, during which a massive seaswell of anger was slowly developing, came the next wave of feminism that had gathered so much pent-up force and energy that it threatened to wash away

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the patriarchal structures which resisted it. This new feminism, i.e., “radical feminism,” held strong opposing views with respect to liberal feminism. The radical feminism dismissed the liberal feminism outright as “bourgeois feminism,” because it focused on superficial symptoms of sexism – such as legal inequalities, employment discrimination, etc. It is often claimed that liberal feminism withered away by the end of the 1960s such that it has not emerged significantly ever since. It is further claimed that the utopia of individual freedom, attempted through changes in legislation to ensure a more egalitarian system, is not and cannot be realized. Thus, the claimants conclude that it was necessary for the radical stance of radical feminism of the 1960s and the 1970s to sweep away the reformist ideas of liberal feminism in order for the feminist movement to make further progress. However, it is quite misleading to suggest that the advent of radical feminism meant the demise of the liberal feminism and the equal rights tradition. In fact, throughout this period, liberal feminists were as active as radical feminists. Indeed, during this period, the high publicity of the demands for women’s liberation gave additional support to the old liberals, not to the new radicals. Furthermore, the deeper feminist fervor brought new members into the liberal camp and invigorated many stronger campaigns. Moreover, many of the laws which were enacted in the 1960s were directly related to the historical activities of liberal feminists, i.e., even before the radicals came to the scene. Many of these new enacted legislative issues were rejected a decade ago as too demanding, but, through the protracted efforts of liberals, general consciousness were raised to the level such that the suggestions of the liberals no longer seemed as far-fetched as they were thought to be. Liberal feminist activities led to definite products such as: The American Equal Pay Act of 1963, the British Equal Pay Act of 1970, and the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975. That is, the sixties and seventies saw consolidation and development of many liberal programs. The old generation of liberal feminists who remained at work in Congress and in Parliament gathered more grass roots support with a larger movement behind them. Whilst in the US the distinction between radical and liberal stayed quite pronounced during this period, in Britain there was much blurring of the edges. Although three positions could be found they were not always represented by different groupings. Women’s groups in the Labor Party, for example, although in many senses still in the liberal feminist tradition with accent on legislation, would also include women much further to the left and those who adopted a more radical stance. Single campaigns tended to draw feminists of all perspectives together. The pro-abortion campaign of the 1960s was one

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such issue culminating in the Abortion Law of 1968. Yet the support was still not unanimous, even here. Many of the older generation of liberal feminists argued that abortion was not part of the feminist case. Edith Summerskill, the Labor MP, was one such example. As a public supporter of birth control since 1935 when she had faced hostility from many in her constituency, she felt abortion was a retrogressive step in the women's program. A long-term champion of the rights of housewives she also vehemently opposed the changes in the divorce laws which became effective in 1971, on the grounds that they were a “Casanova's charter.” They would give a green light to male desertion and leave many women undefended and unsupported. Many people regard Betty Friedan as the most influential contemporary liberal feminist. She wrote a famous book entitled “The Feminine Mystique” in 1963, and organized the “National Organization for Women (NOW)” in 1966 with a mass audience. She focused on the traditional roles of woman, i.e., the housewife and the mother. She came up with the following diagnosis: the reason women were discontent was not due to the lack of enough training as housewives and mothers, but was due to the fact that being a housewife was intrinsically boring. In this way, women lost their individual identity. Women’s potential was limited to the roles of wife and mother. Women’s individuality was stifled, their real personhood denied, and their true choice was absent. Women should be as the (male) culture defines femininity, i.e., the “feminine mystique.” Betty Friedan’s ambition, then, was to free women from destructive dependence which the patriarchal culture produced in them.

II. Interpretive View The women’s movement in the United States has changed the way of thinking about both gender and politics. In this context, gender – which is different from sex – is viewed as a socially-constructed “role.” This means that gender is the outcome of political arrangements and, therefore, it is to be treated as a subject of social and political analysis. For this purpose, “roles” need to be thought about the way it is thought about by social scientists, not as determined by God or nature. That is, how and with what rationale a particular culture distributes among its members certain tasks, certain privileges, and certain responsibilities.35 35

For this literature, see Bem (1993), Brooks (1997), Butler (1986), Clark and Lange (1979), Davis (2007), Dicker and Piepmeier (2003), Dow (1996), Duran (2006), Farrell (2008),

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This radical idea was originally formulated by the anthropologist Margaret Mead. In her study of three primitive societies in New Guinea, she noticed that although in each of the three different cultures certain tasks, responsibilities, and privileges were assigned by gender, those assignments were not identical. For example, in one culture, males were assigned the military task of protecting the village, but in another culture both sexes were assigned the task of defending the village in case of a war. As for another example, in one of the three cultures, agricultural food production was assigned to women, and hunting and gathering was assigned to men. In this social arrangement, men had much more free time, and when they were not away, they were home with ample time and energy, and indeed, they were expected to sit around and indulge in what is nowadays, in the United States, called “gossip.” Whereas in that society, at that time, gossiping was viewed to be a male privilege; in the United States, currently, that type of conversation is considered to be a frivolous female pleasure. Mead’s analysis demonstrated that, although each culture defined certain activities as either male or female, different cultures had different gender designation of those activities. That is, there was no role which was universally defined as either male or female. Mead noted that among the three cultures she studied, there was almost no contact, such that each culture had invented its own gender arrangements almost independently. Nonetheless, in all three cultures there was a gender definition, and in all three cultures one pattern held true: People valued more highly whatever men did compared to whatever women did. Stated in modern terminology, males were assigned tasks that portrayed higher status. Thus, the discussion of sexual politics in the United States needs to face the challenge of the universality of socially constructed gender differences and, despite myths about matriarchies, the challenge of the universality of socially constructed superiority of men over women. It is important to ask why this has been the case? Indeed, this has been the question which ethnologists, anthropologists, sociologists, and political scientists have been trying to answer during the past several decades. Some analysts believe that it is due to the physical strength of males over females, and that males have physically threatened women in order to maintain their Ferree (2012), Ferree and Tripp (2006), Fisanick (2008), Gelb (1989), Gottfried (1996), Gross (1996), Hirsch and Keller (1990), Jacoby (1994), Koedt, Levine, and Rapone (1973), Lerner (1986), Mead (1935), Millet (1970), Mitchell and Oakley (1986), Mudgal (2007), Murphy (2004), Nicholson (1990), Oakley (1972), Ore (2010), Ortner and Whitehead (1981), Rosaldo and Lamphere (1974), Roth (2004), Seigfried (1996), Sharma and Young (1999), Shiach (1999), Vetterling-Braggin, Elliston, and English (1977), Wekesser (1995), and Zeisler (2008). This section is based on Tobias (1997).

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superior status. Some other analysts believe that it is due to the childbearing and childrearing functions of females that so debilitate females such that they become unwilling or unable to compete with men for positions of leadership and power. These analysts emphasize that, in a world without contraception, a healthy female will be pregnant throughout her adult life; and that the only contraceptive is mother’s malnutrition. Although finding a definite answer to the above question is difficult, the reason for women’s inferior status has to be addressed. If biology is not the answer, then some other explanation of how women’s status, in culture after culture, came to be defined as inferior must be provided. Feminists not only have re-conceptualized gender, but also have expanded the concept of politics. Politics, in its narrowest sense, is defined as participation in government, party politics, and elective or appointed office. Politics, somewhat more broadly, is related to power: getting people to do what you want them to do. This definition is contested by academics, and feminists refuse to limit politics to formal roles. Politics, according to feminists, includes relations in the world of work – for instance, who is hired, who is fired, who is always boss, and who is never boss. Kate Millett, in her book entitled “Sexual Politics,” even more broadly defines sexual politics as the power relationship between men and women in formal groups and in the family. Accordingly, sexual politics includes the politics of motherhood. Although one point of view may regard contraception and abortion to pertain only to a woman and her pregnancy; in most countries today, it is the society that determines whether a woman is legally obligated to carry her fetus to term. In some countries, it is forbidden to end a pregnancy, even if it is medically possible. In some other countries, it is the husband and the father who is entitled to make such a decision because the fetus is considered to be his property. In the United States, since 1973, the decision may be made only by the person who is pregnant, in consultation with her medical adviser – neither the father of the child nor the state are entitled to make such a decision. It should be emphasized that these issues are political, which are not determined by nature. Similarly, this broader definition of politics considers childcare today as a political issue, but in a different society it might be considered a family or a private matter, or, likewise, at another time it might have been considered a family or a private matter. According to this broader definition, politics impinges on various rights – such as the right to work, marriage and divorce,

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participation in the military, pornography, and even advertising – that affect both people’s view of women and women’s view of themselves. Feminists have not always defined politics in this broader sense. Indeed, in the nineteenth century, at the beginning of the women’s rights movement, women activists aimed at equal rights (both civil and political, in the narrow sense) of men and women, and focused on a complex, protracted struggle for the right to vote. They realized that they needed to form strong organizations that could concurrently work across the nation for their common goal. This was not an accident of history, and therefore, many questions arise, including: Under what conditions, and through what kind of local struggles, did this first wave of feminism emerge? What led to the mobilization of so many women activists in such a concentrated and comprehensive suffrage effort? Such questions about the women’s movement – about political expediency, the quirks of fate and circumstance, and individual leadership as well as theory – help to understand how these fundamental changes in women’s thinking have occurred. The new feminism (i.e., the second wave of feminism) in the United States started sometime between 1967 and 1968 without prior awareness of the general newspaper-reading public. Suddenly, as if they were brought through a burst of extraterrestrial force, the words sexism, male chauvinism, and patriarchy were in common usage. The movement was closely related to the civil rights struggle of African Americans and the 1960s counter-culturalism. Nonetheless, it was Millett who sketched the theory of patriarchy in her book “Sexual Politics,” which led to the emergence of the new feminism. Patriarchy is often defined as a society whose ethos appreciates the characteristics of masculine gender. Kate Millett used this term to characterize a society which is not only dominated by masculinity, but also by men whose primary purpose is to construct and maintain their power relationship over women. In such a society, much of what people actually believe to be traditional or even “true” is really an extended political ploy to maintain the superior power relationship of males over females. This does not necessarily imply that all men have conspired and colluded with each other to keep women out of power, which means that men have malevolent intention. Rather, feminists believe that men enjoy the privileges and advantages of the system which is in place, and all (or most) men have no particular interest in changing it. Kate Millett was the first who outlined this theory. She observed that, in her society, males and females are traditionally differentiated on three dimensions: temperament, role, and status. People, no matter what their

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profession, hold certain beliefs about sex differences. They believe that: (a) women are more passive, while men are more active; (b) women are more dependent, while men are more independent; and (c) women are more emotional, while men are more rational. The consequences of these temperamental differences are that: (a) women, in contrast to men, are less apt to and less likely to seek a life of their own; and (b) women are more likely to rely on their feelings when in search of truth, while men tend to concentrate on what is demonstrably true when in search of truth. Clearly, these sex differences – real or perceived –significantly impact women who intend to succeed in a world whose values are set by men. Next, Millett examined people’s views about adult roles. Patriarchs lead people to believe that adult role differentiation is natural and that it is the outcome of temperamental differences. That is, by their very nature, females desire to marry, to mother, and to make a home, while, by their very nature, males need to make their mark on the outside world. Woman is a private entity, while man is a public one. Millett also observed that as a consequence of role differentiation men enjoy higher status than women because what men like and do are socially more valued than what women like and do. As for status, Virginia Woolf, who is an early-twentieth-century British novelist and one who has inspired many feminists, in her book “Three Guineas” wrote that Leo Tolstoy was considered a greater writer than Jane Austen because he wrote about war and peace, while she wrote about the drama of interpersonal relationships. But Woolf provocatively asked: Who decides that war is more important than interpersonal relationships? She replied: Of course, society, the particular society in which the novelists write and are read. Since men gain status based on what they do, the argument soon becomes cyclical. That is, what men do is of higher stature because men do it. People believe that the causality runs as follows: temperament, then role, then status, i.e., the causality begins with temperament and ends with status. They believe that temperamental differences are present at birth such that they automatically (without the need to plan and enforce anything) lead to role and status differences. More specifically, since, in an industrial society, the most crucial years of professional advancement are between the ages of twenty-five and forty – i.e., the period in which “normal” women are attending to their home and motherhood tendencies – men, without conspiracy, end up in higher status positions than women. However, Millett informs feminists that the order of causal chain is the reverse of what people believe it is. That is, in patriarchy, status really comes first. This is because the most important goal of patriarchy is to maintain the

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superiority of males over females. Therefore, patriarchy reduces competition from women by assigning women roles that isolate them from men and busy them in caretaking. Millett realized the way these roles are assigned, and found out the reason women accept such roles without engaging in rebellion. Millett explained that professionals – such as social and behavioral scientists, therapists, and educators – promote patriarchy when they define what is normal and what is not normal. As a consequence of such definitions, when a woman states that the mother role is constricting, or when a woman asks for the kind of economic power which is usually enjoyed by men, she is immediately judged as needing “professional help.” Millett showed that it is in this way that women in her society are made to accept their social roles. Millett’s analysis was unsettling because it shook so many previouslyaccepted traditions and because it shook so many women. Millett’s contribution was similar to the Copernican revolution that, in contrast to the ancients who thought the earth was the center of the solar system, placed the earth in an orbit around the sun. That is, Millett turned upside down the conventional assumptions about women’s temperament, roles, and status. Women, in the early 1970s, who read Millett or heard her theories secondhand, began to look in new light at what they had arranged in their lives, particularly in their relationships with men, and had the “click!” experience, i.e., a sudden awareness of the intensity of the political character of those relationships. Millet explained how heavily sexual politics bears on women in the culture of her society. Currently, it is antithetical to what is defined normal behavior for a female to apply intense temperament which is required for dedicated, original work – such as the staying up all night, and I can’t think about anything else darling not even you tonight because I’ve got those things growing in the petri dish. So there is a double bind in which the American female finds herself. To the extent that she has career ambitions, she is not considered feminine; and to the extent that she follows to the needs of her feminine nature, she is not considered a serious professional. As mentioned earlier, the childbearing years not only constitute the period during which a woman is healthiest and has the most energy for childrearing, but also constitute the peak opportunity years in any profession. Therefore, the longer the woman spends time as caretaker at home the heavier would be the cost to her career, given the dominance of the male model. Indeed, the underlying reason women leave their careers and the underlying reason men encourage them to leave their career involves this double bind.

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Millett’s model incorporates the three roles which have traditionally been appropriate for women in her society: the mother role, the wife-like role, and the decorative role (which is a possibility only for young women). Any woman who does not naturally fit into any of these roles is placed in a different category: the witch-bitch trough. Those careers are considered most appropriate for women that are considered as natural extensions of women’s three approved roles. Careers in which women work in some nurturing capacity with either children, the handicapped, or the old are an obvious extension of the mother role. Careers in which women work as either research associates, secretaries, lab technicians, or assistants require women to perform a wife-like role for the men they serve. Careers in which women strongly use their femininity correspond to their decorative role. There is another bias within the ideology of patriarchy that prevents women from seeking work in the intellectual professions and the arts. This bias is the embedded idea that any really good work has to begin in the young age. If a woman, at the age of thirty-five, decides to continue her university training in science, even if she intends to spend the thirty years after her graduation in full-time research, most likely her colleagues are apt to believe that she is not likely to make a major contribution. This is because, currently it is widely believed that science and many other intellectual and artistic professions are young people’s fields. This myth about science, the arts, and the professions is based on the data gathered from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when young men did not live as long as their counterparts live today. This myth ignores an important variable, i.e., newness to the field, which is at work besides the number of brain cells in youth. In the final analysis, knowledge is power. This is why any dominant group applies its utmost efforts to keep subordinate groups away from knowledge. For example, during slavery and even afterwards, African Americans were not allowed to learn to read, which is considered the first tool of knowledge. As for a second example, in earlier centuries, women were formally forbidden to study art, for the reason that the presence of nude models was thought to compromise women’s purity. As for a third example, historically, every colonial power has limited the education of its colony’s native born citizens. Increased knowledge leads not only to higher status, but also increased power, which is exactly what the patriarchal structure is totally against. There is an important role that a political movement can play in order to change ideology. Similar to the differences of opinion with respect to religion, it is difficult to convince people to leave their current beliefs, especially those beliefs form which they have derived status and power. On the other hand,

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theory can act as the glue that holds a movement together because theory offers a sense of shared identity among the members of the movement. Moreover, theory can give the movement proper direction because theory can revise history such that it can give a movement the knowledge of its past, and that it can envision the possibility of a future that would be different from that past. Furthermore, theory provides a political agenda by which the movement can get from its past to that possible future. Accordingly, a feminist strategy should involve the proper interpretation of the past and current events. Millett offered one new way of interpreting the past and the present events. Indeed, it was by sharing such views that feminists rapidly achieved their first set of political goals. But, of course, politics, in general, and feminist politics, in particular, are affected not only by gender but also by other factors: race and class. These factors have led to differences in prioritization of various goals among women, and those differences in turn need to be dealt with both in feminist theory and feminist practice.

III. Radical Humanist View Socialist feminism views human nature as partly defined by biological, i.e., both physiological and psychological, characteristics of human beings. These characteristics, however, are subject to change because human beings continuously transform themselves through their conscious and cooperative productive activity. Thus, human nature changes in a historical sense.36 Socialist feminism recognizes that productive activity involves not only the production of good and services, but also the production of people; and that such production is historically determined and changing. Socialist feminism believes that productive activity not only includes the economy, in which money in exchanged; but also, procreative and sexual work, which is done by women in the home. Socialist feminism analyzes productive activity not only with the analytic tool of class, but also with the conceptual tool of 36

For this literature, see Bartky (1979, 1982), Benhabib and Cornell (1987), Blum (1991), Bowden and Mummery (2009), Butler and Weed (2011), De Beauvoir (1952), Diamond and Quinby (1988), Ehrenreich (1984), Eisenstein (1979), Eisenstein (1993), Elliot (1991), Ferguson (1980), Ferguson (1989), Ferguson and Folbre (1981), Foreman (1977), Gatens (1991), Gottlieb (1989), Greer (1970), Hartsock (1979), Hartsock (1985), Hewitt (2010), Jacoby (1976), Johnson (2007), MacKinnon (1982), McRobbie (2009), Morgan (1976), Morgan (1977), Narayan (1997), Oliver and Walsh (2004), Ore (2010), Phelps (1971), Redstockings (1975), Sargent (1981), Taylor (1983), Walker (1995), and Wing and Davis (2000). This section is based on Jaggar (1983).

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gender. Socialist feminism believes that productive activity is organized based on a sexual division of labor, and that the specific historical form taken by the sexual division of labor is basic in determining the historically prevailing constitution of human nature. Socialist feminism claims that the differences between women and men are not pre-social givens, but are socially constructed, and therefore, socially alterable. Socialist feminism views human nature in relation to productive activity, i.e., work. It, accordingly, believes human fulfilment is to be found in free productive activity. Socialist feminism highly values work because not only it has direct products, which fulfil specific and historically determined human needs; but also it offers the possibility of developing the potentialities of the workers. Socialist feminism regards sexuality and procreation as important avenues for possible human development because they are viewed as historically changing forms of productive activity. Of course, socialist feminism cannot specify what the full flowering of human procreative and sexual capacities would be like, but attempts to identify the material preconditions for such a flowering. For this purpose, the distinction between the “realm of freedom” and the “realm of necessity” needs to be made. The realm of necessity has boundaries which are determined by two interrelated conditions: the level of development of the forces of production, and the type of organization of the social relations of production. When the level of development of the productive forces is low, or when exploitation or forced labor exists, then the realm of necessity is relatively large, and most of the people spend most of their life in that realm. When the level of development of the productive forces is high, and when exploitation is reduced or eliminated, then the realm of necessity is relatively small, and all of the people spend most of their life in the realm of freedom. There is a dialectical relationship between the technical and social boundaries of the realm of necessity. On the one hand, certain forms of technological development have shaped certain social relations of production; that is, those certain forms of technology have set limits to the ways in which people can organize themselves when they have decided to utilize those forms of technology. On the other hand, exploitative class relations have allowed the development of only specific types of productive techniques, which are primarily designed to maximize productivity regardless of their adverse effects on the workers. Thus, the historical development of modes of sexual and procreative activity has been subject to constraints that are simultaneously social and technological.

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Women have primarily performed the sexual and procreative labor of most societies. Men, of course, have had a role in conceiving children, but they have had no role in giving birth to children and they have had minimal role in rearing children. Men’s work has been defined as primarily belonging to the public sphere consisting of “politics,” “culture,” government, and war. Women’s work, on the other hand, has been defined as belonging to the private sphere, and women have mostly performed what society has defined as necessary sexual and procreative labor. Women’s energy has been mostly spent on sexual and procreative labor, and most of this labor has been forced rather than free. Women’s sexual and procreative activity have been limited to the realm of necessity by both technological and social conditions. For instance, low levels of development in the productive forces have often resulted in high infant mortality rates, and the consequent need for a high birth rate. Furthermore, primitive contraceptive techniques have sometimes resulted in higher birth rates than desired. These technological factors, however, have been inseparable from their contemporary system of social relations. For instance, the infant mortality rate has often been related to the class, race, and sex of the infants. Furthermore, the desired birth rate has largely depended on social factors: a high birth rate has been desired primarily when the dominant class has needed more labor power in order to exploit. In primitive hunting and gathering societies, with little opportunity for surplus creation and exploitation, a low birth rate was desired, which was generally achieved, but sometimes partly through infanticide. A high birth rate became desirable only when the development of agriculture and later the Industrial Revolution made possible the accumulation of surplus wealth and offered new opportunities for the exploitation of labor. Consequently, women were forced to give birth to more children, partly by denying knowledge and availability of the contraceptive and abortion techniques which already existed. For these reasons, the historical engagement of women in procreative labor is viewed more accurately as resulting from “social” rather than from “natural” necessity, insofar as these two categories can be given some distinct meaning. Women’s sexual labor is even more clearly a result of “social” rather than of “natural” necessity, as in maledominant societies, women have always been compelled to engage in more and varied types of sexual activity than were required for conceiving children. Since sexual and procreative activity is constrained by both technological and social conditions, then sexual and procreative freedom hinges on developments in both technology and social organization. One of the basic technological requirements for free sexual and procreative activity is the

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availability of means for controlling fertility, i.e., avoiding babies when procreation is not desired, and having babies when they are desired. Procreative freedom also requires the material resources for raising children to adulthood in a certain fashion. Social and technological preconditions exist for the free development of human sexual and procreative potentialities. That is, it must be possible for those who engage in any type of sexual or procreative activity to do so freely rather than out of coercion. In general, in any society, a certain level of sexual and procreative activity is always needed, in the same way that there is always a need for a certain level of other types of productive activity. Socialist feminism does not believe that one can specify exactly how this socially necessary work should be assigned, in the same way that it does not believe that one can specify exactly how other types of socially necessary work should be assigned. Socialist feminism does not believe that one can anticipate in any detail exactly what freely creative, rather than coerced, sexual and procreative activity would be like. However, socialist feminism emphasizes that free sexual and procreative activity requires the abolition of exploitation. In the context of political economy, this means not only the abolition of capitalism, but also the abolition of male dominance. That is, without the elimination of both of these forms of exploitation, the full development of human sexual and procreative potentialities is impossible. Socialist feminism has a conception of freedom which is rooted in the orthodox Marxism conception of freedom, but its actual vision of the realm of freedom differs from that of both orthodox Marxism and liberalism. Liberal feminism believes that freedom primarily lies in the private realm outside the scope of state regulation, although paradoxically liberal feminism expects the state to guarantee that freedom. Marxist feminism, in contrast, believes that freedom can exist only in the public realm, where citizens engage in conscious political action to change the course of history. Socialist feminism has a view of freedom, which is different from these two other views, and which is based on its conception of human nature and of human productive activity. Socialist feminism conceives sexuality and procreation as any other human activities, which are partly biologically determined, and equally partly capable of social development. Socialist feminism, thus, on the one hand, disagrees with the liberal feminism’s belief that sexuality and procreation are matters purely of individual or “personal” concern; and on the other hand, socialist feminism disagrees with the Marxist feminism’s belief that sexuality and procreation are not possible arenas of human development, and are subject to small variation from one society to the next. Socialist feminism’s conception of freedom is

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defined neither in terms of the Marxist feminism, nor in terms of the liberal feminism versions of the public/private distinction. The socialist feminism’s conception of freedom is, indeed, incompatible with the public/private distinction of both Marxist feminism and liberal feminism. Socialist feminism believes that freedom is constituted by transcending the realm of necessity in every area of human life, including sexuality and procreation. Furthermore, freedom is a social achievement, in the sense that it cannot be achieved by isolated individuals in the absence of a general reordering of society. Socialist feminism rejects the public/private distinction based on its vision of the good society, which is closest to the vision of radical feminism. All other theories have devalued the daily work of bodily maintenance, particularly the care of children, and have viewed human freedom and fulfilment as constituted by transcending this work. Only socialist feminism and radical feminism have believed that human nature and human society are shaped by prevailing modes of organizing sexuality and procreation, and have speculated about the way human history may be changed through conscious political activity directed toward transforming existing modes of organizing such activities. Radical feminists, among themselves, of course, hold widely diverse views about the desirable, or even possible, changes in procreation, and the future modes of procreation. In contrast, socialist feminists, who adhere to historical materialism, do not believe that the future modes of procreation can be determined in much detail and far in advance. Socialist feminists and radical feminists have a common concern for ecology. Radical feminists have always had respect for non-human nature. They have linked feminism and ecology, and have grounded feminist ecological concern in women’s spiritual experience of communion with non-human nature. Socialist feminists share the radical feminists’ concern for the environment, but their Marxist conception of human nature enables them to provide a materialist, as opposed to a spiritual, grounding for that concern. Socialist feminists, on the basis of Marxism, recognize that human and non-human nature cannot be conceived separately from each other. That is, socialist feminists believe that human beings depend on non-human nature for their sustenance, and they also shape and transform that nature by their labor. The socialist feminists’ conception of the dialectical unity between human and non-human nature constitutes their theoretical approach to their ecological concerns, and their approach is not incompatible with the radical feminists’ intuition of a spiritual unity between human and nonhuman nature. Marxist feminists could have conceptualized the relation between human and non-human nature in the same way that socialist feminists have done it, but Marxist feminists have tended to

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stress the domination, rather than the balance, of nature. Indeed, some socialist feminists believe that the Marxist feminists’ dominating attitude towards nature is the psychological result of a certain mode of organizing procreation. The basic values of socialist feminism, when applied to the issue of women’s oppression in contemporary society, lead to a distinctive analysis, which, in turn, implies a set of distinctive political proposals for overcoming that oppression. Socialist feminism uses its concept of “alienation” as the point of entry to the analysis of women’s oppression. The concept of alienation have been used, since the latter part of the 20th century, by orthodox Marxists to analyze the oppression of the working class under capitalism. The concept of alienation can also be used as a theoretical framework for the socialist feminists’ critique of women’s contemporary oppression. Socialist feminists utilize the concept of alienation but not in its religious interpretation, which considers the separation of the individual from God, nor in its psychological interpretation, which considers an individual’s feelings of being an outsider, lonely, or unwanted. Instead, socialist feminists utilize the concept of alienation which is based on Marxism, which describes the structure of social relations that define the typical human condition in capitalist society. The Marxist conception of alienation has been primarily developed in the explanation of the condition of wage workers, but it has also been applied to capitalists, who suffer their own special form of alienation. According to the Marxist view, alienation is a specific human condition under capitalism; although certain features of capitalism may exist in other modes of production, and therefore, humans who do not directly participate in those social relations that characterize the capitalist mode of production are not alienated. For instance, peasants and servants are not alienated, although they are certainly exploited. Women are alienated if they participate in the capitalist relations of production either as wage laborers or, very rarely, as capitalists. According to the Marxist interpretation of alienation, women are not alienated if they are excluded from the capitalist relations of production. That is, not all women are alienated, and those who are alienated do not suffer any gender-specific forms of alienation. These are the main features of the Marxist conception of alienation, which socialist feminism intend to revise and to show that, in contemporary society, women are alienated in all aspects of their lives, and that such alienation takes special, gender-specific forms. The central feature of Marxist conception of alienation is that things or people which are, in fact, dialectically related to each other are seen as alien, separated from, and even opposed to, each other. At the core of the concept of

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alienation is the situation of the wage laborer under capitalism. Marxists believe that labor is the essential human activity which connects each human being to not only the non-human world, but also each other; and which paves the way for the development of human capacities. Under capitalism, however, the way in which labor is organized makes these connections disguised; makes it appear as if individuals must always be separate or alienated from the nonhuman world, from their own products, from the process of their work, and from their co-workers; and makes it seem as if labor (i.e., work) must always prevent human beings from fulfilling their potentialities. These apparent separations are experienced because, under capitalism, human beings are deprived of control over their own labor power; and they are forced to work according to the dictates of the capitalist class. Consequently, workers’ products are taken from them to be used against them, their fellow workers are turned into their competitors, and the work process in relation to their “real” lives becomes an exhausting interruption, which forces them to overdevelop a few primitive skills but prevents them from developing more complex and “global” capacities. In this way, alienation fragments not only the human community, but also the human individual. A few socialist feminist authors have built on radical feminist insights to argue that women’s experience in contemporary society is the exact representation of alienation. Socialist feminists’ explorations illustrate the ways in which women are alienated as sexual beings, as mothers, and as wives. Indeed, one socialist feminist has stated that femininity itself is alienation. Socialist feminists analyze the contemporary oppression of women in terms of the concept of alienation, which is inevitably related to capitalism. Socialist feminists deny that “patriarchy” is an unchanging trans-historical and cross-cultural universal; and in contrast, they assert that the subordination of women takes different forms in different historical periods. Currently, the alienation of women is a historically specific product of the capitalist mode of production. More specifically, at the present time, the alienation of women results from historically specific features of capitalism such as the fetishism of commodities, the rise of positive science, separation of home from workplace, split between emotion and reason, and distinction between personal and political. Socialist feminists neither say that women’s oppression stems only from capitalism, nor do they say that the abolition of capitalism would eliminate women’s oppression. Socialist feminists say that the abolition of capitalism would end only the specifically capitalist form of women’s oppression, and they add that there is no reason to suppose that after capitalism there could not

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be a new form of “patriarchy,” or male dominance, and perhaps new modes of alienation. The socialist feminist analysis of women’s oppression points out that women’s liberation requires totally different modes of organizing all forms of production, and the final abolition of “femininity.” In contrast to Marxism, that has specified its goal as the abolition of class, but not the abolition of gender, socialist feminism has specified its goal as the abolition of both class and gender. Socialist feminists, like everyone else, do not determine how male dominance and capitalism will be overthrown. What socialist feminists have determined, however, is a conception of the material base of society, which includes the mode of producing sexuality and children, as well as the mode of producing what are customarily called goods and services. Therefore, several of their proposals for social change, like many of the proposals of radical feminists, involve the transformation of sexuality and procreation.

