Progress versus diversity
Aug. 25th, 2009 10:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusMy report on Professor Alan Macfarlane's lecture on the Japanese legal system to a classroom of Cambridge undergraduates -- Keep distant the hell of accusation -- led to some lively debate and, ironically, not a little accusation, with some commenters finding Professor Macfarlane more apologist than anthropologist. The thread went to over a hundred comments and fragmented, in the usual LiveJournal way, into collapsed sub-threads which need to be laboriously expanded, but I wanted to resurrect... not the debate itself, which I think could run and run into ever-more-arid and specialised areas, like some sort of tedious legal dispute about tedious legal disputes, but an idea that came up late in the debate, one I formulated more clearly than I'd done before.
The idea is that political progressivism and anthropological objectivity are inevitably at odds, because the first champions universal standards and the second champions difference. Trying to impose universal standards, no matter how nobly, risks imposing a monocultural universalism; combined with power, it fits all-too-easily into exactly the kind of neo-imperial framework progressives have traditionally deplored. The idea of progress, as applied to human rights and law and custom and so on, is at odds with the fundamental premise of anthropology, which is to study existing systematic differences in a non-judgmental way. The idea of progress all-too-readily implies a single-track route towards "the good thing" (or "civilisation"), a track on which some trains are "ahead", others "behind". This progressive idea becomes a sort of chauvinism when the speaker -- no matter how liberal -- happens to believe his is the civilisation "ahead".
Liberalism plus globalisation equals a claim from some that liberalism is a new universalism, one that can be spread via global bodies like the UN, by business, or by war. This is why neo-imperialist hawks have, over the last 20 years, increasingly adopted the vocabulary of human rights, the rule of law, and so on. But anthropologists don't and can't think in this way. They don't and can't see a convergence -- bureaucratically or militarily enforced -- between different cultures as a desireable outcome. Their job is to describe difference, and the origins of difference. Anthropologists therefore annoy the naive proponents of a universal liberalism. Even if the substance of their findings isn't at issue, this framing is, for soft-left progressives, problematical, because it derails their one-track picture of "progress" -- a timeline heading towards "the good thing".
Okay, let's look for a moment at a flash-point for this conflict between the ideal of progress and the ideal of diversity: journalism. I'm wary of something I notice a lot: a tendency for foreign analysts of Japan to see convergence with the West. Japan is always, for these people, "catching up" with Western trends or ailments. They often bemoan this "catching up", but they take it as axiomatic that it's happening. And so we learn that:
* Japan's greater social equality is on the way out, being replaced by Western-type Gini levels.
* Japanese are losing their slim figures because of a diet of Western-style foods like hamburgers.
* Japanese women are at last responding to feminist ideas, and standing up for themselves.
* The harmonious Japanese are becoming as litigious as the Americans.
* Japan's supposedly safe streets are getting increasingly dangerous.
Now, some of these trends may be happening, but there are other reasons reporters tell us they're happening:
1. Because the structure of many, many journalistic articles is to give us a well-known stereotype and then dislodge it with some more recent, more relevant information. NB: You do this even if your new information is just as stereotyped, in its way, as the old.
2. Because the empirical mindset so highly valued in the Anglo-Saxon world believes that everything can be proved by specific cases, anecdotes and examples. However, specific cases -- especially those taken from newspapers -- are usually outliers; their "man bites dog" factor is exactly what got them into the newspapers in the first place. Anthropologists, however, need to pay attention to "dog bites man".
3. Because journalists and other observers, particularly activists, pay too much attention to incremental changes and not enough to solid underlying states.
4. Because soft-left liberals have been taught that everything is a "construct" and that "timeless essences" are merely the convenient creations of a power elite.
5. Because a certain Western chauvinism leads us to believe that all other cultures are "behind us on the same track", and "only now beginning to catch up".
Cultural journalism is still in the shadow of structuralism and deconstruction, a tradition going back to Barthes' 1957 book Mythologies. But journalists don't have Barthes' non-judgmentalism, especially when it comes to Japan. Their analyses are often selectively deconstructive. They deconstruct the myth of the monolithic identity of the culture studied, but don't similarly deconstruct the monolithic, mythical identity of their own culture. The equivalent, applied to gender studies, would be to question the whole concept of "woman" while taking entirely for granted the integrity and workability of the concept of "man". Applied to linguistics, it would be "You have an accent but I don't". It makes little sense to selectively deconstruct. If deconstruction is your game -- in other words, if you seek to undermine things you don't like by saying that they are "constructs" -- then you risk finding things you do like looking suddenly like constructs too, and becoming suddenly undermined.
