International Relations and the Problem of Difference
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International Relations and the Problem of Difference
Other titles in the Global Horizons series, edited by Richard Falk, Lester Ruiz, and R.B.J.Walker Methods and Nations: Cultural Governance and the Indigenous Subject Michael J.Shapiro Forthcoming, Spring 2004: Bait and Switch?: Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Policy Julie Mertus The Declining World Order: America’s Imperial Geopolitics Richard Falk
International Relations and the Problem of Difference Naeem Inayatullah and David L.Blaney
ROUTLEDGE NEW YORK AND LONDON
A volume in the Global Horizons series, edited by Richard Falk, Lester Ruiz, and R.B.J.Walker Published in 2004 by Routledge 29 West 35th Street New York, NY 10001 www.routledge-ny.com Published in Great Britain by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane London EC4P 4EE www.routledge.co.uk Copyright © 2004 by Taylor & Francis Books, Inc. Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group. This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” All rights reserved. No part of this book may be printed or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or any other information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Inayatullah, Naeem. International relations and the problem of difference/Naeem Inayatullah and David L.Blaney. p. cm.—(Global horizons; v. 1) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-415-94637-9 (alk. paper)—ISBN 0-415-94638-7 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Intercultural communication. 2. Ethnicity. 3. International relations. 4. International economic relations. I. Blaney, David L. II. Title. III. Series. GN345.6 .I52 2003 303.48′2–dc21 ISBN 0-203-64409-3 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-68137-1 (Adobe eReader Format)
Contents
Part I:
Preface
vi
Introduction
1
Difference in the Constitution of IR
17
1.
The Westphalian Deferral
18
2.
Intimate Indians
42
3.
IR and the Inner Life of Modernization Theory
84
Part II: Studies in Difference and Contemporary IR
115
4.
IPE as a Culture of Competition
116
5.
Toward an Ethnological IPE
145
6.
Multiple and Overlapping Sovereignties
168
Epilogue
197
Notes
200
References
217
Index
246
Preface
In the mid-1970s and early 1980s the discipline of international relations (IR) and its subfield international political economy (IPE) displayed a limited engagement with a strong theoretical voice that had emerged from the third world,1 namely dependency theory. We were fortunate to be in graduate school at a time when, along with dependency theory, world systems theory and various types of Marxism were being taken rather seriously. Such, at least, was the case at the University of Denver, where, in the 1980s, the intellectual and social agenda was dominated by the concerns of students from Africa, Asia, and South America. While some of these critical streams of thought retain an institutional presence, dependency theory, as one of our teachers, James Caporaso (1993:470) observes, “died out more from neglect than frontal criticism.” Our sense is that, on the whole, voices from the third world seem to bore and irritate most IR theorists. For us, this weary dismissal seems curious and requires both an explanation and a response. When we first met, in 1980, David was studying East African development and Naeem was continuing his work in development economics. We soon recognized that development studies frustrated us both. We were unable to make sense of the jumble of assumptions and conceptions taken haphazardly from neoclassical and Keynesian economic theory as well as from IR and comparative sociology and politics. Betting that we could gain a more integrated sense of development studies if we traced its origins, we turned to the history of economic and political thought. Under the guidance of David Levine and James Caporaso, this work took us to classical political economy—the Physiocrats, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Hegel, and Marx—but also to Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. We started to recognize that development studies not only rested on economic assumptions but also could rightly be seen as embedded within, and as an extension of, IR. For example, it is not accidental that the primary unit of analysis in development studies is the nation-state. When we finally turned to IR proper, we followed our prior procedure with development studies, with the aim of placing IR theory within the process of its production in time and space. Our goal was to distinguish IR’s potentially insightful elements from its less useful idiosyncrasies.
vii
By the time we entered the discipline in the late 1980s, critical theory, postmodernism, and feminism were pushing the field toward a greater philosophical and political self-consciousness. Having belonged to various study groups in graduate school, which we can now see were aiming to map the possibilities of post-positivist methods, we began to imagine that our work might be welcome in IR. Our combined focus on political theory/political economy and third-world studies did not strike us as a liability, because most students we knew searched for just such tools to explain and understand the particularities of their personal, national, and transnational biographies. We soon discovered, however, that this combination did not quite fit into IR. Seeking to bolster their self-conception as the ultimate source of their creativity, most IR theorists seem to imagine that they spin their theories in a pristine and abstract space that excludes the messiness of the existent world. To the degree that they concern themselves with the third world, it remains little more than a tangential site for theoretical applications. What they expect from people who are acquainted with the third world is not a challenge or a critique of their theoretical models. Rather, the scholar of the third world is required to provide them with raw information or data, but only if and when they need it. We resisted taking our place in a division of labor where ethnographic knowledge becomes merely input for high theorists. Instead, assuming that the view from outside the empire was important and perhaps decisive, we hoped to theorize IR/IPE from a third-world point of view. Serious obstacles delayed this aspiration. Unfamiliarity with the ethnology of publishing in North America permitted us to believe that, presented with enough rigor, we could make our arguments heard by what we were told were the leading journals in the field. Or perhaps more accurately, we vastly underestimated the degree to which arguments from outside the imperium would have to be properly clothed and then made to bow deferentially to editors and referees busy in their fortified castles. After some head pounding at the gates, we did learn—with help from scholars like Rob Walker and Nick Onuf—that others, standing somewhat outside the centers of power, had different concerns and alternative standards. The memory of that pounding did not stay with us only as a personal experience, however. We saw it eventually as part of a larger, much deeper pattern. In light of our argument in this book, we would now suggest that the stiffest opposition we faced was Western culture’s experience with difference itself, a powerful stream of which has treated difference as a kind of degeneration of God’s original perfection. At least since the Reformation and its wars of religious purification, this aspect of Western culture has been so traumatized by the problems of difference that its habitual mode of dealing with it has been to self-righteously ignore it, or to defer confronting it indefinitely. Thus, we argue that the early modern intellectual origins of IR closely align the field with a legacy of colonialism and religious cleansing. We claim that IR will be unable to find its purpose as a study of differences—as a theory of
viii
international and intercultural relations—until we confront this legacy. Fortunately, resources from which we might build alternatives are available. These resources can be located beyond the European imperium, and also as recessive voices within “Western” social and political thought, suggesting the possibility of a post-Western IR that involves not so much the rejection of the “West” but its reimagination. Open/Close: Form and Content A text’s messages may be offered in distinguishable (but not separable) ways: through the meaning of the words and through the manner of their formulation. The formulation—the tone, texture, and the relative presence or absence of open, interpretive space within the text—implicitly conveys the relationship writers hope to establish with readers. Just as an awareness of the importance of form allows writers to create potentially useful symmetries and tensions between content and form, so also a relative lack of such awareness can create obstacles to realizing a writer’s purposes. We came to such a realization relatively late in the process of writing this book. Nevertheless, we hope that the tone and texture of the book mostly avoids the authoritative tone of lecturing, of presenting the book as a monologue. We hope that the text, instead of closing down options, leaves open space—between the various authors we follow and the (sometimes) multiple ways we formulate our points; between paragraphs, chapters, and sections of the book—where we invite readers to a kind of participant engagement within and around the rhythms of our concerns. We experience the text as containing such spaces for our own future work and we hope that others, whether in the form of extension, correction, or refutation, will find the text similarly open. At the same time, we have not, we believe, left the reader without a sense of our voice or our positions on various issues. Thus, those who prefer a good tight lecture may find our presentation as leaning too heavily on impressions and suggestion, while those who favor minimalist guides may find ours a meddling voice. Class/Race/Gender Kind critics have pointed out that our presentation would be richer had we made explicit gestures toward gender. To round out this criticism, we might add that there is also little explicit development of themes surrounding class or race. In this form, the charge is undeniable. On reflection, we might present our book as working in and with the theme of “indianization” (see Mason, 1990:62–63). During Europe’s internally purifying crusades of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, both Catholics and Protestants found it useful to compare the other unfavorably with “Indians.” We might, then, describe the denigration, vilification, and/or demonization as a form of indianizing of the other. Indianizing grew to have such currency that it was effectively applied to
ix
peasants, the working poor, and other cultural outcasts within Europe and to the culturally “backward” beyond Europe. Though we have not come across much explicit reference to this practice in our foray into these centuries (see, however, Campbell, 1992: chapter 5), it is difficult not to speculate that the witch hunts of the era revealed “witches” as a gendered sibling of the “Indians.” Likewise, we pay only limited attention to the often-discussed ways Amerindians and other nonEuropean peoples were feminized as part of understanding or justifying their subordination.2 We want to be clear that the notion of indianization does not subsume other categories; it suggests overlap and intersection, not isomorphism. It has been pointed out to us—and this is discussed in Chowdhry and Nair’s Power, Postcolonialism, and International Relations (2002: introduction)—that the truly difficult work is to sort out the similarities and differences among processes of proletarianizing, feminizing, racializing, and, we would add, indianizing others. The hard but necessary work of locating and tracing out such intersectionality is a challenge to which this book only partly rises.3 However, we hope that the thematic rhythms of our book resonate with those who are attempting these projects and that the absences in our text might be seen as silent spaces within which others may accent their own beats, supplementing, complementing, and especially playing against the ostinato or tumbao of our rhythms. Acknowledgments Many people have played a special role in the process of bringing this book to fruition. Rob Walker has been a source of encouragement and gentle criticism from the beginnings of our journey into the domains of IR. We were very pleased that he wanted to include our manuscript in the series he was helping to launch at Routledge. Zillah Eistenstein read a draft of each chapter. Her precise criticism helped us recognize our overall argument, and her enthusiastic support stretched us toward the fuller potential of the work. Nick Onuf embraced our work at moments when we ourselves were reluctant to embrace it fully. He has read almost every chapter in this book at some point and has been a careful, thorough, and generous critic. Peter Mandaville has taken on our book as a project, promoting it shamelessly. For that and for organizing a session at the European Consortium of Political Research, in which the initial chapters were read, we will always be grateful. Patrick Jackson has also stood behind us steadfastly, pushing us to get the book done. We also need to thank him for organizing a panel at the Northeast International Studies Association meeting dedicated to the book manuscript. And thanks to those—Rob, Beate Jahn, Iver Neumann, Siba Grovogui, Robin Riley, Yale Ferguson, Edward Weisband, and Stephen Rosow— who read large sections of the manuscript for those panels and commented so expertly. Kurt Burch has been a constant source of friendship and careful reading and editing at numerous moments in the process of writing this book. The loss is to the discipline. Himadeep Muppidi has been a fellow traveler down the path of
x
postcolonial scholarship and finding a home at a liberal arts college. We have too often failed to respond to his most serious and incisive criticism. Two of our professors from graduate school also warrant special mention. Jim Caporaso has a lifelong influence on those who are lucky enough to meet him. We try to emulate as best we can his dedication to teaching his students to meet the highest standards of excellence in scholarship. Though he has read little of the text of this book, David Levine’s influence on our work has been profound, including in ways he might not fully approve of. We want to thank them for helping to launch all of this. Many have shared comments and assistance. We want to thank: John Agnew, Jonathan Bach, Asma Barlas, Tarak Barkawi, Mike Barkun, Don Beachler, Shampa Biswas, Terry Boychuk, Hannah Britton, John Burdick, Stephen Chan, Geeta Chowdhry, Matt Davies, Joel Dinnerstein, Kevin Dunn, Bud Duvall, Tony Favro, Gary Fountain, Chip Gagnon, Chuck Green, Xavier Guillaume, Sandra Halperin, Gil Harris, Harry Hirsch, Hon Tze-ki, Aida Hosic, Dominique JacquinBerdal, Inayatullah, Sara Inayatullah, Shishir Jha, Edward Keene, Sung Ho Kim, Helen Kinsella, Fritz Kratochwil, Sankaran Krishna, Hannes Lacher, Mark Laffey, Yosef Lapid, Andrew Latham, Richard Little, Dan MacIntosh, Kate Manzo, Teresita Martinez-Vergne Jennifer Mitzen, Alexander Moon, Craig Murphy, the late John Nagle, Sheila Nair, Meghana Nayak, Daniel Nexon, Haider Nizamani, Andrew Oros, Mustapha Pasha, Mark Rupert, Ahmed Samatar, Stefan Senders, Michael Shapiro, Kara Shaw, Meili Steele, Jan Thomson, Ann Towns, Ruth Turner, Latha Varadarajan, Jeremy Varon, Marco Verweij, Ritu Vij, Cindy Weber, Wendy Weber, Birgit Weis, Jutta Weldes, Alex Wendt, John Williams, Juliet Williams, and others whose names we might have temporarily misplaced. We have been unable to fully exploit the richness of their comments and concerns. David would like to thank the University of Chicago for providing a hospitable and challenging environment for work during the 1998–99 academic year and the University of lowa for access to its facilities for the academic year 2001–2. Both Naeem and David would like to thank their institutions—Ithaca College and Macalester College, respectively—for funding that supported this work. David would like to thank three student assistants—Lubos Bosak, Kara Bovee, and Egle Tamosaityte—for assistance with the manuscript in the final stages. Chapters 1, 3, 4, 5 are new and expanded versions of previous articles: Blaney, David L., and Naeem Inayatullah (2002) “Neo-Modernization? IR and the Inner Life of Modernization Theory,” European Journal of International Relations 8(1):103–37. Blaney, David L, and Naeem Inayatullah (2000) “The Westphalian Deferral,” International Studies Review 2(2):29–64. Blaney, David L, and Naeem Inayatullah (1998) “International Political Economy as a Culture of Competition,” in Dominique Jacquin-Berdal,
xi
Andrew Oros, and Marco Verweij, eds., Culture in World Politics, pp. 61– 88. London: Macmillan, 1998. Inayatullah, Naeem, and David L.Blaney (1999) “Towards an Ethnological IPE: Karl Polanyi’s Double Critique of Capitalism,” Millennium 28(2):311–40. Finally, if this book emerges from the community of names listed above, it also emerges from our families. Naeem would like to take a humble bow of gratitude to his siblings—Sohail, Noman, and Sara Inayatullah—for their long-term support, to his parents—Zubeda and Inayatullah—for striving toward truth, to his children—Kamal and Shahid—for vivifying temporality, and above all to his wife—Sorayya Khan—for unbending faith, uncommon courage, and sparkling infinite inspiration. David would like to thank his mother, Helen, and remember his father, John, for their faith even in what they could not fully comprehend. And, to Sherry Gray, thanks for believing in me and my work at those moments when I doubted.
Introduction
One of the oldest and most persistent questions in Western philosophy—and as far as I understand it, in Eastern thought too— has been the “problem” of the one and the many and/or identity and difference. —Richard J.Bernstein, The New Constellation [W]e have all been programmed to respond to human differences between us with fear and loathing and to handle that difference in one of three ways: ignore it, and if that is not possible, copy it if we think it is dominant, or destroy it if we think it is subordinate. But we have no patterns for relating across differences as equals. —Audre Lorde, “Age, Race, Class, Sex” The Colonial Legacy The discipline of international relations (IR) is hamstrung by a relative incapacity to speak about “the situation of the Third World—the injuries done to it through conquest and colonialism and the justice of its demands” (Inayatullah and Blaney, 1996:68; see also Neuman, 1998; and Puchala, 1998). This recurrent, if unheeded, protest has informed intellectual responses to dominant perspectives in IR from dependency theory to various postcolonial approaches. Our own intellectual efforts grow from a sense that IR as a discipline does not (except very thinly) assess the quality of cultural interactions that shape and are shaped by the changing structures and processes of the international system. More specifically, while competitive self-help is taken for granted—as backdrop to the entire project of understanding state behavior (including cooperative behavior)—IR has few resources for addressing how the cultural impact of political and economic competition denigrates the varying forms of life of “nonWestern” peoples.1 More important, because competition is taken for granted IR fails to untangle the cultural logic of competition itself. It therefore is unable to give anything but a crude and caricatured understanding of the complex motives and desires involved in colonial/neocolonial subjugation or in the resistance to
2 • INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND THE PROBLEM OF DIFFERENCE
domination. And, in its conventional neorealist or neoliberal guises, IR misses the way international society—as both a system of states and a world political economy—forms a competition of cultures in which the principles of sovereignty and self-help work to sanctify inequality and subjugate those outside of the centers of “the West.” We have investigated these themes in much of our earlier work,2 some of which appears in new and expanded forms as part II of this book. However, the more fundamental and challenging task is to explain why IR fails to confront seriously the role of colonialism, neocolonialism, and various postcolonial responses to colonialism and its legacies. One implication of part I of this book is that we can more clearly see the current shape of IR as itself partly a legacy of colonialism. The attempt to understand this failure has driven us to examine the late medieval-early modern context for the origins of the political imagination informing contemporary IR, including, in our view, theories of modernization of which IR is a crucial component. In the process, we have come to translate our task as explaining IR’s relative incapacity to acknowledge, confront, and explore difference. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe are often treated as a period of transition to the modern world, for which the “discovery” of the Americas and the Peace of Westphalia serve as key markers within the “creation myth” of modernity. With Westphalia, as the story goes, the pretensions of a universal Christian order gave way to a pluralistic society of states. In the wake of bloody religious warfare and the expansion of Europe beyond its provincial narrowness, political and social thought is said to have gradually rid itself of religious foundations, spurring the trend to secular rule and the beginnings of a more liberal and tolerant sensibility. Our reading of this period in the first two chapters substantially revises this conventional view. We argue that this interpretation blinds much of IR to the various creative responses to difference that existed during this period and the way the intellectual discourses of the time—in response to both the wound of the wars of “religious cleansing” and the challenges of incorporating the peoples of the Americas into European worldviews (and empires)—mostly reinforced, rather than challenged, the interpretation of difference as a dangerous aberration from the norms of stability, safety, and order. Theory and practice aimed to contain, domesticate, or destroy difference—to establish an “empire of uniformity,” in James Tully’s (1995b) felicitous phrase. Though this legacy weighs heavily on the present, most particularly in the form of theories of modernization that pervade our understandings of international/global order, we also search for resources that offer alternative responses to difference. We argue that these can be harvested even from the rocky soils of European thought about the Amerindians and from contemporary theories of modernization. We might say, then, that the purposes of this book are to explain the failure of IR to confront the problem of cultural differences and, perhaps less modestly, to begin to reimagine IR as a perhaps uniquely placed site for the exploration of the
INTRODUCTION • 3
relation of wholes and parts and sameness and difference—and always the one in relation to the other. We also aim to provide some preliminary examples of what such a reimagination involves for IR and for our understanding of a postcolonial world. The One and the Many What might initially appear to be a thorough repudiation of the canons of IR is only partially so. As we have worked to place these concerns about cultural difference at the center of our inquiries, we have found ourselves moved—in a way we no longer experience as ironic—by certain features of canonical “realist” texts.3 For example, though there is much to criticize in E.H.Carr’s 1939 account of the polarity of the realist and utopian moments of IR,4 we experience teaching The Twenty Years’ Crisis (Carr, 1964 [1939]) as rewarding and, at times, inspirational. We find common cause with the task of exposing the “historically conditioned” character of schemes that lay claim to “absolute and a priori principles,” or “unmasking” a utopianism “which serves merely as a disguise for the interests of the privileged” (Carr, 1964 [1939]:68, 93). Though Hans Morgenthau is a less inspirational thinker, it is not so difficult to identify also with his strictures against a “crusading spirit” that attempts to impose political, moral, or religious consensus (Morgenthau, 1963:561–62). We share his view that such a spirit produced the devastation and brutality of the religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and, we would add, is responsible perhaps for much of the oppression and violence of our own times. What we need not allow, nonetheless, is for these canonical texts to be used to try to erase important questions of ethics and justice from the domain of international theory.5 Despite such attempts, these questions cannot be erased. Because “moral and ethical self-characterizations” are central to human existence, human beings live “inescapably in a space of ethical questions” (Taylor, 1990:305). International social life can be seen, then, as “a world of everyday ethics” in which people live according to and with the “standards that make their worlds inescapably their own” (Onuf, 1998a:669–70). And, if the theory and practice of international relations is intrinsically ethical, being “already constituted through accounts of ethical possibility,” there is no reason to import “an achieved body of principles, norms and rules”—codified by social and political theorists—into the domain of IR (Walker, 1993:50–51). The point is that we should not treat IR as an amoral realm—an absence or gap that must be filled by ethicists. When we construct the ethical problem this way—as a contest between realpolitik and ethics—we risk undermining important ethical values and meanings in the name of ethics. This conclusion sustains the suspicion of crusaders and global visionaries that we share with Carr and Morgenthau. But there is more. If, as we have suggested, international theory and practice are constituted through accounts of ethical possibility and are lived as a world of (at least
4 • INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND THE PROBLEM OF DIFFERENCE
implicit) ethical purpose, then ethical inquiry is in an important respect “descriptive.” That is, international theory finds its content within the ongoing theory and practice of IR, not in the construction of an external or absolute standpoint against which international relations may be evaluated and reformed (adapted from Lamb, 1979:75–96). Indeed, the idea that the analyst is inescapably embedded in international theory and practice rules out the possibility of an appeal to any such “decontextualized or archimedian standpoint” (Postone, 1993:87; see also Calhoun, 1995:86–87). Rather, international theory involves “drawing…a moral map” of ourselves in the world that articulates what things mean to us, the import they carry for us (Taylor, 1985:67). International theory is also, then, a “continuing conversation” with prior or alternative mappings of the ethical universe, including both scholarly and everyday accounts of the meaning of these practices (see Lamb, 1979:79). Highlighting the “descriptive” moment in ethical inquiry need not obscure its critical role. Social life always contains some “play” in the tension between ethical meanings and aspirations and the actual shape of social practice. This tension suggests the ability for change, for growth, and that an account of the limits of the present and the alternatives for the future may be an important part of realizing such growth (Lamb, 1979:106–11). Put differently, the purpose of critical international theory is to uncover alternative possibilities hidden by our understandings of international relations, to show that these understandings contain within them the possibility of a critical stance toward current theory and practice (adapted from Postone, 1993:88; and Iris Young, 1990:6). Ashis Nandy (1987b:3), somewhat more expansively, refers to this as the production of a “creative tension”: by exposing the “gap between reality and hope,” we invigorate “a source of cultural criticism and a standing condemnation of everyday life to which we otherwise tend to get reconciled.” Thus, critical thought necessarily maintains an “antagonistic connection” to the social world (Walzer, 1988:22). Partly this is an acknowledgment of the fact, noted earlier, that there is no transcendental position from which to evaluate social life. As Iris Young (1990:5–6) suggests, “normative reflection” gains critical purchase, not from “some previously discovered rational ideas of the good and the just,” but from a “socially situated” capacity to hear “a cry of suffering or distress” or to feel distress. If “the given is experienced in relation to desire,” then it is “the desire to be happy” that “creates the distance, the negation, that opens the space for criticism of what is.” This moment of connection also partly involves recognition of the self-contradictory character of two other stances—resignation in the face of the intolerable and radical rejection of all existing values, necessitating an entirely new form of social life. The critic’s simultaneous connection to and distance from existing social life is defined, therefore, by his or her capacity to employ the “symbolic resources” of existing traditions in order to radicalize those traditions (Mouffe, 1992:1–2; 1993:9–11).