IV. Radical Structuralist View Engels analyzed women’s social position relative to that of men, and provided an explanation based on a materialist theory, in which women’s position varies from society to society, or epoch to epoch, according to the economic and political relationships that prevail in society. His ideas best explain the ethnographic and historical data showing that women’s social position has not always, everywhere, or in most respects been subordinate to that of men.37 Engels recognized that in order to understand the present state of affairs and to help shape the future it is useful to look to the past through ethnographic and historical reconstruction. On the one hand, capitalism has dominated and transformed the social orders of most of the world’s people; and on the other hand, non-capitalist ways of organizing economic and political relations have affected the relative positions of men and women in various societies. Such ethnographical and historical analyses provide an answer to why women were subordinate to men in capitalist society, and what political and economic changes are needed to end sexual inequality. 37

For this literature, see Atkinson (1974), Bebel (1904), Delmar (1976), Delphy (1977, 1984), Donovan (2006), Draper (1970), Engels (1948), Ferguson and Folbre (1981), Firestone (1970), Griffin (1978), Hartmann (1981), Kuhn and Wolpe (1978), Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin (1951), Phillips (1987), Sacks (1974), Sargent (1981), Slaughter and Kern (1981), Storkey (1985), Wallerstein (2000), and Zetkin (1934). This section is based on Sacks (1974).

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Engels provided an analysis that went well beyond the consideration of women’s status. His analysis contrasted non-class and class societies. He used a historical approach to show how private property originated; and, after its establishment, how it undermined an egalitarian tribal order, created families as economic units, brought about inequality of property ownership, and resulted in exploitative class societies. Within this wide-ranging explanation, Engels explained how women’s social position declined as private property gained strength and became the organizing principle for society. His analyses provided the reasons why private property had such effects; showed specifically, how private property transformed women’s work organization; and showed generally, how private property was related to class and sex. As is discussed in the rest of this section, the sexual egalitarianism of preclass societies was undermined by class societies through changes in women’s work, and through the growth of families as important economic units. Certain terminology and framework are used in the analysis of non-class societies; and, then, emphasis is placed not only on the importance of public labor in determining women’s social status, but also on the distinction between the role of women as social adults or as wifely dependents. Finally, reasons are provided for why class societies have used the family to circumscribe and subordinate women. It is through a historical dynamic that the role of women is changed from free and equal productive members of society to subordinate and dependent wives and wards. This change is caused by the spread of male-owned private properly, which is appropriated and perpetuated by the institution of family. In early societies, clans or tribes communally owned productive resources. They collected and cooked food on a daily basis. Their aim in production was only for use, i.e., to meet people’s subsistence needs, as there was no surplus produced for exchange. The group consisting of husband, wife, and dependent children was not considered a productive unit, was not intended to perform housework, and did not own property. This group was not an economic unit, as it had not precipitated out of the larger household. Since economic functions are of crucial importance, the family did not exist in early societies. The household was the basic social and economic unit. The household was communistic because all food stores were held in common, and all work was performed for the good of the common, rather than for the benefit of individuals or couples. The household was run by women, who performed the housework. That is, a communistic household embraced numerous couples and their children. In a communistic household, the administration of the household was entrusted to women. The administration of the household by

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women was as much a public and a socially necessary activity as the providing of food by the men. In early societies, the family – as a productive, consuming, and propertyowning group – did not exist. The tribe or clan, instead, constituted the context of men’s and women’s life and labor. The tribe or clan was a communal property-owning group. Although members of both sexes owned tools and personal effects, upon their death their belongings passed to their tribe or clan, which in turn distributed such belongings to the members of the same sex, not necessarily to the children of the deceased. Men and women equally participated in economic and political decision-making. Men and women were equal members of the group because both of them crucially contributed to the economic life of the group. It was the absence of private property that brought into equality the social significance of men’s productive work and women’s household work. In early societies, men and women participated in different stages of the production of the same goods, i.e., the production of subsistence. All production was for the same purpose, i.e., production for use. People worked for the communal household, i.e., for the tribe or clan, rather than for themselves or other specific individuals. Since all work was for social use, and since all adults were social producers, all adults (i.e., men and women) were equal members of the group (i.e., the tribe or clan). In early societies, the public rights of men and women – e.g., the individual right to participate in political decision-making, and the collective right to depose a chief – depended on the membership in the clan, which in turn depended on the performance of public, or social, labor. Wives, relative to their husbands, held a higher status, which was attributable to the solidarity and kinship among the women, who formed the core of the household. The material base for the change in the role of women from equal members of society to subordinate wives lay in the development of private property, i.e., the development of valuable productive resources, initially the domestication of large animals. The term “private property” has a special meaning. It refers to goods or resources that have productive potential. Although individuals held personal goods, which were “private,” they were not “property” in the sense of “private property.” In non-industrial societies, domesticated animals and cultivated land are the most important types of private property, i.e., productive resources. In this context, tools, i.e., productive means, do not play an important role because the skills and materials for their manufacture are equally available to everyone. “Property” has productive potential. Other goods, which are used for conspicuous

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consumption or display, are not private property. They are a result of economic and political inequality rather than a cause of it. In human history, for the first time, private property became possible only when technological development and its application to natural resources resulted in the development of the skills needed for the domestication of animals, or for the investment of labor in land for the extension of the productivity of land over an appreciable length of time. In this way, enduring productivity led to enduring private ownership. “Private” as used here has a broader meaning than when it is used under capitalism, where the owner can do almost anything with the property. “Private,” as used here, means property owned by an individual, or by a family, such that the right to manage it stay with one of the owners. It also means that the owner can dispose of these goods with some leeway. That is, the owner can acquire wives, clients, or services from others. Here, “gaining a livelihood” is men’s work, and the means of production are owned by the user, but the inheritance remained within the clan. In this way, the earliest private productive property, i.e., domestic animals, were owned by men. Domesticated animals fell into the older category of tool ownership. That is, they were privately owned. However, these animals were of a qualitatively different kind. This is because they satisfied subsistence needs, and also, they reproduced themselves. In this way, they constituted the first form of private property. With the growth of private property, the communal political economy of the clan was shattered. The egalitarianism of the clan had been founded on collective ownership of productive property. With the growth of private ownership of property (by men), the family gained importance, soon overshadowed the clan, and became the main economic and decision-making group. In sharp contrast to the clan, the internal structure of the family was not egalitarian. Families had propertyless members: all women and children, and some men. Private property changed the relations between men and women within the family only because it also radically changed the economic and political relations in society at large. Now, a surplus of goods was produced for exchange between productive units. Over time, men were increasingly involved in the development and expansion of production for exchange, which overshadowed the household’s production for use. In the era of industrial capitalism, production became almost exclusively social, was performed outside the household, and was undertaken for exchange. Industrial capitalist production left women’s work as private maintenance for family use.

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As production for exchange overshadowed production for use, it changed the nature of the household, it changed the significance of women’s work within the household, and, consequently, it changed women’s position. Women, as a result, worked for their husbands and families, instead of working for society. Their labor played a necessary, but socially subordinate, role in the production of an exchangeable surplus. Women were changed to wards, wives, and daughters from what they used to be: adult members of society. Private property turned its owner to the ruler of the household. Women and other propertyless dependent members of the household worked to maintain, and to help increase, the property of the head of the household. This was because the head of the household was engaged in competitive production and exchange with other heads of households. Over time, families perpetuated themselves through the inheritance of property. This changed the definition of children. They changed from the new members of society to either private heirs or subordinate, dependent workers. The consequence of this change was that women’s reproductive labor, similar to their productive work, changed from social to private. People and property became intertwined, and each one partly defined the other. As technology was further developed and it made the further accumulation of wealth a reality, the property owners distanced themselves away from their subordinate kinsmen, and moved closer to other property owners in order to preserve and defend their wealth against the claims of the non-propertied. It is at this time that the kinship-based productive group ended, and the class society and the state started. To illuminate the ideas which have been discussed in this section, the approach of ethnographical reconstruction and comparison can be used to analyze some of the variety in women’s status in non-capitalist societies – nonclass as well as class. The rest of this section illustrates an ethnographical reconstruction of women’s position in four African societies before their domination by imperialists. The four African societies are as follows. The Mbuti is located in Zaire and can be considered as a band society, and its subsistence is based on communal net hunting and gathering of vegetables. Lovedu is located in South Africa and is primarily hoe agriculturalists. Pondo is also located in South Africa and is involved in a combination of agriculture and livestock. Ganda in located in Uganda and is a class society with subsistence based on hoe agriculture.

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These societies can be placed on a continuum from egalitarian society to class society, based on three principal respects. First, type of production: the Mbuti and Lovedu are involved in economies of production for use; the Pondo are involved in the initial stages of production for exchange in cattle; and Ganda is quite extensively involved in production for exchange. Second, type of labor: the Mbuti and Lovedu involve the social labor of both sexes in a use economy; the Pondo involves the social labor of women, and the social labor of men is at least in part performed in an exchange economy; and Ganda involves women’s work in individual domestic production for household use, and men work in groups almost entirely in production for exchange. Third, type of productive ownership: the Mbuti band owns the productive resources; in Lovedu and Pondo productive resources are largely patrilineal family estates; in Ganda the productive resources are in control of males, and bear almost no relationship with family obligations. In Mbuti, Lovedu, and Pondo, women perform productive activities that are social, and women have an adult social status. However, in Ganda women perform productive activities that are domestic, and the status of women is only wife and ward – even though women produce most of the food. This confirms the earlier discussion in this section that public or social labor is the basis for social adulthood. Of course, the data also suggest that women do not have to be characterized as either social adults or wifely wards, and that women can be both simultaneously. Women’s status in a marital relationship varies somewhat independently of their status in the larger society. As discussed earlier in this section, the relative status of wife to husband is dependent on their relative ownership of the property of the household. That is, the spouse who owns the property rules the household. The data show that the Mbuti and Lovedu women are the equals to men, in Ganda women are subordinate to men, and the Pondo women belong somewhere in between the two poles. Women self-representation in legal proceedings can be used as an indicator of whether a woman is able to be wronged or to do wrong. In the Mbuti, Lovedu, and Pondo, women can represent themselves in the court of law. However, in Ganda, a woman needs a male guardian (generally husband or father) to represent her case in the court of law; and, in addition, the guardian is held responsible for her wrongdoing, and receives compensation for wrongs done to her. Participation in social activities can be used to see the relative position of women to men. In the Mbuti, Lovedu, and Pondo, both men and women participate in most social activities. Although, in the latter two societies, young

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wives are kept busy with domestic work, and their ability to participate in social events is significantly reduced. It is the older wives, the sisters visiting their own kinsmen, and the diviners, who attend social events as freely as men do. In Ganda, many of the social activities are patron-oriented, or stateoriented and women are excluded from these social activities. Divorce can be used as another indicator of the relative position of women to men. The divorce for men versus women is an indicator of their relative importance for each. In the Mbuti, Lovedu, and Pondo, both men and women are entitled to divorce each other. In Ganda, a husband can effectively get a divorce simply by ignoring his wife. However, a woman must contend not only with her husband but also with her brother, who generally acts, as partial guardian, to preserve the marriage. Another indicator of the relative position of women to men in a society is the ability to give and receive food and items of social exchange as it acts as the material basis for exercising political power. In general, real power develops only as a result of production for exchange and private property. In societies where there is no production for exchange and there is no private property – i.e., in societies based on production for use – a person who performs social labor has the right to join other adults to make political decisions and settle disputes. This is because in an egalitarian society, adult members are responsible for making political decisions and settling disputes. In the Mbuti and Lovedu, both women and men give and receive food. In Lovedu, women give and receive cattle, hold political positions, and enter the decision-making processes. In Pondo, although women are social producers, they cannot dispose of livestock, which is the most important exchange item. This might be explained with reference to the nature of production for exchange in Pondo. Women’s agricultural work, in the short run and the long run, is directed towards the needs of the household, i.e., it is for use. On the other hand, men participate in livestock raiding, which involves them in production for exchange. Livestock raiding, over the short run, is more closely connected with the power need of a chief than to household needs. That is, over the short run, a chief keeps a following by having cattle to distribute. Over the long run, a chief’s power is based on the actual distribution of cattle more widely. Since Pondo women are not involved in production for exchange, i.e., raiding, they cannot dispose of the property that establishes power relationships, and thus, they lack overt political power. In Ganda, peasant women cannot even have a minimal access to political positions which are available to peasant men. Although the mother and the sister of the king

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hold important official positions, their exercise of power is based on their relationship to the king. This chapter briefly discussed four views expressed with respect to feminism. The functionalist feminists have been historically concerned with political rights, as defined in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century liberalism. The interpretive paradigm believes that gender – which is different from sex – can be viewed as a socially-constructed “role.” The radical humanist paradigm believes that productive activity should not only be analyzed with the analytic tool of class, but also with the conceptual tool of gender. The radical structuralist paradigm believes that women’s position varies from society to society, or epoch to epoch, according to the economic and political relationships that prevail in society. Each paradigm is logically coherent – in terms of its underlying assumptions – and conceptualizes and studies the phenomenon in a certain way, and generates distinctive kinds of insight and understanding. Therefore, different paradigms in combination provide a broader and a balanced understanding of the phenomenon under consideration. An understanding of different paradigms leads to a better understanding of the multi-faceted nature of the phenomenon.

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Eisenstein, Zillah R., (ed.), 1979a, Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism, New York, New York: Monthly Review Press. Eisenstein, Zillah R., 1979b, “Developing a Theory of Capitalist Patriarchy and Socialist Feminism,” in Eisenstein, Zillah R., (ed.), 1979, Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism, New York, New York: Monthly Review Press, pp. 5-40. Eisenstein, Zillah R., 1993, The Radical Future of Liberal Feminism, Boston, Massachusetts: Northeastern University Press. Elliot, Patricia, 1991, From Mastery to Analysis: Theories of Gender in Psychoanalytic Feminism, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. Engels, Friedrich, 1948, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Moscow, USRR: Progress Publishers. Evans, Sara M., 1979, Personal Politics: The Roots of Women’s Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left, New York, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Farrell, Warren, 2008, Does Feminism Discriminate against Men?: A Debate, Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Ferguson, Ann, 1989, “Sex and Work: Women as a New Revolutionary Class in the United States,” in Gottlieb, Roger S., (ed.), An Anthology of Western Marxism: From Lukacs and Gramsci to Socialist-Feminism, Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, Chapter 15, pp. 348-380. Ferguson, Ann and Folbre, Nancy, 1981, “The Unhappy Marriage of Patriarchy and Capitalism,” in Sargent, Lydia, (ed.), Women and Revolution: A Discussion of the Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism, Boston, Massachusetts: South End Press, pp. 313-337. Ferguson, Andy, 1980, “Childbirth as Alienated Labor,” Breaking Ground, 1, spring. Ferree, Myra Marx, 2012, Varieties of Feminism: German Gender Politics in Global Perspective, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. Ferree, Myra Marx and Tripp, Aili Mari, (eds.), 2006, Global Feminism: Transnational Women’s Activism, Organizing, and Human Rights, New York, New York: University Press. Firestone, Shulamith, 1970, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution, New York, New York: Bantam Books. Fisanick, Christina, (ed.), 2008, Feminism, Detroit, Michigan: Greenhaven Press. Flexner, Eleanor, 1968, A Century of Struggle: The Women’s Rights Movement in the United States, New York, New York. Foreman, Ann, 1977, Femininity as Alienation: Women and the Family in Marxism and Psychoanalysis, London, England: Pluto Press. Gabin, Nancy Felice, 1990, Feminism in the Labor Movement: Women and the United Auto Workers, 1935-1975, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. Gatens, Moira, 1991, Feminism and Philosophy: Perspectives on Difference and Equality, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. Gelb, Joyce, 1989, Feminism and Politics: A Comparative Perspective, Berkley, California: University of California Press. Gerhard, Jane F., 2001, Desiring Revolution: Second-Wave Feminism and the Rewriting of American Sexual Thought, 1920 to 1982, New York, New York: Columbia University Press.

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Chapter 8

Discrimination: Four Paradigmatic Views Any explanation of discrimination is based on a worldview. The premise of this book is that any worldview can be associated with one of the four broad paradigms: functionalist, interpretive, radical humanist, and radical structuralist. This chapter takes the case of discrimination and discusses it from the four different viewpoints. It emphasizes that the four views expressed are equally scientific and informative; they look at the phenomenon from their certain paradigmatic viewpoint; and together they provide a broader and a balanced understanding of the phenomenon under consideration. In this chapter, Sections I through IV present the four perspectives.

I. Functionalist View There is empirical evidence that there are pay and occupational differences between men and women, and that such differences are not accounted for by productivity differences. Economists have shown how discrimination produces such sex-related differences in economic outcomes, and why this inequality has persisted over time. Economists have developed various models for the analyses of these issues. These models usually assume that male and female labor are perfect substitutes in production. That is, they assume that male and female workers have equal qualifications and, in the absence of discrimination, are equally productive such that they should receive the same pay. This assumption is not an accurate description of reality, because there are sex-related differences in qualifications that explain some of the pay gap. Nevertheless, this assumption is made because models of discrimination are intended to explain the portion of the pay gap which is not due to differences in qualifications. That is, models of discrimination are intended to explain pay differences between men and women who are (potentially) equally productive.38 38

For this literature, see Aguirre and Turner (2010), Aigner and Cain (1977), Altonji and Blank (1999), Arrow (1973), Ayres (1991), Ayres and Siegelman (1995), Becker (1971, 1976, 1985, 1995), Benabou (1996), Bertrand, Chugh, and Mullainathan (2005), Bertrand and

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I.1. Tastes for Discrimination Gary Becker laid the foundation of the modern neoclassical analysis of labor market discrimination. Becker conceptualized discrimination as a personal prejudice, i.e., as a taste against being with a particular group. More specifically, employers, co-workers, and/or customers may have such discriminatory tastes. This specific conceptualization may seem more appropriate for the case of racial discrimination (which Becker initially analyzed), than the case of women, with whom men generally live in families. This issue can be regarded as being more closely related to sociallyappropriate roles than as a desire to maintain social distance, which was considered in the case of race by Becker. Some examples that show the meaning of socially-appropriate roles are as follows. Employers may not hesitate to hire women as secretaries, but may resist to employ them as pipefitters. Men may be willing to work with women who hold complementary or subordinate positions, but may dislike to interact with them when they hold equal or superior positions. Customers may be delighted to purchase nylons from female clerks, but may avoid women who are car dealers or attorneys. These are examples of discriminatory tastes, which may be held independently of the belief that women are less qualified than men for non-traditional pursuits. This latter possibility is discussed later under notion of “statistical discrimination.” Such discriminatory tastes actually influence people’s behavior which have important consequences for women’s earnings and employment. In his model, Becker conceptualized individuals who have tastes for discrimination against women acting as if there are non-pecuniary costs of associating with women, who are performing socially-inappropriate roles. Becker measured the extent of the individual’s discriminatory taste, which is called “discrimination coefficient,” by the monetary size of such costs. With this background, it is Mullainathan (2004), Black (1995), Blau and Ferber (1992), Blecker and Seguino (2007), Borjas and Bronars (1989), Cain (1999), Crouch (1979), England (1992), Fershtman and Gneezy (2001), Friedman (2002), Fuchs (1986), Gronau (1988), Gunderson (1989), Heckman (1998), Hoffman (1991), Kahne and Kohen (1975), Lang (2007), Levy and Hughes (2009), List (2004), Loury (1977), Loury (1981), Lundberg and Startz (1998), Marshall (1974), Medina (2010), Nelson (2009), Phelps (1972), Polachek (1995), Reagan (1975), Riach and Rich (2002), Rodgers (2006), Schiller (2012), Stangor (2009), Thurow (1969, 1975), Williams (2011), Wolfson, Palumbo, Lindgren, and Taub (2011), Wooley (1993), and Zarate (2009). This section is based on Blau and Ferber (1992).

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now possible to examine the consequences of discrimination based on employer, employee, and customer preferences, respectively.

I.2. Employer Discrimination Discriminating employers, i.e., those employers who have tastes for discrimination against women, act as if there is a non-pecuniary cost associated with employing women and that, in dollar terms, this cost is equal to dr (the discrimination coefficient). To discriminating employers, the cost of employing a man is his wage, wm, but the full cost of employing a woman is her wage plus the discrimination coefficient (wf + dr). This means that discriminating employers hire women at a lower wage than men (wm – dr = wf). Further, if men are paid in accordance with their productivity, then women are hired and paid less than their productivity. The extent of the impact of this situation on female workers depends on the prevalence and severity of discriminatory tastes among employers, as well as on the number of women seeking employment. Nondiscriminatory employers are willing to hire men and women at the same wage rate, as their discrimination coefficient is equal to zero. If there are relatively many such nondiscriminatory employers and/or there are relatively few women seeking employment, then all of them may be hired by the nondiscriminatory firms. In this case, there is no sex-based discriminatory pay differential, even though there are some employers who have tastes for discrimination against women. However, if there are relatively many discriminatory employers and/or there are relatively many women seeking employment, some women necessarily find jobs at discriminatory firms. These women, as was discussed before, obtain such employment at a wage rate of wf, which is less than wm. Under the assumption of competitive labor market, all employers pay the same going wage rate for hiring labor of a particular sex. This means that, in equilibrium, the market wage rate differential between men and women is large enough such that all the women find employment, including those women who necessarily find work at the discriminatory firms. Thus, the more prevalent and the more severe are employers’ discriminatory tastes against women, and/or the more numerous are women seeking employment, the more sizable is the aggregate wage gap between men and women (wm – wf). This model, which is based on the employer taste for discrimination, is consistent with the observed labor market wage inequalities between men and women. This model explains the possibility that there is a wage differential

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between equally qualified male and female workers due to discriminatory employers hiring women workers only at a wage discount. This model, furthermore, explains that since less discriminatory employers hire more women workers than more discriminatory employers, male and female workers may be segregated by firm, as it is observed in labor market. This model, finally, explains that if employer taste for discrimination vary across occupations, then occupational segregation by sex can also occur, which is a likely scenario. This model, however, has been identified with one problem. In this model, discrimination is not costless to the employer who foregoes the opportunity to substitute the lower-wage female labor for the higher-wage male labor. Consequently, less discriminatory firms have lower production costs, and their competitive advantage enables them to expand their production and drive the more discriminatory firms out of business in the long run. With the expansion of the less discriminatory firms, the demand for female labor increases, and the male-female wage gap reduces. In the extreme case, where there are enough entirely nondiscriminatory firms to hire all the women workers, then the male-female wage gap is eliminated. Hence, the question for this model is: how discrimination, which represents a departure from profit-maximizing behavior, can survive competitive pressures. Several answers have been given to this question. One answer to this question is that discrimination is related to the lack of competitive pressures in the economy. Becker hypothesized that, on average, employer discrimination is less severe in competitive than in monopolistic industries; and his hypothesis has received some empirical support. Furthermore, women have less representation in unionized employment, and thus, do not benefit from the monopoly wage advantage of unionism to the same extent as men do. Moreover, the monopsony power by employers in the labor market may produce and perpetuate the male-female pay differential. Recall that a firm has monopsony power when it is a large buyer of labor relative to the size of the particular labor market. An example of this case is the university hiring of a couple who both have a Ph.D. and would like to be hired by the university located in a university town. In this situation, the employer enjoys a degree of monopsony power and lowers the pay of both members of the couple, but the wife’s salary may be more adversely affected. Another reason for the persistence of discrimination in the labor market is as follows. It is possible that the employers’ discrimination against women is not based on personal prejudice, but it is based on the actual or perceived differences between male and female workers in productivity or behavior.

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This model is called “statistical discrimination,” which is discussed later in this section. Another reason for the persistence of discrimination in the labor market is put forth by Becker, which is as follows. Even if employers do not have taste for discrimination against women, their profit-maximizing behavior may result in sex-related discrimination in the labor market if their employees or customers have discriminatory tastes against women. Since this situation does not conflict with the profit maximization behavior of employers, there is no economic reason why this type of discrimination cannot continue. With this background, it is time now to consider the possibility of discriminating employees and customers.

I.3. Employee Discrimination A male employee who has tastes for discrimination against women, acts as if he incurs non-pecuniary costs for working with women, as measured by his discrimination coefficient, de. This is the premium he must be paid in order to be enticed to work with women. Under such circumstances, a profitmaximizing employer hires a sex-segregated work force, as this eliminates the payment of the premium to male workers for associating with female workers. When all employers follow this policy, then male and female workers are paid the same wage rate, but they are segregated. Complete segregation, however, may not be profitable when there are substantial costs associated with adjustment from the previous situation. For instance, in hiring new workers, the firm incurs recruitment and screening costs, as well as firm-specific training costs. These adjustment costs together with employee tastes for discrimination perpetuate segregation and result in market-wide wage differences between male and female workers. As in the case of employer discrimination against women, the size of the wage differential depends on the prevalence and intensity of employees’ discriminatory tastes, as well as the relative number of women seeking employment. If a relatively large proportion of employees have no taste for discrimination against women, and/or relatively few women seek employment, then it is possible for all the women to work with nondiscriminatory men, and there is no pay differential. In the opposite situation, both segregation and wage differential would be more severe. If the employees’ tastes for discrimination against women not only exist, but also vary across occupations, then there is occupational segregation as well

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as pay differentials. For instance, women are not usually hired for supervisory and managerial positions because male employees who do not mind working with women, but do not like being supervised by them. Furthermore, male and female employees may not like to have women supervisors. Furthermore, employee discrimination may adversely affect the morale and productivity of discriminating male workers who are expected to work with women. This makes employers reluctant to hire women, especially when their male employees have considerable firm-specific training and, therefore, are very costly to replace. If employers decide to hire women under such circumstances, then employers pay them less in order to offset the reduction in the productivity of the discriminating male employees. Employee discrimination can reduce the productivity of women in comparison to men. This may happen in traditionally male fields. For instance, on-the-job training frequently takes place informally as supervisors and/or coworkers demonstrate how things are done, as well as provide advice and assistance. When male employees have tastes for discrimination against women, they tend to be reluctant to teach women these important skills, and consequently, women learn less, become less productive, and receive lower pay.

I.4. Customer Discrimination Customers or clients, whether male or female, who have tastes for discrimination against women act as if there is a non-pecuniary cost associated with purchasing a good or a service from a woman, and such cost equals to their discrimination coefficient, dc. This means that if a woman wants to sell as much as a comparable man does, then she would have to charge a lower price. Women are, therefore, less desirable employees and receive a lower pay. If customer discrimination is not spread uniformly, then occupational segregation may also occur.