I'm always suspicious when "facts" people tell me fit the cookie-cutter templates of Western mental reflexes, especially when they propose the West as "ahead". And I'm predisposed to listen more kindly to analysts who say "We have much to learn from [other culture x]" than to analysts who say "[other culture x] is catching up to us". Especially in the context of the West's recent history of neo-imperialism using the fig-leaf of "humanitarian intervention" and "security" and "universal human rights" (oh yes, and, incidentally, the control of the flow of oil and heroin).
So where do I stand on this slippery question of progress versus difference? On the side of difference, right? Well, not quite. I'd say I believe in difference-as-progress. That may sound like a cunning fudge, but it makes sense -- it's nature's way, after all (if we believe at all in Darwin and his "blind watchmaker"). I have little faith that progress will be achieved by explicit intention. I prefer that diversity do the work of progress by allowing many different systems to co-exist.
As in crop tech, it's monoculture which is likely to destroy progress: we discover a "green revolution" based on pesticides, it's considered to be the epitome of "progress", the genetic diversity of wheat and rice is damaged as farmers all over the world embrace this one "correct" solution and then BANG! we realise that pesticides aren't so great or so safe after all. We are not infallible, and what is taken to be progress -- and what "progress bullies" at a given time try to force everybody to adopt -- turns out, all too often, to be a later decade's idea of the delusional, the misguided, the disastrous. Because switches like this are constantly happening in human history, and because "the good thing" gets bigger, more totalising and more dangerous the more globalised we get, it's crucial to keep diversity in play; to allow polyculture to thrive, and alternatives -- even ones that look, from the present perspective, wrong -- to multiply.
The idea is that political progressivism and anthropological objectivity are inevitably at odds, because the first champions universal standards and the second champions difference. Trying to impose universal standards, no matter how nobly, risks imposing a monocultural universalism; combined with power, it fits all-too-easily into exactly the kind of neo-imperial framework progressives have traditionally deplored. The idea of progress, as applied to human rights and law and custom and so on, is at odds with the fundamental premise of anthropology, which is to study existing systematic differences in a non-judgmental way. The idea of progress all-too-readily implies a single-track route towards "the good thing" (or "civilisation"), a track on which some trains are "ahead", others "behind". This progressive idea becomes a sort of chauvinism when the speaker -- no matter how liberal -- happens to believe his is the civilisation "ahead".
Liberalism plus globalisation equals a claim from some that liberalism is a new universalism, one that can be spread via global bodies like the UN, by business, or by war. This is why neo-imperialist hawks have, over the last 20 years, increasingly adopted the vocabulary of human rights, the rule of law, and so on. But anthropologists don't and can't think in this way. They don't and can't see a convergence -- bureaucratically or militarily enforced -- between different cultures as a desireable outcome. Their job is to describe difference, and the origins of difference. Anthropologists therefore annoy the naive proponents of a universal liberalism. Even if the substance of their findings isn't at issue, this framing is, for soft-left progressives, problematical, because it derails their one-track picture of "progress" -- a timeline heading towards "the good thing".
Okay, let's look for a moment at a flash-point for this conflict between the ideal of progress and the ideal of diversity: journalism. I'm wary of something I notice a lot: a tendency for foreign analysts of Japan to see convergence with the West. Japan is always, for these people, "catching up" with Western trends or ailments. They often bemoan this "catching up", but they take it as axiomatic that it's happening. And so we learn that:
* Japan's greater social equality is on the way out, being replaced by Western-type Gini levels.
* Japanese are losing their slim figures because of a diet of Western-style foods like hamburgers.
* Japanese women are at last responding to feminist ideas, and standing up for themselves.
* The harmonious Japanese are becoming as litigious as the Americans.
* Japan's supposedly safe streets are getting increasingly dangerous.
Now, some of these trends may be happening, but there are other reasons reporters tell us they're happening:
1. Because the structure of many, many journalistic articles is to give us a well-known stereotype and then dislodge it with some more recent, more relevant information. NB: You do this even if your new information is just as stereotyped, in its way, as the old.