INTRODUCTION • 5
Though we aim to practice some form of immanent critique of global social and political arrangements, we are left feeling a bit uneasy. The task of critics, as we have described it thus far, is to articulate our implicit and explicit values and aspirations, exposing our failures to live up to these values or realize these aspirations, and to point to those features of our social theories and practices that explain, or are complicit with, our failures and the suffering we and others experience. But whose values and aspirations form the common ethical world to which the critic refers? Along which affective register are we to embrace desire and measure suffering? That is, the persuasiveness of the critic’s case rests on the assumption that there exists a substantial backdrop of agreed-upon values, a relatively shared ethical or cultural tradition, or a mostly common register of desire and feeling. Thus, we hesitate. Immanent critique appears to assume a common social world—a “we” to which the critic refers—and it is those very claims of global unity and moral universality that we, like Carr and Morgenthau, view with suspicion. IR offers a typical response to our uneasiness with cosmopolitan pretensions, in the form of a communitarian international political theory (see Brown, 1992: part I). The communitarian vision embraces a society of states. International society is imagined as a “practical association” that is committed principally to the mutual coexistence of the varied and competing goals and values of the “purposive” associations—the states—within which people live (Nardin, 1983). As a “compact of coexistence” (Bull, 1977:91) or a kind of “tolerant society” (Walzer, 1997), a society of states is necessarily a “very weak regime,” embracing only a “thin” conception of the good (Walzer, 1997:19; 1994: chapter 4), or a set of common institutions, norms, and values that supports mutual accommodation but necessarily limits any attempt to pursue more encompassing goals or establish the institutions of a cosmopolitan order (Bull, 1977: chapters 3, 4; 1966). In Walzer’s (1994: xi) terms, ethical inquiry in an international society divides into two kinds of “moral argument” that parallel the “inside/ outside” construction constitutive of IR (see Walker, 1993): the juxtaposition of the domestic political community of order and justice and the less cooperative and more dangerous relations among political communities. With “people abroad” and “across different cultures,” Walzer (1994:xi) claims that we engage in moral argument concerned with (and largely restricted to) the very thin life of mutual accommodation that we share. By contrast, “among ourselves, here at home,” we engage in moral argument that draws upon the “thickness of our own history and culture.” In such a world, cosmopolitan social criticism is treated very nearly as a contradiction in terms. The common backdrop of values and norms of international society is too thin and too circumscribed by the imperative of mutual coexistence to sustain much of a “we” to whom the social critique might appeal. Social criticism is possible, but it is always “local” and “thick “grounded in the local/national political community that provides the “richly referential, culturally resonant,” and “locally established symbolic system and network of meanings” on which ethical argument depends. Thus, Walzer (1988:
6 • INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND THE PROBLEM OF DIFFERENCE
232) sees immanent critique as intrinsically a multiple or “pluralizing activity” in that the critic necessarily engages a particular, localized ethical vision, distinct from others. Such a negative utopia has appeal. Ashis Nandy (1987b:13) has argued that utopian visions of cosmopolitan order consistently raise the problem of “conflicting values” and that we might be better off with relatively “unheroic” visions. It is precisely this worry—that claims of universal values are accompanied by a temptation to impose values on the recalcitrant, resulting in violence and domination—that we share with Morgenthau and Carr. Surely, as Bull and Walzer argue, a world of live-and-let-live—a negative utopia of tolerance—is preferable to the bloodletting associated with moral crusading across political and cultural borders. However, as we have already hinted and as we discuss in more detail in chapter 1, the negative utopia of a society of states achieves far less than is claimed. With the emergence of the states system, the differences constituting and complicating each state as a particular political community are kept separate and managed within the territorial boundaries of the state. This demarcation and policing of the boundary between the “inside” and “outside” of the political community defines the problem of difference principally as between and among states; difference is marked and contained as international difference. This construction of difference allows us to claim to “solve” the problem by negotiating a modus vivendi among political communities. However, the problem of difference remains pervasive. The bounded political community constructs (and is constructed by) the other. Beyond its boundaries, the other lurks as a perpetual threat in the form of other states, antagonistic groups, imported goods, and alien ideas. The other also appears as difference within, vitiating the presumed but rarely, if ever, achieved “sameness.” The other within the boundaries of the political community is “managed” by some combination of hierarchy, eradication, assimilation or expulsion, and tolerance. The external other is left to suffer or prosper according to its own means (though its poverty or prosperity may be experienced as a threat); it is interdicted at border crossings, balanced and deterred; it is defeated militarily and colonized if need be. Indeed, colonial relationships have long existed as a separable mode of, or perhaps as a supplement to, relations among sovereign states (Keene, 2002). Given the tragic consequences of a society of particularistic states, we cannot be surprised at the strength of the cosmopolitan impulse to erase or transcend that particularism. Two options are made available, each defined as the antithesis of the other: a world of independent states or a cosmopolitan order. The competing impulses to divide and separate or unify and homogenize seem to go hand in hand. If the idea of international society serves as a “warning” about the dangers of political identity and community beyond the territorial state (for example, some form of world empire), an international society of states also calls forth the very “longing for reconciliation and integration” expressed in cosmopolitan conceptions and a “more universally conceived humanity”
INTRODUCTION • 7
(Walker, 1993:15, 17–19). There is a pervasive fear of both an imperial uniformity and the divisiveness of a particularized world. We are drawn to a broadly different description of the world that suggests the limits of both cosmopolitan and communitarian conceptions. While acknowledging the power of the idea of an international society of states to capture key features of international social and political life, we see such a picture as underemphasizing the “horizontal forces and ties that cut across state frontiers” (Neumann and Welsh, 1991:327). These forces and ties make possible forms of life and claims of identity that cannot be simply mapped onto the national demarcations of the society of states (Shapiro and Alker, 1996; Appadurai, 1996), though it is equally unreasonable to insist that we are arriving at a genuine global culture (Friedman, 1990; Hannerz, 1990; 1992; 1996). If it is “one world,” it is also “many worlds” (to borrow a phrase from Walker, 1988). And, just as we are unwilling to give up the idea of the unity of humanity, what that means in practice remains far from clear and is, perhaps, the site of a necessary contestation (Cheah and Robbins, 1998). We would highlight, instead, the “cultural complexity” of the world (Hannerz, 1992): that competing visions for constructing global social and political space form and circulate within and across complex cultural terrains (Nandy, 1987b:16, 18; Appadurai, 1996:23, 64); that these visions and the traditions and cultures that spawn them are overlapping and interacting, such that every identity owes a debt to alterity and every vision is multiple, containing dominant and recessive voices that conjoin with others near and far (Kennan Ferguson, 1996:176; Nandy, 1987b:17; Verma, 1990:129; Appadurai, 1996:46); and, finally, that processes of cultural differentiation and interaction have entailed relations of domination and subordination (Todorov, 1984; Nandy, 1987b:12–15; Verma, 1990). If these descriptions are reasonably accurate, critical inquiry occurs against a complex backdrop of values, aspirations, and desires—a situation of ethical complexity, exhibiting less a common sense of ethical valuation and more a substantial incommensurability among alternative visions and traditions. As John Gray (1998:20) explains, incommensurability entails, first, the claim that the “human good is irreducibly diverse”—that the “goods of human life are many” and “cannot be derived from or reduced to any one value.” Second, incommensurability requires that these human goods are “often incompatible and rivalrous,” such that goods and values “may crowd one another out, exclude one another altogether, or belong to ways of life that are by necessity uncombinable.” Finally, “there is no principle or set of principles which enable conflicts among values to be resolved in ways acceptable to all reasonable people.” That is, “[d] iverse and conflicting goods and evils cannot be rationally compared or traded off” (see also Kekes, 1994:46; and Bernstein, 1991:59–67). Given this ethical complexity and incommensurability, cultural values and ethical traditions, whether extended beyond their points of origin or not, always stand (implicitly or explicitly) as a judgment on the ways of life and ethical standards of others (Bernstein, 1991:66; Nandy, 1987b:8, 11–12). And, to return to Carr’s fears
8 • INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND THE PROBLEM OF DIFFERENCE
about those who speak on behalf of humanity, we are likely to find that such claims are sustained only via a process by which resistance is both repressed and constructed as an uncivilized, inferior “other” (Said, 1978; Gong, 1984; 1998; Verma, 1990; Spurr, 1993). We need to keep in mind that the claim of ethical incommensurability does not entail that alternative visions and traditions are fully incompatible, precluding any overlap or commonality in values and visions. Nor does it rule out the possibility of comparing or evaluating competing values or ways of life (Bernstein, 1991:65–66; Kekes, 1994:46, 59; Gray, 1998:21–24). However, we are still left wondering how it is possible, in a world of diverse and often incommensurable values and visions that cut across localities, states, and regions, to make the kinds of comparisons and evaluations necessary to sustain an ethical argument that is generally compelling. It remains unclear how it is possible to move beyond claims that possess more than a parochial appeal or resonate for more than a narrow band of humanity. Or, even where agreement appears to exist, we might be quite concerned about how such “agreement” was forged and wish to resist the way such “universalism” can become a civilizing project imposed on the recalcitrant. Thus, despite the current popularity of various critical, global political projects,6 the possibility of international theory as a form of global social criticism—locating tensions between (shared) aspirations and (common) social practices—remains unresolved. How might we respond to the somewhat or mostly incommensurable visions and traditions of others? Co-suffering and the Other Within The early voyages to the Americas were marked by “an inability to understand or be understood”—a situation of “opacity” (Greenblatt, 1991:24; 1976:576; see also Zamora, 1993:158–59). This “problem” of communication, Greenblatt (1991:24) remarks, no doubt contributed to the sense of wonder with which the strangeness of the New World was generally greeted. Yet this sense of awe was difficult to hold onto; wonder was overwhelmed all too easily by a desire to linguistically and materially appropriate the Americas, abetted by the European sense of moral and cultural superiority (Greenblatt, 1991:9, 13). We read Greenblatt, then, as suggesting that the initial uncertainty and ambiguity of these types of encounters are resolved all too often by an assertion of superiority and outright conquest. However, Greenblatt (1991:25) also holds open the possibility of a different response to the wonderment produced by the experience of “otherness.” Rather than appropriating the other, we might be able to locate that sense of wonderment, of options beyond the banal and taken-for-granted that are hidden, or perhaps repressed, within ourselves and our own ways of life. We will discuss this possibility—an “ethnological moment” in Todorov’s terms or a “struggle for cultural self-discovery” in Nandy’s—more fully below. It is this
INTRODUCTION • 9
potential (or hope) that inspires and animates our inquiries into both the origins and contemporary character of IR as theory and practice.7 Following Mary Louise Pratt (1992:6–7), we refer to this space of the discovery of the other as the “contact zone”. The contact zone invokes “the spatial and temporal copresence of subjects previously separated by geographic and historical disjunctures, and whose trajectories now intersect.” However, the historical experience is that these intersecting trajectories have been infused with inequalities of power; that is, the contact zone has generally become a “space of colonial encounters.” Within this space of unequal encounters, colonizer and colonized cannot be conceived as radically separable; rather, they are “subjects” only as “constituted in and by their relations to each other.”8 Though these relations are certainly defined by “conditions of coercion, radical inequality, and intractable conflict,” this does not require “diffusionist accounts of conquest and domination” that obscure the “interactive” and “improvisational dimensions of colonial encounters.” We second Pratt’s insistence on the interactive and improvisational quality of the encounters with others, but emphasize also the role of learning via trial and error. Uncertain if they understand or are understood (to draw again on Greenblatt), actors plod along, often stumbling and attempting to right themselves. And, yet, the outcome is not necessarily salutary. These frustrations may prompt humility in the face of difference or they may spur a voracious hunger for certainty and mastery or one followed by the other, or any number of responses in between. Chapter 2 involves an investigation of this range of responses as they emerged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In earlier work (Blaney and Inayatullah, 1994; Inayatullah and Blaney, 1996), we have drawn on the writings of Tzvetan Todorov and Ashis Nandy to give some sense of the varying responses of the self to the “discovery” of the other.9 Todorov (1984:42–43), based on his study of the conquest of America, argues that a common pattern of meanings and identities—a “double movement”— emerges in situations of initial contact. However strong our egocentric need to make sense of the world in our own terms, and against the backdrop of commonality that this presents, “discovery” nevertheless reveals difference, that the world is not one and our view of it does not exhaust its possibilities. Despite this revelation and the initial sense of wonderment that Greenblatt highlights, otherness is not readily or consistently recognized. Here Columbus is exemplary.10 Unable to sustain this sense of wonderment,11 Columbus tends to translate the initial experience of difference into a conviction of the inferiority of the other. This status then justifies the various forms of ill treatment and exploitation meted out to the Indians. But there is a second moment in Columbus’s response. Further contact with the Indians reveals or produces commonalities between the Spaniards and the other. This emergent sense of commonality brings with it an inchoate recognition of the common humanity of the other. However, this limited moment of equality comes only at the high price of negating differences between self and other. Again quite typically, Columbus becomes blind to differences, projecting his own values onto the other. Hence the demand, often backed by
10 • INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND THE PROBLEM OF DIFFERENCE
force, for assimilation. Wonderment is thus dissolved into the double movement: difference becomes inferiority, and the possibility of a common humanity requires assimilation. Consistent with Pratt, knowledge of and action toward the other in the contact zone mostly reflects and expresses this framing of possibilities, constructing archetypal colonial relationships (Todorov, 1984: chapters 2, 3, especially pages 127–29, 177). As Todorov’s portrayal of Hernando Cortés makes clear, growing knowledge of the other does not immediately produce sympathy and a fuller understanding. Rather, knowledge of the other, inflected by the equation of difference and inferiority, becomes a means for the physical destruction, enslavement, or cruel exploitation of the other. In the case of a young Bartolome de Las Casas, “love” for the other—based on a sense of the Amerindians’ common humanity; that is, their potential for Christian piety—works to obscure differences. This presumption of commonality, joined with Las Casas’s (rather meager) knowledge of the other, becomes the basis for colonial conversion—an assimilation of the other to the self that promises cultural, if not physical, destruction. What is precluded within the reflexes of the double movement is the possibility of recognizing the other as both different and equal (Todorov, 1984: 249). The responses, described here as a double movement, accomplish a form of “splitting.” As Jessica Benjamin (1988:25–31, 62–63) tells us, “splitting” occurs when there is a breakdown in the mutuality of interaction between self and other. Maintaining a sense of balance between two subjects, each demanding recognition from the other, involves complex interactions and fragile interrelationships in a zone of psychological and social contact.12 Parallel to Pratt, Benjamin’s contact zone is characterized by ambiguities, frustrations, and uncertainties. The temptation, then, is to try to replace the ambiguities of the ongoing balancing act and the frustrations entailed by the essential tension between two subjects with a relationship of mastery and servility. Where the uncertainty of one’s position vis a vis the other is difficult, even impossible, to bear, the self may be driven by the desire to move from a relationship of mutuality and interdependence to one of autonomy and dominance on one side and dependence and servility on the other. As Benjamin explains, this movement from mutuality to domination involves splitting—an attempt to purify the self of the need for the other. In splitting, “the two sides are represented as opposite and distinct tendencies,” where “one side is devalued, the other idealized, and each is projected onto different objects,” “so that they are available to the subject only as alternatives” (Benjamin, 1988:63). Instead of recognizing the possibility of the overlap of self and other, boundaries are rigidly drawn, carefully policed, and mapped onto the difference between good and evil. This tendency to split apart and then freeze difference and commonality into mutually exclusive, axiologically polarized extremes, as in the double movement, is “the pattern for every form of domination” (Benjamin, 1988:218).
INTRODUCTION • 11
Nevertheless, the contact zone admits of other possibilities. For example, Todorov’s inquiries (1984:185–93, 225, 240–41) reveal learning and growth and the emergence of responses that begin to move against the double movement and the mechanism of splitting. Some, like Las Casas and Bernardino de Sahagún, may come to adopt a kind of “perspectivism” in their understanding of the other. Rather than simply effacing the other by assimilation, the cultural practices and traditions of others are placed beside one’s own, both differences and commonalities (and strengths and weaknesses) are noted, and a certain overlap of views, if not a personal hybridity, is constructed and revealed. More commonly, as Todorov (1984:240–41, 250) explains, the stance toward the other remains that of the “comparativist,” where difference is expressed largely in one’s own terms; by appropriating the other within one’s own cultural categories, the values and visions of the other are thoroughly obscured. Though acknowledged, the internal multiplicity of the hybrid is evaluated according to standards that continue to split self and other, privileging the imperial, Spanish elements of the self while denigrating the Indian aspects. Though multiple voices may be given play, they are juxtaposed, but not allowed to intermingle in a process of critical self-reflection. In the latter, which Todorov labels an “ethnological” stance, the other becomes a resource for a self-examination that might substantially alter not only how the self sees the other, but also how the self views its own culture and traditions. If we are to interact as ethnologists, we would need to learn how to treat the doubts and ambiguities generated in the contact zone as resources. Only then could we become parties to a conversation that “contributes to the reciprocal illumination of one culture by another.” It is Nandy who provides a particularly compelling vision of a potential “dialogue” in the contact zone. For Nandy, this means reshaping the “space in public discourse” so that the parties to the “civilizational encounters of our time” meet on grounds of equality (Nandy, 1987a:118), so that they “come together to make culture-to-culture dialogue a reality [and] establish a new plural future through cross-cultural dialogues” (Sardar et al., 1993: 90). However, as in Todorov’s account, if the interactions and improvizations shaping encounters in the contact zone are to take on the form of dialogue, participants need to negotiate the polarizing tendencies characteristic of the “psychology of colonialism” (Nandy, 1983:ix-xii). As Nandy (1983:4–18) argues, British colonial domination was organized discursively along dimensions of both gender and age, invoking hierarchy—strength and weakness, dominance and submission —via parallel polarizations of masculinity and femininity and maturity versus childhood and old age. By mapping these polarities onto the British and Indian selves, British dominance was constructed as manly rule over submissively feminine India, and a vibrant European adulthood was counterpoised to an at once infantile and decrepit, aged East. The colonial project was the logical extension of this act of splitting: India requires the British other as a strict headmaster and physician to whose tutoring and prescription it must submit.
12 • INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND THE PROBLEM OF DIFFERENCE
But, for Nandy, the contact zone also contains critical potentials. The cultural spaces revealed and constructed by these “intersecting trajectories” are complex and overlapping. Cultures and traditions face each other not as homogenous and fixed entities. Though “shared” in important respects, cultures are more like an “open-ended text” than a “closed book” (Nandy, 1987b:2; 1987a:118); traditions are layered, comprising “different levels or parts,” or perhaps dominant and recessive moments (Nandy, 1987b:17). And no matter how different, the subjects of cultural encounters can find connections and overlaps between their own values and visions and the various “levels and parts” and dominant and recessive moments of the cultural practices and traditions of the other (Nandy, 1987b:54– 55). In some cases, the responses to domination that grow from this overlapping cultural space may prove largely self-contradictory. In an effort to establish or restore a mutuality of relationships, the subordinated self may lose, or perhaps repress, elements of itself. Indeed, far too much of Indian resistance, Nandy (1983:19–24) explains, involved an effort to assimilate by recovering those “British” aspects of the Indian self, unacknowledged or repressed by the British. Figures like Michael Madhusudan Dutt and Bankimchandra Chatterjee are exemplary in their search for the British self and British valuations of India within Indian cultures and traditions themselves. Yet Nandy sees this as the search for a recessive voice that may be reclaimed and elevated only after it has been purified of the residual elements of Indian backwardness and submissiveness. Recovering the Indian self in this way involves a simultaneous loss of the self. Efforts to maintain the purity of the British self are similarly costly for British interlocutors (Nandy, 1983:40, 65–70). Policing the boundary between colonizer and colonized denies the possibility that the colonizer will learn or be healed by the insights or responses of the other. And the British are forced, like Kipling and Orwell in Nandy’s account, to repress those parts of themselves that link them to India, that, more strongly, show them to be Indian. More creative responses also are enabled by the intersecting trajectories of the contact zone. Nandy (1983:36–48) describes how a small but important group— Sister Nivedita (born Margaret Noble), Anne Besant, Mira Behn (born Madeline Slade), and C.F.Andrews—evade the colonial imperative to police the boundary between self and other. Not only do they distance themselves from dominant aspects of their own society, using Indian “versions of religiosity, knowledge and social interaction” as an internal mirror, they also build on this critical selfreflection to envision and fight for forms of society and political life beyond the oppressions of colonialism. Gandhi, similarly but more profoundly in Nandy’s (1983:36–37, 48–51) account, creates alliances between recessive traditions in the West and themes in India’s cultures that offer a vision of liberation from colonialism—for both the Indians and the British. These figures represent for Nandy the achievement of something like Todorov’s ethnological moment, but with a distinctly critical and political cast.
INTRODUCTION • 13
As with Todorov, the ability to acknowledge that the other is not simply external but also exists within the self is only the first step. More powerful and creative is the capacity to uncover the other within as a source of critical self-reflection and cultural transformation. For Nandy, the key is that each figure uses his or her own experience of suffering not only to establish a connection to the suffering of others, but also to make overcoming of suffering central to thought and action. In Nandy’s (1983:54) evocative phrasing, “a cultural closeness” of otherwise diverse civilizational experiences is made possible by “this experience of cosuffering.” Thus, as Nandy (1987b:4) warns, we should not seek and are not likely to uncover a full “integration of visions” in such civilizational encounters. Rather, establishing dialogue in a world of inequalities and oppressions depends centrally on the capacity to draw connections between various traditions’ and cultures’ understandings of and responses to oppression. Nandy (1987b:13) sees this as a “negatively defined” utopia, not one involving an appeal to a thick, universal order. As we noted earlier, cosmopolitan visions tend to produce conflict, and severe violence accompanies their attempted imposition. A dialogue of responses to oppression, by contrast, “promotes a vague, implicit negative consensus on an unheroic vision of a ‘decent society.’” This may disappoint those who long for some ultimate reconciliation in a world order, but Nandy suggests that it is precisely this longing for a unified order that needs to be abandoned. Abandoning this quest for a universal order makes it possible to “establish communications among social criticisms.” Such a dialogue involves refusing to attempt “to summate the values of diverse civilizations.” Nandy calls us to articulate instead “the diverse concepts of a tolerable society” at work in our world. Perhaps we cannot avoid demarcating these alternative visions of a “tolerable society” as either self or other. However, as long as we recognize that the other is also within and that our common experience of suffering may show us the way to establish connections between self and other, the other may serve as a source of critical self-reflection. Thus, the intersecting trajectories of the contact zone admit of potentials for “cultural self-discovery” (Nandy, 1987b:55) and a joining of “social criticisms” that Pratt may not adequately highlight. This finding is important because, as our descriptions of world politics in the previous section suggest, we continue to inhabit the colonial relationships characteristic of the contact zone. Beginning in chapter 3, this book demonstrates that the contemporary terrain of culture remains “a space of colonial encounters”— of the eradicatory or assimilative violence of the double movement and the methodological violence of distancing central to the practice of the “comparativist.” But, as we have argued here, the contact zone contains alternative possibilities—of critical self-reflection and of an alliance of social criticisms. For us, then, the political and ethical challenge is to locate for IR the resources for an ethnological stance even in a world where the reflexes framed by the double movement and the logic of the comparativist hold sway.
14 • INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND THE PROBLEM OF DIFFERENCE
Our attempt to locate and cultivate such resources involves a mode of reading or textual exegesis that draws on the insights of Nandy and Todorov. First, this requires a respect for the subjectivity of the author. We must pay heed to the author’s voice, uncovering the author’s dominant motivation and purpose as the author him-or herself might understand it.13 At the same time, texts (like cultures and traditions) are layered, possessing dominant and recessive themes and political and ethical purposes that work beyond the author’s intentions. Thus, reading also involves an attempt to locate these minor and sometimes submerged themes and purposes as resources for interpreting the text and for contemporary political and ethical purposes. In the case of interpreting the text, we come to see how both the dominant and recessive themes serve as the necessary effects of a deeper contextual/textual structure of historical conditions and intellectual and popular debates. We can then observe how various texts together form a “constellation” of writings that, even if not reducible to a single “core,” are usefully juxtaposed because they express some key “truths” embraced in that era, with implications for later eras (see Bernstein, 1991:5–8). For our own political and ethical purposes, the recovery of recessive themes and voices at once undermines the naturalness of the dominant conceptions or conclusions of political and ethical traditions and reveals alternative conceptions and conclusions that may be turned against dominant understandings. More important in our view, this process of recovery is central to the ethnological moment that breaks the hold of the reflexes of the double movement. Finding the other within is, as Nandy tells us, essential not only to the process of critical self-reflection, but also to a conversation of cultures and traditions that responds to the oppressions of the contact zone. We can now return more explicitly to the issue of our stance toward IR. What is implicit in this discussion but needs to be said openly is the way this method of reading informs our efforts to reimagine IR. If IR is implicated in the colonial character of the contact zone, as we suggest, then our work is a gesture toward a post-Western IR. However, this gesture is complicated by the fact that revealing the particularity and parochialism of the West14 is simultaneously to recover the values and visions of the West (in its numerous guises, both dominant and recessive) as resources. To put it differently, moving beyond the hegemony of the West requires the rediscovery and reimagination of the West. Heterology: Beyond and within Western IR Reimagining the West is beyond us, but we can contribute to this process by trying to rediscover and reimagine IR. Key to this endeavor is the process of “provincializing” IR—documenting the historical process by which the spatial and temporal demarcations of IR come to seem self-evident.15 As a first step, we reintroduce the idea of “culture” into IR.16 The question of what culture does for us must be asked, since alarms may sound around IR when one hears the term. Culture is considered “soft,” not capable of adequate specification. Its use
INTRODUCTION • 15
conjures up interesting but probably irrelevant ethnographies of distant, “stateless” peoples. The rich or thick description suggested by the term seems to fly in the face of the imperatives of a positive science (see Geertz, 1973). By dominant standards, IR is deductive in approach, emphasizing the nomothetic over the ideographic, the analytic over the descriptive, parsimony over the messy or complex, systematic imperatives over particularistic creations. Though we share some of the suspicion of “culture” as a category, we have been drawn to it, gradually at first, and then, all of a sudden, almost wholeheartedly. In our view, the language of culture is immediately useful for IR because it evokes two tensions or oppositions (Walker, 1990). On the one side, culture is distinguished from nature and the cultural from the natural. Culture refers us to human activity and creativity; the capacity to construct, live, and aesthetically express forms of life; and the coexistence of human action that embraces and practices as well as resists and reforms inherited (or imposed) forms of life. This phrasing highlights the weight of cultural representations in shaping human existence into forms of life, including their role in constituting a group’s specific identity in relation to others and to the larger cosmos. Thus, the language of culture leads us to sustain a strong (but not absolute) contrast between human artifice and the fixities and givens of nature. We might say that the human is both freed and shaped as a cultural being. On the other side, and to draw on earlier discussion, culture points at once to universality and commonality and to partiality and diversity. We are referred to the universal—the meaningful and constructed character of human experience— and to the particular commonalities (and differences) used to construct identities in relation to others. And though these two references are brought together in claims about the existence of a system of national cultures or, increasingly, its supercession by the arrival of a global culture, the term still strongly signals that human artifice is multiple, that ongoing processes of cultural self-definition (in relation to multiple internal and external others) continue to operate partly in opposition to much of what is implied by the ideas of a nation or a global culture. To summarize, the language of culture draws our attention to the construction, maintenance, and transformation of meaningful and purposeful schemes of existence as a common human endeavor, yet also as multiple, diverse, and often competing human projects. Thus, we might add, the human project itself is coterminous with what we have called the “contact zone,” exhibiting the varied possibilities admitted by cultural encounters. As described above, these possibilities range (to emphasize polar cases) from opacity, repression, and knowledge sought for purposes of domination to a sense of wonder, a desire for understanding and mutual communication, and a joining of social criticisms. And, to complete the thought, IR can thus be reimagined as a theory of intercultural relations or perhaps rediscovered as an important site of “heterology”—the study of differences (Certeau, 1986; Giard, 1991). At the risk of being overly bold, we can imagine that had such a study of differences—or heterology—more fully infused the understandings of theorists
16 • INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND THE PROBLEM OF DIFFERENCE
and practitioners of IR, the attacks of September 11, 2001, would not have come as much of a surprise. Anticipating that others, at home and elsewhere, have alternative narratives of what we call “modernization” or “civilization,” we might have predicted the humiliation, anger, and violent response to what are seen as colonizing projects. Perhaps, having anticipated such powerful and dangerous responses by the targets of modernization, we might have done two things to try to foster alternative responses. First, we could have incorporated the peoples of the third world not just in the execution of the project of modernity, but more fully in the formulation of its very meaning and in serious debates about its relative value. Second, by listening to others, far away and nearby, we might have come to understand the need to defend and demonstrate the vibrancy and depth of Western culture(s), instead of simply taking those for granted. In the process of doing these two things, we might have discovered depths in ourselves that we had forgotten (or repressed) and assisted others in discovering those in themselves, so that we might have replaced relationships of violence and domination with dialogue. These options are still available, but they require that we begin with a critique of IR theory so that we may locate those alternatives within ourselves.
PART I Difference in the Constitution of IR
CHAPTER 1 The Westphalian Deferral
Where two principles really do meet which cannot be reconciled with one another, then each man declares the other a fool and heretic. —Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty War’s a deal. It cuts both ways. Whoever takes also pays. Our age brings forth its new idea: Total war—and total fear.