I.5. Statistical Discrimination As noted earlier, models of statistical discrimination are based on a different employers’ motivation for discrimination, which is consistent with profit maximization and discrimination persistence in the long run. In models of statistical discrimination, employers need to make decisions under conditions

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of incomplete information or uncertainty. Even if employers carefully study all available information about the qualifications of the job applicants, they never certainly know how individuals will perform on the job or how long they will stay with the company after they are hired. Any mistakes on the part of the employer can be costly to the company, especially where hiring and training costs are substantial. Employers’ decisions with respect to the promotion of their employees involve similar risks, even though employers have additional first-hand information based on the past job performance of employees within their company. Employers who need to make personnel decisions under conditions of risk and uncertainty, often use any readily available information which may be related to the productivity or job stability of the employee. If employers believe that, on average, women are less productive or less stable employees, they commit statistical discrimination against the individual woman. That is, employers commit statistical discrimination when employers judge the individual woman on the basis of their beliefs about group averages. This results in discrimination against women in hiring, pay, and/or promotion. Employers commonly hold beliefs regarding differences in average ability or behavior by sex. Male managers and administrators, when comparing men and women with respect to a variety of traits that are likely to be related to productivity, generally hold the following beliefs. Men as a group are rated more highly on understanding the “big picture” of the organization; approaching problems rationally; getting people to work together; understanding financial matters; sizing up situations accurately; administrative capability; leadership potential; setting long-range goals and working toward them; wanting to get ahead; standing up under fire; keeping cool in emergencies; independence and self-sufficiency; and aggressiveness. Women as a group are rated more highly on clerical aptitude; being good at detail work; enjoyment of routine tasks; crying easily; being sensitive to criticism; timid; jealous; being excessively emotional regarding their jobs; being more likely to be absent and to quit; and putting family matters ahead of their job. If such employer beliefs are incorrect, exaggerated, or reflect time lags in adjusting to a new reality, and if the employer takes actions based on them, then their actions are unfair and constitute labor market discrimination. This is because such actions result in wage and occupation differences between men and women which are not based on (potential) productivity differences. For an individual woman, the consequences are far from satisfactory. This is because the individual woman who is as productive and as stable an

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employee as a male employee is denied employment or is paid a lower wage. From a normative perspective, the employment decision which is based on a characteristic like sex – a characteristic that the individual cannot change – is unfair. Indeed, when an individual is judged on the basis of his or her group characteristics, rather than upon his or her own individual merits, constitutes stereotyping and discrimination. Such behavior is illegal under the antidiscrimination laws and regulations. Statistical discrimination can have very harmful consequences, particularly where there are feedback effects. For instance, if employers believe that females have job instability, and therefore, the employers give women less firm-specific training, and assign them to jobs with minimized turnover costs, then women have little incentive to stay with the company and may respond by exhibiting exactly the unstable behavior that employers expect, i.e., self-fulfilling prophecy. Employers note that their perceptions are confirmed in practice, and therefore, they see no reason to change their discriminatory behavior. In contrast, if employers had believed that women are stable workers and had assigned them to positions that rewarded such stability, then women might have performed as stable workers. Thus, when statistical discrimination has feedback effects, an employer behavior, which is initially based on incorrect assessments of average sex differences, may persist in the long run and be fairly resistant to competitive pressures.

II. Interpretive View In the United States, the Census Bureau is responsible to gather data on all residents every ten years. Such data are very important, because they form the basis for the determination of the distribution of federal funds to support housing assistance, highway construction, employment services, schools, hospital services, programs for the elderly, and other funding targets. In the last census, for the first time, persons with mixed racial heritage were given the unique opportunity of selecting more than one racial category, i.e., as a result of the new government policy, the category “multiracial” became a reality in the United States.39

39

For this literature, see Allport (1955), Back and Solomos (2000), Berger and Luckmann (1966), Bergmann (1989), Better (2008), Bettio (2008), Bettio and Verashchagina (2008), Bonilla-Silva (2006), Duckitt (1992), Figart (2005), Greenwood (1984), Hellman (2008), Humphries (1995), Kennedy (2013), Montagu (1957), Myrdal (1944), Ore (2010), Piore

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This, of course, does not mean that multiracial people have never before lived in the United States, because multiracial people have been present throughout the history of the United States. However, until recently, the U.S. government policies had not allowed for the recognition of a multiracial identity. Instead, the U.S. government policies had enforced the rule of “hypodescent” – according to which one drop of black blood makes you black – in order to define and maintain distinct racial categories. The preceding example was intended to show that not only we use categories to describe ourselves and those around us, but more importantly, the categories we use are the products of social, rather than biological, factors. Biologically multiracial people have certainly lived throughout the United States history, and it is unlikely that anyone has been “racially pure.” Therefore, it is in our social setting that our recognition, definition, and grouping of these factors make them culturally significant in our daily interactions. We rely so much on such distinct categories that, for instance, when we encounter someone, whose race is not immediately discernible to us, we ask: “What are you?” The significant characteristic of these culturally defined classifications is that they are structured as categories that are fundamentally different and separate from one another. For instance, we expect people to be either black or white, but never in between. It is important to note that difference is not a negative quality. On the contrary, the existence of categories of difference makes our lives much richer. More specifically, the existence of different cultural traditions, types of food, forms of music, and styles of dance make our life experience more interesting. Whereas differences by themselves do not cause inequality in our culture, the meanings and values which we apply to these differences make differences harmful. For instance, in the United States, not only people of color are defined as different from whites, but in addition, that whites are viewed as superior and as the cultural standard against which all others are judged. They are such meanings and values that transform different categories of race into a system of racial inequality. Generally, the categories of difference with regard to race/ethnicity, social class, sex/gender, and sexuality are socially constructed and socially transformed into systems of inequality. Through social processes, people simultaneously create categories of difference and construct structures of social stratification – i.e., a system based on which society ranks categories of

(1970), Rose (1951), Rutherglen and Donohue (2009), Saenger (1953), Warnke (2007), and Wooley (1993). This section is based on Ore (2010).

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people in a hierarchy – and social stratification results in systems of inequality. The categories of difference and inequality affect the lives of all the members of our society, and therefore, such inequalities need to be addressed.

II.1. Essentialism and Social Construction As noted earlier, in the United States, there is a system of stratification which is based on various categories of difference, such as race/ethnicity, social class, sex/gender, and sexuality. Those people who believe in essentialism tend to view this stratification system as fixed because they assume that these categories are unchangeable. Essentialism is the idea that human behavior is “natural,” predetermined by genetic, biological, or physiological mechanisms, and thus, not subject to change. Human behaviors that are somewhat similar are assumed to be reflections of an underlying human drive or tendency. In the United States, people rarely call into question the natural or biological status of gender and sexuality. Essentialism informs the way most people in the U.S. think about such things as gender, and remains the hegemonic or culturally dominant belief in the U.S. culture. Essentialism guides the way people in the U.S. order their social world, and determines what people value as well as what people devalue. Social construction theory offers a different perspective. Social construction theory is based on the premise that categories such as race/ethnicity, social class, sex/gender, and sexuality are socially constructed. According to this theory, social order is neither part of the “nature of things,” nor it can be derived from the “laws of nature,” because social order is a product of human activity. Social construction theory believes that what we see as “real” (e.g., cultural categories of difference and systems of inequality) is the result of our (i.e., human) interaction. Through our interaction, we not only create various aspects of our culture, but also objectify them, internalize them, and take them (i.e., the cultural products) for granted. When we adopt a social construction theory framework, we understand that we are not born with a sense of what it means to be male, female, or intersexual; with a disability, or not; black, Latina/o, Asian, white, or Native American; gay, straight, asexual, or bisexual; or rich, working-class, poor, or middle-class. This is because we learn about all these categories through social interaction. That is, we are given the meanings and values for all these categories by our social institutions, peers, families, etc. This means that what

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we learn depends on both the culture in which we live, and our place in that culture. It is important to recognize the effect of such cultural definitions. This is because cultural definitions often determine how we experience our social world. In other words, cultures define situations as real, and as such they have real consequences. For example, when we define one group as inferior to another, although this does not make that group inferior, it may cause them to have an inferior experience. For a more detailed example, consider the vicious cycle that results from the allocation of substandard resources to people who are considered to be poor. Low-income housing is generally located in geographic areas with low-quality resources, such as low-quality public schools and low-quality health care. Such low-quality resources further deepen their social disadvantage, i.e., perpetuates the poverty of this group. Thus, although reality is “soft” when it is initially constructed, it can become “hard” when it takes effect. According to the social construction theory, reality is socially constructed in three stages: (1) externalization, (2), objectivation, and (3) internalization. Externalization is the first stage in which we create cultural products through social interaction. These cultural products may be in the form of material artifacts, social institutions, or values and beliefs regarding a particular group. After these cultural products are created, they become “external” to those who have produced them. As an example, let us take the case of the social construction of gender. The construction of gender identity begins at birth when the child is placed within a sex category, either male or female. Child’s culturally defined dress and adornment inform people of the sex of the child, and people treat the child according to the culturally-defined gendered expectations for that particular sex. The child then behaves differently because of the different treatment he or she receives. Therefore, a situation which is initially defined as real, becomes real in its consequences. Different behaviors are defined for boys and girls, and as a consequence, they do behave differently, and boys and girls are seen as being different from each other. As a second example of externalization can be racial formation, which is the process through which social, economic, and political forces interact to shape not only the content and importance of racial categories, but also racial meanings. In this context, the recognition of a multiracial identity involves more than individuals being identified as biologically multiracial. Instead, interactions that takes place at the social, economic, and political levels lead to the construction of such categories of race.

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Objectivation is the second stage in which the products created by people in the first stage take on a reality of their own, and become independent of the people who created them. People lose awareness that they themselves are the authors of their cultural products, i.e., their social and cultural environment and their interpretations of reality. Consequently, people feel as if such cultural products have an objective existence, and that such cultural products are another part of reality to be taken for granted. For example, as was noted earlier, most people in the United States take race categories for granted, because they believe in essentialism, which views race categories as the result of biological or genetic factors. However, as was also noted earlier, various social, economic, and political forces interact to construct race categories. When people forget their part in the social construction of race, or lose sight of the social forces that operate to construct race categories and their meanings, these categories take on objective realities. In the recent census conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, the objective realities that many people attribute to racial categories can be inferred. According to the census data, only 2.5 percent of respondents identified themselves as multiracial. Such a low response rate can be attributed to (1) lack of knowledge of the available options; and (2) identification with one race, without regard to one’s multiracial heritage. These findings demonstrate that most respondents believe in the objective reality of clear and mutually exclusive race categories. Internalization is the third and final stage in which we learn the so called “objective facts” about the cultural products which have already been created. This learning primarily occurs through socialization. That is, through the process of social interaction one learns the norms of society and their implications with respect to one’s specific roles – i.e., the sets of rules and expectations associated with a social position (or status) in that society. In this stage, we absorb these “facts” in our subjective consciousness. It is through the process of internalization that members of a culture share the same understanding of reality, and rarely question the origins of their beliefs or the processes by which their beliefs came to being. For instance, the mass media acts as a very powerful tool in shaping the way we think. Mass media constitutes a significant part of our culture, and operates as a very important socialization mechanism. The phenomena which are selected and presented in the mass media, as well as the way they are presented in the mass media, convey important messages about the extent to which who and what is or is not valued. More specifically, mass media join forces in the internalization of certain constructs about class in our society. Mass media not only convey the message that poverty is not a significant problem in this country, but also that

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those who are poor should blame themselves, and that we are a middle-class society, and that blue-collar and union workers should be blamed for the declining economic security. When we are presented with these images by the mass media, we develop a particular view of the class structure in our country. Accordingly, we internalize beliefs about the members of each specific class (e.g., the poor are lazy) as if they are “objective facts.” In this way, the media play a significant role in maintaining constructions of difference and the resulting systems of inequality. The discussion of the three stages through which cultural products are generated does not imply that the creation of reality occurs in a neat and overt progression. In some cases, such as the invention of heterosexual identity, the process of externalization in the creation of a social category is clear. In general, the construction of reality does not always involve such a clear process. However, the discussion of the three stages through which cultural products are generated provides a general understanding of how the knowledge that guides our behavior is established, and how it becomes a part of our culture and our common sense. In addition, it is important to be aware that the categories of difference are not only constructed and transformed into systems of inequality, but also they are often maintained by the same social forces and practices. To clearly understand these phenomena, it is necessary to examine the processes that construct them. The categories of race, class, gender, and sexuality are socially constructed and transformed into systems of inequality. The preceding explanation of social construction theory provided an understanding of how these categories are socially constructed. A more detailed understanding of this process requires an understanding of social factors that are involved in creating these categories. The social categories of difference which we use are the result of our social activities, which are guided by the values of our culture. We engage in the process of creating categories of difference when we, as parents, teach our child how to behave like a “lady” or act like a “gentleman;” when one child labels another child a “sissy” or a “fag;” or when a girl under pressure stops playing “rough” in order to avoid being called a “tomboy.” We take these everyday actions for granted, but they reflect our fundamental view of the world. The kinds of categories we create, as well as the meanings we attach to them, are based on our cultural values regarding the extent to which who or what is important. These categories are created through processes which we encounter every day in various contexts. Institutional context is one of the most significant of

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them. An institution is the set of rules and relationships that govern the social activities in which we get involved in order to meet our basic needs. The major social institutions are as follows: 



 



The family: responsible for reproducing, socializing, and protecting the young, regulating sexual behavior, and providing emotional comfort and support to the family members. Education: responsible for teaching members of society the knowledge, skills, and values which are considered most important for the survival of the individual as well as society. The economy: responsible for creating, controlling, and distributing the human and material resources of a society. The state: responsible for using the legal power to regulate the behavior of members of that society, and in addition, it is responsible for regulating the relationship of that society to other societies. The media: responsible for providing information to members of society, for reinforcing the policies of other institutions, and for socializing members of society with the norms of proper behavior and accepted cultural values.

These institutions follow policies and practices, which are based on our cultural values, and create categories of difference. For instance, when we, as parents, teach our child how to behave like a “lady” or act like a “gentleman,” we create categories of difference within the institutional context of the family. Interpersonal context, which refers to our daily interactions with others, provides us with a context in which we create categories of difference. During these interactions, we follow common guidelines for behavior (norms) to define situations and create categories of difference. For instance, in the United States, when an American, operating on stereotypes based on race and ethnicity, labels a person “foreigner,” she or he is following the commonly assumed images of what is an “American.” In this way, she or he creates categories of difference within an interpersonal context. Finally, in internal contexts, we create categories of difference by internalizing the values and beliefs which are established in institutional and interpersonal contexts. For instance, when a girl decides to stop playing “rough” to avoid being called a “tomboy,” she is internalizing the socially constructed criteria of being a girl which she had learned from her family as well as her peers.

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People create these categories of difference based on their beliefs. For instance, European explorers created separate categories for reference to the people who were indigenous to the lands which the European explorers “discovered.” When the European explorers encountered people who looked different from them, their assumptions regarding the origin of the human species became questionable. As a result, religious debates about creation, and creation of a single species of humanity, led to questions about the possibility of the natives of the New World to be “saved,” and how they should be treated. European settlers deemed themselves as children of God, and indigenous people as “other,” accordingly the European settlers maintained their world view.

III. Radical Humanist View Any mode of inequality involves a social process through which a powerful group of humans (top dogs) reaps benefits for itself at the expense of a less powerful group (underdogs). The process is constituted by an institutionalized struggle over power, status, and wealth. The four most important and most common modes of inequality are as follows: (1) gender, (2) race, (3) class, and (4) nation. These four modes of inequality overlap and reinforce each other.40 Inequality, more specifically, is a whole complex of “modes,” “practices,” “enabling myths,” “focal points,” and “antidotes.” To each mode of inequality, corresponds a set of “practices” in which the top dogs take advantage of the underdogs, i.e., such “practices” ensure that the top dogs win. To each mode of inequality, also corresponds a set of “enabling myths” that culturally enforce the “practices” by making the game seem fair to both the top dogs and the underdogs. To each mode of inequality, also corresponds a “focal point,” which is a particular institution where in the inequality resides – i.e., where the myths justifying the mode of inequality are learned, and the practices 40

For this literature, see Abdela, Drago, and Shulman (2004), Barker and Feiner (2004), Burrell (2010), Chakrabarty, Roberts and Preston (2013), Coates (2011), Crenshaw, Gotanda, Peller and Thomas (1995), Delgado (2012), Dugger (1996), Ehrlich (1973), Essed and Goldberg (2002), Feagin (2006), Feiner and Morgan (1987), Feiner and Roberts (1990), Frankfurt Institute for Social Research (1972), Held (1980), Johnson (2006), LadsonBillings (2009), Lynn and Dixson (2013), Miles (2000), Mills (1997), Ore (2010), Parker and Lynn (2009), Saunders and Darity (2003), Sherman (1996), Sidanius and Pratto (2001), Stefancic and Delgado (2013), Taylor (2009), Taylor, Gillborn and Ladson-Billings (2009), Valdes, Culp and Harris (2002), Young (1990), and Zamudio, Russell, Rios and Bridgeman (2011). This section is based on Dugger (1996).

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realizing it actually take place. The “focal point” of a mode of inequality changes as the mode of inequality evolves. To each mode of inequality, also corresponds an “antidote,” which is a set of values, meanings, and beliefs, that can debunk the “enabling myths.” Inequality – as a whole complex of “modes,” “practices,” “enabling myths,” “focal points,” and “antidotes” – does not reach a balance of forces, i.e., equilibrium, because it involves an interacting process of cumulative causation in which inequality either gets better or worse, i.e., it seldom, if ever, stays the same. Values play a central role in inequality. Values either rationalize inequality by making it seem fair and true, or values debunk inequality by exposing its injustice and falsehood. People may pretend to be value neutral about inequality, but they never are. Table 1 classifies all the modes, practices, myths, and antidotes of the four inequalities. Table 1. The whole complex of inequality Modes Practices Gender Domination Race Discrimination Class Exploitation Nation Predation

Myths Sexism Racism Classism Jingoism

Antidotes Feminism Civil Rights Economic Democracy Internationalism

III.1. Four Modes of Inequality Mode of inequality refers to the way in which one group gives offense and another group receives the offense. Individuals do not choose to join one group or the other, but they are assigned to one group by the operation of law, tradition, and myth. Culture and coercion are the operative factors, not the individual preference and choice.

III.1.1. Gender Inequality Gender inequality is the practice of the domination of one gender by another. Nowadays, men dominate women through various gendered practices. These practices are justified and supported by myths regarding female inferiority and male superiority. These myths constitute the substance of sexism. Sexist myths not only enable men to dominate women without having guilt conscious, but also numb women so that they can be dominated without mass rebellion or suicide. Those who transcend sexist myths, form the antidote to gender inequality, which is called “feminism.”

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Females are taught by their culture to behave like women; and males are taught by their culture to behave like men. Nowadays, the males are expected to be superior to the females, and the females are expected to be inferior to the males.

III.1.2. Race Inequality Race inequality is the practice of one race discriminating against another race. Nowadays, its most significant crystallization is white Europeans discriminating against either black Africans or other people of color. It is justified by myths regarding African, Asian, and Latin American inferiority and white European superiority. These myths constitute the substance of prevailing racism. Racist myths not only enable white Europeans to discriminate against non-European people of color without having guilt conscious, but also numb such people of color so that they can take their unfair treatment without fully realizing that it is unfair. Those who transcend racist myths, form the antidote to discrimination, which is called “civil rights.” Race, like gender, is as much cultural as it is biological. For instance, in the United States, “African American” is as much a cultural as a biological grouping. It does not, on the one hand, include all people whose skin is black, such as people from India, Melanesia, Sri Lanka, and Native Australians, who have their own problems and suffer from their own injustices. The group of “African Americans,” on the other hand, includes some people whose skin is white, i.e., the white skin people whose ancestors were seized for slaves in Africa and forcibly transported to the Americas. It has been miscegenation and a whole set of laws, traditions, and myths that has forced generations of “African Americans” into an inferior position relative to “white” Europeans. It should be noted that cultural learning, not genetics, has been the principal factor operating throughout their history. III.1.3. Class Inequality Class inequality in capitalism, is the practice of the exploitation of the workers by the capitalists. In Soviet communism, the exploitation of workers took place by the nomenklatura. Class exploitation is justified and supported, in the West, by the myths about market efficiency, while in the East, it was done by the myth about the dictatorship of the proletariat. Class myths not only enable a powerful class to exploit a powerless class without having the guilt conscious, but also numb the powerless class to bear with the hardship of the exploitation. Those who transcend class myths, form the antidote to exploitation, which is called “economic democracy.”

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Individuals are grouped into classes based on how they appropriate their incomes, and how large their incomes are. The upper class is composed of capitalists and those who have appropriated large incomes for themselves, and have prevented the lower classes from doing the same. The middle class is composed of those who want to appropriate large incomes but lack the differential advantage needed to do so. Members of the lower class are far from having the desires of the middle class. Among classes, there is a limited opportunity for individual choice, merit, and luck. Notwithstanding, an individual’s membership in a particular class is determined primarily by the class which the individual is born into, rather than that individual’s rise or fall. Although class is an economic category, it is also strongly affected by cultural factors. Youth learning about beliefs, values, and meanings takes place through school, family, and religion, and it varies by class. In this way, the youth learn and accept the appropriate class role, and grow up as a welladjusted person.

III.1.4. Nation Inequality Nation inequality is the practice of the predation of powerful nations on weak nations. It is justified and supported by jingoistic myths regarding national honor and foreign treachery. Jingoistic myths not only enable the members of powerful nations to take pride in the preying of the members of weak nations without having guilt conscious, but also numb the members of the weak nations to bear the hardship of being preyed on. Those who transcend jingoistic myths, form the antidote to national predation, which is called “internationalism.” People are grouped into separate nations based on arbitrary geopolitical boundaries that divide people into nationals and foreigners. A nation is an area controlled by one state; and allegiance is made to that state and against others. Cultural, educational, ethnic, religious, and language differences may further differentiate the people in one state from those in another. When these differences are combined with the power and propaganda of the nation-state, they result in a very effective mode of inequality. For instance, individuals who find themselves identified as French, German, Italian, or Russian are not so by nature; rather, they have been taught these identities. People are taught that foreigners are untrustworthy, ignorant, brutal, and inferior. Based on this propaganda, state leaders use their jingoism either for gaining support for attacks against other nations, or for mounting a defense against (imagined) attacks. States create formidable security agencies to implement the groupings. Security agencies such as the former Soviet State Security

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Committee (KGB), as well as the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) serve as the focal points of nationalism.

III.2. Four Practices of Inequality Each of the four practices of inequality is multifaceted, and therefore, each practice is discussed separately.

III.2.1. Domination The institutionalized focal point of the domination of women by men in patriarchal societies is the family. An institution, e.g., the family, consists of a group of people who perform their activities according to a set of rules which are justified by a common set of values, beliefs, and meanings. As the members of the group perform their activities according to such rules, they internalize the values, beliefs, and meanings that justify the rules. Domination within the patriarchal family involves the male parent, i.e., the patriarch, exercising power over the other family members, and appropriating most of the family status, wealth, and power. All the members of the family, including the female parent, accept the rules that support the male parent’s practices because they accept the values, beliefs, and meanings that support such practices. All the members of the family come to believe that family means the patriarchal family only, and that no other types of family are possible. This mind set – which consists of values, beliefs, and meanings that support male domination within the family – also spreads to other social institutions. III.2.2. Discrimination In the United States, the focal point for discrimination against African Americans was slavery and the process of production. Despite its variation, slavery was always supported by a racist culture, according to which Europeans were considered to be the superiors and Africans to be the inferiors. The racist culture dehumanized Africans, and turned them into property, which could be bought and sold. Slavery was always coercive. Racism did not end with the abolition of slavery. Racism supports various discriminatory practices which are diffused throughout the economy, society, and polity. The practice of discrimination has become institutionalized in various bureaucracies of modern society, has been joined by male domination over females, upper class exploitation of the lower class, and the predation of the chosen people on foreigners.

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III.2.3. Exploitation The focal point in capitalism is the hierarchical workplace, in which owners hire workers to produce commodities, which will be sold for as high a profit as possible. They seek a differential economic advantage that will allow them to appropriate more income at the expense of those who do not have such advantages. Such advantages are usually obtained through property ownership. Owners increase their incomes by lowering wages and increasing the prices of their products. III.2.4. Predation The nation state is the focal point for predation, which is practiced by war and diplomacy. Nation states seek favorable treatment for their elite groups of capitalist corporations and state bureaucracies (military or civilian). The most successful predator nations build empires by forming alliances with other predators, and deal with opposing nations by either occupying them, subjecting them to unfavorable trade relations, or setting up puppet regimes within them. Predation enables the predatory apparatus of each state to extract status, power, and wealth from the population of that state in the name of defending the homeland and national security, even though these occur at the expense of the reduction of the liberties of citizens and the increase in their taxes.

III.3. Myths as the Cultural Support of Inequality Myths are primarily stereotypes which are believed by the beneficiaries of inequality, such as what men believe about women, European Americans believe about African Americans, the upper class believes about the lower class, and the chosen people believe about foreigners. In addition, myths justify the inequality in the minds of both its victims and its beneficiaries. In order to prevent the victims from unrest, they must be taught that their treatment is not unfair. In order to prevent the beneficiaries from having guilt conscience they must be taught that their advantages are due them. Teaching the victims is much harder than teaching the beneficiaries. This is because it is easy to convince the beneficiaries that they deserve all the good things that come their way. It is much harder to convince the victims that they deserve all the bad things that come their way. Teaching to the victims is much more

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important than teaching to the beneficiaries, and therefore, it is the primary function of myths. Myths not only instill superiority in the top dogs and inferiority in the underdogs, but also, they create “otherness,” i.e., centrality and marginality. That is, in order for one to be superior, an “other” must be inferior. Similarly, in order for one to be at the center of things, an “other” must be on the margin. For instance, the myths of sexism put males at the center of humanity and females on the margin. –

III.3.1. Sexism as the Myths That Support Gender Inequality Sexist myths begin with “otherness,” in which males are the center, and females, as the “others,” are the margin. Thus, “mankind” or “man” is used to refer to human species, but “womankind” or “woman” is used to refer to women, the margin. This forms the foundation of the justification for males dominating females. Public activities – which yield wealth, status, and power – are for men. Private activities – which do not yield wealth, status, and power – are for women. Men can speak better in public; are more intelligent and articulate; are better bosses; are less emotional; and more straightforward and honest in the pursuit of goals. Women are too emotional and intuitive; and less straightforward. Women who internalize these myths find it easier to put up with their narrowed role in life. Men who internalize these myths find it easier to exclude women and have no guilt conscience. III.3.2. Racism as the Myths That Support Race Discrimination Racist myths also begin with “otherness,” in which, in the United States, the European is the one, and the African American is the other. In the United States, culture, e.g., literature and art, refers to the culture of white Europeans. Racial myths exist in the realm of magic and superstition, not that of fact and experience. They emanate from the otherness of the African American in the mind of the European American. Racial myths enable “whites” to take advantage of “blacks.” However, they are psychologically grounded in magic and in superstitious. III.3.3. Classism as the Myths That Support Class Exploitation Classist myths consist of a set of components: (a) the free market system is neutral in regards to class, and therefore, it involves no class exploitation; (b) the capitalist/Western world operates on a free market system; (c) the free market system involves individual competition, which results in benefits for all. According to these myths, the free market system through market

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competition, not differential economic advantage, distributes income. The underdogs can improve their position by working harder, being smarter, and saving more. If they do not succeed, it is their own fault. When the victims of inequality actually believe in these myths, then the top dogs are safe.

III.3.4. Jingoism as the Myths that Support National Predation In the United States, jingoism is used to mean that “Americans” are “the one,” and foreigners are “the other.” Jingoism involves denial and projection, and is used to justify attacks on foreign nations. More specifically, when the predatory apparatus of the United States attacks another nation, the attack is accompanied by: (a) the denial of the United States’ own hostile intentions, and (b) the projection of hostile intentions onto the nation being attacked. Myths simultaneously do four related things: (a) they provide a rationalization of privilege; (b) they create the “otherness” of the victim; (c) they create a superstitious apprehension of the unknown, “other,” in the minds of the top dogs; and (d) they encourage the underdogs to blame themselves for injustices.

III.3.5. Antidotes for Inequality Inequality must be attacked through its myths and practices. The myths of inequality must be debunked by the churches, the schools, the sciences, the arts, and the social movements. The actual practices of inequality must be transformed through collective action by the unions, the professional associations, the corporate boards, the courts, the legislatures, and the social movements.

IV. Radical Structuralist View A large amount of empirical research has documented that there are persistent divisions among American workers. They are divided by race, sex, educational credentials, industry grouping, and so forth. These groups practically operate in different labor markets that have different working conditions, different promotional opportunities, different wages, and different market institutions.41 41

For this literature, see Aptheker (1948), Bonacich (1972, 1976), Bowles and Gintis (1947), Braverman (1974), Cox (2000), Edwards, Reich, and Gordon (1975), Edwards, Reich, and

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The continuing divisions in the labor market is anomalous to neoclassical economists. The orthodox theory assumes that profit maximizing behavior of employers leads to the evaluation of workers in terms of their individual characteristics, and therefore, predicts that labor market differences among various groups will decline over time due to of competitive mechanisms. However, by most measures, the labor market differences among various groups have not been declining. Thus, the continuing importance of the existence of various groups in the labor market is neither explained nor predicted by orthodox theory. A radical theory of labor market segmentation can explain the reason that the labor force is, generally, still so fragmented; and that group characteristics are, repeatedly, so important in the labor market. This radical theory of labor market segmentation argues that economic forces within American capitalism have not only given rise to, but also perpetuated segmented labor markets. It further argues that it is incorrect to view the sources of segmented labor markets as exogenous to the economic system.

IV.1. Prevalence of Labor Market Segmentation Labor market segmentation can be considered as the historical process through which economic and political forces lead the division of the labor market into separate submarkets, or segments, which have different labor market characteristics and behavioral rules. That is, segmented labor markets are the outcome of a segmentation process. Segments may cut vertically as well as horizontally, i.e., across the occupational hierarchy. The prevailing labor market conditions can most usefully be understood as the outcome of four segmentation processes, as follows.

IV.1.1. Segmentation into Primary and Secondary Markets The primary and secondary segments – which is the terminology used in the dual labor market theory – are distinguished primarily by the stability characteristics of the job. Primary jobs share common characteristics as follows: (a) they require and develop stable working habits; (b) they provide Weisskopf (1978), Fanon (2008), Foster and McChesney (2004), Gordon (1972), Gorz (1978), Humphries (1976), Longhi (2013), Marglin (1978), Reich (1978, 1981), Reich, Gordon, and Edwards (1973), Rose (1951), Smith, Collins, Hopkins, and Muhammad (1988), Sokoloff (1988), Stevenson (1988), Wallerstein (2000), Wright (1978), and Wright, Costello, and Sprague (1982). This section is based on Reich, Gordon, and Edwards (1973).