2. Because the empirical mindset so highly valued in the Anglo-Saxon world believes that everything can be proved by specific cases, anecdotes and examples. However, specific cases -- especially those taken from newspapers -- are usually outliers; their "man bites dog" factor is exactly what got them into the newspapers in the first place. Anthropologists, however, need to pay attention to "dog bites man".
3. Because journalists and other observers, particularly activists, pay too much attention to incremental changes and not enough to solid underlying states.
4. Because soft-left liberals have been taught that everything is a "construct" and that "timeless essences" are merely the convenient creations of a power elite.
5. Because a certain Western chauvinism leads us to believe that all other cultures are "behind us on the same track", and "only now beginning to catch up".
Cultural journalism is still in the shadow of structuralism and deconstruction, a tradition going back to Barthes' 1957 book Mythologies. But journalists don't have Barthes' non-judgmentalism, especially when it comes to Japan. Their analyses are often selectively deconstructive. They deconstruct the myth of the monolithic identity of the culture studied, but don't similarly deconstruct the monolithic, mythical identity of their own culture. The equivalent, applied to gender studies, would be to question the whole concept of "woman" while taking entirely for granted the integrity and workability of the concept of "man". Applied to linguistics, it would be "You have an accent but I don't". It makes little sense to selectively deconstruct. If deconstruction is your game -- in other words, if you seek to undermine things you don't like by saying that they are "constructs" -- then you risk finding things you do like looking suddenly like constructs too, and becoming suddenly undermined.
I'm always suspicious when "facts" people tell me fit the cookie-cutter templates of Western mental reflexes, especially when they propose the West as "ahead". And I'm predisposed to listen more kindly to analysts who say "We have much to learn from [other culture x]" than to analysts who say "[other culture x] is catching up to us". Especially in the context of the West's recent history of neo-imperialism using the fig-leaf of "humanitarian intervention" and "security" and "universal human rights" (oh yes, and, incidentally, the control of the flow of oil and heroin).
So where do I stand on this slippery question of progress versus difference? On the side of difference, right? Well, not quite. I'd say I believe in difference-as-progress. That may sound like a cunning fudge, but it makes sense -- it's nature's way, after all (if we believe at all in Darwin and his "blind watchmaker"). I have little faith that progress will be achieved by explicit intention. I prefer that diversity do the work of progress by allowing many different systems to co-exist.
As in crop tech, it's monoculture which is likely to destroy progress: we discover a "green revolution" based on pesticides, it's considered to be the epitome of "progress", the genetic diversity of wheat and rice is damaged as farmers all over the world embrace this one "correct" solution and then BANG! we realise that pesticides aren't so great or so safe after all. We are not infallible, and what is taken to be progress -- and what "progress bullies" at a given time try to force everybody to adopt -- turns out, all too often, to be a later decade's idea of the delusional, the misguided, the disastrous. Because switches like this are constantly happening in human history, and because "the good thing" gets bigger, more totalising and more dangerous the more globalised we get, it's crucial to keep diversity in play; to allow polyculture to thrive, and alternatives -- even ones that look, from the present perspective, wrong -- to multiply.
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whoa there, from WC1
Date: 2009-08-25 09:24 am (UTC)This may amuse you: once, an intelligent but completely self-absorbed young British Asian became cross with me for suggesting her mother spoke English with 'an accent'. Each of us - the girl, her mother and myself - came from a different part of the middle-class, English-speaking world. My reply was: 'who among us does not speak English with an accent?'
It is deeply funny when people who seek to characterize themselves as outside the monolith unwittingly file reports from the inside.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-25 09:54 am (UTC)This is something Americans do more than anyone else, therefore this article is mostly directed at the US, therefore you are being Anti-American!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-25 10:29 am (UTC)This is only the case if you take a very narrow view of anthropology. What about Lévi-Strauss, easily the world's most famous living anthropologist? His project is not so much about difference but about how the underlying structures of a wide range of different cultures are actually the same. And he specifically wrote Race et Histoire for UNESCO, so I don't think he's against the notion of human rights.
Also, I see something of a contradiction between your cynical take on "human rights" and your championing of the "exoticisation of the other".
Re: whoa there, from WC1
Date: 2009-08-25 10:31 am (UTC)I think one valid objection to my argument here -- and this will probably come up later in the comments -- is "But what happens if people in Japan or wherever want to adopt the same concept of progress as people in America? Nobody, after all, settles for diversity -- a noble place in the multicultural seed bank, an option for a rainy day -- when they could have success and be, if not number one, at least number two or three, or in the top ten?" Nobody, in other words, voluntarily chooses things like high infant mortality or (cliché alert!) genital mutilation just for the sake of preserving a diversity which benefits someone else.