—Bertolt Brecht, Mother Courage and Her Children The solution, however, wasn’t really a solution, nor the beginning a beginning. —Urvashi Butalia, The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India Only recently has sovereignty appeared again as a puzzle. A review of academic and popular discourse suggests that the political and ethical certainties associated with the nation-state are under assault by, variously, the inexorable forces of global capitalism, the transnational mobilization of environmental and human rights activists, the progressive emergence of global governance, and the pervasive deconstruction of borders and identities.1 The sense that humankind is thereby facing an uncharted future has also generated historical and theoretical interest in Westphalia, with the expectation that critical reflection on the origins, principles, and purposes of the state system might help us identify strategies by which we can remake the world (see Walker, 1993; Spruyt, 1994; Ruggie, 1998; Onuf, 1998b; Van Creveld, 1999; and Keene, 2002). We share the expectation that a return to the puzzle of sovereignty is important for political and ethical inquiry. Cutting against the grain of much contemporary academic practice, however, we believe that sovereignty—as theory and practice
THE WESTPHALIAN DEFERRAL • 19
—remains a site of political and ethical possibilities. Rather than an ethical dead end or a site of political closure, we suggest that the problems posed by sovereignty contain opportunities that extend, stretch, divide, and revise sovereignty more than they fully transcend it. We elaborate this set of claims in the latter stages of this book, where we explore the idea of multiple and overlapping sovereignties.2 Here we focus on the way the formal sovereignty of states—conventionally attributed to the Westphalian settlement3—intensifies the difficulties we face in responding to differences in culture, religion, and mode of life. How does this “problem of difference” emerge with Westphalia? Perhaps ironically, differences in culture remain less of a problem in an age of (premodern) empire, when the principle of hierarchy reigns supreme. As Michael Walzer (1997:15) suggests, “[i]mperial rule is historically the most successful way of incorporating difference and facilitating (requiring is more accurate) peaceful coexistence.” Subjugated peoples, though excluded from the apex of the social order and marked as inferior, paradoxically can find a kind of sufferance of their way of life, religious practices, and distinct customs. Walzer (1997:14–16) argues that, while this form of tolerance is partly rooted in a sense of “minimal fairness” that the imperial center extends to the conquered, it is also largely a practical matter: as long as imperial rule is respected—taxes are paid and imperial authority is acknowledged—further subordination is unnecessary. Preserving the peace of the empire entails merely enforcing peaceful coexistence among the “authority structures and customary practices” of the various conquered groups. And, though tolerance is extended primarily to groups rather than to individuals (this is not a liberal world), individuals may escape some of the pressures for communal conformity in the more cosmopolitan cities of the empire. These days we are less comfortable with hierarchy and we do not openly sanction imperial practice. But neither have modern empires proved to be particularly tolerant, as we shall see. The rise of the principle of equality in international relations (in the centuries following Westphalia) has served, relatively speaking, to delegitimate and break the hold of the monopoly of social and political power of a particular group. But where groups of differing persuasions are placed on more equal (legal, if not social) footing, the imperial solution of sufferance of subservient others is mostly foreclosed. When the equality of others is acknowledged, we require the affirmation of those others instead of divine ordination to secure our own status. However, the presence of differences in ways of life, values, and visions also challenges the seeming naturalness of our social practices and threatens the certainty of our given sense of self (Benjamin, 1988: chapter 2). Walzer (1983:249–54) also points in this direction, explaining that hierarchical orders resolve the problem of recognition by giving everyone a fixed place in the social order. Whenever such a ranking breaks down, it presents a potential challenge to our sense of our own value and simultaneously we become unsure of our relations to others. In this way, the problem of difference emerges and intensifies under modern conditions of
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relative equality, often leading to the reassertion of (illicit or informal) forms of social hierarchy—the marking of the others as inferior and thereby as less of a threat. We comprehend and affirm our values as others recognize us. And yet, perhaps because of this dependence on them, others seem also to threaten us. How then should we reconcile need and threat? How do we realize equality with difference? These problems remain central to modernity. These problems are also central to the very constitution of international relations. We read the geopolitical demarcations of a society of states as a spatial containment of cultural difference. Difference is placed at a distance (managed within the boundaries of “other” states and deterred by the defense of one’s own borders) and resolved into “sameness” within one’s own political community. That is, the state is the domain where difference is translated into uniformity, while IR remains eternally a site of potentially dangerous, but one would hope manageable, confrontations with others. This splitting of inside/outside (to combine Benjamin, 1988, and Walker, 1993) signals in our minds less a solution to the problem of difference and more a deferral of the need to face that problem frontally. The idea that international society represents a solution to the problem of difference is often linked to a reading of the legacy of the Peace of Westphalia. Thus, we examine the Peace of Westphalia in its historical context—as a response to the “religious cleansing” and material and psychological devastation of the Thirty Years’ War—in order to trace IR’s posture toward difference. An Internal Crusade Most historians consider the Thirty Years’ War and the Peace of Westphalia that brought it to a close among the major events of the latter half of the millennium. Ronald Asch (1997:7) calls the Thirty Years’ War “the best example of a political event which profoundly changed political and social structures, and perhaps even collective mentalities.” The decisiveness of these events is sealed by the predominant view of the Peace of Westphalia as signaling the move from a religious to a modern, secular world and from the accepted, if somewhat vaporous, goal of a united Christendom to a system, or perhaps society, of independent states (Pages, 1970:17, 250; Thomson, 1963: 814). There is nothing foreign about this interpretation: the decisiveness of these events is asserted, if not taken for granted, by most scholars in the field of international relations.4 This period is indeed notable for the central role played by religious conviction in instigating military conflict. While legal and political motivations— such as the limits of the emperor’s authority and dynastic rivalry—were certainly present, such factors took on a distinctly religious hue. Just as we today perceive the ubiquity of the economic motive, whatever else may be involved, both the ruling classes and the masses of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are said to have seen the events of their time through a distinctly religious gaze (Asch, 1997:7; Langer, 1980:11; Thomson, 1963:800; Lockhart, 1995:1–2; Brightwell, 1979:418). The religious conflict flaring up in the sixteenth century and all but
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consuming the seventeenth century found its initial spark in the Reformation’s challenge to the ideological monopoly and material power of the Catholic Church (Friedrich and Blitzer, 1957:10–11; Van Creveld, 1999:67–84). This challenge persisted and escalated with the spread of various forms of Protestantism among the masses and the conversion of certain territorial princes in Germany. The specific character of the religious conflict merits some discussion. In his War against the Idols, Carlos M.N.Eire evocatively frames the Reformation as a transition from an immanent to a transcendent notion of religiosity. In his account of the events of 1509, the year of John Calvin’s birth, Eire (1986:1) describes a Europe in which Christianity was tangibly expressed in the events and objects of daily life: Heaven was never too far from earth. The sacred was diffused in the profane, the spiritual in the material. Divine power, embodied in the Church and its sacraments, reached down through innumerable points of contact to make itself felt: to forgive or to punish, to protect against the ravages of nature, to heal, to soothe, and to work all sorts of wonders. But within a period of only two decades, a radical and sweeping change was initiated. The religious immanence of Catholicism came to be seen as a corruption of the Scripture; its form of piety branded as “idolatry.” Condemnation of the papacy fell on prepared ground, as many lay persons shared a resentment of the privileges and abuses of the Church (Blickle, 1984; Jelsma, 1998). Thus, the beliefs of the reformers were soon translated into action, disrupting the sense of the role of the Church in society: “churches were sacked, images smashed and burned, relics overturned, and consecrated hosts fed to dogs and goats.” As this displacement of the dominance of a “religion of immanence” by a “religion of transcendence” spread from Germany and Switzerland to France, the Netherlands, and England, “the unity of the European religious vision was forever shattered” and “the image donors” rather suddenly became “image smashers.” The Reformation remade Europe (Eire, 1986:2; see also Head, 1998:95–96). Though reformers were fractured along numerous lines, Eire (1986:2) emphasizes the competition among three major “streams of piety.”5 Catholics defended their own centuries-long history, “suffused with the immanence of the divine,” while reformers tended to divide between the relative moderation of the Lutherans and a Calvinist rigor and intolerance for compromise. Lutheran piety objected to the Catholic practice of “works-righteousness”—the belief that grace could be conferred through works—but accepted the Catholic use of material objects in worship so long as those objects were seen as a means to the divine and not as divine themselves. Calvinism, or the “Reformed stream,” flowed in a different direction, “surging with transcendence” and unleashing an “uncompromising and disruptive…crusade against idolatry that manifested
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itself in iconoclasm, civil unrest, and eventually even in armed resistance against legitimate rulers” (Eire, 1986:3; emphasis added). For contemporary readers, the allusion to an “internal crusade” needs emphasis. Nor can we afford to minimize the moral and epistemic charge of the word idolatry, or the oft-repeated charge that “the Devil and his army of demons” stood behind the practices of the established church (Jelsma, 1998:27). Catholics fully understood the accusation, for they themselves hurled it when they vituperatively degraded, for example, the religions of the Amerindians. Here, a remark that serves Eire (1986:5–6) as peripheral and expository strikes us as prescient, given our focus on European assessments of Amerindians in the next chapter: It is good to keep in mind that at just about the same time that the soldiers of Charles V replaced the “horrible idols” of the Aztecs with “beautiful” crosses and images of Mary and the saints in the New World, Protestant iconoclasts were wreaking havoc on these Catholic objects in lands nominally ruled by him in Europe. The grisly cult of human sacrifices led by bloodstained priests inside the Wall of Snakes in Tenochtitlan inspired the same kind of reaction among the Conquistadors as the celebration of the Mass in the richly decorated cathedral of Basel did among Protestants. As Eire (1986:5) so rightly points out, “one man’s devotion was another man’s idolatry.” And so it is that he who casts the first stone finds it returning with a vengeance that can only come from the deepest doubts of former believers. The Calvinists claimed that the medieval Church had fallen into idolatry in two ways. First, the Church as a whole was seen as an idolatrous entity. The Church, in other words, “had set itself up as an idol, substituting its own decrees for those of God.” Second, it used idols as a part of its worship, thereby directing the worshiper’s attention not to God, but to material artifacts (Eire, 1986:55–56; see also Blickle, 1984). Eire (1986:55–56) describes the Reformist judgment: “Like some vast Augean stable, the medieval Church was ankle-deep in the ‘filth’ of images, relics, altars, holy places, and miraculous hosts. The Calvinist attack on medieval piety sought to flood and cleanse the Church from the accumulated debris.” Such feeling was justified, it was thought, because what was at stake was not simply human lives, but human souls and the truth of God’s plan for humanity (Gregory, 1999: 345–46). Such intense feelings could not but have had momentous political consequences. Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt—Luther’s colleague at the University of Wittenberg—argued that because Catholic worship transgressed the word of God it was the duty of Christians to remove idols and idolatry even if this required violence (Gregory, 1999:78–82; Head, 1998:96–97; Skinner, 1978:27, 75; Eire, 1986:65). While Karlstadt’s revolutionary views were rejected by both Luther and Calvin, they nevertheless provide a sense of how the Catholic
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Church came to be seen by its critics as a “realm of darkness” and “the kingdom of the Antichrist.” By the 1520s, for those in Germany and Switzerland there were two opposing Churches and the question became which one to believe. A 1521 pamphlet poses this problem starkly—“should I then consider the pope and his cronies to be the Christian Church?” The Protestant answer to this question, as Eire shows through a sermon preached by Heinrich von Kettenback in 1522, is obvious: “Christ has his Church, and the Antichrist also has his Church, and the Church of the Antichrist is nowadays often mistaken for Christ’s Church” (Eire, 1986:102). In response, Catholic enmity against the reformers was both symmetrical and asymmetrical: symmetrical because, while accused of spiritual pollution, they themselves saw the Protestants as polluting Christianity; asymmetrical in that while the Protestants focused their rancor on “idols,” the Catholics aimed their animosity at the bodies of “heretics” themselves. This meant that while Protestants sought to overthrow Catholicism by attacking its cultic objects, the Catholics sought to defeat the Protestants by inflicting bodily harm on them. Protestants would feed consecrated hosts to a goat and say “now he can die if he wants, he has received the sacrament,” or spit into the holy water fonts; Catholics, however, regarded such acts as attacks on the sacred, and consequently vented their anger on the persons of the Protestants themselves. (Eire, 1986:161) Thus, each faction regarded the other’s false worship as a threat of plaguelike pollution (Blickle, 1984; Gregory, 1999:85–87; Eire, 1986:228, 283–84). And plagues must be stopped. Put in terms we introduced above, the other’s demand for recognition was experienced as a deathly threat and death for one’s cause an act of martyrdom (Gregory, 1999). Demands to return to orthodoxy—for example, the Edict of Worms (1521), the Second Diet of Speyer (1529), and the Diet of Augsburg (1530)—were resisted by reformers, especially where such resistance was buttressed by the support of Protestant princes. At the same time, attempts to forge a compromise that recognized the divisibility of Christianity (for example, the First Diet of Speyer of 1526) were repudiated by both sides (Lindberg, 1996: chapter 9). In the end, princes loyal to Catholicism leapt to or were drawn into a defense of the Universal Church—a Counter Reformation led by the Habsburgs, the Holy Roman Emperor, and the papacy. German Protestants responded in kind, and both sides mobilized for war. More than thirty years of indecisive hostility were brought to a temporary halt in 1555 by the Peace of Augsburg (Thomson, 1963: 500–1, 791). From our point of view, the Peace of Augsburg appears to have been an initial and relatively meager attempt to come to terms with the problem of difference. The treaty confirmed, if not strengthened, the autonomy of the princes within the empire, including recognizing the principle of ubi unis dominus, ibi una sit
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religio (“where there is one ruler, there should be only one religion”).6 While this established a minimal pluralism (Lindberg, 1996: 246–48; Thomson, 1963:791), the right of rulers to fix the religion of their own citizens worked ill in an “extensive, long-unified territory,” where migration by those of other faiths to a safe haven of coreligionists was difficult. It worked somewhat better in practice where jurisdictions were “fractured and fragmented,” such that “people of deep religious commitments need not move far to find, either a ruler who shared their convictions, or a tolerant free city” (Toulmin, 1990:49–50; see also Head, 1998: 98–100). For us, however, it is the limits of Augsburg that stand out. The right of individual conscience was not recognized, and tolerance was established only between Catholic and Lutheran princes, excluding Calvinists, Zwinglians, Anabaptists, and other sects. In addition, even the minimal tolerance established by the treaty was seen by the signatories as an act of prudence in the face of a balance of forces, merely a pause in an ongoing struggle to eliminate the religious others (see Lindberg, 1996:146–47; Head, 1998: 99–101). As Asch (1997:10) describes the situation, “[T]hose who signed the Peace of Augsburg… did not yet see this principle as the essence of the settlement as clearly as the lawyers interpreting the Peace later were to do; for they had not yet given up the hope of re-establishing some sort of religious unity.” As would also be the case with the later Peace of Westphalia, the Catholic Church refused to accept the principle of tolerance among princes. The emperors—Charles V (r. 1519–1556) and Ferdinand I (r. 1556–1564)— saw the settlement as undermining the special relationship of empire and Church (or empire and God). Protestant princes and states also tended to accept the arrangements as provisional (Thomson, 1963: 500–1; Pages, 1970: 37; Parker, 1997:16–17). A Purifying Hatred The outcome seems scripted, and we are tempted to read the Thirty Years’ War as the inevitable culmination of a long period of religious zealotry in which difference is first translated into inferiority and subject to eradication and then glossed as the reason and basis for the gradual movement to a more tolerant modernity. While the events of the seventeenth century are usually read in this way, we would warn against accepting such a view too readily. Cary Nederman (2000) suggests that conventional accounts ignore the vast intellectual resources supporting tolerance within the thinking of the Middle Ages—from John of Salisbury and Marsiglio of Padua to Bartholomé de Las Casas (to whom we will return in the next chapter). Stephen Toulmin similarly argues that the sixteenth century offered an alternative, more tolerant theory and practice than is suggested by the usual retrospective reading of this period as the antithesis and precursor of the modern. For example, in late-medieval or Renaissance figures like Erasmus, Montaigne, and Shakespeare, Toulmin finds “an urbane openmindedness and skeptical tolerance,” reflecting mostly Renaissance impatience
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with the quest for religious or philosophical certainty as well as relative “respect for complexity and diversity” (Toulmin, 1990:25–30; quotations on 25 and 29).7 Similarly, in Henry IV of France he finds a political practice that turns gradually toward greater tolerance of the Protestant Huguenots, despite domestic and external opposition. However, when Henry’s assassination in 1610 brought his experiment to an end, the event was interpreted widely as a failure of the policy of tolerance. This event served as “confirmation of people’s worst fears” and “dashed the last hope of escaping from irresoluble conflicts” (Toulmin, 1990:46– 53; quotation on 48; see also Van Creveld, 1999:72). The equation of difference with danger was seen as vindicated with savage results. The revolt of the Bohemian estates against Catholic domination triggered a renewed effort by the Habsburgs to root out heresy from their domains (Thomson, 1963:800). Emperor Ferdinand II’s defeat of the Bohemian rebels and his intensification of religious persecution reverberated throughout Europe, irrevocably shattering the uneasy stalemate among religious forces. This phase of Counter Reformation was prosecuted as a “consuming passion” with the tools of “fire and sword” (Parker, 1997:75–76; Wedel, 1991:51). Though not all rulers welcomed these provocations or the eventual outbreak of open warfare, the prospect of losing a religious war and being subjected to the religious dictates of the victor generated an anxiety difficult to bear. Protestants and Catholics alike mobilized to resist this possibility; neutrality became almost impossible (Brightwell, 1979:418–19; Trevor-Roper, 1962:39–40; Parker, 1997:75–76; Gutmann, 1988:767–68). In this context, piety was translated into a clear and certain response to difference—an attempt to eliminate alternative modes of Christian belief and practice by conquest, persecution, and purification. The resulting conflict is infamous for the material devastation, but also the social, moral, and psychic scars it left across Europe. Trevor-Roper (1962:33) considers it the “greatest and most destructive war in preindustrial Europe.” Toulmin (1990:53) is more expansive in his characterization of its effects on central Europe: “For thirty years, in a series of brutal and destructive military campaigns, shifting alliances of outside powers used the territory of Germany and Bohemia as a gladiatorial ring in which to fight out their political rivalries and doctrinal disagreements, most often by proxy, and turned the Czech and German lands into a charnel house.” Perhaps a better sense is provided by comparison with a more contemporary reference. Geoffrey Parker (1997:192– 93) notes: “Until 1939, the Thirty Years’ War remained by far the most traumatic period in the history of Germany. The loss of people was proportionally greater than in World War II; the displacement of the people and the material devastation was almost as great; the cultural and economic dislocation persisted for substantially longer.” And, following Charles Weeks (1991:213), we might describe the events as a cataclysm foreshadowing those of our own time: the Thirty Years’ War was a total ideological war, ushering in a “modernist” period in which the “unfolding disasters of war”—runaway inflation, spiraling military engagement, and a “phalanx of disease, hunger, and chaos”—crashed down on
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civilian populations. John Theibault (1995:1–2) reports that the Thirty Years’ War is selected (still today and by a wide margin) by Hessian villagers as “the greatest calamity to befall their villages” in the period bounded by the Black Death and World War II. We would, then, along with Herbert Langer (1980: 10), emphasize the devastating psychic wounds left on populations, both the masses and ruling groups. Surely an important reason for the extremes of destruction is that armies were maintained in the field continuously for nearly the duration of the war. Troops became, in Herbert Langer’s (1980:97) phrase, “marauding baggage-trains,” draining the resources of the countryside and spreading terror and epidemics in their wake (see also Theibault, 1995:141–42, 151– 60; Nichols, 1989:261–63). Conscription, fed by heavy battlefield losses and the unremitting toll of disease, depopulated villages across Germany, Sweden, Finland, and elsewhere. Military service became a veritable death sentence (Lynn, 1991:95; Parker, 1997:186–88). If the length of the war helps explain the magnitude of the destruction, this begs the question of what sustained the war. It also leaves us unable to easily account for the savagery displayed by combatants. We are led again to religiously inflected motives. John Laursen (1998) argues that numerous chances for compromise that might have substantially shortened the war were missed by intransigent leaders moved by a religious mission. Toulmin (1990:54) argues similarly that the doctrinaire character of the religiosity fed the frenzy of killing: The longer the bloodshed continued, the more paradoxical the state of Europe became. Whether for pay or from conviction, there were many who would kill and burn in the name of theological doctrines that no one could give any conclusive reason for accepting. The intellectual debate between Protestant Reformers and their Counter-Reformation opponents had collapsed, and there was no alternative to the sword and the torch. Yet the more brutal the warfare became, the more firmly convinced the proponents of each religious system were that their doctrines must be proved correct, and that their opponents were stupid, malicious, or both. We should not be surprised, then, that the barbarities were unspeakable, of a kind some trace to that time (Langer, 1980:101), yet clearly recognizable in events of recent decades. The pillaging of the countryside was accompanied by torture and rape, often of children and pregnant women. No religious grouping was spared; nor were the religious dissenters less cruel than their persecutors (Parker, 1997: 186–88; Lynn, 1991:96; Wedel, 1991: 42–45). The savagery reached such a scale that the inhabitants of Styria, who had contributed generously to Emperor Ferdinand’s coffers, claimed that his armies had caused more destruction and suffering than the dreaded Turks (Nichols, 1989:261–63). And one of the Hutterite brethren, a group subjected to perhaps the worst indignities, compared the infidels favorably to their fellow Christians: “Even Turks and Tartars…
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would have said it was too much.” Thus, Wedel, echoing Toulmin’s analysis, with which we began, takes the treatment of the Hutterites as evidence of the power of a “purifying hatred” (Wedel, 1991:46–47). Purifying hatred, one might imagine, burns with great fury but can also exhaust itself, especially when joined by an equally furious fire. Indeed, it is argued that exhaustion again led the combatants to a series of peace tables, and the resulting treaties are usually labeled the Peace of Westphalia. Historian Georges Pagès’s (1970:250) view is emblematic of the interpretation usually ascribed to this set of events: The peace of Westphalia substituted the idea of independent states, a sort of international society, for the idea of a united Christendom. The peace did not openly express this idea but it did contain the idea of a society which took no account of the method of government of its component states…. Similarly, no account was made of the dominant religious faiths. On the international plane, Europe became a secular system of independent states. It was the dawn of the principle of nationalism. S.Harrison Thomson’s (1963:814) account of the events likewise portrays the Peace as a marked step forward for religious tolerance: “The achievements of the peace congress in the controversial area of religious liberty, while not revolutionary, were not insignificant…. Complete toleration was not to be expected. The old principle of cuius regio eius religio was deeply ingrained in the princely class. Now, however, Calvinists were tolerated and the princes were expressly enjoined not to interfere in the religion of their subjects.” Hans Morgenthau’s (1963:312) assertion that, by the end of the Thirty Years’ War, “sovereignty as supreme power over a certain territory was a political fact, signifying the victory of the territorial princes over the universal authority of emperor and pope,” is similarly exemplary of international relations orthodoxy. Others follow suit. Leo Gross (1968:47) claims that the “Peace of Westphalia consecrated the principle of toleration by establishing the equality between Protestant and Catholic states and by providing safeguards for religious minorities.” Terry Nardin (1983:50) describes the emergent international society similarly as a system of mutual tolerance and accommodation. Stephen Krasner (1993:242–44; 1999:73– 82), though he doubts the claim that Westphalia implemented the idea of sovereignty, stresses the attempt of the treaties to contain religious conflict by fixing boundaries in a system of nation-states, disentangle religion from politics, and foster greater religious tolerance. In general, then, and to repeat a point, Westphalia normally is seen as a key marker of the eclipse of the medieval world by modernity. There is purportedly a movement from the religious to the secular, from the idea of Europe as unified by Christianity to a European system of independent states, and from a web of overlapping and competing authorities to a modern states system based on the demarcation of exclusive territorial jurisdictions.