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extensive on the job skill training; (c) they pay relatively higher wages; and (d) they offer the opportunity for climbing the job ladder. Secondary jobs share common characteristics as follows: (a) they do not require and often discourage stable working habits; (b) they provide minimal on the job skill training; (c) they pay relatively much lower wages; (d) they offer very few opportunities for climbing the job ladder; (e) they experience high turnover rate; and (f) they are filled mainly, though not exclusively, by minority workers, women, and youth.

IV.1.2. Segmentation within the Primary Sector Within the primary sector there is a segmentation between what can be called “subordinate” primary jobs and “independent” primary jobs. Subordinate primary jobs share common characteristics as follows: (a) they are routinized; (b) they encourage personality characteristics of dependability, discipline, responsiveness to rules and authority, and acceptance of the firm’s goals. Examples of subordinate primary jobs are factory and office jobs. In contrast, independent primary jobs share common characteristics as follows: (a) they encourage and require personality characteristics of creativity, problemsolving, and self-initiating; (b) they often have professional standards for work; (c) they have relatively high voluntary turnover; and (d) they highly reward individual motivation and achievement. IV.1.3. Segmentation by Race Although minority workers have jobs in the secondary segment, subordinate primary segment, and independent primary segment, they are often led to distinct sub-segments within those labor market segments. There are certain jobs which are “race-typed,” i.e., they are segregated by prejudice and by labor market institutions. In these cases, the divisions between race-segments are often maintained by geographic separation. IV.1.4. Segmentation by Sex Particular jobs have generally been reserved for men, and others for women. Female segments share common characteristics as follows: (a) they usually offer lower wages than offered in comparable male jobs; and (b) they often require and encourage a “serving mentality,” i.e., having an orientation toward providing services to other people and especially to men. These characteristics are encouraged during upbringing in institutions such as family and school.

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IV.1.5. The Historical Origins of Labor Market Segmentation The prevailing divisions in the labor market are best understood through an historical analysis of their development from their origins. As will be noted, these labor market segmentations have arisen during the economic transition from competitive capitalism to monopoly capitalism. For this purpose, the historical analysis focuses on the era of monopoly capitalism, i.e., from around 1890 to the present, and places special emphasis on the earlier years of such transition. During the preceding period, i.e., competitive capitalism, labor market developments had an orientation toward the increasing homogenization of the labor force, not toward segmentation. The factory system eliminated many skill-crafted occupations, and created a large number of semiskilled jobs. Production was made for a mass market; and increased mechanization led to standardized work requirements. Large establishments housed large numbers of workers in common working environments. With the emergence of monopoly capitalism, the labor force – which was characterized by having become increasingly homogeneous and proletarian – generated tensions which were manifest in the tremendous upsurge in labor conflicts: in railroads dating back to 1877, in steel before 1901 and again in 1919, in coal mining during and after the First World War, in textile mills throughout the same period, and in countless other plants and industries around the United States. The success of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the emergence of a strong Socialist party, the general (as opposed to industry-specific) strikes in Seattle and New Orleans, the mass labor revolts in 1919 and 1920, and the increasingly national character of the labor movement throughout this period were based on a general, widespread, and growing opposition to capitalist hegemony. Increasingly, strikes which began just over wage issues gained momentum and moved towards much more general issues. While the work force was becoming more homogeneous, oligopolistic corporations, which still dominate the economy today, began not only to emerge, but also to consolidate their power. The leaders in the new era of monopoly capitalism, who had been released from short-run competitive pressures, were in search of long-run stability, and therefore, planned for the capture of strategic control over product and factor markets. That is, their new concerns became the creation and implementation of monopolistic control, rather than their old concern regarding allocation based on the calculus of short-run profit-maximization.

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Monopoly capitalism’s new needs for control were threatened by the consequences of the changes in the characters of the labor force, which was becoming increasingly homogeneous and proletarian. There is a large body of evidence which shows that the owners of large corporations were at pains when they became aware of the potentially revolutionary character of labor force movements. Indeed, the employers’ mass offensive on unions, between 1903 and 1908, was more geared toward ideology than specific demands. At the same time, the formation of the National Civic Federation (NCF) – which consisted of a group dominated by large “progressive” capitalists – was another observable manifestation of the fundamental crises which the capitalist class was facing. Employers, to meet this threat, actively and consciously promoted and supported the implementation of labor market segmentation in order to “divide and conquer” the labor force. Moreover, the efforts of monopolistic corporations, which was aimed at gaining greater control over their product markets, led to a dichotomization of the industrial structure which unintentionally, but indirectly and desirably, reinforced their conscious strategies. Thus, labor market segmentation was the result of both conscious strategies and systemic forces. Although in this historical analysis, more space is allocated to employers’ conscious efforts, it should not be interpreted as if systemic forces are not active as underlying forces. IV.1.6. Conscious Efforts Monopoly capitalist corporations deliberately planned strategies in order to advantageously resolve the contradictions between the work force’s increased proletarianization and the corporate’s growth, consolidation, and concentration. At the core of the new corporate strategy was the plan to break down the increasingly unified workers’ interests which arose out of the proletarianization of work and the concentration of workers in urban areas. Several aspects of these large firms’ operations exhibited that their new strategy aimed at dividing the labor force into various segments so that the actual experiences of different groups of workers were different and therefore, the basis of workers’ common opposition to capitalists were undermined. Large corporation’s efforts were “conscious” in the sense that, as capitalists, they faced immediate major problematic events and in response they devised strategies to meet them. However, capitalists’ strategies were not “conscious” in the sense that the capitalists who devised them understood fully the historical forces acting upon them, or understood all the ramifications of their strategies. In certain cases, capitalists acted based on a broader class consciousness. Those strategies which were successful, as a result were copied.

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In corporate strategy, the first component was related to the internal relations of the corporation. Because of the tremendous growth in the size of monopoly capitalist work forces, and because of the demise of craft-governed production, there arose the need for a change in the authority relations in the corporation which underlay the control relations in the corporation. One of the changes in this area was Taylorism, i.e., Scientific Management, which involved the establishment of personnel departments, experimentation with different organizational structures, and the use of the services of industrial psychologists, i.e., “human relations experts,” in order to devise proper ‘"motivating” incentives, and so forth. The implementation of Taylorism led to the intensification of hierarchical control, especially the “bureaucratic form” of modern corporations. For instance, in the steel industry, shortly after the formation of U.S. Steel, an entirely new system of stratified jobs was introduced. In practice, bureaucratization established a rigidly graded hierarchy of jobs and power, based on which “top-down” authority could be exercised. In restructuring the internal relations of the firm, capitalist corporations created segmented “internal labor markets,” and in this way, enhanced labor market segmentation. They created job ladders, which had specific “entrylevel” jobs and defined patterns of promotion. White-collar workers joined the firm’s work force and then they were promoted within this segment of the firm’s workers. This was in contrast to the treatment which was received by the blue-collar production workforce. More specifically, workers who did not have the qualifications for specific entry-level jobs were excluded from having access to the entirety of the corresponding job ladder. In response, labor unions often demanded a seniority criterion for promotion so that they could gain freedom from the arbitrary discretionary power of supervisors. Unions who succeeded in such endeavors, essentially took over the management of the internal labor markets. That is, they allocated workers and disciplined recalcitrant workers. Unions, thus, helped to legitimize the internal market, in exchange for some degree of control over the operation of the internal market. The emphasis on the efforts which were directed at internal control eventually resulted in labor market segmentation by industry. Firms initially set policies to raise the cost to workers for leaving their company, but not the cost of entering their company. Such policies were based on firms granting certain benefits only to those employees who continued their employment in their company. Part of this strategy was “welfare capitalism,” which emerged, in particular, from the National Civic Federation (NCF), and became most pronounced in the advanced industries. For instance, at Ford, only those

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workers who continued their employment at Ford were able to receive benefits, including benefits such as education for the workers’ children, and credit. In this way, workers were more securely tied to the firm. This is because the worker’s loss of job meant a complete disruption in all aspects of his family’s life. In addition, worker’s seniority benefits were lost when a worker switched companies. Later, when industrial unions gained power, they were able to transform some of such firm-specific benefits to industry-wide privileges. However, the net effect of all of these efforts was an intensification of labor market segmentation not only internally, but also industry-wide, which, as will be discussed next, had other origins as well. While capitalist corporations were segmenting their internal labor markets, similarly they were active with respect to their external relations. More specifically, employers quite consciously took advantage of existing race, ethnic, and sex antagonisms in order to counter unionism and break strikes. During the consolidation of monopoly capitalism, many times, employers manipulated the mechanisms of labor supply by importing blacks as strikebreakers; and employers stirred up racial hostility in order to divert attention from class conflicts to race conflicts. For instance, during the steel strike of 1919, which has been one of the critical points in U.S. history, in a short few week, many black (30,000 to 40,000) were imported as strikebreakers. Employers also often designated some jobs as “female jobs” in order to make such jobs less susceptible to unionization. Employers also consciously took advantage of ethnic antagonisms in order to achieve labor market segmentation. For this purpose, employers often hired workers from rival nationalities whether in the same plant or in different plants. During labor unrest, the companies sent spies and rumor mongers to each ethnic group in order to stir up fears and antagonisms of other ethnic groups. Their strategy was most effective when many groups of immigrant workers had little command of English language. Employers also turned to educational “credentials” as a relatively new divisive means. They used educational credentials to regulate job skill requirements. Employers played an active role in changing educational institutions to fit these channeling functions. The new educational requirements performed the following two tasks: (a) they perpetuated the distinctions between factory workers and the workers in routinized office jobs; and (b) they generated some strong divisions among the office workers, i.e., between semi-skilled white-collar workers and the more highly skilled office workers.

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IV.1.7. Systemic Forces The rise of giant corporations and the emergence of a monopolistic core reinforced segmentation. As different firms and industries grew at different rates, a dichotomy within the industrial structure developed. The larger, more capital-intensive firms were sheltered by barriers to entry; and enjoyed economies of scale in technology, market power, and finance; and enjoyed higher rates of profit and growth than their smaller, labor-intensive competitive counterparts. Large monopolistic corporations, with their large capital investments, required stable market demand and stable planning horizons to ensure that their investments would not go unutilized. Where demand was unstable, production was subcontracted or “exported” to small, more competitive and less capital-intensive firms on the industrial periphery. The dualism in the industrial structure led to the development of a dualism of working environments, wages, and mobility patterns. Monopoly corporations developed stable job structures and internal relations that reflected the stability in their production and sales. Peripheral firms developed unstable job structures that reflected the instability in their production and sales. The result of such systemic forces was the dichotomization of the urban labor market into “primary” and “secondary” sectors. IV.1.8. The Social Functions of Labor Market Segmentation As the preceding historical analysis has shown, labor market segmentation is inherently related to the dynamics of monopoly capitalism. The labor market segmentation was initiated and perpetuated because it facilitates the operation of capitalist institutions. Segmentation helps to reproduce capitalist hegemony. First, segmentation divides workers and prevents their unity against employers. Second, segmentation establishes “fire trails” across vertical job ladders, and workers tend to perceive separate segments with different criteria for access, and therefore limit their own aspirations for mobility. As a result, less pressure is placed on other social institutions, such as family and school, which reproduce the class structure. Third, segmentation legitimizes inequalities in authority and control between superiors and subordinates. In this context, for instance, institutional sexism and racism reinforce the industrial authority of white male foremen. IV.1.9. Political Implications Labor market segmentation is one of the principal barriers to the united anticapitalist opposition among workers. This segmentation has penetrated into the class consciousness of workers. A better understanding of the endogenous

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nature of labor market segmentation helps to explain the difficulties involved in overcoming divisions among workers. This chapter briefly discussed four views expressed with respect to discrimination. The functionalist paradigm conceptualizes discrimination as a personal prejudice based on socially appropriate roles. The interpretive paradigm believes the categories of difference with regard to race/ethnicity, social class, sex/gender, and sexuality are socially constructed and socially transformed into systems of inequality. The radical humanist paradigm believes that any mode of inequality involves a social process through which a powerful group of humans (top dogs) reaps benefits for itself at the expense of a less powerful group (underdogs). The radical structuralist paradigm believes that economic forces within capitalism have not only given rise to, but also perpetuated segmented labor markets. Each paradigm is logically coherent – in terms of its underlying assumptions – and conceptualizes and studies the phenomenon in a certain way, and generates distinctive kinds of insight and understanding. Therefore, different paradigms in combination provide a broader and a balanced understanding of the phenomenon under consideration. An understanding of different paradigms leads to a better understanding of the multi-faceted nature of the phenomenon.

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Ehrlich, Howard J., 1973, Social Psychology of Prejudice: A Systematic Theoretical Review and Propositional Inventory of the American Social Psychological Study of Prejudice, New York, New York: Wiley. England, Paula, 1992, Comparable Worth: Theories and Evidence, New York, New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Essed, Philomena and Goldberg, David Theo, (eds.), 2002, Race Critical Theories: Text and Context, Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, Ltd. Fanon, Frantz, 2008, Black Skin, White Masks, New York, New York: Grove Press. Feagin, Joe R., 2006, Systemic Racism: A Theory of Oppression, New York, New York: Routledge. Feiner, Susan F. and Morgan, Barbara A., 1987, “Women and Minorities in Introductory Economics Textbooks: 1974 to 1979,” Journal of Economic Education, 18:4, 376392. Feiner, Susan F. and Roberts, Bruce B., 1990, “Hidden by the Invisible Hand: Neoclassical Economic Theory and the Textbook Treatment of Race and Gender,” Gender and Society, 4:2, 159-181. Fershtman, Chaim, and Gneezy, Uri, 2001, “Discrimination in a Segmented Society: An Experimental Approach,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 106:1, February, 351–377. Figart, Deborah M., 2005, “Gender as More Than a Dummy Variable: Feminist Approaches to Discrimination,” Review of Social Economy, 63:3, September, 509-536. Foster, John Bellamy and McChesney, Robert W., 2004, Pox Americana: Exposing the American Empire, New York, New York: Monthly Review Press. Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, 1972, “Prejudice,” in Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, Aspects of Sociology, Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press, Chapter 11, pp. 169-181. Friedman, Milton, 2002, Capitalism and Freedom, Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press. Fuchs, Victor R., 1986, “His and Hers: Gender Differences in Work and Income, 19591979” Journal of Labor Economics, 4:3, July, 245-272. Gordon, David M., 1972, Theories of Poverty and Unemployment: Orthodox, Radical, and Dual Labor Market Perspectives, Lexington, Massachusetts: Lexington Books. Gorz, Andre, (ed.), 1978, The Division of Labor: The Labor Process and Class Struggle in Modern Capitalism, London, England: Harvestor Press. Greenwood, Daphe, 1984, “The Institutional Inadequacy of the Market in Determining Comparable Worth: Implications for Value Theory,” Journal of Economic Issues, 18:2, June, 457-464. Gronau, Reuben, 1988, “Sex-Related Wage Differentials and Women’s Interrupted Labor Careers – The Chicken or the Egg,” Journal of Labor Economics, 6:3, July, 277-301. Gunderson, Morley, 1989, “Male-Female Wage Differentials and Policy Responses,” Journal of Economics Literature, 27:1, March, 46-72. Heckman, James J., 1998, “Detecting Discrimination,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 12:2, spring, 101–116. Held, David, 1980, Introduction to Critical Theory, Berkeley, California: University of California Press.

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Chapter 9

Multiculturalism: Four Paradigmatic Views Any explanation of multiculturalism is based on a worldview. The premise of this book is that any worldview can be associated with one of the four broad paradigms: functionalist, interpretive, radical humanist, and radical structuralist. This chapter takes the case of multiculturalism and discusses it from the four different viewpoints. It emphasizes that the four views expressed are equally scientific and informative; they look at the phenomenon from their certain paradigmatic viewpoint; and together they provide a broader and a balanced understanding of the phenomenon under consideration. In this chapter, Sections I through IV present the four perspectives.

I. Functionalist View Multiculturalism is a new word. The Oxford English Dictionary traces it back to the late 50s and early 60s. But, people have lived in societies that were, for much of their history, multicultural. Apart from the word, there is nothing new in it. It is simply a return to how we were before the triumph of nationalism and its ideology some hundred and fifty years ago. For, it was not until the triumph of nationalism that the thought which seems so natural as to be almost inescapable to us, that is the thought that only common ethnicity, a common language, and a common culture can constitute the cement which bonds a political community, became the commonplace that it is today. The ideology of one nation one state was, however, responsible for many of the acts of oppression that Europe has known over the last two centuries, and for much of the misery that parts of Europe experience today. In a way, multiculturalism is one of the strands in modern political thought that is trying to undo some of the harm done by nationalism.42 42

For this literature, see Auster (1991), Brookhiser (1992), Cheney (1988, 1989, 1990, 1993), Degenaar (1987), D’Sousa (1992), Glazer (1997), Glazer and Moynihan (1970), Gordon (1975, 1981), Hollis (1999), Kimball (1992), Kymlicka (1995), Morton (1985), Raz (1994, 1998), Ravitch (1990), Schlesinger (1991), Sowell (1991), and van den Berghe (1981). This section is based on Raz (1998).

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The most basic challenge to multiculturalism is the moral challenge: Why multiculturalism? What is the moral reason for trying to go down this road in the first place? Our countries are, no doubt, far from ideal. But, we uphold certain ideals, which are called the ideals of Western Liberalism, or the ideals of Western Social Democracy. These combine an endorsement of democratic government, individual liberties, a welfare state, and a market driven economy. Liberal politics arise out of the application of a universal humanistic morality to the conditions of the Western capitalist societies in their postindustrial stage. Within the political frameworks that these principles sanction, and that to a lesser or greater degree do in fact prevail in the western democracies, cultural institutions can and sometimes do flourish, various churches can and do operate, diversity is unhindered, and no legitimate human interests are ignored. So, what is the moral need for a new ideal, that of multiculturalism? In a way, multiculturalism is not a new doctrine. Morality is after all universal, and therefore, immutable. Moreover, the fundamentals of morality, in as much as they apply to us, are not a mystery. In one way or another, they are known. Rather, multiculturalism brings with it a new way of conceiving an old truth, putting it center stage, not letting us forget about it. It reflects a new sensitivity to the facts that establish this moral truth. And, in particular, it warns us against the dangers of each one of us understanding the universal in terms of him- or her-self, a danger that is particularly great when the other is an alien in our country, when we are at home, and he/she is not. We should not think of multiculturalism primarily as an ethical or political theory, but as a way of marking a renewed sensitivity, a heightened awareness of certain issues and certain needs people encounter in today’s political reality. It is the diverse forms that multiculturalism takes in different countries that make it difficult to think of multiculturalism as more than a new moral sensitivity. The multicultural policies appropriate in different countries vary greatly, and any useful generalizations one can think of allow for many exceptions. Nevertheless, multiculturalism is more than just a new moral sensitivity. What we may call Liberal Multiculturalism is a normative precept motivated by concern for the dignity and well-being of all human beings. It is a precept that affirms that, in the circumstances of contemporary Western societies, a political attitude of fostering and encouraging the prosperity, cultural and material, of cultural groups, and respecting their identity, is justified. This precept has far-reaching ramifications. It calls on us radically to reconceive society, changing its self-image. We should learn to think of our

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societies as consisting not of a majority and minorities, but as constituted by a plurality of cultural groups. Naturally, such developments take a long period to come to fruition, and they cannot be secured through government action alone, as they require a widespread change in attitude. The current attitude of the population at large, and the speed with which it accepts the precepts of multiculturalism, set limits on the practicability and good sense of proceeding with various concrete policies to advance and implement liberal multiculturalism. But, we must think long term to set short-term policies within a sensible context. The size of cultural groups and their viability are additional variables affecting the way various concrete measures should be pursued. Where publicly funded programs are called for, relative size is inevitably a consideration. So is viability. There is no point in trying to prop up by public action cultures that have lost their vitality, that have become moribund and whose communities – usually their young members – drift away from them. Of course, multiculturalism changes the prospects of survival for cultures it supports. That is its aim. But it recognizes that deliberate public policies can serve a useful purpose only if they find response in the population they are meant to serve. They can serve to facilitate developments desired by the population, but not to force cultural activities down the throats of an indifferent population. The more concrete policies, which become appropriate gradually, as developments justify, will be varied and highly dependent on local conditions. They will include measures like the following: 1) The young of all cultural groups of significant size should be educated, if their parents so desire, in the culture of their groups. But all of them should also be educated to be familiar with the history and traditions of all the main cultures in the country and an attitude of respect for them should be cultivated. 2) The different customs and practices of the different groups should, within the limits of permissible toleration, be recognized in law and by all public bodies in society, as well as by private companies and organizations that serve the public, be it as large employers, providers of services, and in other ways. At the moment, petty intolerance is rife in many countries. 3) It is crucial to break the link between poverty, under-education, and ethnicity. So long as certain ethnic groups are so overwhelmingly over-represented among the poor, ill-educated, unskilled, and semiskilled workers the possibilities of cultivating respect for their

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cultural identity, even the possibility of members of the group being able to have self-respect and to feel pride in their cultures, are greatly undermined. 4) There should be a generous policy of public support for autonomous cultural institutions, such as communal charities, voluntary organizations, libraries, museums, theatre, dance, musical, or other artistic groups. Here (as in education) the policy calls for allocation of public resources. In the competition for them, the size of the groups concerned is an important factor. It works in two ways. By and large, it favors the larger groups with a more committed membership. But it also calls for disproportionate support for small groups that are strong enough to pass the viability test. Given that the overheads are significant, the per capita cost of support for small viable cultural groups is greater than for large ones. 5) Public space, streets, squares, parks, shopping arcades, etc. (as well as airtime on television) should accommodate all the cultural groups. Where they differ in their aesthetic sense, in their preferences for colors, patterns, smells, music, noise, and speed, the way to do so may involve dividing some public spaces between them, as often happens without direction in ethnic neighborhoods, while preserving others as common to all. These concrete multicultural policies are not for immediate implementation by any government. This is because they have to be assessed against local conditions and available alternatives. Of course, all such measures are designed to lead to relatively harmonious coexistence of non-oppressive and tolerant communities. They, therefore, have their limits. But it is important not to use false standards as tests of the limits of toleration. Similarly, the fact that tolerating certain practices of immigrant communities will lead to a change in the character of some neighborhoods or public spaces in one’s country is no reason for suppressing them. It is natural that we should wish to preserve the character of neighborhoods and public spaces. Our lives, and the quality of our lives, are bound up with them. But so are the lives of others, and many of them, be they the younger generation, that is our children, or members of other cultural groups, may find uncongenial what we find congenial. We owe them what we owe ourselves, that is the ability to feel at home in their own home, for once they have emigrated to a country it has become their home.

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Nevertheless, there are significant limits to toleration. One may mention four: First, all cultural communities should be denied the right to repress their own members. Second, no community has a right to be intolerant of those who do not belong to it. Third, the opportunity to leave one’s community must be a viable option for its members. Fourth, liberal multiculturalism will require all groups to allow their members access to adequate opportunities for selfexpression and for participation in the economic life of the country, and the cultivation of the attitudes and skills required for effective participation in the political culture of the state. People’s well-being consists in their success in valuable relationships and activities. Their social and other skills to engage in activities and pursue relationships derive from their own cultures, and their sense of their own dignity is bound up with their sense of themselves as members of certain cultures. Up to a point, people can retrain and acquire the skills needed to make a life in another culture. In a multicultural society, it is important to give people the opportunity to do so. But not all could do so, and not all would want to do so. The case for letting people have the chance to carry on with their own cultures and ways of life derives in part from the fact that people’s ability to retrain and adapt are limited. But the demand for a forced retraining and adaptation is liable to undermine people’s dignity and self-respect. It shows that the state, their state, has no respect for their culture, finds it inferior, and plots its elimination. So, the ethical challenge: why multiculturalism? is answered by our concern for the well-being and dignity of people. Multiculturalism rejects the thesis that a common nationality is necessary for the viability of a political community. But multiculturalism has to face a hard challenge: What can replace common nationality as the cementing bond of a political unit? The truth is that our understanding of the bonds that keep a political society together is very tenuous. There are serious dangers of acting immorally out of exaggerated fears and anxieties. One of the most familiar bonds that holds countries together is a common enemy. As we know, most commonly, though not exclusively, the enemy is a foreign country that represents a threat to one’s existence or to one’s vital interests. Sometimes it is an ideological enemy: an alien religion, or ideology. Sometimes, it is an enemy within. We should not strive for a state of perpetual cold or hot war in order to foster unity, because it is an immoral means. We should not let the need for a common bond lead us to policies of oppression against groups living in our countries.

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The question of a political bond is, of course, very important. Political societies are characterized by the fact that they claim authority over individuals, and in the name of that authority they not infrequently require individuals to make sacrifices for the benefit of other members of the same political society. Re-distributive taxation, regional policies, and all the institutions of the welfare state are examples of state institutions imposing sacrifices on some for the sake of others. The willingness to share is not purchased easily. Without it a political society soon disintegrates, or has to rely on extensive use of force and coercion. How is the willingness to share maintained? Some of the things which can be safely said about this question are true, but do not take us far enough. Members of a modern political society need to share a common culture. This is true, but it is easy to read exaggerated conclusions from this harmless observation. We know that a common culture does not mean a common religion, and it does not mean membership of a common ethnic or racial group. It does not even mean a common language, though the absence of a common language can be a nuisance. Stating that none of these is necessary for a willingness to share in a common political society does not mean that they do not help. They certainly do help where they are present. But they are not necessary, for the thought that political societies must be based on a common religion or race is not much more appealing than the suggestion that they must be based on a common enemy. So, what is the truth in the talk of the importance of a common culture? It is not easy to summarize. There are many diverse factors to consider. Here are a few: 



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First, for a country’s economy to function well there must be a general knowledge of the basic skills required for it: a more general sharing of the more general skills, a smattering of understanding, and a more specialized training in the more specialized skills. Second, a democratic political system depends on literacy, access to information, a certain understanding of political issues, and of political processes. Third, willingness to share depends on capacity for empathy. It depends on the ability of people to feel for others and that depends on their ability to understand and empathize with other people’s experiences, aspirations, and anxieties.

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A variety of factors contribute to the realization of these conditions: sharing in the same economic system leads to the acquisition of similar skills and to a shared understanding of the relatively technical aspect of how things work, and what people’s fortunes depend on. The existence of democratic institutions and of free mass media spreads a shared understanding of the nature of political processes, and of the constraints that political action must meet. It also familiarizes people with the lifestyles prevalent in society, and with other people’s points of view and aspirations. The existence of a common education, and of a multicultural syllabus that makes the cultures of all cultural groups familiar to all members of a society are essential to the spread of mutual understanding and respect. These are some of the factors that show the truth in the thesis that a common culture is necessary for a political society. But a common culture is not enough. In some sense, all European countries share a common culture, so do all those countries that once belonged to the French Empire, or to the British Empire. But this does not make them ready to participate in one political society. Other factors are important as well: restricting inequalities of income and wealth helps to limit gaps in life-expectancy, in health, and in general expectations; gaps that often make people on the opposite sides of the social and economic divide incapable of understanding and empathizing with each other. But none of this gets to the heart of the matter. And it is our limited understanding of what lies at the heart of the matter that accounts for our uncertainties. Ultimately, political unity depends on people’s free and willing identification with the political society they belong to: on the fact that they feel German, that their sense of their own identity as German is totally instinctive and unproblematic, as well as on the fact that they are proud to be German. Among the things which our very imperfect understanding of the condition of identification teaches us are the following few: First, identification involves a sense of belonging, of being a part of a larger whole. Second, people identify with a variety of groups and institutions: they belong to a family, to a workplace, to a party, to a sports club, to a religious group, etc. We know that multiple identifications do not generally conflict with each other. On the contrary, they are often mutually supportive. Third, it is particularly important that identification with a political society does not replace, but incorporates identification with other groups in that society. It is generally agreed that the communist attempt to suppress all other groups has

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been disastrous; and many studies nowadays emphasize the importance of the coexistence of a multiplicity of foci of identification. It is of vital importance for the ability of one group to be able to identify with a political society that their membership of the smaller group is respected by the political society; this applies to all aspects of identity. A political society that does not respect gays, or Christians, or black people, cannot expect that those it fails to respect will identify with it, and it does not deserve their allegiance. So an important condition of identification with a political society is that that society respects its members. To respect them, it has to respect their cultures, their religions, etc. To that extent, multiculturalism, far from being a threat to the common bond that unites a political society, is one of the factors contributing to it.

II. Interpretive View A number of strands in contemporary politics turn on the need, sometimes the demand, for recognition. The need, it can be argued, is one of the driving forces behind nationalist movements in politics. And the demand comes to the fore in a number of ways in today’s politics, on behalf of minority or “subaltern” groups, in some forms of feminism, and in what is today called the politics of “multiculturalism.”43 The demand for recognition in these latter cases is given urgency by the supposed links between recognition and identity. The thesis is that our identity is partly shaped by recognition or its absence – often by the misrecognition of others – and so a person or group of people can suffer real damage, real distortion, if the people or society around them mirror back to them a confining, demeaning, or contemptible picture of themselves. Nonrecognition or mis-recognition can inflict harm, can be a form of oppression, imprisoning someone in a false, distorted, and reduced mode of being. Due recognition is not just a courtesy we owe people, it is a vital human need. In order to examine some of the issues that have arisen here, we need to look first at how this discourse of recognition and identity got started. We can distinguish two changes that together have made the modern preoccupation with identity and recognition inevitable. The first is the collapse of social

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For this literature, see Gutmann (1994), Nash (1992), Rex (1986, 1991), Rosaldo (1988), Smelser and Alexander (1999), Taylor (1994), Tully (1995), Waldron (1992), Watson (2000), and Wieviorka (1998). This section is based on Taylor (1994).