And I think that's why Japan is such a fascinating case. Its diversity is real, but so is its success. Japan shows that diversity need not equate to failure in any way. You can do things differently from the West without in any way being the West's inferior. You can have "diversity modernity". And this is one reason I resist people who see Japan's difference as something pre-modern. Difference is by no means incompatible with modernity, even super-modernity. There is not one modernity, but many.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-25 10:36 am (UTC)I think exoticisation of the other might be a valuable alternative to the concept of universal human rights. You can quite easily invade a culture citing their violation of a charter of "universal human rights" you wrote yesterday. Much more difficult is to invade a culture you have put on an exotic pedestal and lavished with praise for their noble differences.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-25 10:48 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-25 10:51 am (UTC)The thing about exoticisation, though, is that it tends not to be a celebration of noble differences or of how the culture actually "is". It tends to cherry-pick only certain aspects of a culture and make them definitional, in order to serve a particular need of the culture that is doing the exoticising. History is littered with examples of seemingly "positive" exoticisations that have had negative effects on those exoticised (the 18th century "noble savage", for instance, non-coincidentally coming at the time of the Pacific discoveries that helped wipe out so many cultures). Which means that "exoticisation" often works in exactly the same undermining way that you claim for "human rights".
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-25 10:57 am (UTC)Re: whoa there, from WC1
Date: 2009-08-25 11:00 am (UTC)I dunno, writers seldom know what part of their own work is going to rile others, or at least it's never the thing they first think.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-25 11:03 am (UTC)American losses in Vietnam
Date: 2009-08-25 11:10 am (UTC)French losses as colonial occupier judged against pop?
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-25 11:24 am (UTC)French colonialism was if anything nastier than the British equivalent, and its nastiness went on longer. Algeria was no picnic.
But anyway, you didn't address my point about exoticism and human rights. The two are grounded in similar instincts and often have similar outcomes.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-25 11:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-25 11:57 am (UTC)Not one modernity but many.
Date: 2009-08-25 11:58 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-25 12:04 pm (UTC)Actually, for most of the 20th century this was the American claim for their own culture; that it had triumphed in a Darwinian struggle. "Explicit intention" was communism and its planning. Diversity allowed America to thrive, but proclaimed, by century's end, a clear winner. (This also happened to co-incide with the Calvinist idea of worldly success as the best indicator of one's salvation and membership of God's Elect.)
This century, things are a little different. America is slipping, and India and China are rising fast. I wonder if Americans will be less enthusiastic about Darwinian diversity in the era of "the rise of the rest"? Will they be more inclined to champion planning (in the form of market protectionism and -- gasp! -- things like socialised medicine) over the progress that comes through diversity, freedom and meritocratic struggle? In other words, were Americans only enthusiastic about that game while they were winning at it?
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-25 12:11 pm (UTC)Please don't speak for me; I am glad that most charity organisations exist, including Amnesty. I share their goals, for the most part, and support their work. What I deplore is the "one-size fits all" rights ideology underpinning their work, which lends itself easily to abuse (though it may well be the shibboleth that ensures their funding by the great powers).
This touches on something Prof Macfarlane very valuably raised in his lecture: "Rather than a competitive game, you work to harmonize, to adjust unequal statuses. People are not taken to be "equal before the law"; everything is, instead, relative to your status. What is right for an uncle to do is not what's right for a nephew to do, what's right for a man to do is not right for a woman, and so on. This view of law is tribal, non-modern, context-dependent, and Japan falls very much to this side."
The only thing I might dispute in there is "non-modern". I think there is a parallel modernity in which Justice dispenses with her blindfold.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-25 12:13 pm (UTC)- Joshua
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-25 12:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-25 12:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-25 01:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-25 01:23 pm (UTC)So, given those theoretical constraints, are you suggesting that the only useful practices are descriptive rather than prescriptive? Or, are prescriptions sometimes required, but should be contextually-sensitive?
-Joshua
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-25 01:32 pm (UTC)Momus, do you have any more of this guy? You posted a video of him like a year ago in of your entries!!!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-25 01:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-25 01:44 pm (UTC)