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What is crucial in these varied accounts is the intimation that Westphalia and a nascent modernity represent initial but definitive steps toward a solution to the problem of difference. We wish to complicate this reading, because the received view of Westphalia tends to blind us to the creative responses to difference that were lost during this period; the persistent, if understandable, evasion of the task of exploring the source of the wounds in the dominant response to difference; and the manner in which the intellectual discourse, originating in the shadow of the Thirty Years’ War, reinforced, rather than challenged, the interpretation of difference as a dangerous aberration from the norms of stability, safety, and order. Thus, a richer story necessarily qualifies any effort to establish Westphalia as a clear marker of the transition to a tolerant modernity. Toward an “Empire of Uniformity” Our argument nearly reverses the stress of the received view. By contrast with the vision of an emerging tolerance, we suggest that the practical and intellectual repercussions of the Thirty Years’ War fostered a movement as much toward uniformity as toward recognizing and respecting diversity. We will elaborate this point in two steps. First, the attempt to contain difference within the relatively autonomous units recognized by Westphalia8 deferred a deeper exploration and engagement of the problem of differences. Ronald Asch (1997:193–94) notes that Westphalia was not a solution to the problem of religious difference, but, rather, it kept alive the religious conflicts of the previous century, “confirming the existing status, rights, and privileges of the confessional churches,” and thereby “perpetuating religious divisions,” albeit in a more “muted form.” Combined with a recognition of the independence of princes, the effect was to divide “‘Europe’ into Catholic and Protestant spaces” and spur “the interstate construction of the continent” (Campbell, 1992:51). Religious tolerance among sovereigns was made, in effect, a function of the balance of power among them (Keene, 1998:21), but within the nascent states the situation was different Despite the treaties’ relative embrace of religious liberty, the moral constraints placed on rulers were, as Krasner (1993: 244–45) observes, on a collision course with the sovereign’s right to dictate the faith of the realm as originally acknowledged in the Treaty of Augsburg and as supported by the emerging reality and theory of sovereignty. “[F]rom now on,” Toulmin (1990:91) concludes, “established religion was the general rule.” This move, by setting difference at a distance, may well have helped to minimize the prospects of religious war on the scale of the Thirty Years’ War, but it did so at a price: the problem of difference was simply displaced into the “domestic realm.” However, the consequences for religious liberty were not uniform across the newly sanctified political units. Toulmin (1990:92) describes a situation in which each state or domain individually faced “the continuing problem of religious conformity and toleration.” Despite the expectation of submission to a national faith, nonconforming minorities remained a troubling issue; others, thought to
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have been placed at a distance, were found within. And though, “[a]fter thirty years of bloodshed, few people still considered the price of imposing religious conformity worth paying,” Toulmin (1990:92) reports, “the local pressure for conformity remained strong, and religious minorities were everywhere subject to some degree of discrimination or persecution” (see also Laursen, 1998:170; Kamen, 1967:161–90, 196–99, 201–15). But the degree did vary, each national experience representing “a different variation on a common set of tunes.” In Austria, the Habsburgs remained as “leaders” of the Counter Reformation: “continued Lutheranism was seen as disloyalty to the Habsburg dynasty, and the Protestant minority of craftsmen and professionals had to choose between conversion, death, and flight.” English papists were targets of discrimination, but their treatment paled in comparison to that dealt out to “heretics” in France. Under the rule of Louis XIV, “the Protestant minority was denied the right to work in many professions, and exposed to military attacks that drove them back into their traditional strongholds.” Consequently, large numbers of Huguenots exercised the option of “flight,” either “across land, or became boat people and headed for England or America” (Toulmin, 1990:92; see also Laursen, 1998:171– 72). Thus, Nevzat Soguk (1999:62, 67–74) sees the displacement of the Huguenots not only as a key early example of the problem of refugees, but as a clear marker of the rise of the effort to manage, and often homogenize, populations—an effort central to statecraft in an emergent system of territorial states. By contrast, Calvinist Holland, lacking the constraints of long-standing and centralized institutions, was relatively tolerant of Catholics and other dissenters (Laursen, 1998:174–75; Toulmin, 1990: 92–93; Keene, 1998:29–30; Kamen, 1967:191–93). Everywhere, a balance was struck that “stopped short of the horrors of a renewed religious war” (Toulmin, 1990:93). While this was no mean achievement, the problem was not so much resolved as it was deferred— displaced into the domestic realm, where, it was hoped, it could be managed and contained. Second, the received view of Westphalia as a crucial point of transition to a more civilized era ignores the relatively negative impact of the experience of the war on thinking about difference. Rather than supporting openness toward the other or fostering a view of difference as a resource, the intellectual legacy of the era is a pervasive suspicion of difference. Disorder and degeneration are thought to result from difference; uniformity or homogeneity naturally produces social order and stability. As we explore in the next chapter, these two equations were already central to much of Christian thought and were reproduced by early ethnographers’ attempts to make sense of the discovery of “the New World.” The treatment of difference outside would follow from the treatment of difference inside9—both deducible from the equation of difference as the problem to which creating an “empire of uniformity” is the solution. In Toulmin’s (1990:67–69) account of the process, the Thirty Years’ War shook the “cosmopolitical” conception of a hierarchically arranged and integrated natural and social order that undergirded much of late-medieval
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thinking and practice. Spurred by the resulting anxious and pessimistic mood, the intellectual project to restore such order is best seen as a “defensive counterrevolution,” a closing down of options produced by a frantic search for certainty (Toulmin, 1990:16–19, 81; quotation on 17). More specifically, the possibility of reclaiming the relative skepticism and pluralism of Renaissance humanism was discredited as being not up to task of containing religious difference and anchoring social order: In this blood-drenched situation, what could good intellectuals do? So long as humane Renaissance values retained their power for Montaigne in the private sphere, or for Henry of Navarre in the public sphere, there was hope that the reasoned discussion of shared experiences among honest individuals might lead to a meeting of minds, or, at least, to a civilized agreement to differ. By 1620, people in positions of political power and theological authority in Europe no longer saw Montaigne’s pluralism as a viable intellectual option, any more than Henry’s tolerance was for them a practical option. The humanists’ readiness to live with uncertainty, ambiguity, and differences of opinion had done nothing (in their view) to prevent religious conflict from getting out of hand: ergo (they inferred) it had helped cause the worsening state of affairs. If skepticism let one down, certainty was more urgent. It might not be obvious what one was supposed to be certain about, but uncertainty had become unacceptable. (Toulmin, 1990: 54–55) And, Toulmin (1990:55) continues, where differences in religious faith had proved so destructive, the appeal of a standpoint beyond question was overwhelming: Failing any effective political way of getting the sectarians to stop killing each other, was there no other possible way ahead? Might not philosophers discover, for instance, a new and more rational basis for establishing a framework of concepts and beliefs capable of achieving the agreed certainty that the skeptics had said was impossible? If uncertainty, ambiguity, and the acceptance of pluralism led, in practice, only to an intensification of the religious war, the time had come to discover some rational method for demonstrating the essential correctness or incorrectness of philosophical, scientific, or theological doctrines. Thus, Toulmin (1990:56–62) links the impetus for Descartes’s search for a single and certain principle, from which all else would necessarily follow, to this mood and the parallel need to answer Montaigne’s epistemological skepticism. Many took hope from Descartes’s project and turned to the effort “to construct abstract and timeless intellectual schemes.” Certainty became associated with “geometrical proof” or “mathematical structures” (Toulmin, 1990:105; see also
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20, 75; Collingwood, 1981 [1945]: part II, section 1; and Friedrich and Blitzer, 1957:1). And, as Toulmin (1990:76) describes the thought, “if ethics were to join physics and logic on the rational side of the fence,” humanity could “escape the chaos of diverse and uncertain opinions.” This move privileged the written, the universal, the general, and the timeless; it denigrated “practical philosophy,” with its reliance on “argumentation” or “case analysis” that involved “particular people in specific situations, dealing with concrete cases, where varied things were at stake” (Toulmin, 1990:70, 31–35). The former promised certainty and safety; the latter opened the way to disagreement, conflict, and the danger of chaos. The search was for a “certitude” that would “help to bind the wounds” opened by the wars of religion (Toulmin, 1990:89). We can trace the parallel and connected consequences of this mood for thinking about politics and political organization. Deborah Baumgold (1993) explains that seventeenth-century thinkers—most prominently Grotius, Hobbes, and Locke in her account—were engaged in a project of “pacifying politics” in the wake of religious conflict, both international and internal. As in social theory more generally, restoring political order was thought to require a foundation of unchallengeable principles, proofs, and powers (Toulmin, 1990:76–77; Tuck, 1988:29; Boucher, 1998:225; Tully, 1993:184). Quite famously, the thinkers of this era sought a foundation for authoritative political organization—a sovereign power—in the ideas of natural law and social contract. But, as Tuck (1993:xixviii; 1999: 1–15) makes very clear, in contrast to the more expansive notions of natural law associated with the scholastics, early modern thinkers transformed the “state of nature” into a minimal order, stripped of (much of) the richness of civil society and the particularities of cultural life. This idea of the natural condition of humankind was partly sustained in the political imagination of the time by the dominant view of the Amerindians as, in fact, occupying some state prior to or apart from civil society (see Slavin, 1976; and Jahn, 1999). Reasoning from the axioms associated with such a natural state was treated as if it were independent of, or neutral in relation to, varying moral or religious beliefs. After all, who would dispute the primacy of human self-preservation and, perhaps, a right to property? Thus, the contractarian position was seen as a more certain (even scientific) basis for justifying political authority and, thereby, a solution to the problem of moral relativism and religious difference that threatened political order. This move is clear in the work of the major thinkers of the time, as well as a precursor of the contemporary doctrines of modernization examined in chapter 3. Tuck (1993:171–72, 174) credits Grotius with the conceptual innovation that transformed Renaissance skepticism into the foundations of a new moral science, claiming the certainties of mathematics. In De Iure Praedae Grotius (1964:7; c.f.Grotius, 1925:23) ascribes to this method of securing certainty: he begins with “a preliminary statement of certain broad axioms on which all persons are easily agreed,” providing a “fixed point from which to trace the proof of what follows” and “laying a foundation upon which our other conclusions may safely
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rest.” In particular, Grotius turns the skeptics’ maxim of self-preservation into the central principle of a minimal, and purportedly universal, natural law. With creation, humans are endowed with the “natural properties” necessary to sustain their own existence. For Grotius (1964:9), “love, whose primary force and action was directed to self-interest, is the first principle of the whole natural order.” He immediately derives two laws from this first principle: the right of self-defense and the right to acquire those things necessary for sustaining life. From these, he deduces the corollary requirements that people refrain from injuring others and take care to respect their possessions (Grotius, 1964: 10–13). Thus, from the simple principles of the human drive for and the right to self-preservation Grotius attempts to produce an unquestionable basis for natural justice and the richer, though thin, civil order that gradually emerges in the workings of human history. It is this order that is capable of realizing natural justice and, thereby, subordinating the individual to the “public good” (Tuck, 1993:175–76; 1999:89). Both Hobbes and Locke are inheritors of this intellectual move. Hobbes is famous for his rather bleak picture of the natural condition of mankind, but, like Grotius, he identifies certain laws of nature—defined principally by a right to self-defense and an obligation of restraint in relation to others—as a path to justice (Hobbes, 1996:1, chapters 13, 14). However, as Tuck (1993: 306–8) explains, even this minimal set of ethical injunctions is not capable of resolving the problems of material competition and religious and moral diversity that produce the fear for self and possessions (see Hobbes, 1996: II, chapter 18). Indeed, for Hobbes it is the capacity of the sovereign to align together men’s judgments10 that motivates individuals to transfer the bulk of their rights to a sovereign power. The sovereign power must direct individual actions to the “Common Benefit”: “The only way to erect such a Common Power…is, to conferre all their power and strength upon one Man, or upon one Assembly of men, that may reduce all their Wills, by plurality of voices, unto one Will…. This is more than Consent, or Concord; it is a reall unite of them all, in one and the same Person” (Hobbes, 1996:120). To put it differently, reason dictates sovereignty as a spatial solution to the problem of moral and religious uncertainty; power is spatialized in the state, thereby transforming a dangerous diversity of individual opinions and wills into a sovereign opinion and a sovereign will (Pocock, 1973:157–58, 191; Walker, 1993:62). Thus, Hobbes also saw his work as akin to Descartes’s project, as the creation of a science immune to the force of skepticism or the moral and cultural disputes that perpetually threaten to return humanity to a state of civil war (see Hobbes, 1996:28, 32, 145; Tuck, 1993:279, 285; and Johnston, 1986:11, 22–23, 110–13, 124). While Locke is often thought to offer a break with this tradition, Tuck (1999: chapter 6) places him well within the Grotian line. In the Second Treatise (completed around 1681) Locke writes that the “Law of Nature” teaches us that, though each person “is bound to preserve himself,” and will exercise the “perfect Freedom” offered by the state of nature to do so, this is “not a state of licence”. Rather, each individual is restrained in relation to the self-preservation of others
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(Locke, 1988:269–71). Like Hobbes, enforcing the mutual restraints of the law of nature is the primary justification and motivation for the establishment of civil society, but, of course, Locke differs from Hobbes in his greater stress on the citizenry’s right to resist tyranny (Locke, 1988:II, chapters 8, 10). What is most interesting from our point of view is that this apparent enshrining of a liberal respect for the individual is partly reclaimed when we highlight Locke’s scheme for “governing conduct.”11 Locke’s own efforts to produce an uncontestable basis for political judgment and, hence, civil order led him over time to doubt the capacity of human beings to come to ready agreement on principles of truth and behavior. In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (published in 1690), Locke argues that the idea that there is some innate disposition to universal truth is easily disproved by the absence of universal agreement on any such principles (Locke, 1996: 8, 15–16). Nor is it clear that the vast majority of human beings are much adept at or interested in the sort of reasoning required for ascertaining moral and political principles (Locke, 1996:9– 10, 329–37). Having arrived at this conclusion—that reasoned and moderate judgment is not an innate disposition, but the result of the kind of careful cultivation to which few could aspire or sustain—Locke turned his attention to educational and social schemes to ensure, if not reasoned obedience, at least compliance with civil order. His most famous work in this regard is Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693). Here Locke (1964:20, 26) presents the child12 as a blank page that must become “obedient to discipline, and pliant to reason.” Though Locke seems rather advanced in his demand to spare the rod, education is conceived as a process of “government” in which educators must carefully apply the principle of “rewards and punishments” or, in the more refined households where genuine education is possible, of “esteem and disgrace.”13 In this way alone can we cultivate the kinds of virtue that make possible life in a civil society based on property, commerce, and reasoned consent (Locke, 1964:84–85, 100–1, 104–5, 148). For those less capable of participating in such a society, Locke suggests more punitive means.14 As Tully summarizes, Locke’s sees the civil self in “penal” terms—as a product of the “apparatus of deterrence” central to a “juridical mode of governance” (Tully, 1993: 240–41). Here, as in international relations, deterrence of difference operates as a crucial force. Given the primacy assigned to social harmony and political unity in these thinkers and the looming threat of more religious crusades, it is not surprising that the predominant opinion of the time soon became that the sovereign authority was justified in subordinating religious liberty, whenever necessary, to limit conflict and defend social order. Grotius, Hobbes, and Locke (in early writings) defend this view of the rights of the sovereign to dictate the religion of the realm, but do so from a position informed by a relative skepticism about the prospects for establishing a uniformity of genuine religious belief. That is, religious unity can be coerced for practical or political, but not religious, reasons (Tuck, 1988:29–33).
34 • INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND THE PROBLEM OF DIFFERENCE
Perhaps typical is Locke’s concern, expressed quite clearly in a 1659 letter,15 that it is highly unlikely that religious groups would “quietly unite…under the same government and unanimously cary the same civill interest and hand in hand march to the same end of peace and mutuall society though they take different ways towards heaven.” Not long after, in the Two Tracts on Government (1660– 62), Locke locates the blame for the religious warfare and political instability of the preceding century squarely on unwarranted claims of religious liberty.16 Where religious liberty is tolerated, ambitious religious leaders and the flock they influence will try to build a “temple” to their own faith and thereby attempt to purify the realm of religious difference: “Grant the people once free and unlimited in the exercise of their religion, and where will they stop, where will they themselves bound it, and will it not be religion to destroy all that are not of their profession?” (Locke, 1993:143–44). The consequences are stark. Not only is the peace threatened and the state ruined, but devastation is unleashed on the population: “All those flames that have made such havoc and desolation in Europe, and have not been quenched but with the blood of so many millions, have been at first kindled with coals from the altar” (Locke, 1993:144). Locke proposes to remove the sword from the hand of religion at once; that is, to disarm religion but for the weapons of “word and spirit” (Locke, 1993:144–45). But this stricture is more about the authority of the “magistrate” than about religious tolerance. Though Locke recognizes that Christianity is “embraced privately in the heart and by faith alone,” it falls within the purview of civil authority to regulate the “peace of society and the dignity and welfare of religion” within a “single set of laws” (Locke, 1993: 156–58). More precisely, Locke authorizes the sovereign to impose what he must for the sake of peace. Thus, what is supported is not so much private conscience but a unified church and a common form of worship within the realm, so long as the ruler respects the fundamental (and quite minimal) tenets of the Christian faith (Locke, 1993:154–57).17 At the same time, each author’s work or life offers moments of a defense of religious toleration, though these moments are severely circumscribed. Hobbes is noted for a defense of intellectual inquiry in the face of religious authority and opposing laws condemning heresy, though he did not extend his generosity to nonbelievers, despite the common condemnation of him as an atheist (Tuck, 1993:334, 343–44; Pocock, 1973:187). This limitation is quite consistent with his demand for relative religious uniformity. He put it succinctly: “But seeing a Common-wealth is but one Person, it ought also to exhibite to God but one worship” (Hobbes, 1996:252). Though Hobbes makes some accommodation to private beliefs by demanding only public conformity (Hobbes, 1996:253), he is generally hostile to the play of individual moral judgment and private conscience in political life, declaring them “Diseases of a Common-wealth,” and doctrines “repugnant to Civill Society” (Hobbes, 1996:223). Indeed, Hobbes’s project of rationalizing Christianity (mostly performed in the rarely read parts III and IV of Leviathan) may be seen as part of this more general imperative of the “alignment” or “disciplining” of “individual psychology” (the quoted phrases are
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from Tuck, 1993: 308, 346; see also the important work of Johnston, 1986:109, 130, 210–12). Grotius, himself a victim of religious schism (a story left to the next chapter), defends a somewhat more robust version of tolerance at points in his political career and writings. Sensitive to the religious conflicts of the time (and hostile to Iberian imperial claims based on a papal decree), he refuses any generalized right to religious warfare or persecution (Grotius, 1925:516–17, 518–21). However, atheists receive no such mercy, and religious dissenters were granted no protection in the face of political necessity (Kingsbury and Roberts, 1990:44– 45; Tuck, 1988:30–31). As is clear from his varied writings on religion, Grotius aimed less to defend a robust notion of tolerance of difference than to work for the reunification of Christianity (Haggenmacher, 1990:145; Tuck, 1993:185). And his method of unification is a familiar one: reducing Christianity to its minimal and “undeniable” aspects. Thus, areas of disagreement among Christians are bracketed or pushed aside in order that a narrow set of commonalities might be highlighted and, if necessary, enforced (Tuck, 1993:185– 86; Tully, 1993:49). That Grotius shows less tolerance for those beyond Christendom is suggested by his much celebrated work on the laws of war and peace. Though subjecting war to legal restraint, in De Iure Belli Grotius finds numerous justifications for war that fall particularly heavy on non-Europeans targeted for colonization. Where natives violently resist conversion, restrict transportation or commerce, or fail to properly cultivate their lands, they may find themselves duly subjected to enslavement and their territory duly an object of conquest (Grotius, 1925:190–92, 194–204; 517–18; see also Röling, 1983: 296; Kingsbury and Roberts, 1990:42–47; Tuck, 1999: chapter 3; and Keene, 2002: chapter 2). The hypocrisy involved is palpable: “In short, the enormous popularity of Grotius’ doctrine becomes comprehensible when we recognize that in theory it could gratify the high-minded because it pointed to the way which could reasonably lead to a better world—while in practice it did not restrict in any way the endeavour to subjugate the non-European peoples to European authority” (Röling, 1983:297). Locke’s later views reflect greater respect for religious diversity. This shift is attributed to two experiences that profoundly altered his thinking. As Tully reports (1993:52–53), Locke had observed Christian communities in which relative tolerance was practiced and had seen the attempts to impose religious uniformity in England produce only greater dissent and instability. His changed outlook is reflected in A Letter Concerning Toleration (written in 1685). Tolerance is now seen as an essential trait of the “true Church,” and Locke makes it clear that genuine belief cannot be coerced nor can salvation be had by those who conform outwardly to beliefs they do not share (Locke, 1993:390, 394, 410). Based on this understanding of faith, Locke aims “to distinguish exactly the business of civil government from that of religion, and to settle the just bounds that lie between the one and the other” (Locke, 1993:393). The task of civil authority is to secure the life and possessions of the population, not to compel
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religious belief. Indeed, given that belief is not capable of being forced (the church being a “free and voluntary society”), the state’s penal methods are wholly inappropriate to the task (Locke, 1993:396, 420; see Waldron, 1988:69). Nor are rulers better able to discern religious truth; their attempts to coerce religious compliance are more than likely to disturb the peace by fostering resentment and rebellion (Locke, 1993:407, 428). Beyond this practical disincentive to meddle in the religious lives of citizens, Locke points to God’s judgment of those who refuse to practice tolerance (Locke, 1993:390–93). Obviously, Locke has moved from his earlier, quite restrictive position, but we should be careful in accepting his views as a simple precursor of our own liberal practices. Locke does not embrace a general pluralism, and the bounds of religious toleration are still quite circumscribed.18 Indeed, his extension of tolerance to dissenters is made against the assumption of certain givens: natural law and a Christian (Protestant) commonwealth (Locke, 1993:421; see also Tuck, 1988). Atheists and Catholics were, therefore, treated with suspicion, since neither could be trusted to submit to civil authority (Locke, 1993:424–26, 431). In this way, legitimate religiosity was restricted to a distinctly Protestant version of a privatized, individualized faith, despite the fact that Locke sees religious diversity as potentially valuable since (Protestant) churches check and balance each other (Locke, 1993:429). In any case, he had come to accept that “the diversity of opinions…cannot be avoided” (Locke, 1993:431), though the “public good” remains a regulative principle, trumping when necessary the liberty of religious practice (Locke, 1993:411–15). Thus, we are still tempted to see Locke less as a great defender of “individual conscience” and more (as above) as the proponent of a cultural conformity enforced by social and political sanction (Tully, 1993:179–80). This judgment is only reinforced when we note that, as with Grotius, sanction for civil uniformity is turned not simply against recalcitrant violators of natural law within the civil order, but also on those outside, such as the Amerindians, whose political and economic practices fail to conform to civilized dictates.19 This conclusion turns largely on Locke’s understandings of property and civil society in the Second Treatise. Though the world is originally “given to Mankind in common,” the appropriation of property by individuals is possible, even in a prepolitical “state of nature,” because the natural right to self-preservation allows the acquisition and consumption of the produce of nature by individuals (Locke, 1988:II, 285–86). The mechanism for this appropriation of nature as property, Locke suggests, is the application of labor (Locke, 1988:II, 287–88). Initially applying this logic to hunting and gathering (Locke, 1988:II, 289–90), Locke extends it to ownership of the land: “As much Land as a Man Tills, Plants, Improves, Cultivates, and can use the Product of, so much is his Property” (Locke, 1988:II, 290). The requirement of cultivation and improvement allows Locke to assert that the enclosure of land does no injury to other claimants, since the application of human labor to land “does not lessen but increases the common stock of humankind” (Locke, 1988:II, 292–95). The progressive
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enclosure of land as private property eventually produced settlements and cities that “came in time to set out the bounds of their distinct Territories.” Though the appropriation of property is justified by natural law and the territorial bounds of settlements might be negotiated by societies in the state of nature, a definitive demarcation of property rights and territorial boundaries depends on the formation of government(s)—the establishment by “Compact” of the institutions of rule definitive of a world of civil societies (Locke, 1988: II, 295, 299). We might say, then, that these two enclosures—of landed property and territorial boundaries—operate in tandem: ownership and sovereignty equally establish exclusive rights of dominion, by which property owner and political community can exclude others from the benefits flowing from or attaching to objects of property and membership in community.20 Locke thus envisions a world of bounded territorial states, each containing a civil society in which landed property is the distinctively civilized form of entitlement and the industrious property owner is the epitome of a civilized citizen. Locke defines Amerindian societies by comparison. More precisely, he understands the Indians in terms of a purported lack of these European practices and institutions, seemingly so that the lands of America could be treated as open for European expansion.21 Indians appear in Locke’s account merely as hunters and gatherers (Locke, 1988:II, 289). The consequence is that, though they may claim property in what they hunt and gather, their lack of a settled, agricultural life (in a European mode) allows them no similar claim to the “Earth it self ” (Locke, 1988:II, 290). Thus, the lands of the Americas remain within the commons subject to appropriation by any and all within mankind. All that is required, following on the argument above, is that these “vacant places” and “wild woods and uncultivated wast of America” be removed from the commons by those (Englishmen) willing and able to improve the land via labor and settle the wilderness for civilized life (Locke, 1988:II, 293–94). Fortunately, Locke assures us, no injury can come to the current inhabitants (but nonowners) of the lands of the Americas, since this appropriation will only increase the “Products of the earth” and the “Conveniences” available to them as participants in the commercial society that will ensue. In a passage paraphrased famously by Adam Smith, Locke presents definitive evidence: “And a King of a large and fruitful Territory there feeds, lodges, and is clad worse than a day Labourer in England” (Locke, 1988:II, 296–97). Locke’s liberal vision of property and commerce thus appears intimately entangled with a colonial project that erases any possible Native claims to their own lands and any long-term coexistence of different forms of life. In Barbara Arneil’s (1994:609) terms, the “English farmer, through the application of his reason and industry, becomes in turn the only legitimate member of the newly forming civil society” and, thus, “it would only be through industry and reason that the American Indian could be converted from natural to civil man.” Since the civil (English) necessarily displaces the natural (Indian), Locke’s liberalism “becomes a philosophical justification for both the usurpation of Indian land and the assimilation of ‘natural man’ into civil society.”