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hierarchies, which used to be the basis for honor, which is intrinsically linked to inequalities. As against this notion of honor, we have the modern notion of dignity, now used in a universalist and egalitarian sense, where we talk of the inherent “dignity of human beings,” or of citizen dignity. It is obvious that this concept of dignity is the only one compatible with a democratic society. Democracy has ushered in a politics of equal recognition, which has taken various forms over the years, and has now returned in the form of demands for the equal status of cultures and of genders. But the importance of recognition has been modified and intensified by the new understanding of individual identity that emerges at the end of the eighteenth century. We might speak of an individualized identity, one that is particular to me, and that I discover in myself. This notion arises along with an ideal, that of being true to myself and my own particular way of being, i.e., the ideal of “authenticity.” To see what is new here, we have to see the analogy to earlier moral views, where being in touch with some source – for example, God, or the Idea of the Good – was considered essential to full being. But now, the source we have to connect with is deep within us. This fact is part of the massive subjective turn of modern culture, a new form of inwardness, in which we come to think of ourselves as beings with inner depths. Human life has a fundamentally dialogical character. We become full human agents, capable of understanding ourselves, and hence of defining our identity, through our acquisition of rich human languages of expression. But we learn these modes of expression through exchanges with others. People do not acquire the languages needed for self-definition on their own. Rather, we are introduced to them through interaction with others who matter to us, i.e., “significant others.” We define our identity always in dialogue with, sometimes in struggle against, the things our significant others want to see in us. Even after we outgrow some of these others – our parents, for instance – and they disappear from our lives, the conversation with them continues within us as long as we live. It is true that we can never liberate ourselves completely from those whose love and care shaped us early in life, but we should strive to define ourselves on our own to the fullest extent possible, coming as best we can to understand and thus get some control over the influence of our parents, and avoiding falling into any more such dependent relationships. We need relationships to fulfill, but not to define, ourselves.

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Of course, the point is not that this dependence on others arose with the age of authenticity. A form of dependence was always there. The socially derived identity was by its very nature dependent on society. But, in the earlier age recognition never arose as a problem. General recognition was built into the socially derived identity by virtue of the very fact that it was based on social categories that everyone took for granted. Yet inwardly derived, personal, original identity does not enjoy this recognition a priori. It has to win it through exchange, and the attempt can fail. What has come about with the modern age is not the need for recognition but the conditions in which the attempt to be recognized can fail. That is why the need is now acknowledged for the first time. On the intimate level, we can see how much an original identity needs and is vulnerable to the recognition given or withheld by significant others. It is not surprising that in the culture of authenticity, relationships are seen as the key loci of self-discovery and self-affirmation. Love relationships are not just important because of the general emphasis in modern culture on the fulfillment of ordinary needs. They are also crucial because they are the crucibles of inwardly generated identity. On the social plane, the understanding that identities are formed in open dialogue, unshaped by a predefined social script, has made the politics of equal recognition more central and stressful. Not only contemporary feminism, but also race relations and discussions of multiculturalism are undergirded by the premise that the withholding of recognition can be a form of oppression. The politics of equal recognition has come to mean two rather different things, connected, respectively, with the two major changes we have been describing. With the move from honor to dignity has come a politics of universalism, emphasizing the equal dignity of all citizens, and the content of this politics has been the equalization of rights and entitlements. For some, equalization has affected only civil rights and voting rights; for others, it has extended into the socioeconomic sphere. By contrast, the second change, the development of the modern notion of identity, has given rise to a politics of difference. There is, of course, a universalist basis to this as well, making for the overlap and confusion between the two. Everyone should be recognized for his or her unique identity. The idea is that it is precisely this distinctness that has been ignored, glossed over, assimilated to a dominant or majority identity. And this assimilation is the cardinal sin against the ideal of authenticity. Now underlying the demand is a principle of universal equality. But, its demands are hard to assimilate to the politics of dignity. For it asks that we

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give acknowledgment and status to something that is not universally shared. In other words, we give due acknowledgment only to what is universally present – every-one has an identity—through recognizing what is peculiar to each. The universal demand powers an acknowledgment of specificity. The fact is that there are forms of liberalism of equal rights that in the minds of their own proponents can give only a very restricted acknowledgment of distinct cultural identities. The notion that any of the standard schedules of rights might apply differently in one cultural context than they do in another, that their application might have to take account of different collective goals, is considered quite unacceptable. The issue, then, is whether this restrictive view of equal rights is the only possible interpretation. If it is, then it would seem that the accusation of homogenization is well founded. But perhaps it is not. We think it is not, and perhaps the best way to lay out the issue is to see it in the context of the Canadian case, where this question played a role in the potential breakup of the country. In fact, two conceptions of rights-liberalism have confronted each other, albeit in confused fashion, throughout the long and inconclusive constitutional debates. The issue came to the fore because of the adoption in 1982 of the Canadian Charter of Rights, which aligned Canadian political system in this regard with the American one in having a schedule of rights offering a basis for judicial review of legislation at all levels of government. The question had to arise how to relate this schedule to the claims for “distinctness” put forward by French Canadians, and particularly Quebeckers, on the one hand, and aboriginal peoples on the other. Here what was at stake was the desire of these peoples for survival, and their consequent demand for certain forms of autonomy in their self-government, as well as the ability to adopt certain kinds of legislation deemed necessary for survival. For instance, Quebec has passed a number of laws in the field of language. One regulates who can send their children to English-language schools (not francophones or immigrants); another requires that businesses with more than fifty employees be run in French; a third outlaws commercial signage in any language other than French. In other words, restrictions have been placed on Quebeckers by their government, in the name of their collective goal of survival, which in other Canadian communities might easily be disallowed by virtue of the Charter. The fundamental question was: Is this variation acceptable or not? The issue was finally raised by a proposed constitutional amendment, named after the site of the conference where it was first drafted, Meech Lake. The Meech amendment proposed to recognize Quebec as a “distinct society,”

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and wanted to make this recognition one of the bases for judicial interpretation of the rest of the constitution, including the Charter. This seemed to open up the possibility for variation in its interpretation in different parts of the country. For many, such variation was fundamentally unacceptable. Examining why brings us to the heart of the question of how rights-liberalism is related to diversity. The Canadian Charter follows the trend of the last half of the twentieth century, and gives a basis for judicial review on two basic scores. First, it defines a set of individual rights that are very similar to those protected in other charters and bills of rights in Western democracies, for example, in the United States and Europe. Second, it guarantees equal treatment of citizens in a variety of respects, or, alternatively put, it protects against discriminatory treatment on a number of irrelevant grounds, such as race or sex. There is a lot more in the Canadian Charter, including provisions for linguistic rights and aboriginal rights, that could be understood as according to powers to collectivities, but the two themes singled out here dominate in the public consciousness. For a number of people in “English Canada,” a political society’s espousing certain collective goals threatens to run against both of these basic provisions of the Canadian Charter, or indeed any acceptable bill of rights. First, the collective goals may require restrictions on the behavior of individuals that may violate their rights. For many non-francophone Canadians, both inside and outside Quebec, this feared outcome had already materialized with Quebec’s language legislation. But second, even if overriding individual rights were not possible, espousing collective goals on behalf of a national group can be thought to be inherently discriminatory. In the modern world, it will always be the case that not all those living as citizens under a certain jurisdiction will belong to the national group thus favored. This in itself could be thought to provoke discrimination. But beyond this, the pursuit of the collective end will probably involve treating insiders and outsiders differently. Those who take the view that individual rights must always come first, and, along with nondiscrimination provisions, must take precedence over collective goals, are often speaking from a liberal perspective that has become more and more widespread in the Anglo-American world. Its source is, of course, the United States, and it has been elaborated and defended by some of the best philosophical and legal minds in that society, as follows. They make a distinction between two kinds of moral commitment. We all have views about the ends of life, about what constitutes a good life, which

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we and others ought to strive for. But we also acknowledge a commitment to deal fairly and equally with each other, regardless of how we conceive our ends. We might call this latter commitment “procedural,” while commitments concerning the ends of life are “substantive.” They claim that a liberal society is one that as a society adopts no particular substantive view about the ends of life. Society is, rather, united around a strong procedural commitment to treat people with equal respect. The reason that the polity as such can espouse no substantive view, cannot, for instance, allow that one of the goals of legislation should be to make people virtuous in one or another meaning of that term, is that this would involve a violation of its procedural norm. For, given the diversity of modern societies, it would unfailingly be the case that some people and not others would be committed to the favored conception of virtue. They might be in a majority; indeed, it is very likely that they would be, for otherwise a democratic society probably would not espouse their view. Nevertheless, this view would not be everyone’s view, and in espousing this substantive outlook society would not be treating the dissident minority with equal respect. It would be saying to them, in effect, “your view is not as valuable, in the eyes of this polity, as that of your more numerous compatriots.” Quebeckers, therefore, and those who give similar importance to this kind of collective goal, tend to opt for a rather different model of a liberal society. On their view, a society can be organized around a definition of the good life, without this being seen as a depreciation of those who do not personally share this definition. Where the nature of the good requires that it be sought in common, this is the reason for its being a matter of public policy. According to this conception, a liberal society singles itself out as such by the way in which it treats minorities, including those who do not share public definitions of the good, and above all by the rights it accords to all of its members. But now the rights in question are conceived to be the fundamental and crucial ones that have been recognized as such from the very beginning of the liberal tradition: rights to life, liberty, due process, free speech, free practice of religion, and so on. On this model, there is a dangerous overlooking of an essential boundary in speaking of fundamental rights to things like commercial signage in the language of one’s choice. One has to distinguish the fundamental liberties, those that should never be infringed and therefore ought to be unassailably entrenched, on one hand, from privileges and immunities that are important, but that can be revoked or restricted for reasons of public policy – although one would need a strong reason to do this – on the other.

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A society with strong collective goals can be liberal, on this view, provided it is also capable of respecting diversity, especially when dealing with those who do not share its common goals; and provided it can offer adequate safeguards for fundamental rights. There will undoubtedly be tensions and difficulties in pursuing these objectives together, but such a pursuit is not impossible, and the problems are not in principle greater than those encountered by any liberal society that has to combine, for example, liberty and equality, or prosperity and justice. There is a form of the politics of equal respect, as enshrined in a liberalism of rights, that is inhospitable to difference, because (a) it insists on uniform application of the rules defining these rights, without exception, and (b) it is suspicious of collective goals. Of course, this does not mean that this model seeks to abolish cultural differences. This would be an absurd accusation. But it can be called inhospitable to difference because it cannot accommodate what the members of distinct societies really aspire to, which is survival. This is (b) a collective goal, which (a) almost inevitably will call for some variations in the kinds of law we deem permissible from one cultural context to another, as the Quebec case clearly shows. We think this form of liberalism is guilty as charged by the proponents of a politics of difference. Fortunately, however, there are other models of liberal society that take a different line on (a) and (b). These forms do call for the invariant defense of certain rights, of course. But they distinguish these fundamental rights from the broad range of immunities and presumptions of uniform treatment that have sprung up in modern cultures of judicial review. They are willing to weigh the importance of certain forms of uniform treatment against the importance of cultural survival, and opt sometimes in favor of the latter. They are thus in the end not procedural models of liberalism, but are grounded very much on judgments about what makes a good life – judgments in which the integrity of cultures has an important place. More and more societies today are turning out to be multicultural, in the sense of including more than one cultural community that wants to survive. The rigidities of procedural liberalism may rapidly become impractical in tomorrow’s world.

III. Radical Humanist View The last four decades of the twentieth century witnessed the emergence of a cluster of intellectual and political movements led by such diverse groups as

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the indigenous peoples, national minorities, ethno-cultural nations, old and new immigrants, feminists, gay men and lesbians, and the greens. They represent practices, lifestyles, views and ways of life that are different from, disapproved of, and in varying degrees discouraged by the dominant culture of the wider society. Although they are too disparate to share a common philosophical and political agenda, they are all united in resisting the wider society’s homogenizing or assimilationist thrust based on the belief that there is only one correct, true, or normal way to understand and structure the relevant areas of life. In their own different ways, they want society to recognize the legitimacy of their differences, especially those that in their view are not incidental and trivial but spring from and constitute their identities. These movements, thus, form part of the wider struggle for recognition of identity and difference, i.e., identity-related differences.44 Their demand for recognition goes far beyond the familiar plea for toleration, for the latter implies conceding the validity of society’s disapproval and relying on its self-restraint. Rather they ask for acceptance, respect, and even public affirmation of their differences. Some of these groups want the wider society to treat them equally with the rest and not to discriminate against or otherwise disadvantage them. Some go further and demand that it should also respect their differences; that is, view them not as pathological deviations to be accepted grudgingly but as equally valid or worthy ways of organizing the relevant areas of life or leading individual and collective lives. While acceptance of differences calls for changes in the legal arrangements of society, respect for them requires changes in its attitudes and ways of thought as well. Some leaders of the new movements go yet further and press for public affirmation of their differences by symbolic and other means. In the eyes of their champions, these and related demands represent a struggle for freedom, self-determination, and dignity and against contingent, ideologically biased, and oppressive views and practices claiming false objectivity and universal validity. Although the politics of recognition has its own autonomous logic, it is also closely related to the older and more familiar politics of social justice or economic redistribution. The latter was never merely about redistribution but

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For this literature, see Benhabib (1996), Chin (2017), Delanty (2003), Eisenberg (2000), Gates (1992), Giroux (1992, 1993, 1994), Gitlin (1995), Goldberg (1994), Habermas (1998), Hall (1991a, 1991b), Hollinger (1995), Honneth (1995), Kobayashi (1993), McLaren (1994), Offe (1998), Parekh (2000), Shohat and Stam (1994), Stimpson (1992), Todorov (1993), Turner (1993), Vertovec (1996, 1998), and Young (1989, 1990, 2000a, 2000b). This section is based on Parekh (2000).

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had an implicit or explicit cultural agenda. Classical socialism was not just about better economic opportunities for the poor and underprivileged, but also about creating a new culture and new forms of social relations. Marxism attacked capitalism in the name of a new civilization based on the kind of universalist identity represented by the proletariat. Although the new movements spearheading the politics of recognition sometimes appear to be exclusively preoccupied with the issues of identity and difference, their more articulate spokesmen appreciate that the latter cannot be dissociated from the wider economic and political structure. Identities are valued or devalued because of the place of their bearers in the prevailing structure of power, and their revaluation entails corresponding changes in the latter. Women, gays, cultural minorities, and others cannot express and realize their identities without the necessary freedom of self-determination, a climate conducive to diversity, material resources and opportunities, suitable legal arrangements, and so on, and all these call for profound changes in all areas of life. Almost all societies today are multicultural and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. This is our historical predicament, and we obviously need to come to terms with it. Since cultural diversity has much to be said for it, our predicament, if approached in the spirit of multiculturalism, can also become a source of great creative opportunities. Multiculturalism is best seen neither as a political doctrine with a programmatic content nor as a philosophical theory of man and the world, but as a perspective on human life. Its central insights are three: First, human beings are culturally embedded in the sense that they grow up and live within a culturally structured world, organize their lives and social relations in terms of its system of meaning and significance, and place considerable value on their cultural identity. This means that they are deeply shaped by it, can overcome some, but not all, of its influences and necessarily view the world from within a culture, be it the one they have inherited and uncritically accepted or reflectively revised or, in rare cases, consciously adopted. Second, different cultures represent different systems of meaning and visions of the good life. Since each realizes a limited range of human capacities and emotions and grasps only a part of the totality of human existence, it needs others to understand itself better, expand its intellectual and moral horizon, stretch its imagination, and guard it against the obvious temptation to absolutize itself. This means is that no culture is wholly worthless, that it deserves at least some respect because of what it means to its members and the creative energy it displays, that no culture is perfect and has

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a right to impose itself on others, and that cultures are generally best changed from within. Since each culture is inherently limited, a dialogue between them is mutually beneficial. It both alerts them to their biases, a gain in itself, and enables them to reduce them and expand their horizon of thought. To be “in a conversation” means to go beyond oneself, to think with the other, and to come back to oneself as if to another. The dialogue is possible only if each culture accepts others as equal conversational partners, who need to be taken seriously as sources of new ideas, and to whom it owes the duty of explaining itself. And it realizes its objectives only if the participants enjoy a broad equality of self-confidence, economic and political power, and access to public space. Third, all but the most primitive cultures are internally plural and represent a continuing conversation among their different traditions and strands of thought. This does not mean that they are devoid of internal coherence and identity, but that their identity is plural and fluid. Cultures grow out of conscious and unconscious interaction with each other, partly define their identity in terms of what they take to be their significant other, and are at least partially multicultural in their origins and constitution. Each carries bits of the other within itself and is rarely sui generis. This does not mean that it has no powers of self-determination and inner impulses, but rather that it is porous and subject to external influences which it interprets and assimilates in its own autonomous way. A dialogue among cultures requires that each should open itself up to the influence of and be willing to learn from others, and that in turn requires that it should be self-critical and willing and able to engage in a dialogue with itself. What is preferably called a “multicultural perspective” is composed of the creative interplay of the above-mentioned three complementary insights. When we view the world from its vantage point, our attitudes to ourselves and others undergo profound changes. All claims that a particular way of thinking and living is perfect, the best, or necessitated by human nature, itself appear incoherent and even bizarre, for the multicultural perspective sensitizes us to the fact that all ways of life and thought are inherently limited and cannot possibly embody the full range of the richness, complexity, and grandeur of human existence. We instinctively suspect attempts to homogenize a culture, return it to its “fundamentals,” and impose a single identity on it. From a multicultural perspective, no political doctrine or ideology can represent the full truth of human life. Each of them – be it liberalism, conservatism, socialism, or nationalism – is embedded in a particular culture, represents a particular vision of the good life, and is necessarily narrow and

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partial. Liberalism, for example, is an inspiring political doctrine stressing such great values as human dignity, autonomy, liberty, critical thought, and equality. However, it has no monopoly of them, and they can be defined in several different ways, of which its own definition is only one and not always the most coherent. It also ignores or marginalizes such other great values as human solidarity, equal life chances, selflessness, self-effacing humility, contentment, and a measure of skepticism about the pleasures and achievements of human life. And it is insufficiently sensitive to and cannot give coherent accounts of the importance of culture, tradition, community, a sense of rootedness and belonging, and so on. Other political doctrines are just as limited, if not more so. Since every political doctrine has a limited grasp of the immense complexity of human existence and the problems involved in holding societies together and creating sensitive, sane, and self-critical individuals, none of them, including liberalism, can be the sole basis of the good society. Since multicultural societies represent an interplay of different cultures, they cannot be theorized or managed from within any one of them. They require a multicultural perspective of the kind sketched earlier. It alerts the political theorist to the complex and subtle ways in which his/her culture shapes his/her modes of thought and limits his/her powers of critical reflection, and also offers him/her a way to minimize these limitations. Although he/she has no Archimedean standpoint, or a God’s-eye view, available to him, he/she has several coigns of vantage in the form of other cultures. He/she can set up a dialogue between them, use each to illuminate the insights and expose the limitations of others, and create for himself/herself a vital in-between space, a kind of immanent transcendentalism, from which to arrive at a less culturebound vision of human life and a radically critical perspective on his/her society. From a multicultural perspective, the good society does not commit itself to a particular political doctrine or vision of the good life and ask how much diversity to tolerate within the limits set by it, both because such a doctrine or vision might not be acceptable to some of its communities and because it forecloses its future development. Instead, it begins by accepting the reality and desirability of cultural diversity, and structures its political life accordingly. It is dialogically constituted, and its constant concern is to keep the dialogue going and nurture a climate in which it can proceed effectively, stretch the boundaries of the prevailing forms of thought, and generate a body of collectively acceptable principles, institutions, and policies. The dialogue requires certain institutional preconditions such as freedom of expression,

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agreed procedures and basic ethical norms, participatory public spaces, equal rights, a responsive and popularly accountable structure of authority, and empowerment of citizens. And it also calls for such essential political virtues as mutual respect and concern, tolerance, self-restraint, willingness to enter into unfamiliar worlds of thought, love of diversity, a mind open to new ideas and a heart open to others’ needs, and the ability to persuade and live with unresolved differences. While nurturing a wide variety of views and fostering the spirit and deepening the morality of dialogue, such a society draws a line against those too dogmatic, self-righteous, or impatient to participate in its conversational culture and accept its outcome. The dialogically constituted multicultural society both retains the truth of liberalism and goes beyond it. It is committed to both liberalism and multiculturalism, privileges neither, nor moderates the logic of one by that of the other. It neither confines multiculturalism within the limits set by liberalism and suppresses or marginalizes non-liberal values and cultures, nor confines liberalism within the limits of multiculturalism and emasculates its critical and emancipatory thrust. Apart from its fundamental commitment to the culture and morality of dialogue, the dialogically constituted society privileges no particular cultural perspective, be it liberal or otherwise. It sees itself both as a community of citizens and a community of communities, and hence as a community of communally embedded and attached individuals. It cherishes individuals, their basic rights and liberties and other great liberal moral and political values, all of which are integral to the culture of dialogue. It also, however, appreciates that individuals are culturally embedded, that their cultural communities are essential to their well-being, that the communities are open and interactive and cannot be frozen, and that public institutions and policies should recognize and cherish their evolving identities and nurture a community of communities based on the kind of plural collective culture described earlier. Unlike the standard liberal approach of the proceduralist, civic assimilationist, or comprehensively assimilationist variety, which abstracts away citizens’ cultural and other differences and unites them in terms of their uniformly shared economic, political, and other interests, it insists that this is neither possible nor desirable and finds ways of publicly recognizing and respecting their cultural and other differences. The common good and the collective will that are vital to any political society are generated not by transcending cultural and other particularities, but through their interplay in the cut and thrust of a dialogue. The dialogically constituted multicultural society has a strong notion of common good, consisting in respect for a consensually grounded civil authority and basic rights,

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maintenance of justice, institutional and moral preconditions of deliberative democracy, a vibrant and plural composite culture and an expansive sense of community. And it cherishes not static and ghettoized, but interactive and dynamic, multiculturalism. A multicultural society cannot be stable and last long without developing a common sense of belonging among its citizens. The sense of belonging cannot be ethnic or based on shared cultural, ethnic, and other characteristics, for a multicultural society is too diverse for that, but political in nature and based on a shared commitment to the political community. Its members do not directly belong to each other as in an ethnic group, but through their mediating membership of a shared community, and they are committed to each other because they are all in their own different ways committed to the community and bound by the ties of common interest and affection. Although they might personally loathe some of their fellow members or find their lifestyles, views, and values unacceptable, their mutual commitment and concern as members of a shared community remain unaffected. The commitment to a political community is highly complex in nature and is easily misunderstood. It does not involve sharing common substantive goals, for its members might deeply disagree about these, nor a common view of its history which they may read differently, nor a particular economic or social system about which they might entertain different views. Decocted to its barest essentials, commitment to the political community involves commitment to its continuing existence and well-being as defined earlier, and implies that one cares enough for it not to harm its interests and undermine its integrity. It is a matter of degree and could take such diverse forms as a quiet concern for its well-being, deep attachment, affection, and even intense love. While different citizens would develop different emotions towards their community, all that is necessary to sustain it, and can legitimately be expected of them all, is a basic concern for its integrity and well-being; what one might call patriotism or political loyalty. They might criticize the prevailing form of government, institutions, policies, values, ethos, and dominant selfunderstanding in the strongest possible terms, but these should not arouse unease or provoke charges of disloyalty so long as their basic commitment to dialogue is not in doubt. Commitment or belonging is reciprocal in nature. Citizens cannot be committed to their political community unless it is also committed to them, and they cannot belong to it unless it accepts them as belonging to it. The political community cannot therefore expect its members to develop a sense of belonging to it unless it equally values and cherishes them in all their

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diversity and reflects this in its structure, policies, conduct of public affairs, self-understanding, and self-definition. Although equal citizenship is essential to fostering a common sense of belonging, it is not enough. Citizenship is about status and rights; belonging is about being accepted and feeling welcome. Misrecognition has both a cultural and a material basis. White Americans, for example, take a demeaning view of African Americans partly under the influence of the racist culture, partly because this legitimizes the prevailing system of domination, and partly because the deeply disadvantaged blacks do sometimes exhibit some of the features that confirm white stereotypes. Misrecognition, therefore, can only be countered by both undertaking a rigorous critique of the dominant culture and radically restructuring the prevailing inequalities of economic and political power. Since the dominant group welcomes neither the radical critique nor the corresponding political praxis, the struggle for recognition involves cultural and political contestation and sometimes even violence. The politics of culture is integrally tied up with the politics of power because culture is itself institutionalized power and deeply imbricated with other systems of power. Cultural self-esteem cannot be developed and sustained in a vacuum and requires appropriate changes in all the major areas of life. No multicultural society can be stable and vibrant unless it ensures that its constituent communities receive both just recognition and a just share of economic and political power. It requires a robust form of social, economic and political democracy to underpin its commitment to multiculturalism. Multicultural societies throw up problems that have no parallel in history. They need to find ways of reconciling the legitimate demands of unity and diversity, achieving political unity without cultural uniformity, being inclusive without being assimilationist, cultivating among their citizens a common sense of belonging while respecting their legitimate cultural differences, and cherishing plural cultural identities without weakening the shared and precious identity of shared citizenship. This is a formidable political task, and no multicultural society so far has succeeded in tackling it. Although multicultural societies are difficult to manage, they need not become a political nightmare and might even become exciting if we exuviate our long traditional preoccupation with a culturally homogeneous and tightly structured polity and allow them instead to intimate their own appropriate institutional forms, modes of governance, and moral and political virtues.

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IV. Radical Structuralist View A nation is a historically evolved, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.45 A nation is not merely a historical category but a historical category belonging to a definite epoch – the epoch of rising capitalism. The process of elimination of feudalism and development of capitalism was at the same time a process of amalgamation of people into nations. Such, for instance, was the case in Western Europe. The British, French, Germans, Italians, and others formed themselves into nations at the time of the victorious advance of capitalism and its triumph over feudal disunity. But the formation of nations in these instances at the same time signified their conversion into independent national states. The British, French, and other nations are at the same time British, French, etc., states. Ireland, which did not participate in this process, does not alter the general picture. Matters proceeded somewhat differently in Eastern Europe. Whereas in the West, nations developed into states, in the East, multi-national states were formed, states consisting of several nationalities. Such are Austria-Hungary and Russia. For instance, in Russia, the role of welder of nationalities was assumed by the Great Russians, who were headed by a historically formed powerful and well-organized aristocratic military bureaucracy. This was how matters proceeded in the East. This distinctive method of formation of states could take place only where feudalism had not yet been eliminated, where capitalism was feebly developed, where the nationalities that had been forced into the background had not yet been able to consolidate themselves economically into integral nations. But capitalism also began to develop in the Eastern states. Trade and means of communication were developing. Large towns were springing up. The nations were becoming economically consolidated. Capitalism, erupting into the tranquil life of the nationalities which had been pushed into the background, was arousing them and stirring them into action. The development of the press and the theatre, the activity of the Reichsrat (Austria) and of the Duma (Russia) were helping to strengthen “national sentiments.”

45

For this literature, see Bloom (1941), Burks (1961), Davis (1967), Lenin (1967), and Stalin (1950). This section is based on Stalin (1950).