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As a way of summary perhaps, the doctrine of sovereign power, as Hinsley (1986:138–50) carefully recounts, was necessarily related (by these thinkers in particular) to the conception of a “body politic” bringing together people, state, and territory into a unified, harmonious whole. David Campbell (1992: 42) likewise has referred to this emerging notion of citizenship and the state as the “passage from difference to identity.” It appears to us, then, that the equation of cultural diversity and political chaos, on the one side, and cultural homogeneity and political order, on the other, is central to the legacy of political thinking bequeathed to us by this era. James Tully elaborates this claim. The dominant interpretation of the causes of the Thirty Years’ War was that it stemmed from “conflicts over the locus of sovereignty”—“that the conflicting jurisdictions and authorities of the ancient constitutions were the cause of wars.” If ambiguity or uncertainty was the culprit, it was imperative “that authority had to be organized and centralised by the constitution in some sovereign body” (Tully, 1995b:66– 67). For the people to be understood as capable of constituting a sovereign authority, they had to be conceived as “culturally homogenous in the sense that culture is irrelevant, capable of being transcended, or uniform.” The idea was embraced, consequently, that the people form “a society.” Society was defined variously as “equal individuals in a state of nature,” or as a collective existing “at a ‘modern’ level of historical development,” or as a “community” bound together by a conception of the good. Whatever view is taken, society is seen as preexisting the “uniform political association” that its members are inevitably (rationally) drawn to construct (Tully, 1995b:63–64). Unlike the customary and irregular (or “multiform”) character of the old regime or the various historical states of barbarity or wildness that were the source of so much trouble, “[t]he sovereign people, in modern societies,…establish a constitution that is legally and politically uniform: a constitution of equal citizens who are treated identically rather than equitably, of one national system of institutionalised legal and political authority rather than many, and a constitutional nation equal in status to all others” (Tully, 1995b:64– 67). Tully (1995b:66) sees this “legal and political monism” as “perfectly understandable” given the experience of the years of warfare, but this does not vindicate what he calls an “empire of uniformity.”22 Rather, he argues that the modern ideal of uniform constitutionalism serves as an impediment to our capacity to “recognize and accommodate cultural diversity” (Tully, 1995b:1). Toulmin’s assessment is quite close to Tully’s. For Toulmin (1990:128), a new “scaffolding of modernity”—constructed on the basis of “principles of stability in and among the different sovereign nation-states, and hierarchy within the social structure of each individual state”—legitimated a new social and political order. Although this represented a “timely response to the general crisis of 17thcentury politics”—a suturing of the “wounds” in the medieval “Cosmopolis”— he is not sanguine about the results. He argues that, though we have found these certainties and legitimations unconvincing ultimately, we have been given
THE WESTPHALIAN DEFERRAL • 39
inadequate guidance as to how we are to respond to the problem of difference (Toulmin, 1990:80, 89, 172–75). Thus, following Tully and Toulmin, we read Westphalia not only as a deferral of the problem of difference, but also as directing us down a path of theory and practice deeply suspicious of, if not actively hostile toward diversity. The problem is magnified where our celebration of modernity continues to blind us to the inadequacy of the guidance bequeathed to us by Westphalia. It is to the contemporary resonance of the Westphalian deferral that we now turn. Conclusion: IR and the Problem of Difference The society of states, as we have already noted, is strongly associated with the principle of tolerance among different and separate political communities. There is something to this belief, but the association is quite fragile and burdened with numerous complications and discrepancies. We believe that it is more accurate to see the theory and practice of international society as largely a deferral of a genuine recognition, exploration, and engagement of difference. This deferral is achieved in several intertwined moves. In international society, others are located outside the state, beyond the boundaries of political community. The idea that the state is a political community suggests that, within the state, a realm of relative “sameness”—a cultural homogeneity and a uniform constitution in Tully’s terms —is presumed. To put this set of ideas somewhat differently, the differences constituting each state as a particular political community are kept separate and managed within the boundaries of the state. This demarcation and policing of the boundary between the “inside” and “outside” of the political community defines the problem of difference as between and among states; difference is marked and contained as international difference. This construction of difference allows us to “solve” the problem by negotiating a modus vivendi among political communities. A minimal set of rules—revolving around sovereignty and nonintervention—constitutes international society as a world of mutually tolerant political communities. In this account, it is the very minimalism, and therefore supposed “neutrality,” of this sovereignty solution that stabilizes the system: any and all, regardless of culture or ideology, can find a home in this world. Or so goes the story. We suggest a different interpretation of international society in which the problem of difference is pervasive. The bounded political community constructs (and is constructed by) others both within and beyond its boundaries. The other lurks as a perpetual threat in the form of other states, foreign groups, imported goods, and alien ideas, and as difference within, vitiating the presumed but rarely, if ever, achieved “sameness.” Internal others are managed or governed by some combination of hierarchy, eradication by assimilation or expulsion, and tolerance. External others are left to suffer or prosper according to their own means, interdicted at border crossings, balanced and deterred, or, in appropriate cases, subjected to coercion or conquest. Our responses to others seem, as explained in
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the introduction, perpetually drawn toward Todorov’s equation: difference is translated as inferiority and thereby subjected to eradication. Indeed, the “inside/ outside” logic performs, in Jessica Benjamin’s terms, an act of “splitting”—an exclusion of the overlap of self and other that works to deflect our responses to difference in the direction of a “purifying hatred.” Locating difference securely beyond the boundaries of self impedes our capacity to fully acknowledge and affirm others that always lie within, or to appreciate and claim selves that exist as part of others beyond those boundaries. The implication is clear: unless we can respond creatively to this exclusivity of self and other, by exposing and cultivating the points of connection and the spaces of overlap (while still respecting the divergences and incompatibilities), we will not find our way to an understanding in which equality and difference coexist. In other words, we are still largely hostage to the kinds of impulses toward difference that marked the wake of the Thirty Years’ War. We remain bound to a narrow understanding of difference as disorder, perpetuating the “wound” of difference by failing nearly altogether to appreciate the opportunities and resources accompanying engagement with others. We can see this process of splitting at work in the very constitution of the subject matter of international relations. Martin Wight’s “Why Is There No International Theory?” is paradigmatic in its counterpoising of political theory and IR: political theory—the domain of the “theory of the good life” possible in a state—is contrasted with the moral and political impoverishment of IR theory. Where IR is distinguished as a “realm of recurrence and repetition” or a “precontractual state of nature,” there can be no properly international political theory (Wight, 1966:17, 20–22, 26, 30–33). It is important to be clear that this is not a simple distinction between disparate elements, but an act of splitting that is mutually constitutive of both the state/political theory and a society of states/IR theory. As Rob Walker (1993: chapter 2) elaborates, IR theory’s account of the political and ethical limits and possibilities of modern life turns on this demarcation of inside/outside: politics and the pursuit of the good life are possible only within sovereign states; the condition of sovereign political community is, however, the ethically limited and tragic interactions of these separate states. Thus, the splitting of inside/outside is not only constitutive of the field, but also a precondition of the deferral of the problem of difference associated with a society of states. Rather than an ephemeral feature of twentiethcentury theorizing, we find the sources of this deferral in the putative origins of European international relations. IR continues to inhabit this legacy and the problem of difference that it bequeaths. We return to this theme again in chapter 3, where we examine conventional IR theory and several contemporary reactions to post-Cold War trends as aspects of theories of modernization. That inquiry depends, however, on a deeper investigation into the sixteenth-and seventeenth-century sources of this suspicion of difference. In particular, we explore European responses to the temporal and spatial anxieties generated by the “discovery” of
THE WESTPHALIAN DEFERRAL • 41
the Americas. There we find the seeds of early modern notions of modernization and development that continue to weigh heavily on the shoulders of the present.
CHAPTER 2 Intimate Indians1
We may speculate…that desire for access to the real in the other’s culture is in part a deflection of desire for access to the real within one’s own. —Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions You are the ones who give out an evil smell according to my way of thinking, and you are the ones who are repulsive and disgusting to me, because you seek only vain frivolities and because you lead soft lives just as though you were not Christians. These poor Indians have a heavenly smell to me; they comfort me and give health, for they exemplify for me that harshness of life and penitence which I must espouse if I am to be saved. —Bishop Juan de Zumárraga (quoted in Hanke, 1949:175) In the previous chapter we argued that the predominant political and ethical response of sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Europe to the divisions of Reformation and Counter Reformation involved an attempt to eradicate difference. Contrary to most conventional readings that treat the Peace of Westphalia as a marker of a new, more tolerant era, we suggest substantial continuity between the radical solution of “religious cleansing” and the attempt within social and political thought to construct an unassailable “empire of uniformity.” Thus, modern political theory betrays its status as a response, and in our view a largely inadequate one, to the ugly consequences of that time’s failure to live peacefully with difference (see Tuck, 1999). We begin with the intuition, then, that IR’s difficulty in theorizing difference is not a simple anomaly in its theoretical lenses, easily correctable with a quick trip to the epistemological ophthalmologist. Rather, this failing appears central to dominant strands of Western social and political thought more generally, requiring that we dig deeper into the way of being that creates this way of seeing. Pursuing this task we find ourselves once again in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as Europe attempts to make sense of the recent “discovery” and exploration of the New World. This confrontation with the other posed a serious challenge to European
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self-understanding; the Amerindians were only partly comprehensible within the received categories of contemporary and ancient learning (Hanke, 1959:2–3; Hodgen, 1964: chapter 9; Pagden, 1982:1–3; Mason, 1990:17–19). Making sense of the Indians became a major preoccupation, stimulating a cottage industry of travelers’ tales, the reports of missionaries, the emergence of comparative ethnologies, so well documented by Margaret Hodgen (1964) and Anthony Pagden (1982), and new conceptions of the relation of European political units and newly “discovered” peoples (Anghie, 1996). It is these latter two developments—the rise of comparative studies and new conceptions of the relations of European political units with others—that are crucial to our account of the limits of the predominant European responses to difference. Certainly, comparison is central to any social and political theorizing. While making comparisons we may wish, for practical or political purposes, to highlight either differences or similarities. However, no matter how abstract or concrete, comparison always requires some engagement with both similarities and differences. Similarity must be framed against difference, and difference is necessarily the context for similarity; no comparison is possible without some attention to each (Campbell, 1992:8; Collingwood, 1933:26–53; Zizek, 1993: 122–24). Yet many engagements with the other attempt to defy this basic principle, pursuing either similarity or difference almost single-mindedly. The dangers of this are made clear by Tzvetan Todorov’s analysis of the “double movement.” As we described in the introduction, the other is greeted with a pattern of response that either tries to fully assimilate the other to self, repressing difference, or designates the other as radically different, denying a common humanity. Like this chapter, Todorov’s study is centered on the colonization of the Americas, but we share his view that this mode of engagement with the other “heralds” the modern era and is reproduced in much of contemporary social and political thought (Todorov, 1984:5; see also Dussell, 1995:9–12). We explore this final claim in the following chapter. Here our search is for the motivations that underlie the double movement and the possibility of alternative responses. We argue that the pattern of response characteristic of the double movement is conditioned by the presence of certain very powerful and often hidden commitments. For the IR/political theory matrix, these hidden commitments do not simply emerge from the wound of the Thirty Years’ War, but are lodged in the general problematic of sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Christian Europe. The dominant aspiration of this time was to grasp the social world as emerging from a single point of origin (the creation) and, even if currently fallen or divided, guided by God’s purposes and plan toward an ultimate redemption and unification. The commitment to a single origin and a uniform teleology constructs difference not as an intrinsic and ubiquitous part of life, but as a fall from God’s grace, a deviation from God’s purpose, and a degeneration of God’s original perfection. Such a commitment to uniformity had, of course, to bear the explosion of difference being reported and experienced both inside and outside Europe (Elliot, 1995:401–2). The key issues became how to reconcile the core
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assumptions of European culture with the experience of difference and how to behave toward difference. By placing tremendous pressure on the commitment to uniformity, this discovery of difference created unbearable doubt and anxiety. In this context the problem of difference generates two opposing impulses. First, linked so tightly with doubt and anxiety, difference is feared—it is something humans feel compelled to explain and locate at some distance from the self so that it might be contained or vanquished. The search for an “empire of uniformity” reflects this impulse. Second, and a recessive theme gestured toward by the initial quotations from Greenblatt and Zumárraga, doubt also indicates a desire to explore the pleasures and benefits of difference. As something that instills desire, difference must be explored and engaged in order to expose and oppose the stifling constraints of uniformity. This counterimpulse signals to us the possibility of an “ethnological moment”—a hope we defend in this book—in which difference is appreciated as a resource for internal self-reflection and social criticism. If the dominant impulse is to regard difference as degeneration and disorder, alongside this impulse subsists another that treats difference as a medium for regeneration and possibly redemption.2 We might say, then, that the commitments that produce IR as an “empire of uniformity” hide, yet also contain, an alternative moment that may be uncovered and cultivated. This chapter begins this task. We locate these opposing impulses both within the dominant patterns of sixteenth-and seventeenth-century thinking and trace out their presence in the work of a series of important figures: Vitoria, Léry, Grotius, and Campanella. At the end of this chapter, we suggest that an important transition has occurred in these writings, one that sets the stage for the emergence of more recognizable notions of development and modernization in the eighteenth century and beyond. We introduce the claim that development and modernization (and accompanying colonial impulses) may be seen both as an explanation of and as a possible solution to this problem of difference, degeneration, and disorder (we are tempted here to say: anarchy). Thus, we can identify two major strains of the effort to manage difference. The first, the subject of the previous chapter, involves a spatial strategy of separating difference with boundaries. The second, key to this chapter, involves a temporal strategy, deploying ideas of development or modernization. By the end of this chapter, we will have arrived at the skeletal structure of IR: anarchy as the ordering principle of the states system; an order of development or modernization within. We can, then, in the following chapter examine the way contemporary IR, as a variant of modernization theory, both preserves and sets in tension these two strategies for managing difference. Wild Men and Indians As Europe “discovered” the Americas, the primary terms that served to secure the spatial and temporal boundaries of civilization and therefore to act as the repositories of difference centered on the idea of “wildness”—the existence of a
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“wilderness” and “wild men” (White, 1972; Sheehan, 1980; Mason, 1990; Seed, 1993). Though melded from diverse origins, as we suggest below, the rehearsed responses to the monstrous figures and savage practices associated with “wildness” shape the European encounters with the Amerindians, providing a largely prefigured language and repertoire of images (Hanke, 1959:3–5; Greenblatt, 1976:566; Mason, 1990:23). With these images and categories, Europeans attempted to account for the Indians in ways consistent with two imperatives: to defend a precarious sense of cultural superiority and to preserve the integrity of Christian teachings.3 More specifically, they sought to preserve the idea of the unity of creation and the restorative role of God’s church (after “the Fall”),4 as posited by Christian doctrine but disrupted by the suddenly revealed presence of new peoples, unaccounted for by European understandings of the peopling of the world and untouched (it seems) by the Christian Gospel. However, the notion of “wildness” is rife with ambiguity, offering both idyllic and frightening visions and branding difference both as a sign of degeneration and as a source of desire. This ambiguity is partly explained by the complex sources of the categories and images associated with “wildness” and partly by tensions endemic to the project of policing the boundary between barbarism and civilization. The medieval notion of wildness takes over numerous images and ideas from ancient Greek, Roman, and Hebrew sources, but inflects them with Christian understandings. The Greeks, White (1972:9–10, 23–24) tells us, associated order with the ways of the city, in direct contrast to the potentially chaotic and isolated existence of men living outside, in the countryside or forests. Thus, barbarity or wildness appears in both moral and geographical guises, as at once a judgment about the internal diversity of humankind, into higher and lower parts, and about the spatial borders of civilization and the monstrosities, dangers, and temptations that lie on the other side.5 The late-medieval and Renaissance deployments of the category of wildness in relation to the Amerindians drew on this classical distinction between the civility of the city and the barbarism of roving hordes of hunters and gatherers (Mason, 1990:46; Sheehan, 1980:52), but braided it with Christian orthodoxy; civilization required, in addition to the social practices of settled agriculture and commerce associated with cities, the sensibilities and trappings of Christian piety (Sheehan, 1980:40–41). The position of the Amerindians as barbarians or savages was obvious, and we should be less than surprised (as we will see below) that these groups are associated with a presocial state—“the state of nature”—that becomes paradigmatic of a state of disorder and anarchy. Late-medieval interpretations of the New World were also framed by expectations deriving from the Christian appropriation of ancient Hebrew traditions surrounding the creation myth and the Fall. Medieval Christian readings of the meaning of the creation largely followed the Hebrew understanding (see White, 1972:12–14). An “omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly just” God cannot but produce a perfect and harmonious order. Though
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humanity is placed at the moral center of that order, it is human action that corrupts the “Edenic state,” resulting in the expulsion of humanity from Eden and its banishment into a suddenly hostile and hard world. It is at this point that Hebrew and Christian understandings begin to diverge. For the ancient Hebrews the Fall serves an etiological function: it explains why humanity has lost God’s blessing and offers a path—upholding the covenant with God—by which that blessing and Edenic conditions may be restored. Perhaps even more starkly than the Greeks, the Hebrews constructed a humanity divided threefold—among the people of the covenant, who serve as “the paradigm of a morally redeemable humanity,” Gentiles, mired in “nature” but potentially redeemable, and “wild men,” who seem to have fallen “into a state of degeneracy below that of ‘nature’ itself, a horrible state in which the possibility of redemption is all but completely precluded” (White, 1972:12–13). Though this hierarchy of (human?) types is not completely displaced in later European thinking about the peoples of the New World, the Fall takes on a much different significance in Christian thinking. For Christianity, the Fall appears as a “species taint,” an “ontological flaw at the heart of humanity,” preventing the full realization of God’s law on earth (White, 1972:12). In this way, the idea of the diversity of humanity is partly dislodged by a conception of a division internal to each human being—between the sinner (wild man) within and the possibility of redemption via commitment to a life of faith. Though sometimes only begrudgingly acknowledged in European encounters with the Amerindians, as we shall see, none—no matter the state of degeneracy or degree of wildness— is in principle beyond the reach of God’s grace. Unless preempted by some very strong version of the doctrine of predestination, the missionary project, with its aim of restoring the harmony and order of creation, follows immediately from this understanding (White, 1972:17; Mason, 1990:46; Sheehan, 1980:6; Dussel, 1995:50–54). Thus, the ontic hiving-off of wildness by the ancient Hebrews is replaced by an internalization of wildness within the Christian ontological scheme. Rather than a separate (both geographical and logical) place, medieval Christianity transforms this separation into an internal space, permitting its followers to treat wildness (including the wildness of the Americas) temporally— as the beginning to which Christianity is the teleological end. This figures importantly in Vitoria’s translation of the notion of natural slavery into what is recognizable as the rudiments of a theory of development (the subject of the next section) and prefigures Enlightenment theories of progress and development (discussed at the end of this chapter) and contemporary theories of modernization (the focus of the next chapter). However, the deployment of the idea of wildness is accompanied by ambiguities that generate acute anxieties among the European explorers, missionaries, and interpreters. This is the result, first and in part, of the availability of an alternative set of associations. Wildness might be understood in relation to a “primal myth in European culture” of a “pre-social time,” informed by the Iure of Biblical descriptions of Eden (Sheehan, 1980: 1), or a state of
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primitive innocence and freedom from the constraints of social life, informed by some combination of Greek and Biblical themes (White, 1972:22, 25). When joined with the idea that “wildness” was not simply separate and distant but a possibility within each human, the wilderness (both beyond European society and within each person) serves not only as a site of danger but also as a locale of desire. As “the image of the man released from social control, the man in whom libidinal impulses have gained full ascendency” (White, 1972:21), the wild man served as a screen on which was projected both “repressed desires and anxieties” (White, 1972: 7; see also Greenblatt, 1976:567). White (1972:21) elaborates: In the Christian Middle Ages, then, the Wild Man is the distillation of the specific anxieties underlying the three securities supposedly provided by the specifically Christian institutions of civilized life: the securities of sex (as organized by the institution of the family), sustenance (as provided by the political, social, and economic institutions), and salvation (as provided by the Church). The Wild Man enjoys none of the advantages of civilized sex, regularized social existence, or institutionalized grace. But, it must be stressed, neither does he—in the imagination of the medieval man—suffer any of the restraints imposed by membership in these institutions. He is desire incarnate, possessing the strength, wit, and cunning to give full expression to all his lusts. His life is correspondingly unstable in character. He is a glutton, eating to satiety one day and starving the next; he is lascivious and promiscuous, without even consciousness of sin or perversion (and therefore of course deprived of the pleasures of more sophisticated vices). And his physical power and agility are conceived to increase in direct ratio to the diminution of his conscience. These anxieties conditioned much of European thinking about the Amerindians. More precisely, the specific translation of the Amerindians into wild men was governed by the imperative to reduce anxiety and doubt by repressing the ambiguities associated with this set of categories and images. Allowing this ambiguity seemed to open the possibility of alternative political and ethical understandings, challenging existing constructions of self and other and threatening degeneration into disorder, into another Fall (Pagden, 1982:196–97; 1993:46; Sheehan, 1980:3, 38). Self and other had to be radically separated (Mason, 1990:58)—a form of “splitting” as described in the introduction. As Jessica Benjamin (1988:62–63) would expect, any possible parity between the parties to these encounters is eliminated by a process that polarizes interacting subjects as completely distinct and opposite tendencies, as the embodiments of good and evil. Thus, the superiority of the European self was defended through an act of exclusion (Mason, 1990: 41). Indians were found to be not only uncivilized, but wild in a way that associated them with beasts.6 Especially common were images of cannibalism, despite the apparently scanty evidence of its actual practice (Sheehan, 1980: 64–65). Any sign of resistance to European
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influence called forth and reinforced a simple equation of Indians, incivility, and Satan so that the Indians came to represent defiance of God’s laws embodied (however imperfectly) in European civilization (Sheehan, 1980:37–41). In short, and by comparison with accounts of other regions, the Americas and the Amerindians were rendered as radical or absolute otherness (Mason, 1990:179; Whately, 1990: xviii). The impulse is clear: only by rendering the Indians as radically other, denying them a common humanity, can anxiety and doubt be quelled. Second (and building on this), the discovery of the Americas also seemed to threaten European historical understandings rooted in classical and, especially, Biblical sources. European observers were “possessed,” Pagden (1982: 13) argues, “by a belief in the uniformity of human nature, a belief which required every race to conform, within certain broad limits, to the same ‘natural’ patterns of behaviour.” Though Europeans already imagined themselves in relationship to otherness of various kinds, these inherited understandings were strained by a newly revealed diversity of peoples and social and religious practices, until then completely unknown to Europeans. This decentering of the European world was intensified by growing reports of abominations and monstrosities beyond the imagination (Hodgen, 1964:213, 231). That is, the very act of exclusion that served to preserve the purity of the self, as we saw above, rendered the Amerindians—as a radical other—difficult to square with the idea of the unity and order of creation drawn from Genesis. As we saw in the previous chapter, the passionate commitment of all those within (an increasingly divided) Christendom to theological unity made “the plurality of worlds…problematic because it compromised the uniqueness of salvation” (MacCormack, 1995:106). Thus, the problem of accounting for the diversity suggested by the Amerindians assumed increasing urgency (Pagden, 1982:1–9; Hodgen, 1964:221–22). Two primary modes of explaining diversity were available to the thinkers of the time. Either the issue was taken up under Biblical guidance or under secular historicoenvironmental arguments suggested by classical philosophers. Since both approaches were “framed in accord with the universal respect always paid to historical or genetic types of explanation” (Hodgen, 1964:222), it was possible to sustain elements of each as a tension among thinkers and within individual accounts, though Biblical authority played the governing role (Whately, 1990:xxiii; Williams, 1948:140; Hodgen, 1964: 225; Pagden, 1982:28, 50, chapter 7). Resort to Biblical authority also did not produce a fully uniform approach. Thinkers fractured between the defense of more orthodox monogenist theories, emphasizing the singularity of creation, and various polygenist theories, suggesting multiple “creative episodes” (Hodgen, 1964:272–75). Ideas of a “second Adam” or “spontaneous generation from the earth” were considered heretical—“a dire threat to the unity and integrity of the human race” (Pagden, 1982:22–23)—and since they were no less hostile to deviations from God’s order, offering little in the way of an ethical alternative, we leave the polygenists aside for the moment.7
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Drawing on these resources, interpreters generally treated diversity as degenerative in relation to the original perfection of creation. Radical difference was counterpoised to the orthodoxy that humanity originates from “a single creative act, in a single moment in time, and at a single spot on the earth’s surface.” This understanding of creation admits of little initial difference among peoples of the earth; humans are originally of “one blood and one inheritance”—“physically, ethnically, and socially homogeneous.” However, the additional textual resources required for explaining human diversity could also be authorized Biblically, particularly Genesis’s genealogy of the Fall, Cain’s exile, the flood, postflood repopulation, and dispersion via Babel. These elements were taken to be largely adequate to explain the “ruptures of uniformity” that spread people across space and differentiated them culturally, though there was often a need to extend the logic, by analogy or by conjecture, to account for more contemporary realities (Hodgen, 1964: 223–29, 243–44; see also Allen, 1963). Using Biblical themes of expulsion from paradise with the Fall and the dispersions of populations via fratricide (with Cain) and hubris (at Babel), human time and geographical space came to be seen as corruptive (Hodgen, 1964:254–55). After the Fall, space and time could no longer serve unambiguously as the medium through which God’s beauty and perfection unfold. More precisely, human diversity and geographical dispersion appear only after and beyond God’s initial plan and largely in opposition to the original perfection of creation. Thus, the combination of human movement across generations and geographic expanse produced multiple and variously degenerated variants of the original. Space/time alienates rather than realizes God’s labor,8 and difference is constructed and explained as degeneration (Certeau, 1980; Williams, 1948: 148). The monstrosity and abominations of the Amerindians thus find a location within the Christian cosmology. But since all are fallen and all degenerated by temporal and geographical distance from creation, the need to police the boundaries of wildness and civilization takes on added theological and historical weight. Much care must be devoted to sorting out the varied temporal and geographical relationships that simultaneously explain the peopling of the New World and preserve the (axiomatically) superior location of European and Christian civilization.9 And given that Indians and Europeans both must be placed within the human band of God’s creation, it is not only differences but also similarities that must be accounted for. Accordingly, sixteenth-and seventeenth-century thinkers were forced to direct their attention to the problem of their own likeness with the Amerindians (Hodgen, 1964:301).10 Though the inference of difference as degeneration remained pivotal, the accompanying problem of similarities afforded thinkers an opportunity to complicate and deepen Europe’s temporal and spatial relationships—both among its spatially outer others—various brands of Indians and other savages or barbarians—and what Europeans took to be their temporally and developmentally prior internal others—Greek and Roman antiquity. The method
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they devised was to locate a cultural correspondence over a particular trait and then to draw parallels between the full scope of both cultures. This was deemed especially useful for the analysis of “savage” cultures that were treated as historyless because they lacked written history. In such cases, “given a pair of similar traits—one from a contemporary but perhaps utterly history-less culture and another from an ancient but richly documented one—the age and evidential import of the ancient trait was imparted to its history-less contemporary, permitting the documentary use of the contemporary, despite its recency and historical emptiness” (Hodgen, 1964:308). That is, the spatial difference between Europe and others is converted into a temporal one. With the conversion of space into time, the constructed temporal backwardness of the savages is equated with the imagined temporal origins of the European self in antiquity and the spatially distinct other is thereby converted into a temporally prior self (Armitage, 1995; Fenton and Moore, 1974).11 “Effaced from memory,” in Hodgen’s (1964:339) terms,was the historicity of the Amerindians. While we will examine the axiological valences of this spatiotemporal maneuver more fully below, it is clear that it amounts to an erasure of the present as a time shared by the European self and its others—a “denial of coevalness” (Fabian, 1983). This denial—still at the heart of contemporary social theory, as we shall see— aimed to solve certain problems. It seemed to account for the origins of the Amerindians. The spatial and temporal unity of creation could be maintained if the peopling of the Americas by Noah’s descendents could be verified, first, by establishing similarities between the Amerindians and (known) Asian descendants of Noah and, second, by documenting the route that they traveled on their way from Asia to the Americas. Similar proposals derived the Amerindians “from the Welsh, the Greeks and Romans, the Jews, the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, the Africans, Ethiopians, French Kurlanders, or Phoenicians” (Hodgen, 1964:312). In each case, the assertions relied on a (more or less) careful documentation of similarities in which Amerindians were compared to peoples— both past and present—to which their resemblance was believed to confer a “genetic cultural relationship” (Hodgen, 1964:312). However, and consistent with the assumption of European superiority, it was always assumed that a “European or Eurasian culture was, and must be, older than an American culture” (Hodgen, 1964:313). Or to put it the other way around, it came to be accepted that, relative to the present of the Europeans, the Amerindian culture and the cultures of antiquity were equally immature (Hodgen, 1964:332). This notion of the transmission of peoples and cultures from antiquity to the Americas thus produced an image of the Amerindians as unchanging replicas of these past cultures. Passed on from generation to generation, the culture of the Indians was pictured as “in an unchanged, an accountably fixed, primitive and aboriginal condition” (Hodgen, 1964:332). As a summary of this section, we want to highlight that this method of comparison has at its core three interlinked elements, all of which work to repress a common humanity. First, the coevality of peoples in the present is
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denied. Second, this denial of coevalness is sustained by treating certain peoples as unchanging, as history-less. Finally, with the claim of a changeless antiquity that is transmitted to these “people without history,”12 the ancient (but internal) other and the contemporary (spatially external) other may be equated as prior and less advanced forms of the self. Together these three elements construct difference as degeneration—a problem to be resolved by a return to unity. From an unchanging antiquity (both past and contemporaneous) there are only two paths possible. One, the true path, has led a Christianized Europe from this original condition to participation as peoples in a meaningful history. The other path, leading from antiquity to the Amerindians, must be a false one (having received no visitation by Christ) or a degeneration (in that Christ has been forgotten). Thus, savage, wild, or barbarous cultures were granted neither historicity nor mutability, but that which the Europeans might offer to (or impose on) them. And their equality as human beings, to the extent that it was recognized, depended ultimately on conversion and assimilation.13 European Encounters: Dominant and Recessive Moments Though this method of comparison may represent the dominant response of the Europeans to the “discovery” of the Americas, it by no means exhausts the possibilities evidenced by this set of encounters in the “contact zone.” We have already indicated some of the ambiguities involved in the idea of wildness or savagery—as both a sign of degeneration and as a source of desire—and the desperate efforts to secure the European self-understanding in the face of radical otherness. The ambiguities and nuances in the European stance toward difference merit more examination, yet it is beyond our means to attempt an exhaustive cataloging of the variety of responses. Our strategy, inspired by the example of Nandy (1983) and Todorov (1984), is to draw on the work of several important figures from this period as a way of mapping some of the key features of the terrain of European response. We introduce and discuss the writings of four figures—Francisco de Vitoria, Jean de Léry, Hugo Grotius, and Tomasso Campanella. Each account suggests the power of the dominant views of the Amerindians as degenerate. However, in each case we can also identify certain improvisational elements. In Vitoria’s work, and crucial to our study, a view of the Indians as absolutely other—as natural slaves—is transformed into recognizable rudiments of a theory of development. Léry reworks cannibalism so that it is shifted from being simply a marker of absolute otherness to being deployed as a critical category, put into service as a weapon against the internal other of Catholicism and, more profitably, as a mirror for evaluating a radically changing Europe. In Grotius’s engagement with the debate about the origins of the Amerindians, we offer the possibility that the Amerindians—as a crucial other—may have been key to debates about tolerance among Christians. Finally, with Campanella, we find hints of the transition from a medieval notion of Christian unity to a recognizably modern, cosmopolitan answer to the problem of
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difference that feels the need for the other even as it effaces it within a universal vision. Thus, on the one hand, the improvisational elements introduced by these individuals—figured in later European thinking as the oppositions between civil order and anarchy, developed and underdeveloped—work to defend the boundaries of the European self, reinforcing a sense of European moral and cultural superiority. But, on the other hand, each figure also suggests elements that serve as resources for an alternative assessment of the relations of cultures and peoples. Francisco de Vitoria (1485–1546): Others as Children When in the course of colonial expansion a Western body politic came to occupy, literally, the space of an autochthonous body, several alternatives were conceived to deal with that violation of the rule. The simplest one, if we think of North America and Australia, was of course to move or remove the other body. Another one is to pretend that space is being divided and allocated to separate bodies. South Africa’s rulers cling to that solution. Most often the preferred strategy has been simply to manipulate the other variable—Time. With the help of various devices of sequencing and distancing one assigns to the conquered populations a different Time. —Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other Francisco de Vitoria, Dominican theologian and founder of the Salamanca or Spanish school of jurisprudence,14 was a central figure in the debate over the nature of the Indians in the sixteenth century. However, the imperatives motivating his work were much broader. His education in Paris (from 1507 to 1522) immersed him in the works of Thomas Aquinas, but also exposed him to new strands of humanist skepticism and various Protestant (and, from his point of view, heretical) doctrines of the relationship between grace and dominium. Upon his return to Spain in 1523, he was elected to the prime chair in theology at Salamanca, a position he held until his death. In his first major series of lectures (1526–29), Vitoria placed Thomism back onto equal footing with the ancients, working to restore the consistency of Aristotelian thought with medieval natural law doctrine. A central motivation of this project was to counter Renaissance skepticism and the potential social quietism of the Protestants, by defending the extension of the scope of theological inquiry and its moral certainties into the concerns of everyday life. In order to achieve this, Vitoria located the right to rule and ownership of self and property in natural, not divine or human, law. Thus, dominium is universalized, no longer limitable to the elect or true believers or merely subject to customary practice. And, crucial for our purposes, if the right to rule oneself is integral to natural law, the claims that some are naturally slaves or that individuals and political communities are at liberty to voluntarily enslave
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themselves had to be rejected (see Tuck, 1979:49–50; and Anghie, 1996:323– 24). The bearing of his views on the status of the American Indians is clear, and Vitoria took up this issue with great seriousness in his 1539 lectures, De Indis (On the American Indians, published in 1557, after his death). Vitoria’s De Indis struggles to locate the Indians in a hierarchically graded creation. In line with his rejection of the category of natural slave, he settled on a view of their status as fully human. But, consistent with the common assessment of their level of technological mastery and social and religious practices, he saw the Indians as seriously out of sync with natural law, or, put differently, as in a distinct and perpetual state of social and religious disorder. The Amerindians appear as a notably lesser developed version of a European self. The importance of Vitoria’s innovation is best understood in relation to the details of the intellectual context in which he lectured, though, we would argue, it is also a pivotal, if early, precursor of theories of development and modernization that we will discuss at the end of this chapter and in the next. Prior to the 1520s, what information Europe possessed about the Indians came largely from Spanish contact with the “primitive” communities of Hispaniola, Cuba, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico. These cultures hardly interested the Spaniards, but, with the conquests of the Aztec and Inca empires and the publication of a series of new accounts of the Americas—Hernan Cortés’s Cartas de Relacion (1522), Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo’s Sum-mario de la Natural Historia de las Indias (1526), Peter Martyr’s De Orbe Novo (1530), Franscisco Jerez’s Verdadera Relacion de la Conquista del Peru (1534), and Oviedo’s Historia General y Natural de las Indias (1535)—Spanish interest began to surge. Evidence of substantial technological mastery, large cities, political structures encompassing vast empires, markets and exchange networks, a merchant class, rule by nobility, organized wars, systematic exploitation of others, and the presence of organized religion established that some Indians had created highly developed cultures. No doubt reminding the Spaniards of themselves, these Indians must have seemed formidable enough to be taken seriously. Even so, the remaining, particularly religious, differences between Spaniards and Indians were substantial and posed the problem of their relative place in the cosmological order (Pagden, 1982: 57–58; Seed, 1993). The cosmological problem was, simultaneously, a legal issue about the legitimacy of the Spanish conquest and enslavement of Indians (we draw here and below on Hanke, 1959: chapter 2; Pagden, 1982: chapter 3; Marks, 1992; Seed, 1993; and Anghie, 1996). Slavery itself was not a barrier, since it was accepted as the outcome of “just war,” but the Spanish crown continued to brood over the various juridical and moral questions surrounding their claims in the Americas. They generally relied on Pope Alexander VI’s 1493 bull, Inter Caetera, that permitted Spanish and Portuguese evangelization and territorial rights but not Indian enslavement (see Hanke, 1937). Of course, this legal stricture did not bring slavery to an end in the Americas.
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In 1504, Ferdinand called the first junta15—an open debate between theologians, civil lawyers, and canon lawyers—on the issue of the Americas. Unsurprisingly, the participants legitimated the Spanish claims. However, due to a continuing uncertainty over the issues and to growing pressure from the Dominican order, in 1512 Ferdinand called a second junta at Burgos. It is here that Bernardo de Mesa and Gil Gregorio first employed Aristotle’s theory of natural slavery to justify the enslavement of the Indians. Apparently still not fully satisfied, Ferdinand asked Juan López de Palacios Rubios, who was to author the infamous Requierimiento (for a translation, see Hanke, 1941:71–88), and Matías de Paz to offer “opinions” that same year. They likewise relied on Aristotle’s theory in support of Indian slavery.16 However, this solution to the problem of the Amerindians seemed to set Pope Alexander’s mandate for evangelization at odds with Aristotelian philosophy. The idea that the Indians might be capable of fulfilling their human potential via willful conversion was not consistent with the very traits that fit them for natural servitude—the lack of the capacities to reason and to will for oneself. The challenge facing Vitoria, then, was to refute this use of Aristotle while maintaining the powerful synthesis or mediation of Aristotle and Christian traditions that motivated Thomist thought.17 Vitoria’s approach was also conditioned by the imperative to defend the moral and historical power of Christianity and the social and political institutions of Europe in a time of both increasing divisiveness and skepticism. Lutherans threatened to undercut the basis of civil authority by stressing the incomprehensibility of God’s will, while various reformers challenged the authority of heretical or Godless rulers (Haakonssen, 1996:25–36; Skinner, 1978: 140). The fear of political disorder was widespread and with good reason, as we saw in the previous chapter. If the Lutherans seemed to undercut the capacity to maintain a clear connection between divine and natural law, skeptics rejected the universality of moral principles, perhaps even suggesting the irrelevance of natural law to political life altogether (Skinner, 1978: 140–41; Tuck, 1993: chapter 2). In response, Vitoria and his Salamanca school sought inescapable conclusions via an appeal to reason—the derivation of uncontestable moral precepts and legitimate political institutions from equally certain first principles. More precisely, as Pagden (1982:61) explains, they saw their “principal task” as providing “an exegesis of the law of nature.” Though this foreshadows later (and partly secularized) social contract thinking, as discussed in the previous chapter, Vitoria wishes to avoid even the hint that natural law might be disconnected from God’s will. Rather, natural law is placed within a hierarchy, logically subordinated to the eternal law of God’s acts and divine law, as revealed in scripture, but governing human or positive law (Haakonssen, 1996:16–17). Because the law of nature is “the will of God,” it is “intrinsically just and reasonable,” and positive law remains just and reasonable so long as it is compatible with natural law (Skinner, 1978:148–49). Natural law can be extended to evaluate even the most mundane aspects of social etiquette, since, as a set of “clear and simple ideas” implanted by God in all humans, all men,
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whether Christian or not, can discern its application by the use of reason (Pagden, 1982:60–63). This is the crucial point, because it makes all men, including the recently discovered Indians, part of a single human community, a theme also central to Campanella’s cosmopolitanism, as we shall see. While this conclusion is consistent with the general view of the unity of God’s creation, it was troubling for many because the Amerindians were not simply men as the Europeans knew them to be. Even setting aside the most fantastic accounts of monstrosities and abomination discussed above, which was difficult given the views of the times, the peoples of the Americas were “no mere local variant on some well-known pattern,” but exhibited “aberrant” and “unnatural” behavior (Pagden, 1982:64). However, if the Indians were simply irrational (and thereby natural slaves), it would be hard to account for the growing reports of their technological mastery, their cities and imperial political institutions, and their sophisticated (if satanic) religious practices. Yet, if the Indians were rational human beings, able to access the law of nature and thereby capable of self-government, it then became difficult to explain their practice of human sacrifice, their relatively primitive agricultural techniques and arts, and especially the reported acts of cannibalism. The justice of Spanish claims rested on this issue and it is this quandary that Vitoria addresses in his De Indis (Anghie, 1996: 323). Vitoria poses the problem as one of finding the just reasons for the conquest of America (Vitoria, 1991:233). Since the conquest was already part of the existing order, Vitoria’s method involved identifying those elements in natural and divine law that explained (and justified) the conquest, but that might also require changes in colonial policy. Thus, the question of the correct policy toward the Indians was, in Pagden’s (1982:67) words, “a matter touching on the very nature of man and the metaphysics of the social order.” Vitoria first considers four oft-cited reasons for depriving the Indians of their natural rights to self-rule, territorial dominion, and property. These rights might be forfeited by Indian peoples, he reasoned, if they are: (1) sinners, (2) infidels, (3) foolish—that is, by nature incomplete, or mentally subnormal—or (4) intrinsically irrational beings. Vitoria (1991:240–46) readily sets aside the first two. To deprive sinners of their natural rights is, as we have seen, to fall into the false belief—attributed to Wyclif, Hus, and the Lutherans—that dominium is based on faith. The argument that the legitimacy of rulership turns on espousal of the true faith can dangerously redound to the Spanish, indeed to anyone who espouses it. Nor can the Indians be considered infidels, since they are either ignorant of Christianity or have degenerated too far from their Christian origins to be considered responsible for their beliefs. A consideration of the third and fourth reasons required Vitoria to make greater recourse to the accumulating evidence about the peoples of the Americas. Such evidence was crucial because to think of the Indians as foolish or irrational was to engage explicitly or implicitly the empirical categories central to Aristotle’s theory of natural slavery. Based on his reading of the evidence from
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the New World, Vitoria rejected these claims about the Indians. He writes that the Indians “have judgment like other men.” They “have some order (ordo) in their affairs,” expressed through “properly organized cities, proper marriages, magistrates and overlords (domini), laws, industries, and commerce, all of which require the use of reason.” And crucially, they “likewise have a form (species) of religion” (Vitoria, 1991:250). In these respects, the Amerindians fulfill Aristotle’s own criteria for civilized life (Pagden, 1982:68–79). On the other side of the ledger, however, Vitoria (1991:251) acknowledges the accusation “that these barbarians are…foolish and slowwitted.” He also acknowledges their “sins against the law of nature” (Vitoria, 1991:273). Though not necessarily justifications for displacing the rights of the Indians, as Vitoria (1991:272–75) makes clear, some charges, like cannibalism and human sacrifice, do require careful attention because they signal the presence of a form of intellectual and social chaos. For Vitoria, cannibalism represents an affront to natural law.18 That cannibalism was, indeed, such a violation is indicated by an examination of the historical record. Noting that eating human flesh is an abomination to all civilized nations, he concludes that since all (civilized) men “have held this custom to be a vile one this is because it is so according to natural law” (Vitoria, quoted in Pagden, 1982:85). But common custom is not in itself definitive of anything but the presence of convergent human law: beyond its generally accepted moral indefensibility, the challenge for Vitoria was to explain precisely why such behavior was contrary to natural law. While the law of nature disallows the killing of innocents, what is most significant about cannibalism in particular is that it violates the hierarchical ordering of dominium established in creation. Vitoria explains that the natural world belongs to man because God created it as such for man’s use. As nature stands to man, so man stands to God. Thus, man cannot eat man because man belongs to God. Slavery, likewise, might be a legal relationship under human law, but human law does not create an ontological right to ownership of the kind in natural and divine law, where nature belongs to man and man to God. Because they misunderstand this grading of authority relationships, the Indians continue to commit a serious category mistake, marking their behavior as distinctly inhumane and unnatural. Vitoria is led to conclude that the Indians have fallen into a kind of social and religious disorder because they are consistently unable to see the world as it really is (Pagden, 1982:86–87). Compared to cannibalism, human sacrifice is more comprehensible to Vitoria (Pagden, 1982:89–90). He identifies with the strong need for humans to sacrifice to God their most cherished possession, namely life. He understands, too, that human sacrifice plays a part in Christianity, as in Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son and, of course, in Christ’s own sacrifice on the cross. Despite this relative sympathy, Vitoria mostly condemns Indian practices, placing the emphasis not on the continuities between the two systems of religion, but, once again, on the Indians’ confusion about the hierarchical relationship between
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categories within natural law. God provides humans with animals for the purpose of sacrifice and does not wish any man to destroy God’s favored creation. With human sacrifice, as with cannibalism, Vitoria sees the Indians failing to apprehend the most important precepts of God’s order. He concludes, therefore, that they have a distorted vision of reality and that their mental world is deficient. This disorder of the mental world of the Amerindians is reflected in various cultural and technological inadequacies: the Indians possess only a rudimentary knowledge of agriculture, they lack the ability to work iron and other metals, they are unlettered, and, in the end, they are unable to govern adequately their own domains. In sum, the Indians are human but inadequately so. While Vitoria’s paternalism is palpable, this is not Aristotle’s theory of natural slavery. He makes clear that the deficient condition of the Indians does not alter their essence as human beings; they are not permanently foolish or irrational. On the contrary, as human beings they possess reason, though obviously their capacity to reason lies mostly dormant, as a not-yet-activated potential (Vitoria, 1991:250). The Indians’ own efforts to realize that potential have failed, though not because they lack human traits, but because that potential, in the words of Juan Maldonado, “had neither teachers nor tutors” (in Pagden, 1982:92). Vitoria’s move is similar to Maldonado’s. The fault lies not in their nature, but “mainly due to their evil and barbarous education,” for “they were so many thousands of years outside the state of salvation” (Vitoria, 1991:250). Perhaps this is as close as one can come to locating the precise moment when, for better and worse, the theory of imperial conquest acquires its idealist leaven and its pedagogical drive.19 The ideal that charity, or, in this case, missionary zeal, begins at home may also be a way of saying that what begins at home returns home and has home as its real target Thus, Vitoria quickly illustrates his point about the teachability of Indians with reference to internal others. The laboring poor of Europe are identified with the Indians: “Even amongst ourselves, we see many peasants (rustici) who are little different from brute animals” (Vitoria, 1991:250). With quotations from a theorist of the next century, namely Voltaire, Pagden (1982: 97) substantiates this point: The analogy was an obvious and instructive one. To all educated towndwelling men the peasantry seemed close in condition, if not in kind, to the animals among which they worked. Like Indians they were deprived of any real understanding of the world about them. What Voltaire later mockingly descries as “les pretendus sauvages d’Amerique” were in no way inferior to those savages one met every day in the countryside, “living in huts with their mates and a few animals, ceaselessly exposed to all intemperance of the seasons.” The European peasantry, “speaking jargon which no-one in the towns understand, having few ideas and consequently few expressions,” had no obvious share in the civil life and were thought to be
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still less capable of what one observer called “the superior exercises of the soul” than even the artisan class, precisely because that class, however low it might be, was, none the less a “people of the city.” Pagden goes on to explain that the term Indian came to apply even to those “of Asturias, of Calabria and Sicily, of the Abruzzi, regions where, they claimed, the country people lived like ‘savages,’ polygynous and apparently polytheistic.” Indeed, and as noted in the previous chapter, the term Indian was extended “to all men, regardless of their race, who deviated from the orthodox faith—even to such otherwise civilized beings as the Dutch” (Pagden, 1982, 97–98; see also Mason, 1990:60–63; and Friedman, 1983:35–36). Thus, Vitoria’s challenge to Aristotle’s theory of natural slavery began to reduce the ontic distance between Europeans and external others. Pagden’s (1982:99) description of the result is particularly interesting: There was also a further, and for our purpose more far-reaching, theoretical dimension to Vitoria’s analogies. For by insisting that it was education that was responsible for the Indian’s behaviour, Vitoria has effectively liberated him from a timeless void of semi-rationality and set him into an historical space where he would be subject to the same laws of intellectual change, progress and decline as other men are, be they Christian or non-Christian, European or non-European. Yet, having reduced the ontic or horizontal space between Europeans and others, an orthogonal separation replaces it. A vertical plane of temporal/historical distance is inserted between the teachers at the apex of the pedagogic ladder and various types of internal and external Indians at the bottom.20 The Indian is deemed “a brutish creature living outside the discrete web of affiliations, patterns of behavior, modes of speech and of expression, which made up the life of the civil man; psychologically as a child, that unreflective, passion-dominated, halfreasoning being” (Pagden, 1982: 104–5). European tutelage serves as the agency of enlightenment and civil order. It is a bright light that illuminates the worthy labor of the pedagogue, the confident precursor of what later becomes the ominous anguish of the “white man’s burden.”21 Though Vitoria’s views are directed to “the problem of order among societies belonging to two different cultural systems” (Anghie, 1996:331), his remarks fall far short of a full-fledged theory of civilizational stages, modernization, or development. This movement took some time, reaching recognizably modern form perhaps only in the hands of the figures of Turgot and members of the Scottish Enlightenment (Meek, 1976; Friedman, 1983:36–37). We will return to this theme at the end of this chapter and in the next. The impact of Vitoria’s work is to begin to replace horizontal/ontic space with vertical/temporal or developmental space. In this process, the Indians slide from the status of slaves to the status of children; the Europeans from masters to
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teachers/parents. One need not be a Spanish apologist to consider this change in the status of the Amerindians as a significant historical achievement. If Vitoria’s recognition of the Indians as children or students fails to match our contemporary demands for equality, nevertheless it is a precursor of and a basis for those demands.22 More precisely, a complete assessment of Vitoria’s achievement depends on our evaluation of the nature of the pedagogical imperialism it fosters and especially on whether the idea of development nurtures or defers the goal of equality. Much of the rest of this book engages, in one way or another, this assessment of the pedagogical imperialism associated with the idea of development. Jean de Léry (1534–1613): The Cannibal as External and Internal Other For Léry, the ritualization of Tupi cannibalism, by its very containment and ordering, keeps categories of friend and enemy stable; it makes possible large, well-defined areas of trust, unlike the shapeless, convulsive nature of European savagery. —Janet Whatley, “Une Révénce Réciprogue” “[O]thers” are here only because and insofar as I am not simply identical to myself but have an unconscious, insofar as I am prevented from having direct access to the truth of my own being. It is this truth that I am looking for in others: what propels me to “communicate” with them is the hope that I will receive from them the truth about myself, about my own desire. —Slavoj Zizek, Tarrying with the Negative Anthropophagi—or cannibals—occupied a pivotal space within the sixteenthcentury European mode of comparison, perhaps akin to the role that rogue states, perpetrators of crimes against humanity, terrorists, evildoers, and crony capitalists play in our own. The designation of others as cannibals marks the moment when the process of measuring differences and similarities breaks down; the other’s actions, no longer the result of an alternative array of social understandings, are pushed into the realm of absolute difference. Indeed, the practice of cannibalism is thought to be morally and physically transforming, so that the practitioner moves beyond the realm of the human (Pagden, 1982:80– 83). This is a “threatening, prohibited world,” and the cannibal is “exiled to the other side of the universe, at the outer limit of the conquerors’ enterprise” (Certeau, 1988:233). “That,” the European might say, referring to the eating of human flesh, “is exactly what we are not.” Jean de Léry’s History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil (1578) (Historie d’un voyage faict en la terre du Brésil) reflects this interpretive impulse. His journal
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provides an enduring image of the “primitive world,” immortalized by Montaigne in his essays (Lestringant, 1993:127), reinscribed by various seventeenth-and eighteenth-century philosophers—Locke, Bayle, Diderot, and Rousseau—as either ignoble or noble savages (see Lestringant, 1993: 128–29), and praised as a founding document of anthropology by Claude Lévi-Strauss (Certeau, 1988:212). Yet Léry’s writings also suggest more complicated deployments of the cannibal and the savage. He uses cannibalism as both a weapon against the Catholics and a mirror for his own Protestant understandings of the emerging modern world in ways that blur the clear distinction between the European self and the Tupi other that informs much of the text. The source of this ambiguity may lie partly in Léry’s own, rather more complex relationship with cannibalism and religious difference.23 Léry would have three encounters with the specter of eating human flesh in his lifetime: during his 1557 stay with the Tupinamba of Brazil, who, he reports, ritually eat their captured enemies; during his return to France on a battered ship beset by hunger; and many years later (1573) during the eight-month siege of the French town of Sancerre by royalist (Catholic) troops. His position in the religious conflicts of the time—as both Calvinist missionary and object of Catholic persecution—also shapes his understanding of the nature of savagery. In Léry, the savage is present not only as a source of both external and internal danger, but also as an ethnological moment of internal reflection and criticism. Not much is known about Jean de Léry’s early years except that he was born in Burgundy to a French Protestant, Huguenot, family. His life is shaped rather profoundly by the Reformation and the Wars of Religion (1562–98) that culminated in the persecution of the Huguenots. By the time Léry was an adult, Calvin had established a theocracy in Geneva that served also as a base from which French exiles launched missionary expeditions into France. It was one of these missionary groups that Léry followed back to Geneva. In 1556 Léry himself was asked to join the first Protestant mission to the Americas. Nicholas Durand de Villegagnon—a military man who had fought against both the Moors and the Turks—was the driving force behind the mission. The French crown had many reasons to support his venture to establish a colony in Brazil. There was, of course, money to be made, especially from the dye that comes from brazilwood. The crown also wanted to challenge the papal bull that granted the Americas to the Spanish and Portuguese. These motives seem clear enough. The religious purposes of the mission were split, however, just as France itself was split. Villegagnon asked for and received the support of a known Huguenot sympathizer, Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, a future leader of the Huguenots, who was later martyred in the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre. According to Léry, Villegagnon also contacted Calvin, whom he had known in his student days in Paris, asking for ministers from the Reformed Church of Geneva. All fourteen of the Calvinists on the trip assumed that they were to found a Calvinist mission. Upon arriving in Brazil, however, they learned that Villegagnon, far from being a protector of the Reformed faith, was a capricious and dangerous character. The
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colony became bogged down in fierce quarrels over the Eucharist. When three of Léry’s party were murdered, the rest escaped the colony, taking refuge in a small trading post nearby. For two months, their survival depended upon the hospitality of the Tupinamba. Léry would return on the next trading ship to France, but not without the ship veering off course; many on board died of starvation. The survivors lived by eating treasured monkeys and parrots, tapir skins, and rats. Indeed, upon arrival in France, the captain revealed that he was calculating the moment when they would be forced to kill their fellow travelers for food (Léry, 1990:214). Though his travels to and from Brazil and the months spent with the Tupinamba form the basis for the History, two decades passed before he brought his writings to publication. This gap is important for two reasons. First, during this time, Léry experienced the aftermath of the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre (August 1572; see Kingdon, 1988) and was caught up in the siege of Sancerre (January-August, 1573). His prior experience with famine on the return voyage from Brazil helped him to teach those under his ministry to prepare rats and leather for cooking and eating. The starvation created by the siege forced one set of parents to eat their dead child, an experience that, among others, must have prompted Léry to draw comparisons in the History between these incidents of domestic cannibalism and the ritualized cannibalism of the Tupinamba. Second, Léry seems to have been spurred to publication by the desire to respond to André Thévet’s Cosmographie Universelle (1575). Thévet, a Franciscan friar, was also part of the mission to Brazil, spending ten weeks there before Léry’s arrival on the scene. Thevet’s earlier book, Singularities de la France Antartique (1556), published shortly after his return, won him great fame with his contemporaries and did much to carve out the figure of the Brazilian Indian in Europe. Thévet’s new book was similar to the previous one, but added passages where he attributed the failure of the Brazil mission to the sedition of the Calvinists. Thévet, a chaplain to Catherine de Medici and a royal cosmographer for Charles IX, was closely linked to the centers of Catholic power, so his accusations had the added sting of authority. Three years after Thévet published his accusations, the first edition of Léry’s History (1578) appeared. As is evident in the preface, part of Léry’s motivation for writing his History was to set the record straight. Léry’s account of the Tupinamba was introduced into prepared soil. Janet Whatley (1990:xxiv-xxv) reports that, by 1550, the Brazilian Indian was already a part of European spectacle: When Henry II paid a state visit to Rouen in 1550, there was a sort of Brazilian exotic package, ready to present to him a spectacle: on an island in the Seine was set up a mock Brazilian Village, where fifty real Tupinamba Indians, joined by two hundred fifty sailors in savage guise (naked and painted black and red) hunted, cut brazilwood, fought, and danced among trees swarming with monkeys and parrots.