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The intelligentsia that had arisen was being imbued with “the national idea” and was acting in the same direction. But the nations which had been pushed into the background and had now awakened to independent life, could no longer shape themselves into independent national states; they encountered the powerful resistance of the ruling strata of the dominant nations, which had long ago assumed the control of the state. In this way, the Czechs, Poles, etc., formed themselves into nations in Austria; the Croats, etc., in Hungary; the Letts, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Georgians, Armenians, etc., in Russia. What had been an exception in Western Europe (Ireland) became the rule in the East. In the West, Ireland responded to its exceptional position by a national movement. In the East, the awakened nations were bound to respond in the same fashion. Thus arose the circumstances that impelled the young nations of Eastern Europe into the path of struggle. The struggle began and grew, to be sure, not between nations as a whole, but between the ruling classes of the dominant and the oppressed nations. The struggle is usually conducted by the petty bourgeoisie of the oppressed nation against the big bourgeoisie of the dominant nation (Czechs and Germans), or by the rural bourgeoisie of the oppressed nation against the landlords of the dominant nation (Ukrainians in Poland), or by the whole national bourgeoisie of the oppressed nations against the ruling nobility of the dominant nation (Poland, Lithuania, and the Ukraine in Russia). The bourgeoisie plays the leading role. The chief problem for the young bourgeoisie is the problem of the market. Its aim is to sell its goods and to emerge victorious from competition with the bourgeoisie of another nationality. Hence its desire to secure its own, its home market. The market is the first school in which the bourgeoisie learns its nationalism. The bourgeoisie of the dominant nation, whether large or small, is able to deal more swiftly and decisively with its competitors. Forces are united and a series of restrictive measures is put into operation against the alien bourgeoisie, measures passing into acts of repression. The struggle spreads from the economic sphere to the political sphere. Restriction of freedom of locomotion, repression of language, restriction of franchise, closing of schools, religious restrictions, and so on, are piled upon the head of the competitor. The bourgeoisie of the oppressed nation, repressed on every hand, is naturally stirred into movement. It appeals to its “native folk” and begins to

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shout about the “fatherland,” claiming that its own cause is the cause of the nation as a whole. It recruits itself an army from among its countrymen in the interests of the fatherland. Nor do the folk always remain unresponsive to its appeals, they rally around its banner: the repression from above affects them too and provokes their discontent. Thus, the national movement begins. The strength of the national movement is determined by the degree to which the wide strata of the nation, the proletariat and peasantry, participate in it. Whether the proletariat rallies to the banner of bourgeois nationalism depends on the degree of development of class antagonisms, on the classconsciousness, and degree of organization of the proletariat. The classconscious proletariat has its own tried banner, and has no need to rally to the banner of the bourgeoisie. As far as the peasants are concerned, their participation in the national movement depends primarily on the character of the repressions. If the repressions affect the “land,” as was the case in Ireland, then the mass of the peasants immediately rally to the banner of the national movement. From what has been said it will be clear that the national struggle under the conditions of rising capitalism is a struggle of the bourgeois classes among themselves. Sometimes the bourgeoisie succeeds in drawing the proletariat into the national movement, and then the national struggle externally assumes a nation-wide character. But this is so only externally. In its essence it is always a bourgeois struggle, one that is mainly to the advantage and profit of the bourgeoisie. But it does not follow from this that the proletariat should not put up a fight against the policy of national oppression. Restriction of freedom of locomotion, disfranchisement, repression of language, closing of schools, and other forms of repression affect the workers no less, if not more, than the bourgeoisie. Such a state of affairs can only serve to retard the free development of the intellectual forces of the proletariat of subject nations. But the policy of nationalist persecution is dangerous to the cause of the proletariat also on another account. It diverts the attention of large strata of the population from social questions, questions of the class struggle, to national questions, questions common to the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. And this creates a favorable soil for lying propaganda regarding harmony of interests, for glossing over the class interests of the proletariat and for the intellectual enslavement of the workers. This creates a serious obstacle to the work of uniting the workers of all nationalities. But the policy of repression does not stop there. It not infrequently passes from a system of oppression to a 'system of inciting nations against each other,

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to a system of massacres and pogroms. Of course, the latter is not everywhere and always possible, but where it is possible – in the absence of elementary civil rights – it frequently assumes horrifying proportions and threatens to drown the cause of unity of the workers in blood and tears. And where such a policy succeeds, it is a tremendous evil for the proletariat and a serious obstacle to the work of uniting the workers of all the nationalities in the state. The workers therefore combat and will continue to combat the policy of national oppression in all its forms, from the most subtle to the crudest, as well as the policy of inciting nations against each other in all its forms. Social-Democracy in all countries therefore proclaims the right of nations to self-determination. The right of self-determination means that only the nation itself has the right to determine its destiny, that no one has the right forcibly to interfere in the life of the nation, to destroy its schools and other institutions, to violate its habits and customs, to repress its language, or to curtail its rights. This, of course, does not mean that Social Democracy will support every custom, institution, and demand of a nation. While combating the coercion of any nation, it will only uphold the right of the nation to determine its own destiny, at the same time agitating against the noxious customs and institutions of that nation in order to enable the toiling strata of the nation to emancipate themselves from them. The obligations of Social Democracy, which defends the interests of the proletariat, and the rights of a nation, which consists of various classes, are two different things. The fate of the national movement, which is essentially a bourgeois movement, is naturally bound up with the fate of the bourgeoisie. The final collapse of the national movement is possible only with the collapse of the bourgeoisie. Only under the reign of Socialism can peace be fully established. But even within the framework of capitalism it is possible to reduce the national struggle to a minimum, to sever its roots, to render it as innocuous as possible to the proletariat. It requires that the country be democratized, and the nations be given the opportunity for free development. National autonomy is contrary to the whole course of development of nations. It calls for the organization of nations; but can they be artificially welded together if, in actual reality, economic development tears whole groups from them and disperses them over various regions? There is no doubt that in the early stages of capitalism, nations become welded together. But there is also no doubt that in the higher stages of capitalism a process of dispersion of nations sets in, a process whereby whole groups separate off from nations and go off in search of a livelihood and subsequently settle permanently in other

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regions of the state, in the course of which these settlers lose their old contacts, acquire new contacts in their new domicile, and from generation to generation acquire new habits and new tastes, and possibly a new language. One asks: Is it possible to unite into a single national union, groups that have grown so distinct? But the unity of a nation diminishes not only as a result of migration. It diminishes also from internal causes, owing to the growing acuteness of the class struggle. In the early stages of capitalism, one may still speak of a “common culture” of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. But as large-scale industry develops and the class struggle becomes more and more acute, this “common culture” begins to melt away. One cannot seriously speak of the “common culture” of a nation when the masters and the workers of that nation cease to understand each other. Is it not obvious that national autonomy is contrary to the whole course of the class struggle? Anyone who adopts national autonomy must also adopt the task of organizing a nation, but to adopt the latter means to abandon the class position and to adopt the path of nationalism. But if national autonomy is unsuitable now, it will be still more unsuitable in the future, socialist society. But this does not exhaust the harm caused by national autonomy. It prepares the ground not only for the segregation of nations, but also for breaking up the united labor movement. The idea of national autonomy creates the psychological conditions that make for the division of the united workers’ party into separate parties built on national lines. The break-up of the party is followed by the break-up of the trade unions, and complete segregation is the result. In this way, the united class movement is broken up into separate national rivulets. It will be seen from this that cultural-national autonomy is no solution to the national problem. It only serves to aggravate and confuse the problem by creating a soil that favors the destruction of the unity of the labor movement, fosters the segregation of the workers according to nationality and intensifies friction among them. Such is the harvest of national autonomy. It remains for us to suggest a positive solution to the national problem. The aim of the movement is to achieve complete democracy. It is in connection with this movement that the national problem must be examined. Of course, it is not for Marxists to create obstacles in the process of independence of nations. That is, Marxists cannot dispense with the right of nations to self-determination. Thus, the right of self-determination is an essential element in the solution of the national problem.

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The real solution is regional autonomy, autonomy for such crystallized units as Poland, Lithuania, the Ukraine, the Caucasus, etc. The advantages of regional autonomy consist, firstly, in the fact that it does not deal with a fiction bereft of territory, but with a definite population inhabiting a definite territory. Secondly, it does not divide people according to nation, it does not strengthen national partitions; on the contrary, it only serves to break down these partitions and to unite the population in such a manner as to open the way for division of a different kind, division according class. Finally, it provides the opportunity of utilizing the natural wealth of the region and of developing its productive forces in the best possible way without awaiting the decisions of a common center – functions that are not proper to cultural-national autonomy. Thus, regional autonomy is an essential element in the solution of the national problem. Of course, not one of the regions constitutes a compact, homogeneous nation, for each is interspersed with national minorities. Such are the Jews in Poland, the Letts in Lithuania, the Russians in the Caucasus, the Poles in the Ukraine, and so on. It may be feared, therefore, that the minorities will be oppressed by the national majorities. But there will be grounds for this fear only if the old order continues to prevail in the country. Give the country complete democracy, and all grounds for this fear will vanish. National equality in all forms (language, schools, religion, movement, etc.) is an essential element in the solution of the national problem. Consequently, a state law based on complete democracy in the country is required, prohibiting all national privileges without exception and every kind of disability or restriction on the rights of national minorities. This is the real guarantee of the rights of a minority. One may or may not deny the existence of a logical connection between organizational federalism and cultural-national autonomy. But one cannot deny the fact that the latter creates an atmosphere favoring unlimited federalism which tends towards complete rupture, towards separatism. When the Czechs in Austria and the Bundists in Russia began with autonomy, passed to federation, and ended in separatism, there can be no doubt that an important part in this was played by the nationalist atmosphere that is naturally generated by cultural-national autonomy. It is not fortuitous that national autonomy and organizational federalism go hand in hand. It is quite understandable. Both demand division according to nationality. Both presume organization on national lines. The similarity is beyond question. The only difference is that in one case the population generally are divided, while in the other it is the

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Social-Democratic workers who are divided. The only cure for this is organization on international lines. Type of organization influences not only practical work. It stamps an indelible impress on the whole mental life of the workers. The worker lives the life of his organization, which stimulates his/her intellectual growth and educates him/her. And thus, moving within his/her organization and continually meeting comrades from other nationalities, and fighting side by side with them a common struggle under the leadership of a common collective body, he/she becomes deeply imbued with the idea that workers are primarily members of one class family, members of the one army of Socialism. And this cannot but have tremendous educational value for large sections of the working class. Therefore, the international type of organization serves as a school of fraternal sentiments and is a tremendous agitational factor on behalf of internationalism. But this is not the case with an organization based on national lines. When the workers are organized according to nationality, they segregate themselves within their national shells, fenced off from each other by organizational partitions. The stress is laid not on what is common to the workers but on what distinguishes them from each other. In this type of organization, the worker is primarily a member of his/her nation: Jew, Pole, and so on. It is not surprising that national federalism in organization inculcates in the workers a spirit of national aloofness. Therefore, the national type of organization is a school of national narrow-mindedness and prejudice. Thus the principle of international solidarity of the workers is an essential element in the solution of the national problem. This chapter briefly discussed four views expressed with respect to multiculturalism. The functionalist paradigm believes in liberal multiculturalism that emanates from capitalism. The interpretive paradigm believes that multiculturalism is socially constructed. The radical humanist paradigm believes that multiculturalism is socially and economically constructed. The radical structuralist paradigm believes that multiculturalism is based on class interests. Each paradigm is logically coherent – in terms of its underlying assumptions – and conceptualizes and studies the phenomenon in a certain way, and generates distinctive kinds of insight and understanding. Therefore, different paradigms in combination provide a broader and a balanced understanding of the phenomenon under consideration. An understanding of different paradigms leads to a better understanding of the multi-faceted nature of the phenomenon.

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References Auster, Lawrence, 1991, The Path to National Suicide: An Essay on Immigration and Multiculturalism, Monterey, Virginia: The American Immigration Control Foundation. Benhabib, Seyla, (ed.), 1996, Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Bloom, Solomon F., 1941, The World of Nations: A Study of the National Implications in the Work of Karl Marx, New York, New York: Columbia University Press. Brookhiser, Richard, 1992, The Way of the WASP: How It Made America and How It Can Save It, So to Speak, New York, New York: Free Press. Burks, R. V., 1961, The Dynamics of Communism in Eastern Europe, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Cheney, Lynne V., 1988, Humanities in America: A Report to the President, the Congress, and the American People, Washington, DC: National Endowment for the Humanities. Cheney, Lynne V., 1989, 50 Hours: A Core Curriculum for College Students, Washington, DC: National Endowment for the Humanities. Cheney, Lynne V., 1990, Tyrannical Machines: A Report on Educational Practice Gone Wrong and Our Best Hopes for Setting Them Right, Washington, DC: National Endowment for the Humanities. Cheney, Lynne V., 1993, “Forum: Multiculturalism Done Right: Taking Steps to Build Support for Change,” Change, January. Chin, Rita, 2017, The Crisis of Multiculturalism in Europe: A History, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Davis, Horace B., 1967, Nationalism and Socialism: Marxist and Labor Theories of Nationalism to 1917, New York, New York: Monthly Review Press. Degenaar, Johan, 1987, “Nationalism, Liberalism, and Pluralism,” in Butler, Jeffrey, Elphick, Ricard, and Welsh, David, (eds.), Democratic Liberalism in South Africa: Its History and Prospect, Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, Chapter 13, pp. 236-398. Delanty, Gerard, 2003, Community, London, England: Routledge. D’Sousa, Dinesh, 1992, “The Big Chill? Interview with Dinesh D’Sousa,” in Berman, Paul A., (ed.), Debating P. C.: The Controversy over Political Correctness on College Campuses, New York, New York: Dell, pp. 29-39. Eisenberg, Avigail, 2000, “Cultural Pluralism Today,” in Browning, Gary K., Halcli, Abigail, and Webster, Frank, (eds.), Understanding Contemporary Society: Theories of the Present, London, England: Sage Publications. Gates, H. L., 1992, Loose Canons, New York, New York: Oxford University Press. Giroux, Henry A., 1992, Border Crossings, New York, New York: Routledge. Giroux, Henry A., 1993, Living Dangerously, New York, New York: Peter Lang. Giroux, Henry A., 1994, “Insurgent Multiculturalism and the Promise of Pedagogy,” in Goldberg, David Theo, (ed.), Multiculturalism: A Critical Reader, Oxford, England: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., Chapter 15, pp. 325-343. Gitlin, Todd, 1995, “After the Failed Faiths: Beyond Individualism, Marxism, and Multiculturalism,” World Policy Journal, 12:1, spring, 61-68.

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Glazer, Nathan, 1997, We Are All Multiculturalists Now, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Glazer, Nathan and Moynihan, Daniel P., 1970, Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. Goldberg, David Theo, (ed.), 1994, Multiculturalism: A Critical Reader, Oxford, England: Blackwell Publishers Ltd. Gordon, Milton M., 1975, “Toward a General Theory of Racial and Ethnic Group Relations,” in Glazer, Nathan and Moynihan, Daniel P., (eds.), Ethnicity: Theory and Experience, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, Chapter 3, pp. 84110. Gordon, Milton M., 1981, “Models of Pluralism: The New American Dilemma,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 454, March, 178-188. Gutmann, Amy, 1994, “Introduction,” in Gutman, Amy, (ed.), Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, pp. 3-24. Habermas, Jurgen, 1998, “Struggles for Recognition in the Democratic Constitutional State,” in Habermas, Jurgen, The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, Chapter 8, pp. 203-236. Hall, S., 1991a, “Old and New Identities, Old and New Ethnicities,” in King, A. D., (ed.), Culture, Globalization, and the World-System, Basingstoke, England: Macmillan, pp. 41-68. Hall, S., 1991b, “Ethnicity: Identity and Difference,” Radical America, 13:4, 9-20. Hollinger, David A., 1995, Post-Ethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism, New York, New York: Basic Books. Hollis, Martin, 1999, “Is Universalism Ethnocentric?,” in Joppke, Christian and Lukes, Steven, (eds.), Multicultural Questions, Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, Chapter 2, pp. 27-43. Honneth, Axel, 1995, Struggles for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, Cambridge, England: Polity Press. Kimball, Roger, 1992, “The Periphery vs. the Center: The MLA in Chicago,” in Berman, Paul A., (ed.), Debating P. C.: The Controversy over Political Correctness on College Campuses, New York, New York: Dell, pp. 61-82. Kobayashi, A., 1993, “Multiculturalism: Representing a Canadian Institution,” in Duncan, J. and Ley, D., (eds.), Place/Culture/Representation, London, England: Routledge, pp. 205-231. Kymlicka, Will, 1995, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Lenin, V. I., 1967, “Critical Remarks on the National Question,” in Lenin, V. I., Questions of National Policy and Proletarian Internationalism, Moscow, Russia: Progress Publishers. McLaren, Peter, 1994, “White Terror and Oppositional Agency: Towards a Critical Multiculturalism,” in Goldberg, David Theo, (ed.), Multiculturalism: A Critical Reader, Oxford, England: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., Chapter 1, pp. 45-74.

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Morton, F. L. 1985, “Group Rights versus Individual Rights in the Charter: The Special Cases of Natives and the Quebecois,” in Nevitte, N. and Kornberg, A., (eds.), Minorities and the Canadian State, Oakville, Ontario, Canada: Mosaic Press, pp. 7185. Nash, Gary B., 1992, “The Great Multicultural Debate,” Contention: Debates in Society, Culture, and Science, 1:3, spring, 1-28. Offe, Claus, 1998, “‘Homogeneity’ and Constitutional Democracy: Coping with Identity Conflicts through Group Rights,” Journal of Political Philosophy, 6:2, 113-141. Parekh, Bhikhu C., 2000, Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Raz, Joseph, 1994, “Multiculturalism: A Liberal Perspective,” Dissent, 41:1, winter, 67-79. Raz, Joseph, 1998, “Multiculturalism,” Ratio Juris, 11:3, September, 193-205. Ravitch, Diane, 1990, “Diversity and Democracy: Multicultural Education in America,” American Educator, spring. Rex, John, 1986, “The Concept of Multicultural Society,” Coventry, England: Center for Research in Ethnic Relations, University of Warwick, Occasional Papers in Ethnic Relations, No. 3. Rex, John, 1991, “The Political Sociology of a Multi-Cultural Society,” Journal of InterCultural Studies, 2:1, 7-19. Rosaldo, Renato, 1988, “Ideology, Place, and People without Culture,” Cultural Anthropology, 3, 77-87. Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr., 1991, The Disuniting of America, New York, New York: W. W. Norton and Company. Shohat, Ella and Stam, Robert, 1994, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media, New York, New York: Routledge. Smelser, Neil J. and Alexander, Jeffrey C., (eds.), 1999, Diversity and Its Discontents: Cultural Conflict and Common Ground in Contemporary American Society, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Sowell, Thomas, 1991, “A World View of Cultural Diversity,” Society, 29:1, 37-44. Sowell, Thomas, 1991, “A World View of Cultural Diversity,” Society, 29:1, 37-44. Stalin, Joseph, 1950, Marxism and the National Question, Moscow, Russia: Foreign Language Publishing House. Stimpson, Catharine R., 1992, “On Differences: Modern Language Association Presidential Address, 1990,” in Berman, Paul A., (ed.), Debating P. C.: The Controversy over Political Correctness on College Campuses, New York, New York: Dell, pp. 40-69. Taylor, Charles, 1994, “The Politics of Recognition,” in Goldberg, David Theo, (ed.), Multiculturalism: A Critical Reader, Oxford, England: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., Chapter 2, pp. 75-106. In Gutmann, Amy, (ed.), Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, Chapter 1, pp. 25-73. Todorov, Tzvetan, 1993, On Human Diversity, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Tully, James, 1995, Strange Multiplicities: Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

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Chapter 10

Paradigm Diversity Multi-paradigmatic approach has been the backbone of all the chapters in this book. This chapter makes three remarks (in Sections I through III) with respect to the relationship between the multi-paradigmatic approach and scholarly research, monoculturalism-multiculturalism, and identity politics.

I. Remark 1: Multi-Paradigmatic Approach and Scholarly Research Social theory can usefully be conceived in terms of four key paradigms: functionalist, interpretive, radical humanist, and radical structuralist. The four paradigms are founded upon different assumptions about the nature of social science and the nature of society. Each generates theories, concepts, and analytical tools which are different from those of other paradigms. All theories are based on a philosophy of science and a theory of society. Many theorists appear to be unaware of, or ignore, the assumptions underlying these philosophies. They emphasize only some aspects of the phenomenon and ignore others. Unless they bring out the basic philosophical assumptions of the theories, their analysis can be misleading, since by emphasizing differences between theories they imply diversity in approach. While there appear to be different kinds of theories, they are founded on a certain philosophy, worldview, or paradigm. This becomes evident when these theories are related to the wider background of social theory. The functionalist paradigm has provided the framework for current mainstream theorists, and accounts for the largest proportion of theory and research in their academic fields. In order to understand a new paradigm, theorists should be fully aware of assumptions upon which their own paradigm is based. Moreover, to understand a new paradigm, one has to explore it from within, since the concepts in one paradigm cannot easily be interpreted in terms of those of another. No attempt should be made to criticize or evaluate a paradigm from the outside. This is self-defeating, since it is based on a separate paradigm. All four paradigms can be easily criticized and ruined in this way.

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These four paradigms are of paramount importance to any scientist, because the process of learning about a favored paradigm is also the process of learning what that paradigm is not. The knowledge of paradigms makes scientists aware of the boundaries within which they approach their subject. Each of the four paradigms implies a different way of social theorizing. Scientists often approach their subject from a frame of reference based upon assumptions that are taken for granted. Since these assumptions are continually affirmed and reinforced, they remain not only unquestioned, but also beyond conscious awareness. In this way, most researchers tend to favor the functionalist paradigm. The partial nature of this view only becomes apparent when the researcher exposes basic assumptions to the challenge of alternative ways of seeing, and starts to appreciate these alternatives on their own terms. To do this, one must explore other paradigms from within, since the concepts in one paradigm cannot easily be interpreted in terms of those of another. The diversity of social research possibilities referred to in this book is vast. While each paradigm advocates a research strategy that is logically coherent, in terms of underlying assumptions, these vary from paradigm to paradigm. The phenomenon to be researched can be conceptualized and studied in many different ways, each generating distinctive kinds of insight and understanding. There are many different ways of studying the same social phenomenon, and given that the insights generated by any one approach are at best partial and incomplete, the social researcher can gain much by reflecting on the nature and merits of different approaches. It is clear that social scientists – like other generators of knowledge – deal with the realization of possible types of knowledge, which are connected with the particular paradigm adopted. The mainstream social theories are based upon the functionalist paradigm; and, for the most part, social theorists are not always entirely aware of the traditions to which they belong. This book recommends serious conscious thinking about the social philosophy upon which social theory is based and about the alternative avenues for development. Mainstream social theorists can gain much by exploiting the new perspectives coming from the other paradigms. An understanding of different paradigms leads to a better understanding of the multifaceted nature of social phenomenon. Although a researcher may decide to conduct research from the point of view of a certain paradigm, an understanding of the nature of other paradigms leads to a better understanding of what one is doing. Paradigm diversity is based on the idea that more than one theoretical construction can be placed upon a given collection of data. In other words, any

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single theory, research method, or particular empirical study is incapable of explaining the nature of reality in all of its complexities. It is possible to establish exact solutions to problems if one defines the boundary and domain of reality. Functionalist research, through its research approach, defines an area in which objectivity and truth can be found. Any change in the research approach, or any change in the area of applicability, would tend to result in the breakdown of such objectivity and truth. The knowledge generated through functionalist research relates to certain aspects of the phenomenon under consideration. Recognition of the existence of the phenomenon beyond that dictated by the research approach results in the recognition of the limitations of the knowledge generated within the confines of that approach. It is almost impossible to find a foundational solution to the problem of creating specific kinds of knowledge. Researchers are encouraged to explore what is possible by identifying untapped possibilities. By comparing a favored research approach in relation to others, the nature, strengths, and limitations of the favored approach become evident. By understanding what others do, researchers can understand what they are not doing. This leads to the development and refinement of the favored research approach. The concern is not about deciding which research approach is best, or about substituting one for another. The concern is about the merits of diversity, which seeks to enrich research rather than constrain it, through a search for an optimum way of doing diverse research. There is no unique evaluative perspective for assessing knowledge generated by different research approaches. Therefore, it becomes necessary to get beyond the idea that knowledge is foundational and can be evaluated in an absolute way. Different research approaches provide different interpretations of a phenomenon, and understand the phenomenon in a particular way. Some may be supporting a traditional view; others may be saying something new. In this way, knowledge is treated as being tentative rather than absolute. All research approaches have something to contribute. The interaction among them may lead to synthesis, compromise, consensus, transformation, polarization, or simply clarification and improved understanding of differences. Such interaction, which is based on differences of viewpoints, is not concerned with reaching consensus or an end point that establishes a foundational truth. On the contrary, it is concerned with learning from the process itself, and encouraging the interaction to continue so long as

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disagreement lasts. Likewise, it is not concerned with producing uniformity, but with promoting improved diversity. Paradigm diversity is based on the idea that research is a creative process and that there are many ways of doing research. This approach leads to the development of knowledge in many different – and sometimes contradictory – directions such that new ways of knowing will emerge. There can be no objective criteria for choosing between alternative perspectives. The number of ways of generating new knowledge is bounded only by the ingenuity of researchers in inventing new approaches. The functionalist paradigm regards research as a technical activity and depersonalizes the research process. It removes responsibility from the researcher and reduces him or her to an agent engaged in what the institutionalized research demands. Paradigm diversity reorients the role of the researchers and places responsibility for the conduct and consequences of research directly with them. Researchers examine the nature of their activity to choose an appropriate approach, and develop the capacity to observe and question what they are doing, and take responsibility for making intelligent choices which are open to realize the many potential types of knowledge. To implement paradigm diversity, some fundamental changes need to be directed to the way research is presently managed. In other words, paradigm diversity implies and requires changes. The most fundamental change is to understand the multifaceted nature of society as a phenomenon. An understanding of paradigms provides a valuable means for exploring the nature of the phenomenon being investigated. Furthermore, an understanding of other paradigms provides an invaluable basis for recognizing what one is doing. It is interesting to note that this recommendation is consistent with the four paradigms: 1) It increases efficiency in research: This is because diversity in the research approach prevents or delays reaching the point of diminishing marginal return. Therefore, the recommendation the recommendation is consistent with the functionalist paradigm, which emphasizes purposive rationality and the benefit of diversification. 2) It advocates diversity in research approach: This is consistent with the interpretive paradigm, which emphasizes shared multiple realities. 3) It leads to the realization of researchers’ full potential: This is consistent with the radical humanist paradigm, which emphasizes

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human beings’ emancipation from the structures which limit their potential for development. 4) It enhances class awareness: This is consistent with the radical structuralist paradigm, which emphasizes class struggle. Social knowledge is ultimately a product of the researcher’s paradigmatic approach to this multifaceted phenomenon. Viewed from this angle, the pursuit of social knowledge is seen as much as an ethical, moral, ideological, and political activity as a technical one. Mainstream theorists can gain much from the contributions of the other paradigms.

II. Remark 2: Multi-Paradigmatic Approach and Monoculturalism-Multiculturalism The purpose of this section is to discuss “us and them” – a distinction that accompanies any categorization of people into different groups, e.g., based on nationality, race, gender, age, etc. Therefore, any categorization, which in the context of the values of a culture is associated with a hierarchical ranking, creates tension. This section argues that monoculturalism creates tension as it converts “us and them” to “us vs. them,” however, multiculturalism mitigates the tension as it converts “us and them” to “us with them.” To elaborate, the section starts, in Subsection 1, with a discussion of the dual-process social psychology, which considers a spectrum with two extreme processes of effortless “heuristic” and effortful “systematic.” Whereas the former, “heuristic,” process is more prone to bias, the latter, “systematic,” process tends to reduce the bias. In Subsection 2, the section discusses the monoculture-multiculture spectrum, which contains the following stages: (i) monoculturalism, (ii) cross-cultural contact, (iii) cultural conflict, (iv) educational interventions, (v) disequilibrium, (vi) awareness, and (vii) multiculturalism. The monoculture-multiculture spectrum operates in a parallel fashion with the heuristic-systematic spectrum. A typical member of a culture who is socialized into a culture, takes such culture for granted and acts on it as his/her heuristic. However, if the typical member of the culture learns about multiculturalism, then he/she modifies the taken-for-granted culture and acts on it as his/her systematic. This Subsection also points out that whereas the monoculture-heuristic pair is biased, creates tension, and converts “us and them” to “us vs. them,” the multiculture-systematic pair is

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unbiased, avoids tension, and converts “us and them” to “us with them,” as well as that the multi-paradigmatic approach enhances this process.

II.1. Dual-Process Social Psychology This subsection provides an overview of the “heuristic-systematic model,” which is a typical dual-process social psychological model that considers heuristic and systematic modes of information processing, along with the social-cognitive principles thought to govern the activation and use of stored knowledge. This typical model involves a continuum that has two extremes of effortless “heuristic” process and effortful “systematic” process. Whereas the former, “heuristic,” process is more prone to bias, the latter, “systematic,” process tends to reduce the bias.46 Within any specific judgmental context, the heuristic-systematic model delineates two basic modes through which perceivers may determine their attitudes and other social judgments. Systematic processing involves a relatively analytic and comprehensive treatment of judgment-relevant information. Judgments formed on the basis of systematic processing are accordingly responsive to the actual content of such information. By its very nature, systematic processing requires both cognitive ability and capacity. For instance, in a specific judgmental domain, systematic forms of processing are less likely to be seen among perceivers who possess little knowledge in the domain, or among individuals who are processing with time constraints.

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For this literature, see Bargh (1984, 1989, 1994, 1997), Bargh and Chartrand (1999), Bargh, Chaiken, Raymond, and Hymes (1996), Bohner, Moskowitz, and Chaiken (1995), Bohner, Rank, Reinhard, Einwiller, and Erb (1998), Chaiken (1980, 1987), Chaiken, GinerSorolla, and Chen (1996), Chaiken, Liberman, and Eagly (1989), Chaiken and Maheswaran (1994), Chaiken and Trope (1999), Chaiken, Wood, and Eagly (1996), Chen and Chaiken (1999), Chen, Shechter, and Chaiken (1996), Cimpian and Steinberg (2014), Darke, Chaiken, Bohner, Einwiller, Erb, and Hazelwood (1998), Eagly and Chaiken (1993), Erb, Bohner, Schmiilzle, and Rank (1998), Evans and Frankish (2009), Fiske and Taylor (1991), Forehand, Gastil, and Smith (2004), Gilovich and Griffin (2002), Gilovich, Griffin, and Kahneman (2008), Giner-Sorolla and Chaiken (1997), Higgins (1996), Kahneman (2011), Kahneman, Slovic, and Tversky (1982), Kossowska, Guinote, and Strojny (2016), Kuhnen (2010), Logan (1989), Maheswaran and Chaiken (1991), Maheswaran, Mackie, and Chaiken (1992), Martin and Hewstone (2003), Martin, Hewstone, and Martin (2007), Meleady and Crisp (2014), Meyers-Levy and Maheswaran (2004), Petty and Cacioppo (1986), Porcelli and Delgado (2009), Schneider and Shiffrin (1977), Shadlen and Shohamy (2016), Sherman, Gawronski, and Trope (2014), Shiffrin and Schneider (1977), Simon (1976), Tordesillas and Chaiken (1995), Whaley (2009), and Wood, Kallgren, and Preisler (1985). This section is based on Chen and Chaiken (1999).