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Indeed, according to Whatley, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Tupinamba were “the all-purpose allegorical figure of America.” “The figure found in innumerable paintings, frescos, and friezes, with plumed skirt and headdress, carrying a wooden sword with a disk-shaped head: that figure is a stylized Tupinamba Indian” (Whatley, 1990:xxiv). These images of the Tupinamba made the Indian and Brazil consumable European entities. As we have suggested, it is the Tupinamba’s status as cannibals that generated much of the revulsion and attraction for Europeans (see also Greenblatt, 1991:14– 25). In his History, Léry scripts precise and measured details of the delight the Tupi take in eating their enemies. It is not that they find the taste of human flesh addictive or even savory; rather, they are moved to avenge those who have eaten their own relatives. Léry recounts how the Tupinamba eat even the children of pregnant women captured in war. One senses that he understands the effect of his words. He seems self-consciously to push just a bit beyond the reader’s capacity to entertain horror. After many a chilling enumeration of the Tupi’s cannibalism, Léry interjects, “I could add similar examples of the cruelty of the savages toward their enemies, but it seems to me that what I have said is enough to horrify you, indeed, to make your hair stand on end” (Léry, 1990:131). He expects to revolt and shock the reader but, beyond the concrete details, he does so in a manner that the reader can anticipate and from which the reader can garner both delight and revulsion. His method is precisely to establish the authority of his account by translating what his eyes have seen and his ears have heard into a language that evokes the “original” sights and sounds and the wonderment of the initial experience (Greenblatt, 1991:21–24; Pagden, 1993:46, 51). This capacity/authority to translate for the reader depends on the fact that it unfolds in the distant terrain of America, to which he has traveled and from which he has returned: psychically and geopolitically, Léry’s story seems far from home. It is this seeming distance that Léry exploits. At some points, this distance seems almost absolute. Michel de Certeau (1988: 218) suggests that the ocean serves to clearly demarcate the Old and New Worlds, since Léry’s crossings of the Atlantic bracket his time in Brazil in the History. Physical distance is supplemented by a series of oppositions that set the primitive apart from the civilized man, the most obvious to the eye being the primitive’s shunning of clothing. Equally obvious, after some observation and the judicious application of a “Christian exegetical apparatus,” are the primitive’s love of festivity and leisure, and the neglect of productive activity aimed at profit. The life of the primitive is governed by an ethos of pleasure to the neglect of the dictates of duty (Certeau, 1988: 221, 228). Thus, Léry’s descriptions reproduce the image of the primitive as an absence of those things that comprise civilization: a settled, urban life, based on human artifice and the conquest of nature (Pagden, 1993:6). As a good Calvinist, the distance between Léry and the Tupinamba is conceived first and foremost as religious. Léry attributes the various Christian missions’ lack of success to the operation of predestination; the Tupi have simply
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been left out of God’s plan (Lestringant, 1993:129–30). Those very elements in their way of life that amazed Léry (and, through his descriptions, his many readers) evidence the workings of Satan; their bodies are possessed and “they are visibly and actually tormented by evil spirits” (Léry, 1990:138, 141). There is, in Léry’s view, a clear relationship between the Tupi’s primitive ways, their practice of cannibalism, and their permanently fallen state (Pagden, 1982:169; Pagden, 1993:46). In what Greenblatt (1991:15) calls Léry’s “Kafka-like logic,” the Tupinamba are “justly condemned through all eternity precisely because they fear the one true God whom they do not and cannot know and whom for this reason they refuse to acknowledge.” The Christian mission in the New World is for naught in the case of such “atheist peoples”—a conceptual innovation partly attributable to Léry (Lestringant, 1993:130). The divide, as Padgen (1993:43) puts it, is “eschatological” It is at this point that the demarcation of Old and New World begins to break down for many thinkers, including for Léry. As religious conflict intensified in the middle of the sixteenth century, as we have discussed in the previous chapter, Christians found themselves divided by their mutual accusations of idolatry, more than defined by a continuity that separated Europe from others. Within the context of the religious wars, some Catholics and Protestants adopt a relatively generous, admiring stance toward the Indians’ sense of religiosity. As we have seen, for many Catholic thinkers Indian religious devotion is treated as a potential —a Christianity latent in the unity of creation—that European tutelage can convert to actual Catholicism. Though still almost universally condemned as inadequate (the exception being Las Casas, after his own conversion to seeing Amerindian religiosity more on its own terms; see Todorov, 1984:185–201), Indian religiosity might be admired for two additional reasons. First, and especially for Protestants, Indian religious practices served as a weapon to be used against religious enemies. Thus, the degeneracy of Tupinamba religious practices might be compared to the similarly “idolatorous” and equally degenerate practices of the Catholics. Or, when the practices are found admirable they can be esteemed precisely because the comparison heaps scorn on Catholics (Lestringant, 1993:127– 28; Greenblatt, 1991:8; Grafton, 1992:137–39). Second, many Europeans sense in the Indians an echo of a lost self, something they desire to retrieve within themselves. The propaganda war between the Catholics and Protestants highlights their strife, but hides their joint preclusion of another kind of religious practice, one less tied to Scripture and genealogical/epochal history and more infused with the immanence of everyday life. We want to suggest that it is to avert or neutralize this attraction that the repulsion of Indian practices, like cannibalism, must be enhanced. And yet, as we shall see, this is no easy task, because the marker that triggers the repulsion—cannibalism—far from being alien, is already intimate.24 A similar ambivalence is central to Léry’s response to the Tupinamba. As we have already suggested, Léry’s History plays on the linkage between revulsion and attraction to reconstruct his own experience for the reader. But Léry’s
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purpose is not simply to reinforce a sense of distance or incommensurability. Certeau (1988:221) shows that the initial demarcation of Old and New World, symbolized by the Atlantic crossing, is disrupted by another division—the social and the natural—that places European and Tupinamba social life within a common domain. In this move, Léry places Europe and the Tupi practices side by side, and not simply to the advantage of the Europeans. Rather, the “exotic universe” of the Tupinamba is at times employed as “an ethical utopia” to hold up to Europe. Certeau (1988:213) speaks of Léry’s voyage, thus, as “a return to himself through the mediation of the other.” More concretely, in his discussion of cannibalism Léry swiftly and forcefully converts the conventionally distant into the disturbingly familiar, where he compares Tupi practices to the barbarity here at home. His purpose is explicit: “so that those who read these horrible things, practiced daily among these barbarous nations of the land of Brazil, may also think more carefully about the things that go on every day over here, among us” (Léry, 1990: 131–32). Léry then aims his Tupi-framed mirror at the “usurers” that suck the “blood and marrow, and [eat] everyone alive—widows, orphans, and other peoples.” Soon, he hones in on his major target, the Catholics, and especially the persecutors of the Hugeunots, first during the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre and later at the siege of Sancerre: Furthermore, if it comes to the brutal action of really chewing and devouring human flesh, have we not found people in these regions over here, even among those who bear the name of Christians, both in Italy and elsewhere, who, not content with having cruelly put to death their enemies, have been unable to slake their bloodthirst except by eating their livers and hearts? I defer to the histories. And without going further, what of France? During the bloody tragedy that began in Paris on the twenty-fourth of August 1572 [St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre]…among other acts horrible to recount, which were perpetrated at the time throughout the Kingdom, the fat of human bodies (which, is way more barbarous than those of the savages, were butchered at Lyon after being pulled out of the Saone)—was it not publicly sold to the highest bidder? Their livers, hearts, and other parts of their bodies—were they not eaten by the furious murders, of whom Hell itself stands in horror? (Léry, 1990:132) Léry cannot stop here: “Likewise, after the wretched massacre of one Coeur de Roy, who professed the Reformed Faith in the city of Auxerre—did not those who committed this murder cut his heart to pieces, display it for sale to those who hated him, and finally, after grilling it over coals—glutting their rage like mastiffs—eat of it?” (Léry, 1990:132). Having earlier secured the reader’s delight and revulsion over Tupi practices, Léry re-forms that fascination into a weapon for his own vengeance. It’s the butchery of the French, specifically those who attack, murder, and (literally) eat
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the Huguenots, that surpass the barbarity of the Pharaohs, Ahab, Nero, and Herod. Lest we somehow overlook his goal, Léry forces his point home: So let us henceforth no longer abhor so very greatly the cruelty of the anthropophagous—that is man-eating—savages. For since there are some here in our midst even worse and more detestable than those who, as we have seen, attack only enemy nations, while the ones over here have plunged into the blood of kinsmen, neighbors, and compatriots, one need not go beyond one’s own country, nor as far as America, to see such monstrous and prodigious things. (Léry, 1990:133) All this might be considered as part of setting the record straight against Thévet as well as striking blows against the hegemony of Catholicism. However, beyond hitting the bulls-eye in his wrath against Catholics, there might be another, more intimate target. But before we turn to this discussion, we need to clarify a rather important point. Léry’s ethnology of the Tupinamba served eventually as an important and rich source of what has been called the “Huguenot corpus on America.” According to Frank Lestringant (1993:127–28), Léry’s History, Urbain Chauveton’s Histoire Nouvelle du Nouveau Monde, and Theodore de Bry’s Grand Voyages led directly to Montaigne’s essays “of Cannibals” and “of Coaches.” By late in the sixteenth century, this corpus was organized around two themes: first, the denunciation of the crimes of the Spanish conquest, and second, “a defense of the free and happy savage, whom the bloody conquerors should have left to his native ignorance, even at the risk of eternal damnation” (Lestringant, 1993:128). These two are linked: the Huguenot corpus exalted the Indian primarily for the purpose of satirizing the Catholics. This aspiration reached its height in the work of Theodore de Bry and Bernard Picart, where the philosophical combat against the Church of Rome is most obvious and in whose work, for example, “the Mass was debased to the level of the primitive and sometimes repugnant rites of the Kafirs and the Hottentots” (Lestringant, 1993:128; see also Greenblatt, 1991:15). Later, French Enlightenment figures would reduce and simplify the Huguenot corpus—impoverishing the richness of the ethnographic account—in order to produce the tender and simple image of the noble savage as a weapon in the defense of natural liberty and the condemnation of various social constraints (Lestringant, 1993:134–36). It is important not to count Léry as among those whose image of savagery was simply reduced to ennoblement (Whatley, 1990:xxi). It is true that Léry expresses an admiration for the Tupinamba: “As to this earthly life, I have already shown and will show again that, while most people over here [Europe], who are given over to the goods of this world, do nothing but languish, they [the Tupi] on the contrary who take things as they come, spend their days and lives cheerfully, almost without care” (Léry, 1990:150). Nevertheless, this admiration is selective and is limited to this life: “As for the blessedness and eternal bliss
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(which we believe in and hope for in Jesus Christ alone), in spite of the glimpse and the intimation of it that I have said they have, this is a people accursed and abandoned by God, if there be any such under the heavens” (Léry, 1990:150; emphasis added). Thus, as Lestringant (1993:130) points out, even if the Tupinamba are “saved in this life,” they are “lost in the next.”25 There is, nonetheless, a hint of nostalgia and remorse in Léry’s History (Lestringant, 1993:129). Janet Whatley sees in Léry’s account of the Tupinamba in this life a certain sense of loss, a yeaning for a more “festive” and “chivalric” Europe. Whatley writes: As Léry describes them, the exotic New World cultures resemble the Old World in just those aspects that modernity—via the Reformation—would suppress in the name of a purer religion or a more efficient economic structure. The plumed display, the unmeasured consumption of feast days with their gigantic cahouinages, the young Tupi men dancing “like morris dancers” through the villages at night with their maracas, the splendid warriors, the widows’ outpourings for the prowess of their dead husbands— all this speaks directly to European traditions of chivalry, to rituals that bear pre-Christian traces, to ancient codes of valor, to a festive tradition of unparsimonious expenditure. (Whatley, 1990: xxxvi–xxxvii; see also Whatley, 1987:281) At the same time, Léry notes that the Tupinamba fight for vengeance (and, therefore, for honor), instead of for spoils as Léry sees in his fellow Europeans. Though he admires their fidelity to this chivalric code, he is also suspicious, for it is just such fighting for honor that has brought great destruction to Europe. As Whatley (1990:xxvii) suggests, the “inveterate, unremitting hatreds [of the Tupinamba] bear too much resemblance to the viciously retaliatory relations between Catholics and Protestants at the very time of his writing. He knows that point d’honneur is deadly, in Brazil or in France.” What explains this complex and ambiguous tone? So many others simply defended a “Manichean vision of the opposition between the civilized and savage” (Lestringant, 1993:130). Whatley (1990:xxxvi) suggests that “it may be that displaced onto America, they [the festive and chivalric] can have sanctuary and be loved in their ‘savage’ guise, even as they are being combated at home by those very forces with which Léry is doctrinally allied.” Léry takes that which both attracts and repels him and expurgates it, displacing it onto the Tupi. Displacing this ambivalence, and thereby establishing some distance from his doubts, Léry can allow himself to critically examine the internal sources of that ambivalence. In this way, the target of his critical venom, though certainly the Catholics, is also his anxiety about the creation of a modern world infused with his own Calvinist spirit. What Léry’s History suggests is that external others are always intimately linked with the other within, and that the European self can begin, through the use of the Amerindians, to establish an intimacy with its own
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internal tensions. In this way, we can at best, as Luce Giard (1991:213) puts it, investigate “that alterity in oneself against whom the most painful battles are played out.” As we illustrate in the next chapter, this painful battle with the alterity within ourselves is no less crucial to the reading of contemporary modernization thinking. Hugo Grotius (1583–1643): The Other and a Space for Tolerance [T] he spurious embrace of difference only defines the other in mirror opposition to the self. It thus precludes the necessity of dealing with the contradictory tendencies within the self. This escape from the knowledge of self is what constitutes temptation in the struggle to deal with the complexity of life outside the garden. —Jessica Benjamin, The Bonds of Love Hugo Grotius’s writings “reflect the turbulent circumstances of the period” (Kingsbury and Roberts, 1990:1).26 These circumstances include the religious and political conflict of the Thirty Years’ War, and specifically the struggle for Dutch independence from Spain, Dutch colonial competition with Spain, Portugal, and England, and the personal impact of religious schism within the Dutch Reformers. The best known of Grotius’s writings—Mare Liberum (1609), on freedom of the seas, and De Jure Belli ac Pacis (1625), his treatise on the law of nations—place him as a profound innovator in a long line of natural rights theorists and, perhaps, international lawyers (Tuck> 1979; Kingsbury and Roberts, 1990). By shifting the emphasis from Biblical doctrines to an account of natural law that relies on a universal anthropology/sociology, his work had the effect of transforming elements of religious belief into secular ideals (as explained in the previous chapter). Less well known are his many explicitly theological writings, focused partly on defending his religious views and those of his patrons and allies from the charges of heresy by more orthodox Calvinists and partly on his program for the unification of Christianity. We will focus our attention on a rather more obscure text, De Origine Gentium Americanarum Dissertatio (1642), in which Grotius adds his own speculations on the origins of the Amerindians to an already crowded field of competitors (see Hodgen, 1964: chapters 7, 8). The motivations for this work are more difficult to discern, especially because, relative to his other writings, De Origine appears hurried and badly argued. Grotius’s uncharacteristic haste might be best explained, as Rubies (1991) argues, by his desire to counter the ideas of Johannes De Laet, an expert on the Indians, a reputed theologian, and a leading figure of the orthodox Calvinism to which Grotius had long been opposed and at the hands of which he and his allies had long suffered. What we wish to stress is how Grotius seems to use the debate over the origins of the American Indians to
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drive a wedge into the extreme intolerance of his Calvinist opponents. That is, the Indians serve as a medium for the exchange of messages between the religious opponents—as a site of struggle between their respective views concerning the tolerance of difference. While Grotius’s defense of tolerance is rather limited from our point of view (as we argued in the previous chapter), it is expansive by comparison with many of his fellow Cavinists. His role in the debate does suggest how Indians can become intimate allies when they are used to open space for internal diversity. De Laet, the probable target of De Origine, was a noted intellectual figure and his Novus Orbis (1633) a highly regarded work on the problem of the origin of the peoples of the Americas. De Laet’s major sources on Indians were the Spaniards Antonio de Herrera (Historia General de los Hechos de los Castellanos, (1601–15) and, the person who most influenced Herrera himself, José de Acosta (Historia Natural y Moral de los Indias, 1590). A Spanish Jesuit, Acosta is today considered one of the most rigorous theorists of the sixteenth century (Huddleston, 1967). Believing that American Indians had originated from Tartary and Siberia, he was the first to explain the origins of the Indians by reference to a postulated land bridge between Asia and the Americas. That migration occurred, he believed, after the destruction of the tower of Babel, making the Indians part, even if a degenerated part, of the Christian family. This places Acosta squarely in the monogeneticist tradition. As a Dutchman and a Calvinist, De Laet would have been considered the natural enemy of the Spanish Jesuit Acosta, but we find, instead, that De Laet uses Acosta’s writings to severely critique Grotius’s claims about the Norse origins of the Indians. The odd theoretical alliance between the Dutchman and the Spaniard, along with the sharp animosity between the two Calvinists, reveals that something more important than the standard Reformation rivalries are at stake in the contest between De Laet and Grotius. Grotius builds his theory of Indian origins on that of Dutch theologian Abraham Mylius (Lingua Begica), who, on the basis of (rather thin) linguistic analogies, postulated that the North American Indians came from the ancient Dutch tribe of Cimbri.27 In search of support for this position Grotius plumbs the ancients, such as Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Sallust, Tacitus, Strabo, Pliny, Herodotus, and Lucan, comparing them with the travel writings of Spanish, French, Dutch, and British contemporaries, such as Peter Martyr, Zeno of Venice, Francisco Alverez, and Paulo Sarpi. Grotius rejects Acosta’s Asian landbridge argument, pointing out that Tartary is full of horses while the Americas had none. However, in this rejection he makes little room for the possibility of cultural dynamics. For example, the Indians might have descended from the Tartars before they domesticated horses, or during the migration the Tartars/ Indians might have changed customs. The facile reasoning does Grotius little credit and opens him up to serious criticism, as we shall see. It is interesting to note that, when Grotius builds his own arguments, he does employ more dynamic cultural arguments. As he makes his case for Icelanders and Norsemen
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as the source of North America populations, he explains the absence of Christianity among the North Americans by noting that Norsemen must have migrated to North America before the arrival of Christianity in Norway; current Norsemen have become Christians but their American relatives have not (Rubies, 1991: 230). In his Notae ad Dissertationem Hugonis Grotii (1643), De Laet ridicules Grotius’s relatively weak reasoning and lectures him on how to properly weigh the available evidence from the Indies.28 Not surprisingly, Grotius responds bitterly to his old nemesis, going so far as to make fun of De Laet’s name in Dissertatio altera (1643). De Laet counters with an even more precise and cutting analysis in his Responsio (1644). The details of this debate are perhaps less interesting than assessing why Grotius might risk his well-earned and continent-wide respect by releasing a work that was so beneath his reputation. One explanation is that De Origine was an intervention in the colonial struggles of the day. Just as others had cited origins that seemed to give a particular European power a prior claim to the Americas, Grotius’s Icelandic migration might have justified Dutch or Swedish colonial ambitions over against the French or British.29 However, this sort of argument is profoundly inconsistent with Grotius’s own writings on nonEuropean peoples and the justification of conquest he routinely employs. As early as 1604, with his De Iure Praedae, and in the later, and more famous published writings—De Iure Belli ac Pacis and the Mare Liberum—Grotius had followed Vitoria, a useful Catholic source, in challenging the papal grant and refusing arguments that linked dominium to matters of faith. Nor were the Amerindians natural slaves, an argument he rejected fairly early. He went so far as to assert that missionary and pedagogical ideals mask a realist impulse: “long ago, Plutarch pointed out that civilizing Barbarians served as a cloak for greed” (Grotius, quoted in Rubies, 1991: 235). Grotius’s rejection of these rationales for imperialism should not be read to suggest that he was an opponent of colonial expansion (see Grovogui, 1996:55– 63; Keene, 2002: chapter 2). Rather, much of his work involved the careful construction of a rationale for the Dutch overseas policies aimed at breaking the Spanish and Portuguese monopoly in the East Indies. Traces of his early humanist embrace of republican military glory remained part of this rationale (Tuck, 1993:159–70), but his support for Dutch imperialism was cast largely in terms more consistent with his particular reworking of natural law (as we saw earlier). The right of self-defense or self-preservation, though more clearly justifying the Dutch war of rebellion against the rule of Phillip II and Spain, was used in De Iure Praedae to support the use of force by both states and individuals, including, notably, entities like the United East India Company (Tuck, 1999:79–85). The right to use violence against European competitors and local rulers turned especially on arguments about the nature of property and the right to trade. As part of a right of self-preservation, Grotius postulated that individuals have a natural right to acquire and protect goods (without limit), so
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long as they acquire them consistent with just principles of exchange or war. This understanding of the requirements of natural law was used to emphasize the justice of the rather acquisitive motivations of the Dutch and the illegitimacy of the Iberian effort to exclude them (since no one can claim legitimate ownership of the seas). Given that the right to punish offenses against natural law extends to all, without regard to the existence of a shared community, the Dutch could rightly make war on European competitors who defended an illegitimate monopoly and on East Indian political communities that refused commercial intercourse or threatened the lives and property of the Dutch traders (Tuck, 1999: 89–94). Thus, in the process of denying the exaggerated claims of rights by the Iberians, Grotius also restricted the rights East Indians could claim. Their aspiration to defend their realms and their ways of life in effect was trumped by the natural law requirements that guarantee access to travelers and traders. As we suggested in the previous chapter, this denial of native rights became key to European justifications for imperialism. Though this complicates any idea of Grotius as especially sympathetic toward non-Europeans, it is still clear that his assignment of less-barbaric origins to the peoples of the New World is consistent with his desire to argue for Indian independence from kings and popes—a view that also would support Dutch free trade claims in the New World. However, the connection between his muchnoted views of natural law and colonial expansion in his writings of the first quarter of the century makes it difficult to imagine Grotius making so different (and stilted) a claim about the origins of the Amerindians on behalf of the Swedes (or the Dutch) in the 1640s. A second possible explanation for Grotius’s book on the Indians is that it was not directed against the Spanish control of the New World but was a defense of the monogenist theory of human origins against the polygenism of Isaac La Peyrère. La Peyrère’s Pre-Adamitae was published in 1655 in Amsterdam but first circulated in Paris in 1641, before Grotius wrote his Dissertatio. Joan-Pau Rubies (1991) and Richard Popkin (1987) both interpret La Peyrère as a proponent of Jewish messianism. La Peyrère did not believe that Moses had written Genesis and doubted its authority. He argued that the account of the ancient Hebrews was not a history of all humanity but instead a particular history. He considered the Flood to be local and believed that there were Gentiles before Adam who had a simultaneous but separate history from Adam, the Flood, and Noah. In the confrontation between Genesis and evidence of human diversity, La Peyrère rejected the traditional compromise, namely that human diversity was the sign of a degeneration of an original unity. He seemed to take seriously the claims of the Aztecs and Chinese that their own chronologies were older than both Noah and Adam. His polygenist account held that, in the words of Rubies, “there had been different creative acts at different moments and at different places, and that, therefore…diversity in mankind was original” (Rubies, 1991: 239). Nevertheless, this does not mean that La Peyrère championed diversity. On
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the contrary, his Jewish-Christian synthesis contains a strong messianic element that serves to reunite the world and eliminate the problem of diversity. Though La Peyrère’s account came from an attempt to take the Bible seriously, and though he received crucial support both materially and otherwise from important people in his circle without which his ideas would never have been circulated in print, the reaction to his polygenism was, as we might imagine, swift and negative. Both Catholics and Calvinists considered him heretical and dangerous. In this light, Grotius’s dissertation can be seen as reasserting the unity of the human race by reference to classical authority, Biblical sources, and the evidence from the New World. Grotius might have expected De Laet to support his views because both he and De Laet were committed monogenists. The problem was that, beyond the criticism of La Peyrère (which Grotius detailed explicitly in the Dissertatio altera—his response to De Laet’s stinging critique), Grotius also forwarded his own, controversial theory of the origin of the Indians. De Laet and others could accept his critique of La Peyrère while protesting Grotius’s own view. Indeed, the Norse origins of the Indians is De Laet’s primary target in his response to Grotius. This takes us one step closer to home in understanding the animus between Grotius and De Laet. The deepest source of their struggle, suggests Rubies, is not their different strategies over the pursuit of colonial projects, nor alternative readings about the acute danger of polygenist accounts of human origins. It is their opposing vision of Calvinism itself that divides them. The origins of Grotius’s resentment of the Calvinist orthodoxy go back to a schism within the Reformed Church that led to the ruin of his rather promising political career in Holland.30 Born of a prominent Delft family, his early intellectual achievements were rewarded by his appointment as advocate general (in 1607) and, somewhat later, as official historiographer by the states-general of the United Provinces. He soon became associated closely with the eminent Dutch statesman Oldenbarenvelt. As Oldenbarenvelt’s protégé, his influence was tremendous, but this association also cost him dearly. Oldenbarenvelt was aligned with the Remonstrant faction within the Dutch church that resisted the orthodox Calvinist belief in predestination in favor of the theological views of Jacobus Arminius that asserted the compatibility of God’s sovereignty and man’s will. Tension between the two groups simmered for many years, and various compromises, including one suggested by Grotius, were rejected by the Contra-Remonstrants, like De Laet, as heretical, even papist.31 Not surprisingly, the orthodox were neither willing to give up their theology nor to tolerate another. The powerful forces allied against the Remonstrants soon gained a majority in the states-general and called for a final resolution of this rift. From November 13, 1618, to May 9, 1619, an assembly of the Reformed Church met in Dordrecht with the aim of ending the schism. The synod of Dordrecht sided with the Contra-Remonstrants, resulting in the beheading of Oldenbarenvelt. Grotius avoided execution only by renouncing his former patron; his sentence to life imprisonment was evaded only by an escape (masterminded
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by his wife) into exile. Still in exile twenty years later, it is likely that the sting of this treatment at the hands of the orthodox remained all too fresh in his mind. Taking a shot at his old nemesis, De Laet, may have held much appeal as he drafted his treatise on the Indians. Following Rubies’ assessment but pushing further, we want to suggest that the attempt to register worth for the Indians by giving them European origins may have been, in addition, an attempt to carve out a valued space for “internal Indians.” Rubies (1991:241) notes a common pattern among a set of theorists familiar to Grotius and to whom he was quite sympathetic: There was an important tradition of minority groups with pietist and fideist tendencies who sympathized with the idea of unification and who developed scholarly interests across political and religious frontiers. Several of them had offered their own solution to the American debate, for instance Postel and Montanus, who identified Peru with the biblical land of Ophir; Lipsius, who preferred Plato’s Atlantis; or Mylius, who favored a Cimbrian origin. All these authors favored shared a concern with connecting America with biblical and civil, rather than merely degenerate or barbarian, origins. In other words, the less orthodox within Dutch Reformed circles tended to assign the Amerindians more elevated origins. Given this religious and political context, we can begin to understand De Laet’s commitment to Acosta’s rather than Grotius’s theory of Indian origins. Even if Acosta is both Spaniard and Jesuit missionary, De Laet readily shares his views. By linking Indian origins to the non-Christian and therefore condemned Tartars, De Laet (and Acosta) can devalue the Indians.32 Likewise, De Laet would have bristled at any theory, such as Grotius’s, that placed value on those outside the strict orthodoxy of Calvinism—regardless of whether those being valued were Indians or liberalizing Calvinists. Likewise, if for Grotius persecuted internal minorities are linked to, and represented by, external Indians, then more than twenty years of exile may have only deepened his interest in increasing the worth of those devalued and persecuted—both inside and out. Rubies seems to have something like this in mind: “In this context Grotius’ strategy of universal human integration may have indirectly inspired his treatment of the problem of the American Indians, by stressing their closeness to the civil societies of Christians, Europeans, and Chinese” (Rubies 1991:241). While this remains a vision that assimilates the Indians to a European vision of natural law, it nonetheless marks out some (albeit limited) space for tolerance. The Indians act as a medium through which messages are sent across boundaries, such as those between Catholics and Calvinists, but also among Calvinists themselves. For Grotius, perhaps a more respectful treatment of external others would have engendered attitudes and policies that would result in a similar tolerance for internal others—such as Remonstrants and humanists.