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The other basic mode, heuristic processing, involves the activation and application of judgmental rules or “heuristics” (e.g., “Experts’ statements can be trusted,” “Length implies strength,” “Consensus opinions are correct”). Such rules or “heuristics,” like other knowledge structures, are presumed to have been learned and stored in memory. Judgments formed based on heuristic processing reflect easily processed judgment-relevant cues (e.g., message length), rather than individualistic or particularistic judgment-relevant information. Relative to systematic processing, heuristic processing makes minimal cognitive demands on the part of the perceiver. The heuristic mode is constrained by social-cognitive principles of knowledge activation and use – namely, availability, accessibility, and applicability. More specifically, judgment-relevant heuristics must be stored in memory (i.e., available), must be retrieved from memory and used (i.e., accessible), and must be applicable – that is, must be relevant to the judgmental task at hand. Reflecting the widespread notion of perceivers as limited in cognitive resources, and thus as “economy­minded” information processors, the heuristic-systematic model assumes that perceivers are guided partly by the “principle of least effort.” That is, in the interest of economy, the heuristic processing often predominates the relatively more effortful systematic processing. Beyond economy, however, information processing is often guided by motivational concerns. Recognizing this, the heuristic-systematic model incorporates the “principle of least effort” into its sufficiency principle, which maintains that perceivers attempt to strike a balance between minimizing cognitive effort, on the one hand, and satisfying their current motivational concerns, on the other. That is, perceivers who are motivated to generate accurate judgments will exert as much cognitive effort as is necessary (and possible) to reach a sufficient degree of confidence with respect to their judgment accuracy goals. For any specific judgment, the sufficiency principle proposes a judgmentconfidence continuum, along which two critical points lie: one designating perceivers’ level of actual confidence, and the other designating their level of desired confidence, or sufficiency threshold. Perceivers will exert cognitive effort until their level of actual confidence reaches (if it can) their sufficiency threshold, thereby closing the gap between actual and desired levels of confidence. When low-effort heuristic processing fails to provide sufficient judgmental confidence (or cannot occur due to, for example, the lack of any judgment- relevant heuristic-cue information), perceivers are likely to engage in systematic processing in an attempt to close the confidence gap. Although systematic processing is generally more effective than heuristic processing in

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decreasing the gap between actual and desired confidence, engaging in systematic processing does not guarantee that the gap will be closed. Predicting which processing mode will be undertaken, follows directly from the sufficiency principle. Systematic processing is more likely to emerge when the gap between the actual and the desired judgmental confidence is widened as a result of either an increase in one’s sufficiency threshold (e.g., when the importance of the judgment task is enhanced), or a decrease in one’s level of actual confidence (e.g., when judgment-relevant information contradicts the judgmental implications of previously encountered heuristiccue information). This prediction assumes that perceivers generally believe that more processing will provide them with more confident judgments. When this self-efficacy expectation is not held, increasing the gap between actual and desired confidence will not necessarily instigate systematic processing. It is important to note that the sufficiency principle is based on a judgmental continuum, which implies that varying degrees of heuristic and systematic processing may occur, corresponding to variations in the extent of the confidence gap. And of course, as discussed above, heuristic and systematic processing depend not only on one’s motivational concerns, but also on the availability, accessibility, and applicability of judgment-relevant heuristics, as well as the availability of adequate cognitive resources. Although either processing mode may occur alone, the heuristicsystematic model delineates specific and predictable ways in which heuristic and systematic processing may occur at the same time. Below, several patterns of such occurrence are described, in which situational, cognitive, and motivational factors that render one pattern more or less likely than another are pointed out. The heuristic-systematic model’s additivity hypothesis refers to situations where heuristic and systematic processing may exert independent and judgmentally consistent effects. For instance, in a situation where participants were asked to make evaluations of a consumer product, when the judgmental implication of a “brand-name heuristic” was congruent with the judgmental implication of attribute information about the product, participants who were led to believe that their product evaluations would be highly consequential based these evaluations on both their heuristic and systematic processing of the product information. The model’s bias hypothesis refers to the notion that the judgmental implications of heuristic-cue information may establish expectancies about subsequently encountered judgment-relevant information, which in turn may bias the nature of more effortful systematic processing of the judgment-

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relevant information. Such bias is most likely to occur in judgmental settings where individuating judgment-relevant information is ambiguous and hence amenable to differential interpretation, or when no such information is provided but perceivers generate judgment-relevant cognitions of their own. For instance, in a situation where exposure to heuristic-cue information (i.e., source credibility) led participants, who were told that their judgments would be highly consequential, to systematically process ambiguous individuating information about the object of judgment in ways congruent with the judgmental implications of the source credibility information. More specifically, participants exposed to the high-credibility heuristic cue elaborated upon the ambiguous information in more favorable ways than did those exposed to the low-credibility cue, presumably because high source credibility engendered favorable expectancies about the ambiguous individuating information. In turn, participants’ biased systematic processing of this ambiguous information predicted their judgments about the object. Heuristic and systematic processing may also work in opposition – which represents the model’s attenuation hypothesis. For example, the judgmental implications derived from systematic processing may contradict, and thus attenuate, the judgmental impact of heuristic processing. For instance, high-motivation participants in a situation were presented with consensus-cue information that was either congruent or incongruent with the valence of individuating information about the object of judgment. When the judgmental implication derived from their heuristic processing of consensus-cue information was incongruent with that of their systematic processing of the individuating information, these highly motivated participants relied solely on their more effortful cognitions to determine their judgments. The above examples illustrate the predictability of the co-occurrence of heuristic and systematic processing. In the same way that the knowledge of the characteristics of the perceiver and of the current judgmental setting permits predictions of when each processing mode is likely to occur alone, knowledge of these same parameters enables predictions regarding the cooccurrence of heuristic and systematic processing and its particular form. For instance, situational factors such as the presence of heuristic-cue information – as well as its congruence with other available, judgment-relevant information – may largely determine the nature of perceivers’ heuristic and systematic processing. More specifically, assuming adequate cognitive resources and relatively high levels of motivation, if the judgmental implication of heuristic-cue information is congruent with that of other available judgment-relevant information, perceivers may well engage in

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heuristic and systematic processing in additive ways. However, if the judgmental implication of the heuristic-cue information is incongruent with other available judgment-relevant information, perceivers’ systematic processing is likely to attenuate the judgmental impact of the heuristic cue. In contrast, if perceivers have neither the cognitive resources nor the motivation to process systematically, whether heuristic-cue information is congruent or incongruent with other available judgment-relevant information, it will exert little, if any, impact on the nature of information processing. In both cases, perceivers are likely to engage in heuristic processing, resulting in judgments that directly reflect the judgmental implications of the heuristic-cue information.

II.2. Monoculturalism and Multiculturalism Multiculturalism means having a broad multicultural perspective.47 It reflects the fact that human existence is inherently and universally multicultural, although mankind has overlooked it throughout history. This neglect is probably the result of the survival imperative of the ethnocentric impulse, which sees submerging oneself in similarities as a safer path to survival than trying to deal with differences. Multiculturalism implies a set of principles, a “multicultural perspective,” based on which people act in a multicultural society. The first step toward multiculturalism is the awareness of the ethnocentric impulse. This is buried deeply in the unconscious and culturally determined patterns of thinking and behavior. These act as powerful built-in barriers to accepting that society is multicultural. Thus, the first step toward multicultural living consists of: (1) becoming aware of one’s own ethnocentric conditioning; and (2) accepting the fact that society is multicultural. Multicultural education uses the framework of formal education to develop in

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For this literature, see Wayne (2009), Banks (2007), Banks and McGee (1989, 1995), Barber (1992), Baumann and Vertovec (2011), Chapman and Nikola (2010), DeMulder and Eby (1999), Gay (1995, 1997, 2002), George and Chattopadhyay (2008), Gollnick and Chinn (1986), Greene (1993), Guarasci and Conrnwell (1997), Gurin (1999), Hofstede (1980), Hannerz (1996), Hodgkinson and Starbuck (2008), Kirsch (2006), Lynch (1989), Macedo (2000), Mann and Moser (1991), McDonough and Feinberg (2003), Nieto (1992, 1995), Parker (1996, 1997, 2002), Pratte (1979), Rodriguez (1983), Rojot (2008), Sigel and Hoskin (1991), Sims and de Martinez (1981), Sleeter (1991), Sleeter (1996), Stent, Hazard, and Rivlin (1973), Thompson and Tyagi (1993), (2004), and Zarate (2009). This section is based on Wurzel (2004).

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teachers and students both multicultural awareness and the fundamental skills needed for living in a multicultural world. Culture can be regarded as knowledge, as shared patterns of information that a group uses in order to generate and convey meaning among its members. Every group creates a system of shared knowledge that is necessary for its functioning and survival; and the group uses it to facilitate communication among its members. These shared patterns of information can be explicit or implicit. They are the outcomes of ecological, historical, and contemporary adaptive needs. They are comprised of subjective components (beliefs, attitudes, values), interactive components (verbal and nonverbal language), and material components (artifacts). These systems of knowledge, or cultural realities, arise from both macrocultural dimensions – such as ethnicity and nationality – and micro-cultural aspects of human existence – family, religion, occupation, age, sex, vocational interests, etc. When these micro-cultures – i.e., identity groups – are combined with macro-cultures – i.e., the vast array of national, ethnic, and racial groups – it becomes clear that multiculturalism pervades human society – i.e., human beings live in a multicultural world. Individuals within a micro- or macro-culture share their respective culture’s specific patterns of information to a significant degree. Their macroand micro-cultural experiences shape their worldview, and reality; and influence their interaction with others. When their cultural patterns of information are not shared by others, differing realities clash, cultural conflicts arise, and communication breaks down, which result in internal (personal) and interactional (social) tensions, and reinforce cultural isolation, prejudice, and mistrust. In the multicultural world of human beings, they continuously encounter different cultural realities, from which cultural conflicts inevitably arise. Multicultural education recognizes that these conflicts are inevitable, attempts to ameliorate them, and notes that in this process positive learning takes place. Cross-cultural conflicts can help different aspects of cultural learning, including the development of cultural self-understanding and awareness, the enhancement of knowledge about other cultural realities, and the improvement of cross-cultural communication skills. Denying or disregarding the existence of cultural conflicts perpetuates them. In contrast, acknowledging the existence of cultural conflicts, and incorporating them into the multicultural education process, potentially lead to their reduction. Multicultural education may be defined as involving: (1) the recognition of the universality of multiculturalism; (2) the development of cultural self-

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awareness; (3) the willingness to learn about one’s own and others’ cultural realities; (4) the acceptance of the existence of cultural conflicts; and (5) the improvement of communication with people from other cultures. Culture subtly, purposefully, and without individuals’ conscious awareness, imbues them with notions of reality that act as a shared meaning in their interactions with others. To the group of individuals, it supplies, maintains, and perpetuates the familiar, which allows them to understand their world. Culture, with its powerful spell, does not let individuals to easily accept the existence and validity of other cultural perspectives. The strong spell of culture leads individuals to hold to their own culture as long as they can, because they are led to believe that there is a painful loss in admitting the relativity of their cultural reality and the validity of others’. When individuals break the spell of culture, they become richer, because they know more about themselves, and have an expanded cultural vision. From the clashing of cultural realities individuals learn about their own cultural conceptions as well as others’. They discover a new way of seeing themselves and a new way of seeing others. They understand and expand their cultural and conceptual preconditioning. They feel free to accept other cultural conceptions and to examine their own culture with constructive and critical eyes. One of the biproducts of this process is the understanding of the feeble nature of knowledge. If reality is culturally conceived, then the notion that “knowledge is absolute” is challenged. Multiculturalism is the opposite of dogmatism, as it points to the inevitable contradictions embedded in everything humans learn. Thus, a multicultural perspective encourages people to learn about themselves as well as comprehending the realities of others. Through this process, people also learn to tolerate the uncertainty of knowledge. The progressive movement towards multiculturalism can be thought of as consisting of the following seven stages: (1) mono-culturalism; (2) crosscultural contact; (3) cultural conflict; (4) educational interventions; (5) disequilibrium; (6) awareness; and (7) multiculturalism. 1) Mono-culturalism: At this initial stage, individuals regard their interpretation of the world as the best and universal. They perceive other ways of behaving and thinking as either strange or inferior. This is the stage of ethnocentrism, which is both inevitable and universal. It starts in childhood, when the child’s parents, environment, religion, and social traditions are all taken for granted, and help form the child’s identity, and insure the child’s psychological belonging,

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security, and stability. These familiar environmental factors provide the indispensable basis for existence and as a result they are valued positively. When children grow up with a certain style of cooking and customs, then as adults they come to like them. Consequently, anything which is not familiar may be looked down upon or perceived as a threat to the identity of the group. The strong defense of one’s values (the familiar) may lead to hatred and aggressive acts toward those with different values. The main characteristic of the monocultural stage is that people have not yet realized the inevitability and universality of ethnocentrism. People characterize their own cultural information as unique and superior. They may, consciously or unconsciously, tend to impose their cultural patterns on others and expect them to follow accordingly. 2) Cross-Cultural Contact: The process toward multiculturalism begins with individuals’ direct or indirect contact with other cultural groups. Individuals compare and contrast different patterns of cultural information to their own and begin the questioning process. However, at this stage individuals are not aware that there are diverse cultural patterns. 3) Cultural Conflict: Cultural conflict involves the clashing of different cultural patterns and the confrontation of two or more ethnocentric views. Cultural conflict occurs as a result of the collision between two or more groups, each of whom sees its own folkways as unique. This confrontation intensifies ethnocentrism, and leads each antagonist to further differentiate itself from the other. They perceive the world as divided between “us” and “them.” The degree of the intensity of the results of cultural conflict may vary from miscommunication, reinforcement of false perceptions, and different forms of hostility, to individual and social feelings of depression, marginality, and alienation. Cultural conflict becomes very damaging when one group forces its cultural patterns on another. 4) Educational Interventions: Educational interventions can help in the amelioration of cultural conflict and the development of a multicultural perspective. Curricular programs can serve to narrow the communication gap in situations of micro- and macro-cultural conflict. These may include: self-awareness; common human condition themes and cultural differences; cognitive imposition vs. cognitive choice according to cultural needs of students; personally-

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relevant knowledge; inquiry vs. dogmatism; and prevalence of microcultural realities. 5) Disequilibrium: For cognitive development, disequilibrium of mental structures is necessary for the assimilation of new knowledge. More specifically, knowledge and intellectual development take place through the twin mental processes of assimilation and accommodation. While interacting with the environment occurs, the individual assimilates certain elements into the already existing mental structures. This upsets the equilibrium in mental organization because mental structures change to accommodate new data. In the context of the amelioration of cultural conflict, disequilibrium involves the balance between the need to protect sameness and continuity on the one hand, and the need to accommodate change on the other. In the process of multiculturalism, disequilibrium occurs when previously held knowledge is challenged or is invalidated by new cultural encounters. At this stage, individuals begin to doubt and question some of their attitudes and beliefs. They go through an emotional and intellectual struggle as they begin to internalize the concept of culture and its power and arbitrariness in influencing thought and behavior. 6) Awareness: At this stage the individual has completely surpassed ethnocentrism and has begun to understand the concept of culture. The individual has reestablished a new equilibrium and has started the process of accommodating the new knowledge. 7) Multiculturalism: Individuals with multicultural perspective have achieved a new mental and emotional consciousness that enables them to negotiate new formations of reality more readily. At this stage, individuals have been able to internalize the historical and contemporary contradictions that are embedded in the human condition. The individuals hold a multicultural style of thinking and feeling, which is tolerant of cultural differences, the ambiguities of knowledge, and variations in human perspective. They reject simple answers and appreciate inquiry. They question the arbitrary nature of their own culture and believe that people from other cultures can enrich their experience. They are aware and able to incorporate and synthesize different systems of cultural knowledge into their own. They can be recognized by the configuration of their outlooks and worldviews.

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The distinction between “us and them” accompanies any categorization of people into different groups, e.g., based on nationality, race, gender, age, etc. Therefore, any categorization, which in the context of the values of a culture is associated with a hierarchical ranking, tends to embody the sense of “us vs. them” and to create the tension between “us” and “them.” This tension may be more imagined and socially constructed than real, and lead members of a culture to be more inward looking and become more provincial. A typical member of a culture, who is socialized into the culture, takes the “us vs. them” for granted and joins the rest of the members of the culture. The “us vs. them” acts as the heuristic that underlies the judgments, decisions, and actions of the typical member of the culture. As long as this member acts on the “us vs. them” heuristic, he/she will live a biased life. However, the typical member of the culture, through life experience or cultural change, may develop beyond the “us vs. them” heuristic (which is a “monoculture-heuristic”) and make progress toward “multiculturesystematic.” Such a move takes place across the spectrum. Indeed, there are two parallel spectrums: one is the heuristic-systematic spectrum (which was discussed in Subsection 1), and the other spectrum is the monoculturemulticulture spectrum (which was discussed in Subsection 2). How far the typical member of the culture will move from the monoculture-heuristic end of the spectrum to the multiculture-systematic end of the spectrum, depends on the degree of the progress of the member in overcoming the taken-forgranted assumptions of the culture in which he/she was socialized. The further he/she moves away from the monoculture-heuristic and the closer he/she gets to the multiculture-systematic, the more unbiased life he/she will live. Whereas the monoculture-heuristic is biased, embodies “us and them,” and creates tension by converting “us and them” to “us vs. them,” the multiculturesystematic is unbiased, denies “us and them,” and removes this tension, by converting “us and them” to “us with them.” The more a culture internalizes multiculture-systematic, the more that culture becomes open to the diversity of the members of the culture, in the sense that there will be more interpersonal trust, more friendship, more collective work, more place attachment, more social capital, etc. among diverse residents of the place. The multi-paradigmatic approach, which is advocated in this book, not only supports multiculturalism, but also prepares people for a multicultural world. The multi-paradigmatic approach, which advocates paradigm diversity, indeed prepares people for a more fundamentally diverse world than just a world with diverse cultures. The multi-paradigmatic approach is based on the

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existence of diverse worldviews, of which diverse cultural views is only a subset. The multi-paradigmatic approach makes people aware of diverse worldviews, which are based on diverse set of fundamental assumptions, and each worldview has its own merit based on its own fundamental set of assumptions. The multi-paradigmatic approach makes people aware of their own set of assumptions, and also it makes people aware of the assumptions underlying others’ points of view. It makes people aware that there are other people who advocate other worldviews, and that each person should respect other people’s worldviews because all worldviews are meritorious in their own way. In this way, the multi-paradigmatic approach, in a fundamental way, prepares people for a multicultural world. The multi-paradigmatic approach enables people to check their blind spots. The multi-paradigmatic approach emphasizes that people’s worldview, which is intertwined with their cultural view, is central to what they see, how they make sense of what they see, and how they express themselves. Lack of understanding about what constitutes cultural identity, and how people are affected by the various aspects of their worldview, can be a source of conflict and a great hindrance in the development of productive relationships. The multi-paradigmatic approach makes people aware that their culture acts on them, and that their cultural assumptions and values are different from those of others. The multi-paradigmatic approach insists that people should not judge any other culture with the standards embodied in their own culture. It encourages people to learn about other cultures as well as their own. People must take the time for introspection and reflection on their own culture in order to seek an understanding of their own worldview. People must recognize themselves as cultural creatures and realize that they must first know themselves to appreciate the cultural lenses through which they interpret others. The multi-paradigmatic approach is based on the idea that there can be diverse worldviews, each of which can be meritorious. In this way, the multiparadigmatic approach discourages dogma, fundamentalism, and extremism. Moreover, the multi-paradigmatic approach discourages prejudice, dogma, xenophobia, homophobia, homophily, racism, sexism, and ageism. Furthermore, the multi-paradigmatic approach discourages any exclusionary behavior that leads to marginalization, disenfranchisement, isolation, and alienation of other people. Indeed, the multi-paradigmatic approach is inclusive and encourages inclusion in any community. For instance, inclusive classrooms are classrooms in which instructors and students work together to create and sustain an environment in which everyone feels safe, supported, and encouraged to express his/her views and concerns. In these classrooms,

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the content is explicitly viewed from the multiple perspectives and varied experiences of a range of groups. Content is presented in a manner that reduces all students’ experiences of marginalization and, wherever possible, helps students understand that individuals’ experiences, values, and perspectives influence how they construct knowledge in any field or discipline.

III. Remark 3: Multi-Paradigmatic Approach and Identity Politics The purpose of this section is to move toward a comprehensive understanding of social change by transcending boundaries among academic disciplines as well as conceptual dichotomies such as objective-subjective, structure-agency, collective-individual, macro-micro, and conflict resolution-social revolution. This transcending move can be made through the application of the concepts of multi-dimensionality, continuum, and dialectics. That is, each individual’s life can be regarded as being multi-dimensional, where each dimension can be regarded as a continuum, each of which dialectically affects and is affected by the individual’s actions that dialectically affect and are affected by other individuals, collectivity of individuals, and the social structure. This conflictridden process may be regulated to lead to conflict resolution, otherwise it may lead to social revolution. Conceptual dichotomies such as objective-subjective, structure-agency, collective-individual, macro-micro, and conflict resolution-social revolution can be resolved by the applications of the method of dialectics. That is, the two aspects of any dichotomy can be viewed as having dialectical, i.e., mutual or interactive, relationship. In this way, both aspects of any dichotomy can be incorporated into a comprehensive approach to the understanding of social change, which is the aim of this section. The comprehensive understanding of social change, which is the subject of this section, is based on individual behavior, which is affected by both behavioral and structural factors, and in turn the individual behavior affects them. Indeed, the extant literature that uses the structural approach to explain conflict and revolution, does so by translating the changes in the social structure into changes in the social structural components, and then by substituting each social structural component with the behavior of a typical individual member of that social structural component, and accordingly explain the behavior of that social structural component in the same way that theories of individual behavior explain the behavior of an individual. In effect,

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both individual and structural models of conflict and revolution take effect through the explanation of changes in the behavior of individuals. A comprehensive understanding of social change, which is the subject of this section, considers individual behavior in dialectical relationship with its social context, and therefore, allows for variation of behavior among the many individuals who constitute the human society. It is, therefore, consistent with both behavioral and structural theories of conflict and revolution. The proposed comprehensive approach to the understanding of conflict and revolution, which is the subject of this section, is multi-dimensional, multi-disciplinary, and holistic. It is so because it considers the life of each individual to be multi-dimensional, where these dimensions are studied by academic disciplines, and that all these various dimensions are dialectically related to other individuals and their social context.

III.1. A Comprehensive Approach to Social Change This section brings out the core idea of a comprehensive approach to conflict and revolution. In the comprehensive approach to the understanding of revolution, which is the subject of this section, the life of each individual is multi-dimensional. For instance, some of these dimensions are studied by the existing academic disciplines. Some other dimensions may exist, but they are not known yet, and therefore, they are not under study by any academic disciplines. Therefore, this comprehensive approach allows for the use of the contributions coming from existing academic disciplines, and also allows for the use in future of the future contributions coming from academic disciplines, i.e., those contributions which will come to existence in the future. Each of the individual’s life dimensions can be regarded as a continuum, for instance, ranging from very low to very high. At any point in time, each individual perceives himself/herself as having an “actual position” and a “preferred position” on each continuum of his life dimensions. At any point in time, the “actual position” of the individual on each dimension is that individual’s perceived location of himself/herself on the continuum of that dimension at that point in time. Similarly, at any point in time, the “preferred position” of the individual on each dimension is that individual’s perceived preferred location on the continuum of that dimension at that point in time. Furthermore, at any point in time, the individual has a perception of the relative importance of his/her life dimensions, i.e., the individual associates more importance to some dimensions of his/her life, and the individual

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associates less importance to some other dimensions of his/her life. All individual’s perceptions are dialectical outcomes of the individual’s personal characteristics and the characteristics of his/her environment, including: physical, cultural, social, structural, natural, and other factors, which can be real or perceived. Needless to say, that identity-related factors operate within an individual’s personal characteristics and the characteristics of his/her environment. In general, as soon as there is a real or perceived change in any of these factors, its dialectical interaction with the individual will result in a change in the individual’s actual position and preferred position on each of his/her life dimensions, as well as a change in the relative importance he/she associates with those life dimensions. In general, the actual position of the individual on each of his/her life dimensions is different from his/her preferred position. Due to the deviation of the actual position from the preferred position on any of his/her life dimensions, the individual is in the state of discomfort. At this time, the individual develops the potential for reaction, which is referred to as “latent conflict.” This marks the beginning of a potential conflict. When the individual takes an actual action then the “latent conflict” turns into “overt conflict,” or “conflict” for short.48 This comprehensive approach to revolution, as was noted above, allows for any factor to dialectically interact with the individual, the outcome of which will be a change in both the actual position and preferred position of the individual on each of his life dimensions, as well as a change in the relative importance of those life dimensions. For instance, any action taken by the individual himself/herself, or any other individual, will, in general, change both the actual position and preferred position of the individual on each of his/her life dimensions. By the same token, this same change will also change both the actual positions and preferred positions of all other individuals on each of their life dimensions. All these changes are dialectically related. This comprehensive approach to revolution also allows for an individual’s conflict not only be with other individuals and groups of individuals, but also with the nature. When the individual perceives that his/her discomfort emanated from another individual, group of individuals, or nature, then the individual might perceive himself/herself as being in conflict with that individual, or that group of individuals, or the nature, respectively.

48

For similar, but different, literature on modeling self-society interaction (such as Affect Control Theory, Identity Control Theory, and Identity Negotiation Theory), see Owens, Robinson, and Smith-Lovin (2010), Stryker (2007), and Stryker and Burke (2000).

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This comprehensive approach to social change explains why the activities of some individuals might seem rational, behavioral, inconsistent, or irrational. The dynamism built into this comprehensive approach to social change is based on the dialectical relationship of each individual with many other individuals, groups of individuals, and the nature, as well as with their personal characteristics, values, cultures, social structure, natural environment, etc. Such dialectical relationships will have the outcome that each individual’s actual position relative to preferred position, whether real or perceived, on each of his/her life dimensions, as well as the relative importance of his/her various life dimensions will change, and therefore, it is possible for the individual, under the new set of circumstances, to perform an action which might seem inconsistent with the individual’s action if the circumstances had not changed. The life of every individual is conflict-ridden. Any event – whether it is an action taken by an individual, by a group of individuals, or the nature – is a change and this change changes the actual position of all individuals relative to their preferred position on each of their life dimensions and, therefore, makes the life of every individual conflict-ridden. Individuals who perceive themselves as experiencing a similar conflict might tend to attract each other, might tend to sympathize with each other, might tend to search for a way to resolve the conflict which they are experiencing, and might tend to form a sympathizing group, an action group, an interest group, a political entity to resolve their conflict, i.e., might tend to try to move closer to their preferred position on any of their life dimensions. These possible tendencies take effect to the extent that there is a critical mass of individuals whose conflict-ridden experience is server enough, and also to the extent that they have the necessary political freedom and resources for the implementation of these tendencies. The severity or degree of a conflict to any individual on each of his/her life dimensions partly depends on the extent of deviation of his/her actual position from his/her preferred position on that life dimension, as well as the extent of the importance of that life dimension relative to his/her other life dimensions. Each individual has many life dimensions. In general, each individual feels conflict-ridden on each of his/her life dimensions. This leads any specific individual to experience multiple conflicts and, therefore, tend to sympathize with and/or become a member of various action groups, interest groups, and/or political organizations. In this way, each action group, interest group, or political organization consists of members, each of whom is experiencing a different degree of the same conflict, whether perceived or real; and by joining

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the group or political organization, they hope to improve their life situation, whether perceived or real. Accordingly, each individual has a different degree of commitment to the shared goal of the organization and, depending on this and other personal factors (which are the outcomes of the dialectical relationships of the individual with physical, cultural, social, environmental, and other factors), and, therefore, at any point in time during a conflict resolution or a social revolution (just to take the opposite poles of the continuum of conflict resolution-social revolution for argument’s sake) each individual takes a somewhat different position and supports a somewhat different policy from other individuals; and the same individual takes somewhat different positions and supports somewhat different policies during the period of a conflict resolution or social revolution because all factors affecting the individual are constantly changing. These are all the advantages that come with the dynamisms built into this comprehensive approach to revolution. This comprehensive approach to revolution, as noted above, recognizes that individuals have a multi-dimensional life, and based on their conflicts in various dimensions, decide to be associated with various groups and organizations. This means that society consists of overlapping groups and organizations, and, therefore, the society tends to have a cohesive existence orientation. In a conflict-ridden situation, the extant literature allows for either of two alternative routes: (1) assume homeostasis that brings the individual to his/her preferred position; or (2) assume conflict as a fact of life and analyze its consequences. The comprehensive approach to revolution, which is the subject of this section, allows for both alternative routes. If a conflict-ridden situation is not resolved by itself, or is not resolved quickly enough by itself, there might be an opportunity for intervention with the hope of moving it toward conflict resolution. In a conflict resolution case, the parties to the conflict, directly or indirectly, negotiate in order to resolve the conflict. The parties to the conflict can be individuals, groups of individuals, the government, the economic system, nature, etc. Through negotiation, the conflict might be prevented from becoming more conflict-ridden. A conflict-ridden case might not have the opportunity for moving toward resolution. Then, the conflict can become more severe. In the special case of the internal governance of a country, if conflict resolution is not a possibility, and the situation becomes more severely conflict-ridden, i.e., the conflict situation becomes more escalated and polarized, then it can turn into a revolution, where revolution can be regarded as an extreme case on the

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continuum of conflict, where its extreme poles are conflict resolution and social revolution. The causes, courses, and consequences of revolutions depend on the relative strengths of the two sides involved in the various dimensions of the dialectical relationship in the revolutionary conflict. In summary, based on the lessons learned from the multi-paradigmatic approach, this section made a move toward a comprehensive understanding of revolution by transcending boundaries among academic disciplines as well as conceptual dichotomies such as objective-subjective, structure-agency, collective-individual, macro-micro, and conflict resolution-social revolution. This transcending move was made through the application of the concepts of multi-dimensionality, continuum, and dialectics. The role of identity and identity politics in this comprehensive approach should be clear.

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Index

A abortion, 197, 200, 207 acculturation, 149 accumulation, 22, 25, 73, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 114, 116, 117, 178, 179, 182, 207, 216 accumulation of capital, 98, 178, 179 alienation, 8, 15, 35, 63, 64, 65, 66, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 79, 80, 81, 210, 211, 212, 219, 221, 223, 309, 312 anarchistic individualism, 9 annihilation of space, 101 antidote, 242, 243, 244 apparent, 21, 22, 33, 66, 112, 211, 298 aristocrats, 192 assimilationist, 279, 283, 285, 322

B bias, xiii, xiv, xvii, xviii, 83, 158, 163, 167, 168, 169, 204, 301, 302, 304, 319, 320 bigotry, 163, 168 biological racism, 170 blacks, 68, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 172, 180, 247, 254, 285 bourgeois society, 38, 46, 72, 75 bourgeoisie, 98, 143, 144, 146, 176, 287, 288, 289, 290

C capital, 11, 15, 23, 37, 38, 70, 71, 75, 80, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 117, 118, 120, 135, 143, 144, 178, 179, 181, 255, 257, 258, 261, 311 capitalism, 38, 39, 42, 47, 72, 74, 76, 79, 98, 100, 101, 102, 115, 117, 143, 144, 145, 146, 152, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 178, 181, 185, 186, 188, 189, 194, 208,

210, 211, 212, 215, 221, 243, 246, 249, 251, 252, 253, 256, 258, 259, 260, 262, 280, 286, 288, 289, 290, 292 capitalist economy, 172 capitalist society, 73, 74, 81, 174, 193, 210, 212 capitalists, 72, 74, 144, 146, 172, 173, 210, 243, 244, 252 categories, xiii, 29, 38, 63, 82, 108, 131, 160, 165, 207, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 256, 274 center-periphery relation, 101 childbearing, 200, 203 childcare, 200 childrearing, 200, 203 choice, x, 20, 21, 24, 50, 51, 65, 137, 175, 194, 195, 198, 242, 244, 277, 309 circulation, 30, 99, 100, 101 circulation of capital, 99, 100 civil rights, 171, 185, 201, 221, 242, 243, 274, 289 class, 9, 10, 12, 14, 15, 45, 46, 50, 64, 67, 70, 72, 76, 77, 79, 80, 82, 102, 111, 115, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 158, 173, 175, 176, 183, 184, 186, 187, 188, 189, 193, 195, 205, 206, 207, 210, 211, 212, 213, 216, 217, 219, 221, 222, 223, 236, 238, 239, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247, 252, 254, 255, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 263, 288, 290, 291, 292, 301 class antagonisms, 46, 288 class society, 70, 216, 217, 239 classism, 242, 247 classless society, 76 collectivity, 45, 148, 313 color-blindness, 171 color-conscious, 171 commercialization, 73

326 commitment, 51, 52, 54, 56, 194, 276, 283, 284, 285, 317, 322 commodification, 178 commodity production, 73, 75, 76, 98 common sense, 160, 174, 175, 184, 239, 284, 285 communism, 35, 44, 46, 243, 293 competitive, 22, 98, 216, 229, 230, 234, 249, 251, 255 competitive capitalism, 98, 251 conflict, 10, 12, 14, 16, 17, 36, 59, 72, 94, 116, 131, 132, 231, 261, 271, 295, 301, 308, 309, 310, 312, 313, 314, 315, 316, 317, 318, 320, 322 conflict theory, 10, 14 consciousness, 6, 7, 8, 14, 15, 34, 40, 44, 46, 47, 62, 79, 80, 133, 144, 168, 197, 222, 238, 252, 255, 276, 288, 310 constant, ix, xvi, 26, 27, 33, 34, 56, 99, 101, 168, 180, 282 continuum, 5, 7, 9, 10, 47, 133, 217, 220, 302, 303, 304, 313, 314, 317, 318 contraception, 200 contradiction, 4, 8, 9, 10, 41, 74, 102, 176, 179, 182 conventional, 27, 88, 137, 163, 168, 203 counter-hegemony, 176 crisis, 8, 10, 13, 131, 152, 183, 293 critical race theory, vi, 170, 185, 189, 258, 260, 261, 262, 263 critical theory, 9, 13, 14, 47, 96, 259 critical white studies, 172, 185 critique, 8, 13, 15, 16, 47, 68, 79, 96, 117, 149, 185, 210, 219, 256, 285, 296, 322 cultural nationalism, 130, 131, 132, 152 cultural racism, 170 cultural relativism, 29 cultural science, 6 culturally constructed, 93 culture, xii, xiv, xv, 14, 16, 17, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 42, 47, 68, 78, 81, 90, 91, 92, 95, 98, 106, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 132, 141, 144, 145, 146, 148, 149, 151, 158, 164, 165, 173, 175, 176, 188, 198, 199, 200, 203, 207, 220,

Index 223, 224, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239, 242, 243, 245, 247, 265, 267, 269, 270, 271, 273, 274, 279, 280, 281, 282, 283, 285, 286, 290, 294, 295, 301, 307, 308, 310, 311, 312, 321, 322 culture-bias, 158, 159 culture-fair, 158 culture-loaded, 158 customs, 26, 27, 28, 29, 125, 139, 146, 267, 289, 309

D democratic political nationalism, 140 development, xii, 14, 16, 31, 34, 35, 36, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48, 52, 58, 62, 64, 70, 73, 81, 82, 83, 94, 96, 97, 99, 101, 108, 109, 114, 118, 119, 121, 140, 142, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 153, 170, 173, 189, 193, 194, 197, 206, 207, 208, 211, 214, 215, 222, 251, 255, 260, 274, 282, 286, 288, 289, 298, 299, 300, 301, 307, 309, 310, 312, 320 dialectic, 8, 13, 62, 221 dialectical, 16, 33, 60, 76, 102, 109, 114, 206, 209, 313, 314, 315, 316, 317, 318 dialectics, 8, 12, 17, 313, 318 dialogic, 95 dichotomies, 313, 318 discriminating employers, 229 discrimination, vi, vii, xiv, xv, 23, 148, 155, 163, 169, 185, 188, 189, 197, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 233, 234, 242, 243, 245, 247, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 263, 276, 323 discriminatory tastes, 228, 229, 231 distribution, 39, 94, 143, 149, 157, 178, 193, 218, 234, 260, 261 diversity, xi, 1, 11, 16, 27, 28, 40, 44, 48, 87, 112, 113, 118, 146, 165, 166, 169, 266, 276, 277, 278, 280, 282, 284, 285, 295, 297, 298, 299, 300, 311, 321, 322 divided society, 45 DNA, 48, 161

Index dominant, 5, 42, 64, 68, 138, 163, 166, 169, 171, 204, 207, 236, 274, 279, 284, 285, 287 domination, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 42, 146, 210, 216, 242, 245, 285

E ecology, 103, 119, 209 economic base, 172 economic democracy, 242, 243 economic rights, 191 economism, 8 emancipation, 7, 8, 9, 38, 43, 193, 195, 261, 301 enabling myths, 241 ends, 19, 20, 23, 68, 94, 95, 96, 202, 276 Enlightenment, 26, 28, 48, 146, 177, 192 environment, 3, 5, 32, 40, 45, 60, 61, 62, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 107, 108, 114, 115, 116, 118, 119, 120, 121, 155, 158, 160, 162, 179, 185, 196, 209, 238, 308, 310, 312, 315, 316 environmentalist, 156, 157, 159 epistemology, 3, 261 equilibrium, 5, 21, 22, 102, 229, 242, 257, 310 essential, 9, 14, 28, 31, 33, 92, 133, 171, 176, 178, 211, 224, 262, 271, 273, 277, 283, 284, 290, 291, 292 essentialism, vii, 236, 238 ethnic consciousness, 133 ethnicization, 180, 181, 182 ethno-linguistic nationalism, 141, 142 existentialist tradition, 64 exploitation, 42, 43, 73, 144, 146, 147, 206, 207, 208, 242, 243, 245, 246, 247, 260 externalization, 237, 239

F females, 199, 201, 202, 203, 234, 243, 245, 247

327 feminism, vi, xv, 189, 191, 192, 193, 195, 196, 197, 201, 205, 206, 208, 209, 210, 212, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 242, 262, 272, 274 feminist, xiv, xvii, 47, 80, 185, 195, 197, 198, 205, 209, 211, 212, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 257, 259, 261, 262, 263 feudalism, 42, 144, 286 forces of production, 99, 206 freedom, xii, 17, 36, 38, 42, 45, 71, 73, 96, 146, 192, 193, 195, 196, 197, 206, 207, 208, 209, 253, 259, 279, 280, 282, 287, 288, 316, 319 French existentialism, 9 functionalist, v, vi, vii, x, xi, xv, 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 19, 46, 49, 76, 85, 102, 123, 147, 150, 155, 183, 191, 219, 227, 256, 265, 292, 297, 298, 299, 300

G genetic, 29, 30, 31, 32, 129, 155, 156, 157, 159, 160, 161, 169, 179, 180, 236, 238 good sense, 174, 184, 267

H hegemonic culture, 173 hegemony, 175, 176, 251, 255 hermeneutics, 7 heuristic, x, 301, 302, 303, 304, 305, 311, 319, 320, 321, 322, 323 historical materialism, 12, 43, 209, 222 historicism, 29 humanism, 36, 43 humanist Marxism, 174

I identity, v, vii, x, xv, xvi, 34, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 61, 63, 65, 69, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 86, 87, 88, 89, 97, 108, 110, 112, 114, 115, 117, 118, 120, 121, 126, 129, 130, 131, 133, 134, 136, 146, 147, 150, 151, 152, 165,

328 187, 188, 189, 195, 205, 235, 237, 239, 263, 266, 268, 271, 272, 273, 274, 275, 279, 280, 281, 285, 294, 295, 297, 307, 308, 312, 313, 315, 318, 322, 323 identity salience, 52, 55, 82 identity theory, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 61, 77, 79, 81, 82, 83, 323 ideological, xi, xv, 8, 10, 11, 45, 129, 143, 145, 156, 162, 174, 175, 176, 182, 183, 189, 262, 269, 301 imperial, 123, 144, 145, 146, 187 imperialism, 114, 117, 125, 145, 146, 152 individual identity, 56, 97, 198, 273 individualist, 69, 163, 164, 166 individuality, 35, 38, 44, 45, 130, 195, 198 industrial capitalism, 143, 147, 148, 173, 215 inequality, vii, 39, 145, 165, 166, 171, 179, 181, 184, 186, 187, 194, 212, 213, 215, 219, 223, 227, 235, 236, 239, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247, 248, 256, 257, 258, 260, 261, 262, 263 institutions, xii, 20, 26, 50, 116, 127, 130, 131, 135, 138, 139, 140, 164, 165, 171, 173, 184, 240, 248, 250, 254, 255, 258, 266, 268, 270, 271, 282, 283, 284, 289 integrative theory, 5 intelligence, 67, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 161, 162, 184, 185, 186, 187, 245 interactionism, 5, 77, 80, 82 internalization, 237, 238 interpellation, 174, 175, 176 interpretation, 47, 60, 78, 116, 119, 151, 205, 210, 275, 276, 305, 308 interpretive, v, vi, vii, x, xv, 1, 6, 7, 19, 26, 46, 49, 56, 59, 60, 62, 76, 78, 85, 89, 92, 94, 102, 123, 130, 150, 155, 162, 183, 191, 198, 219, 227, 234, 256, 265, 272, 292, 297, 300 interrogating, 95 intersubjective, 92, 93 invented traditions, 137, 138, 139, 167 IQ tests, 155, 156, 158, 159, 185, 189

Index

J jingoism, 242, 244, 248

L labor, vii, 12, 21, 23, 33, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 46, 47, 71, 72, 73, 75, 76, 81, 99, 100, 126, 129, 143, 146, 147, 148, 149, 168, 172, 178, 179, 181, 185, 187, 196, 197, 206, 207, 209, 211, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 221, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 233, 248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 290, 293 labor market, 22, 71, 129, 228, 229, 230, 231, 233, 248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259, 261 labor market segmentation, 249, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 258, 261 labor theory of value, 172 laissez-faire, 192, 195 landscape, 86, 87, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 95, 97, 102, 106, 108, 114, 117, 119 language, xii, 8, 23, 29, 32, 57, 58, 61, 62, 94, 95, 96, 121, 124, 126, 131, 135, 141, 142, 143, 146, 148, 152, 153, 158, 244, 254, 265, 270, 275, 276, 277, 286, 287, 288, 289, 290, 291, 295, 307 laws of nature, 236 liberal feminists, 191, 192, 195, 196, 197, 198 liberalism, 68, 69, 171, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 208, 219, 266, 275, 276, 278, 281, 283, 293 local, xiii, xv, 26, 27, 28, 91, 96, 109, 111, 114, 116, 118, 119, 121, 125, 129, 140, 141, 176, 187, 201, 257, 267, 268 location theory, 98

M making places, 95 male chauvinism, 201

Index males, 165, 199, 201, 202, 203, 217, 243, 247 man, 14, 23, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 66, 67, 70, 75, 81, 116, 117, 118, 121, 126, 176, 184, 202, 229, 232, 247, 262, 280 manipulated, 94, 95, 254 marginalized, 163 market, vii, xv, xviii, 19, 20, 21, 22, 39, 71, 97, 99, 100, 101, 120, 140, 143, 178, 181, 194, 229, 230, 231, 243, 247, 248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 257, 259, 261, 266, 287 market capitalism, 143 Marxist feminists, 192, 209 masculine, 176, 201 masculinity, 201 masses, 44, 45, 71, 101, 127, 144, 146, 192 materialist, 9, 172, 209, 212, 220 maximizing behavior, 20, 21, 249 means, 19, 20, 23, 31, 34, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40, 42, 43, 44, 45, 57, 62, 70, 71, 73, 76, 87, 91, 96, 99, 100, 101, 111, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 132, 133, 134, 141, 146, 155, 156, 157, 171, 172, 175, 192, 195, 198, 201, 208, 214, 215, 229, 232, 236, 245, 254,269, 279, 280, 281, 286, 289, 290, 300, 306, 317 means of production, 42, 70, 71, 76, 101, 215 Mediterranean Marxism, 10 meritocracy, 166, 171, 178, 181, 183 meritocratic system, 179 methodology, xiii, xiv, xvii, xviii, 3, 4, 13, 14, 261 mode of production, 98, 100, 126, 210, 211 modernity, xiii, 79, 120, 126, 127, 141, 142, 148, 151, 186, 188 monarchs, 192 monoculturalism, vii, 297, 301, 306 monopolistic, 22, 230, 251, 252, 255 monopoly, 42, 145, 230, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 258, 282 monopoly capitalism, 251, 254, 255

329 monopsony, 230 motherhood, 52, 200, 202 multiculturalism, vii, xv, 16, 81, 265, 266, 267, 269, 272, 274, 280, 283, 285, 292, 293, 294, 295, 296, 297, 301, 306, 307, 308, 309, 310, 311, 319, 321, 323 multi-dimensionality, 313, 318 myths, vii, 95, 134, 135, 136, 146, 151, 153, 171, 172, 199, 241, 242, 243, 244, 246, 247, 248

N nation, 77, 123, 124, 127, 130, 131, 132, 133, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 150, 151, 152, 153, 184, 189, 196, 201, 241, 242, 244, 246, 248, 258, 262, 265, 286, 287, 288, 289, 290, 291, 292 national state, 138, 143, 144, 286, 287 nationalism, vi, xv, 112, 114, 123, 124, 125, 127, 128, 129, 130, 132, 133, 136, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 184, 245, 265, 281, 287, 288, 290, 293 natural, xi, 5, 6, 9, 14, 26, 27, 29, 30, 35, 38, 40, 41, 43, 44, 45, 81, 90, 91, 92, 93, 95, 96, 107, 112, 114, 115, 116, 119, 120, 121, 127, 128, 130, 139, 143, 164, 180, 185, 194, 202, 204, 207, 215, 236, 265, 268, 291, 315, 316 natural science, 5, 6, 26 nature, v, x, xi, xiv, xv, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 11, 15, 19, 20, 26, 27, 28, 29, 32, 33, 34, 35, 38, 40, 41, 42, 43, 45, 46, 47, 48, 52, 55, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 80, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 98, 101, 102, 104, 106, 112, 113, 115, 116, 120, 126, 130, 132, 137, 144, 146, 150, 172, 177, 183, 194, 198, 200, 202, 203, 205, 206, 208, 209, 216, 218, 219, 222, 236, 244, 256, 260, 261, 271, 274, 277, 281, 284, 292, 297, 298, 299, 300, 302, 304, 305, 308, 310, 315, 316, 317 nature of things, 90, 93, 236 neoclassical, 228, 249, 259, 263

330 neutral, 10, 165, 166, 167, 172, 195, 242, 247 neutrality, 8, 171 nondiscriminatory employers, 229

O objectification, 35, 36 objectify, 58, 236 objective, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 35, 36, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 46, 61, 97, 123, 148, 172, 182, 238, 300, 313, 318 objectivism, 5, 36 objectivity, 171, 279, 299 observed, 4, 86, 109, 147, 201, 202, 229 observer, 4, 6 ontology, 3, 58 oppressed groups, 69, 168 oppressive, 72, 147, 149, 268, 279 order, ix, x, xii, xiv, 2, 4, 5, 9, 10, 21, 28, 29, 30, 37, 38, 39, 44, 47, 53, 54, 58, 59, 61, 62, 63, 65, 68, 70, 71, 73, 76, 82, 99, 100, 113, 120, 136, 151, 173, 176, 177, 179, 181, 197, 199, 202, 204, 207, 212, 213, 216, 231, 232, 235, 236, 239, 240, 246, 247, 252, 253, 254, 269, 272, 289, 291, 297, 307, 312, 317 orthodox Marxism, 8, 208

P paradigm, v, vii, xi, xii, xiv, xv, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 46, 59, 60, 61, 76, 102, 147, 150, 167, 183, 219, 256, 292, 297, 298, 300, 301, 311 paradigm diversity, vii, xi, xiv, xv, 16, 297, 300, 311 patriarchy, xiv, 194, 195, 201, 202, 203, 204, 211, 212, 221, 222, 223 petit-bourgeois, 144 phenomenological, 7, 16, 59, 87, 88, 119 phenomenological sociology, 7 phenomenology, 7, 13, 14, 88, 115, 118, 119, 120

Index place attachment, v, vi, xiii, xv, 85, 86, 87, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 116, 117, 118, 119, 121, 311 place dependence, 86, 87, 88, 104, 108, 112, 118 place identity, 86, 87, 88, 104, 108, 111, 117, 118 place making, 95 political nationalism, 130, 132, 140, 146 political rights, 155, 191, 219 popular consciousness, 174 positivism, 5, 13, 115 positivistic, 87 poverty, 36, 37, 44, 192, 237, 238, 259, 260, 262, 267 power, 8, 11, 12, 20, 37, 39, 59, 60, 61, 63, 67, 69, 71, 72, 94, 96, 97, 109, 120, 124, 125, 130, 131, 134, 135, 147, 158, 167, 168, 170, 172, 173, 174, 178, 179, 184, 185, 186, 188, 192, 200, 201, 203, 204, 207, 211, 218, 222, 230, 240, 241, 244, 245, 246, 247, 251, 253, 254, 255, 260, 261, 280, 281, 285, 310, 321 pragmatic, 5 predation, 242, 244, 245, 246, 248 predator nations, 246 preferences, 21, 22, 24, 25, 87, 102, 108, 121, 162, 164, 167, 229, 268 prejudice, 64, 106, 162, 163, 168, 169, 183, 185, 186, 189, 228, 230, 250, 256, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 263, 292, 307, 312, 323 price, 21, 22, 24, 148, 232 private ownership, 42, 76, 215 private property, 35, 36, 37, 76, 193, 213, 214, 215, 218, 220, 221, 224 private sphere, 207 productivity, xv, 34, 45, 46, 72, 206, 215, 227, 229, 230, 232, 233 profit-maximizing behavior, 230, 231 progressive, 46, 100, 144, 146, 222, 252, 308 proletariat, 144, 243, 280, 288, 289, 290 psyche, 164

Index

331

public sphere, 207

S

Q

scarcity, 11, 20, 76 Scientific Management, 253 segmentation process, 249 segregation, 149, 187, 230, 231, 232, 257, 290 self, v, 2, 7, 12, 15, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 38, 39, 40, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 60, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, 72, 73, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 85, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 96, 105, 107, 108, 110, 112, 114, 117, 118, 123, 124, 126, 128, 131, 133, 139, 140, 141, 156, 171, 172, 192, 193, 195, 217, 233, 234, 250, 258, 266, 268, 269, 273, 274, 275, 279, 280, 281, 282, 283, 284, 285, 289, 290, 297, 304, 307, 309, 315 self-consciousness, 34, 62, 78, 123, 131 self-definition, 54, 89, 90, 91, 92, 273, 284 sense of place, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 93, 94, 95, 97, 104, 106 sexism, 64, 176, 177, 179, 181, 182, 189, 197, 201, 220, 242, 247, 255, 261, 262, 312 sexual division of labor, 206 sexual liberation theory, 191 sexual politics, 199, 200, 201, 203, 223 sexual rights, 191 slavery, 42, 170, 194, 204, 245 social action theory, 5 social behavior, 7, 49, 50, 59, 60, 82, 96, 114, 120 social behaviorism, 60 social change, vii, 15, 70, 83, 139, 212, 220, 222, 223, 257, 313, 314, 316 social class, xv, 62, 71, 76, 172, 175, 193, 235, 236, 256 social construct, vii, 77, 79, 81, 90, 93, 94, 95, 97, 102, 114, 116, 118, 120, 169, 170, 186, 223, 236, 237, 238, 239, 257, 261 social construction, vii, 77, 79, 81, 90, 93, 94, 95, 97, 102, 114, 116, 118, 120, 186, 223, 236, 237, 238, 239, 257, 261

qualifications, 227, 233, 253

R racial domination, 162, 168, 188 racism, vi, xv, 64, 65, 155, 156, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 173, 174, 176, 177, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 242, 243, 245, 247, 255, 257, 258, 259, 261, 262, 263, 312, 323 racist ideology, 173 radical change, 3, 4, 7, 9 radical feminists, 191, 192, 197, 209, 212 radical humanist, v, vi, vii, x, xv, 1, 7, 8, 9, 19, 33, 46, 49, 63, 76, 85, 93, 102, 123, 136, 150, 155, 169, 170, 183, 191, 205, 219, 227, 241, 256, 265, 278, 292, 297, 300 radical structuralist, v, vi, vii, x, xv, 1, 8, 9, 10, 19, 40, 46, 49, 70, 76, 85, 98, 102, 123, 143, 150, 155, 176, 183, 191, 212, 219, 227, 248, 256, 265, 285, 292, 297, 301 rationality, 5, 8, 67, 300 reactionary, 144 regulation, 3, 4, 5, 6, 110, 208 reification, 70, 75, 93 reifies, 91 resources, 21, 22, 24, 25, 55, 94, 96, 112, 114, 115, 116, 119, 120, 125, 146, 149, 208, 213, 214, 215, 217, 220, 237, 240, 261, 268, 280, 303, 304, 305, 316 revolution, xiv, xvii, 14, 44, 76, 100, 140, 144, 152, 172, 178, 203, 207, 221, 222, 223, 224, 313, 314, 315, 317, 318 roles, 4, 9, 27, 50, 51, 52, 55, 56, 64, 65, 67, 82, 135, 178, 181, 182, 196, 198, 200, 202, 203, 204, 228, 238, 256, 260 ruling class, 173, 174, 175, 287 Russian social theory, 10

332 social engineering, 5, 139, 140 social identity, 56, 67, 69, 77, 78, 79, 81, 82, 108 social institutions, 62, 175, 236, 237, 240, 245, 255 social interaction, 23, 69, 81, 91, 92, 93, 97, 111, 119, 236, 237, 238 social networks, 50 social property, 46 social reform, 5 social relations, 10, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 50, 51, 52, 57, 75, 100, 110, 178, 206, 207, 210, 280 social relations of production, 206 social science, x, 1, 3, 4, 5, 14, 17, 20, 29, 56, 79, 81, 103, 114, 187, 294, 297 social stratification, 235 social structures, 33, 49, 50, 54, 55, 56, 58, 59, 171 social system theory, 5 socialism, 38, 42, 76, 172, 173, 175, 193, 219, 220, 224, 279, 281, 289, 292, 293 socialist feminists, 191, 209, 210, 212 socialist regime, 144, 145 socialization, 59, 61, 108, 111, 124, 126, 127, 238 socially constructed, xiii, 7, 59, 94, 96, 102, 172, 183, 199, 206, 235, 236, 237, 239, 240, 256, 292, 311 socially necessary labor time, 73 sociocultural, 59, 90, 91, 93 solipsism, 7, 9 spatial relationships, 98 specialization, 39 species-being, 35 statistical discrimination, vii, 228, 231, 232, 233, 234 stereotypes, 65, 67, 68, 156, 174, 240, 246, 285 stratified, 28, 125, 253 structural, 4, 7, 8, 9, 27, 49, 50, 54, 55, 82, 83, 112, 147, 148, 149, 164, 169, 173, 174, 183, 193, 313, 315 structural conflict, 4, 8, 9 structural symbolic interactionism, 49, 82

Index structuralist Marxism, 174 structure, v, xv, 5, 8, 9, 10, 14, 15, 21, 30, 33, 39, 42, 47, 49, 50, 52, 55, 56, 57, 60, 61, 76, 81, 85, 87, 88, 91, 92, 97, 98, 101, 104, 107, 113, 119, 132, 134, 150, 157, 164, 165, 172, 179, 181, 186, 188, 204, 210, 215, 239, 252, 255, 263, 279, 280, 282, 284,313, 316, 318 subaltern, 272 subjective, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 33, 91, 116, 145, 238, 273, 307, 313, 318 subordinate positions, 171, 228 suffrage, 193, 194, 201, 220, 222, 223, 224 superior positions, 228 superstructure, 8, 145 surplus value, 99, 100, 117, 172, 173, 176 symbolic interactionist, 49, 50, 52, 53, 59, 79, 81 symbols, 30, 32, 56, 62, 63, 90, 91, 92, 93, 95, 96, 106, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 138, 139, 146 systematic, xii, xv, 23, 29, 50, 74, 113, 149, 259, 301, 302, 303, 304, 305, 311, 319, 320, 321, 322, 323

T taken-for-granted, 59, 61, 92, 93, 95, 172, 301, 311 Taylorism, 253 territorial state, 139, 140, 143 the national question, 143, 144, 152 Theory of Accumulation, vi, 98 totality, xi, 8, 10, 30, 73, 99, 128, 280

U underdevelopment, 115, 145, 146, 147 understanding, x, xi, xii, xiv, xv, xvi, xvii, xviii, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 11, 19, 20, 25, 28, 31, 40, 43, 44, 45, 46, 49, 52, 58, 61, 77, 85, 86, 87, 90, 92, 95, 97, 98, 102, 104, 123, 150, 151, 153, 155, 160, 165, 167, 174, 183, 191, 219, 220, 227, 233, 238, 239, 255, 256, 262, 265, 266, 269, 270, 271,

Index 273, 274, 284, 292, 293, 298, 299, 300, 307, 308, 312, 313, 314, 318, 319 uneven development, 120, 145 unionized, 230 universal, 4, 26, 27, 28, 29, 43, 45, 79, 87, 104, 125, 127, 133, 135, 144, 175, 176, 178, 211, 266, 274, 279, 296, 308 universalism, 176, 177, 178, 181, 182, 189, 262, 274, 294 Utilitarian, 192 utility, 21, 22, 24, 25, 50, 96

V values, xvi, 6, 22, 26, 32, 42, 48, 65, 67, 79, 87, 90, 92, 93, 95, 97, 106, 108, 114, 120, 121, 126, 136, 137, 138, 140, 195, 202, 206, 210, 235, 236, 237, 239, 240, 242, 244, 245, 281, 283, 284, 301, 307, 309, 311, 312, 316, 321, 322 variable, 27, 29, 204, 259

333

W wage inequalities, 229 wealth, 21, 22, 36, 37, 39, 101, 128, 146, 175, 207, 216, 241, 245, 246, 247, 271, 291 whites, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 177, 235, 247, 261 workers, 72, 74, 75, 148, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 206, 210, 211, 216, 221, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 234, 239, 243, 246, 248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 267, 288, 289, 290, 291, 292 worldview, xi, 1, 19, 49, 85, 92, 113, 123, 155, 191, 227, 265, 297, 307, 312

X xenophobia, 179, 181, 312