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Thus, Grotius seems to use the Indians to create a space where doubts can emerge and legitimately converse across what might be thought of as the degenerated and taboo terrain within Calvinism. De Laet recognizes Grotius’s gesture and especially its threat to the orthodoxy he prizes. The battle between the two Calvinists and their two theories of Indian origins can be read as a struggle between their doubts concerning difference—with one beginning to treat doubt/ difference as a possible intimate while the other treats it as an order-threatening enemy. For De Laet, difference must be eradicated if the order of the republic is to be preserved. Grotius, no less sensitive to the need to root order in certainty, nonetheless seeks a less comprehensive uniformity that accepts a space for difference. The actual entities designated as Indians seem barely relevant, but of course the effect of this discourse on non-Europeans is not. While still a reflection of the impulse to “an empire of uniformity,” Grotius’s deployment of the Indians as allies in a struggle for tolerance among Calvinists signals the possibility of a fuller respect for human diversity. Tomasso Campanella (1568–1637): Diversity and the Impulse to Universalism [T]he legacy of the European empires in America—which might have been the fabrication of wholly new lives—had, in fact, been to demonstrate, finally and irrevocably, that conquest and annihilation was the only way in which cultures could deal with the differences between them. —Anthony Pagden, European Encounters with the New World Though his work is no longer widely recognized outside of contemporary Renaissance scholarship, Tomasso Campanella was well known in the seventeenth century for his writings that spanned the fields of philosophy, science, the arts, and politics. He was born to a poor family in Naples, but his intellectual promise was recognized early. His views were largely shaped by the Italiano-Hispanic context in which he was trained. Most important for our purposes, Campanella was also a “radical prophet and world reformer” (Headley, 1995:243) who inspired a popular revolt against Spanish authorities in Calabria (Italy) in 1599. If he had any doubts about the physical dangers of holding and espousing his views, these would have been readily set aside in 1600 by the burning at the stake of Giordano Bruno—a fellow Dominican, Neapolitan, and poet-philosopher. Campanella received a life sentence, of which he served nearly three decades, surviving several periods of torture. It was also during this time that he devoted himself to the writings for which he is best known—On the Monarchy of Spain (De Monarchia Hispanica) in 1600, Political Aphorisms (Aforisimi Politici) in 1601, and The City of the Sun (Citta del Sole) in 1602.33
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Campanella’s most important contribution to the debates of the time involves his advocacy of a universal, Christian empire. What is most curious is the combination of millenarian theology and modern science that informs his political (and utopian) thinking. Campanella’s “Christian providentialism” seeks to reconcile the rule of the sacred and the secular, religion and “scientific rationalism” (Pagden, 1990:60); others (like Grotius) hoped to do the same, but his answer to humanist skepticism was much more ambitious and encompassing. This perhaps odd juxtaposition of prophetic and modernist elements in Campanella’s account may seem less surprising when we remember that European imperial enterprises were often endowed with prophetic qualities by their participants (Pagden, 1995:27). What should seem quite odd, but somehow doesn’t to important elements of IR, is today’s conjoining of similarly prophetic, albeit secular claims, about liberal universality with the driving forces of science, technology, and information. We take up this theme in the next chapter. Campanella’s justification for (Christian) empire begins with claims about human knowledge. For Campanella, “[s]ince all human knowledge originated in a single divine intelligence, and operated according to a single divine plan, it must display a natural unity” (Pagden, 1990:44). God’s plan reveals itself to all who can read its signs—historians, natural philosophers, theologians, and astrologers. Christianity is thereby reduced to the life and teachings of Christ —“the purest expression of the law of nature, to which Christianity has simply added sacraments” (Headley, 1995:249). Therefore, any person living according to reason is already a Christian, whether he or she knows it or not, and a universal, Christian kingdom is immanent in the natural order (Pagden, 1990:51– 52). These beliefs brought Campanella into conflict with emerging Protestant views. He opposed the stress on original sin and the role of Christ as Redeemer in favor of emulating the example of Christ’s life on earth. He rejected the predetermined redemption of a select few, believing instead that it is God’s plan for all to be saved, that even Satan and the fallen angels “will be taken up in a universal reconciliation with God” (Campanella, quoted in Headley, 1995:250). Given the diversity of humanity (including the newly discovered peoples of the Americas), he was deeply troubled by the idea that only the current Christian world had a chance at salvation. This is one reason why the promotion of missionary work became so important to him. He followed Vitoria, not only in his belief in the consistency of Christianity with natural law, but also in Vitoria’s claim that there was a right to communication. For Campanella, like Vitoria, this meant in effect the right to evangelize and universalize Christianity. A universal Christianity requires a political form—a “theocratic monarchy”— for its success, and Campanella nominated the Spanish monarchy as the agent of this empire, though, late in his life, distressed by the relative decline of Spain, he passed the mantle to the French (Pagden, 1990:50–51). Similar to Sepúlveda (whom he apparently had not read), Campanella defended the papal grant of dominium in Asia and the New World and justified conquest on the basis of nonEuropeans’ ignorance or violation of natural law (Pagden, 1990:53). In this
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respect, Campanella presented his arguments expressly against the Salamanca school of the previous century, as Headley (1995:262) explains, arguing that Vitoria and his students were wrong to maintain that force could not be used to spread the Gospel. The healing of doctors is not enough; soldiers are required to punish the crimes of sodomy, idolatry, and cannibalism. In this way, Vitoria’s claim of the consistency between Christianity and natural law is deployed by Campanella to assert that, when persuasion fails, the Christian empire has the right to force the dictates of rationality and universal civil order upon all humans. Headley (1995:262) suggests that Campanella’s harsh attitude is the result of unexpected Indian resistance faced by a third generation of missionaries, resulting in a mood of despair mixed with “ethnic prejudice.”34 However, Campanella’s vision of a worldwide Christian monarchy was no mere embrace of the practices of his European contemporaries. Rather, his writings on the topic are distinctly utopian, as in The City of the Sun, where he presents a “community of rationally educated beings ruled by a philosopherking, where art is employed to instruct the citizens in their civic duties” (Pagden, 1990:38; see also McKnight, 1989:88–89). This vision also informs his advocacy of worldwide Spanish monarchy, though he was also partly moved by the dangers posed by the Turks to a divided Christendom (Pagden, 1990:49). In On the Monarchy of Spain, the aim of a universal empire is the spread of a way of life in conformity with God’s plan, a life of human happiness that can be achieved only by a monarch versed in the science of politics (Pagden, 1990:52– 53, 63). This is not a simple license for the prudent use of violence. In Campanella’s hands, the language of “reason of state” joins power and right (Tuck, 1993:71). His “science” of politics is part of that unified system of knowledge (of God’s will realized in a single divine plan) in which the political arts are necessarily embedded in an understanding of “final causes.” And his notion of political “prudence”—the “realist” catchphrase—is infused with virtue, generosity, self-restraint, and respect (Pagden, 1990:45–47). In this way, Campanella’s ambitions for a universal empire under the Spanish monarchy serve also as an occasion for critical reflection on the practices of the European monarchs themselves (Certeau, 1988:155). Indeed, he explains his passing of the mantle of universal empire to the French as a result of the “cruelty and arrogance” displayed by the Spanish in the Americas (Pagden, 1990:53). What is clear in all of this is that Campanella is concerned quite centrally with the problem posed by human diversity (McKnight, 1989:88–89). He praises Columbus’s discoveries, Luther’s break from Catholicism, and recent advances in astronomy for the challenge they posed to traditional authority, especially the parochial character of European opinion, for it is only such challenges that foster the advance of human knowledge and Christian religiosity toward a genuine universality (Headley, 1995:253). In an account that perhaps foreshadows contemporary cosmopolitan condemnations of fragmentation and visions of a postanarchical order (explored in the next chapter), Campanella identifies the
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fragmentation and diversification of the human species as the problem to which universal Christianization is the solution: If all the world were ruled by one, knowledge would be increased on account of all the land and sea traffic, the trade and communication; those subjects known hitherto by individual peoples might be better observed and known in others, especially astronomy, astrology, physics and politics, which require much observation—and what one does not know, the other knows. But the devil, envying us such opportunity, would want that we all remain within our own boundaries, as worms within a cheese, so that he may render us all ignorant and deceive us. Likewise he desires that we do not communicate with one another what we observe and know, nor journey to investigate the works of God in foreign regions, in order that we might not know and see one another but rather that language and religion be diversified so that we would [otherwise] be admitted through common language, nurturer of mutual love among us, we would introduce piecemeal only through wars and death in continuous fear, without charity in God our Father and in all our beings sons of the same. (Campanella, quoted in Headley, 1995:254; emphasis added) Though there is a hint of a less negative evaluation of diversity—that others offer sources of knowledge, not known to us—that hint remains deeply buried. Indeed, Campanella’s project of universal Christianization does not preclude the use of Indians as a material source to solve European and, especially, Spanish problems. In his work on the Spanish monarchy, Campanella suggests the use of Indians to settle what he took to be Spain’s greatest problem, namely its declining population. Trying to convince Philip III to import Indians, he suggested that those Indians who converted to Christianity would be trained in agriculture, artisanal production, and some even for bishoprics, abbacies, and baronicies; those who did not convert could be used as a pool of labor for the galleys. This imported labor would free the Spanish to concentrate on soldiery, itself necessary for the protection of the missionaries (Headley, 1995:255). At the same time, his writings also attest to some sympathy toward the Indians in the tradition of Las Casas (see Todorov, 1984:185–201; Dussel, 1995:68–72; and Pagden, 1982:119–45) and a claim to respect the diverse customs of peoples. In one passage, giving voice to the point of view of the Indians, he writes: Our leaders have reckoned you Spanish to be the sons of God descending from the clouds in ships and with thundering cannon, as God himself, superior beings, as if centaurs, immortal warriors…. But now we are aware that you are as mortal as we, avid for gold and silver, killing our kings against your own pledged word; and we know that the art of artillery, the clock, of letters, and horsemanship to be human inventions, not divine and that you exterminate us cruelly and hold us in servitude. We understand
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you Spanish to be men, rapacious, cunning, ambitious, who under the false pretext of proclaiming the gospel have subjected and pillaged the kingdoms of others. Wherefore we do not reckon your religious practices to be better than ours, which we now find similar in many things, in many preferable. Nor has God abandoned us at such a time, caring nothing for us, if he is the one God of all, if many [gods, then] each cultivates his own. (Campanella, quoted in Headley, 1995:261) As with most of our theorists, this apparent critique of European culture and of Christianity is not a moment of ethnological reflection meant to relativize the European position. Rather, the voice of the Indians is activated only in support of effective proselytizing to overcome diversity and fragmentation. Indeed, the Indians are truly depraved, and here the usual practices are marshaled as evidence —sodomy (of which Campanella was himself accused), polygamy, idolatry, and especially cannibalism. The harsh pedagogical hand of the Spaniards is thus necessary in order to deliver the Indians from depravity and disorder. “We are compelled,” asserts Campanella, “to resort to iron as a doctor in desperately mortal cases” (Campanella, quoted in Headley, 1995:262). This interpretation is only reinforced when we examine Campanella’s political program for Christian empire. Though his writings are notoriously short of any detailed analysis of institutions and practices of the state, Campanella does suggest that legal forms must be simple, respectful of local custom, and entirely consistent with natural law. It is quite clear, as it is for contemporary cosmopolitans, that the emphasis is on universality, not diversity. And though his embrace of the Spanish Habsburgs turns partly on the way they have held together a diversity of peoples and languages in a single empire, his own program involves a radical assimilative project. The suggested process of “cultural transformation” involves the propagation of a single language, common customs, a uniform civil religion, and even a selective breeding program to improve the species. In the manner of modern science, his is a massive project in social (and biological) engineering (Pagden, 1990:55–59). Thus, for Campanella, the Amerindians served three purposes. Their “discovery” heralded the epistemological dominance of science and the quest for knowledge over authority. Their anticipated conversion signaled the unification of the world and therefore the realization of a Christian eschatology. And, in their reception as radical difference, they called forth a European project necessitating a move beyond a limited, parochial vision. Of course, this last purpose is ensconced in a noisily paraded and fully self-celebrating ethnocentrism. Nevertheless, we should take note that, within the core of this ethnocentric engagement, just beyond the easily traceable self-deception, is a real need—the need to overcome European ethnocentrism. Here the space of the other is inverted, so that instead of being peripheral—an excluded and detested alterity— the other becomes central to self-knowledge and self-reflection (Todorov, 1984:
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109). We cannot fault Campanella too harshly for being unable in his time to recognize and embrace this ideal. Perhaps we should be less forgiving of the failure of contemporary cosmopolitans to recognize fully a similar need. The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries as Precursors of IR We have hinted at numerous points that the figures surveyed here foreshadow key elements of contemporary thinking. Of course, there remains some distance between these centuries and contemporary IR and there is a much longer story that could be told.35 Our intention here is only to indicate the contours of that story as a preface to the work of the next chapter and those that follow. In his efforts to resist skepticism and manage the difference presented by the Amerindians, Vitoria sustains moral certainties by insisting on the privilege of natural law and devising a strategy for remedying difference via tutoring and conversion. Protestant thinkers, led by Grotius as we have seen, build on Vitoria’s transformation of the theory of natural slavery into a theory of development, but gradually imbue natural law with a quasisecular status (see also Haakonssen, 1996:25). In order to reestablish moral certainty and a (purportedly) indubitable foundation for political authority in the face of skepticism and fragmentation, they abandon the ambitions of Salamanca natural jurisprudence. Instead, they favor a minimal and in their view incontestable set of precepts upon which diverse religionists and even skeptics would agree. Their maneuver draws directly on predominant interpretations of the Amerindians as wild, savage, precivil beings. Starting with Grotius, scholars begin to present a history of the world in which the genetic or genealogical arguments provided by Genesis are laid side by side, and often overlapping, with accounts that rely on the “state of nature” as a logical starting point (Meek, 1976:14; Jahn, 2000). Like Grotius, Hobbes in Leviathan (1651) presents both a Biblical and a nonBiblical account of the origins of humans, the latter explicitly connecting the “original condition” of the state of nature to the circumstances of the Amerindians. Hobbes’s depiction of a condition of war, without commerce or agriculture, where “the life of man” is “solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short,” is linked directly to “the savage people in many places of America” (Hobbes, 1996: part 1, chapter 13). This set of associations makes the “savage” rather difficult to idealize (Ashcraft, 1972:153– 54; Meek, 1976:16–17). And, despite the efforts of those such as Rousseau to imagine a noble savage, it is the ignoble savage that comes to dominate social theory.36 For instance, though Pufendorf’s The Law of Nature and Nations (1672) rejects the “state of nature” on the authority of the Bible, he follows Grotius in imagining an equivalent original state—a construction that he also associates with the Amerindians (Berry, 1997:31). Building on this original state of humankind, Pufendorf assembles a theory of history in which private property emerges in three forms: the game of wandering hunters and fisherman, the flocks
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and herds of nomadic shepherds, and, finally, the landed property of settled agriculturalists. However, it is John Locke in the Two Treatises on Government (1690) who opens the door to a fully realized tiered theory of history. At first, and very much like Pufendorf, Locke follows the Biblical account of Abel as a shepherd and Cain as a tiller of the soil. But soon the brothers are replaced by a version of human origins focusing on the Amerindians in the “state of nature.” Locke famously suggests in The Second Treatise that “in the beginning all the World was America” (Locke, 1988:II, 301); that “America…is still a Pattern of the first Ages in Asia and Europe” (Locke, 1988:339); and that, against Genesis, agriculture and commerce come to displace hunting and pasturage in these “first ages” (Locke, 1988:II, chapters 5, 8). From this, Meek (1976:22–23) concludes that “the way was thus for the first time really laid open for the emergence of the idea of an orderly sequence…of different modes of subsistence through which societies could be conceived as progressing over time.” It is Turgot (in his On Universal History, 1751–52) and Smith (in various lectures from the 1750s) who craft mature versions of what has been called the “four stages theory”—perhaps the direct progenitor of contemporary theories of development and modernization (Meek, 1976:23–25, 73–75).37 Roughly, this theory claims that “progress normally [takes] the form of the unconscious but law-governed development of society through four successive stages based on four different modes of subsistence”: hunting, pasturage, agriculture, and commerce (Meek, 1976:75; see also Berry, 1997: chapter 5, especially page 115). Particularly for Scottish Enlightenment figures, the theory supported a view of history as a universal process, progressive in direction (despite some anomalies on the way), and quite optimistic in its reading of the prospects for improvements in human nature (Berry, 1997: chapters 3, 4; Stocking, 1975:75). Thus, it is the French and Scottish Enlightenment figures that largely complete the move initiated by Vitoria. The ontic or horizontal space between self and others—key to both Hebrew thought and Aristotle’s theory of natural slavery—is explicitly converted into temporal distance as a theory of history, as a set of stages representing progress across time. However, this transition reveals breaks as well as continuities. Of the breaks, perhaps the most dramatic sees the replacement of a preoccupation with exemplifying and justifying God’s ways to humans by the central concern of showing the role that the natural and social context play in producing human differences. Another important change is the emergence of a decisively positive expectation regarding the future—what Meek (1976:130) terms “bourgeois optimism” and what Berry (1997:70) points to as a belief in the perfectibility of humans. More precisely, in relation to an ignoble image of the Amerindians (but also their own hinterlands, such as the Scottish Highlands and Ireland) as a benchmark and point of origin, the social theorists of the eighteenth century constructed a theory of the economic and social advance of their own societies (Jahn, 2000:119; Berry, 1997:76).38 And, having concluded that cultural differences were products of a differing social context, namely the stage of
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development in which a society was found, they could imagine employing strategies that might change that context—as their own had been changed (Stocking, 1975:82). Such strategies would, they imagined, accelerate the pace of development, thereby civilizing others (Berry, 1997:76).39 Over the decades and centuries, the question that loomed large (and continues to exercise contemporary thinking) is: How is this acceleration to be realized? We believe that much of nineteenth-and twentieth-century social science can be read as variations on these basic themes set down by the end of the eighteenth century (see Wazek, 1988; Becker, 1932; Jahn, 2000; Forbes, 1982).40 It is with this conviction that we read IR as a theory of modernization in the following chapter. This assertion—that IR is a theory of modernization—can be sketched in a preliminary fashion by drawing on our reading of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a crucial precursor of Enlightenment thought. Though we have emphasized the way Vitoria’s move transforms cultural and spatial differences into temporal distance, what is as crucial is the way this transformation also informs the spatial framing of IR. More precisely, various developmental theories have informed imperial relationships and been key to the demarcation of the “inside/outside” or anarchy/order distinctions constitutive of IR (Walker, 1993; see also Anghie, 1996). As is clear from our reading of Vitoria, establishing the Amerindians as a prior or less-developed version of themselves worked to justify Spanish imperial activities in the New World. If Spanish imperialism was thus leavened with an idealist mission, the picture of the Amerindians as fixed in a “primitive” or original condition (prior to property, governmental jurisdiction, and, therefore, order) was used more broadly by English, Dutch, and French thinkers to discredit any possible Native claims to the possession of the soil and the right to sovereignty; the New World is declared res nullius (Pagden, 1995:37, chapter 3; Grovogui, 1996: chapters 1, 2; Strang, 1996; Tuck, 1999; see also our discussion of Locke in the previous chapter). Notions of “savagery” or “barbarism” play a key role in a later and less-distant phase of imperialism as well. Though, as Pagden (1995: chapter 6) tells us, grand visions of world lordship had given way by the beginning of the nineteenth century, a new vision of the world based on commercial exchange emerged to take its place. This shift entailed extensive debates about the relative costs and benefits of colonialism (especially for the imperial power), but generally left the impression that the imperial project offered benefits to the colonized. During the later half of the nineteenth century, older theories of European cultural superiority (now informed by a distinctly commercial vision) moved again to center stage, though transformed gradually into a positive law doctrine of “the standard of civilization” (Gong, 1984: especially pages 35–40 for an analysis of the continuities with earlier views; Strang, 1996:31–32; Grovogui, 1996:18; and Gong, 1998). Thus, late-nineteenth-and early-twentieth-century imperialism operated according to a “theory of mankind” that distinguished between peoples based on their capacity to govern themselves and participate as civilized states within a society of states. The figure of the “barbarian” or the “savage” was
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crucial here in justifying and giving shape to colonial practices (Wight, 1992: chapter 4). In this way, “older providential languages,” linked to “spiritual enlightenment,” are transposed into a language of “enlightened rationalism,” with scientists, technicians, and administrators as the lead characters (Pagden, 1995:10). More precisely, because non-European peoples were categorized as “barbarians,” they were discussed outside of the discourse of sovereignty—as sites to be pacified and civilized, as peoples and places held in “trust” or to be “protected” by Europeans (Wight, 1992:75–78; Grovogui, 1996: chapters 4, 5; Keene, 2002: chapter 3). These non-European peoples and places, as Brian Schmidt (1998: 125) reminds us in his disciplinary history of IR, “were seen as falling outside of the society of nations and as places plagued by internal anarchy.” Indeed, Schmidt (1998:140; see also 235) shows that the “supposed necessity of extending political control over regions plagued by internal disorder (i.e., anarchy)” placed the investigation of colonial administration at the center of the study of international relations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, just as (we might add) similar concerns about failed, uncivilized, rogue, or terrorist states make issues of humanitarian intervention, wars on terrorism, peacemaking, and nation building equally central to the discipline today. Of course, the notion of “anarchy” possesses another, more generally recognized role in the discipline. Though claims about the foundations of IR normally miss the contested and shifting character of the notion of anarchy (including the association outlined in the previous paragraph), major figures have been quite clear in linking international anarchy with early modern notions of the “state of nature” (Schmidt, 1998:39–42; Jahn, 2000: chapter 8). Whether traced to Hobbes (Morgenthau, 1963; Bull, 1977) or to Rousseau (Waltz, 1959), the international system is imbued with those traits that mark a primitive or savage people: a lack of established political authority, and the consequent (at least relative) civil disorder and (at least relatively) impoverished moral, social, and commercial relations. However, and consistent with our argument in the previous chapter, Richard Tuck (1999: introduction) argues that it is not so much that IR builds on an early modern notion of politics (as is conventionally understood), but that early modern political theorists constructed a notion of politics based on their understanding of international (and interreligious) conflict. Their impulse, as we have seen, was to replace fragmentation and diversity with an “empire of uniformity” that located difference beyond the boundaries of the state and managed or erased it internally, though some figures, like Campanella, sought a global uniformity. If anything, this impulse is strengthened by the advent of “bourgeois optimism,” where, as we have seen, the civilizing mission thrives, albeit in a form in which the belief in a scientific reordering of the social and natural context prevails over Christian conversion.41 In this social theory of IR and modernization, the Indians, the “barbarians,” the anarchic, having been transformed from the repository of Christian degeneration to the original, miserable, ignoble, and permanent markers of
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civilizational advance, remain as the negation that gives positive content to the European self. Most important, the fear of difference remains strong. As ever, others cannot be allowed to have an ontologically independent status; their presence is explained by treating them as expressions of a uniform underlying reality (Berry, 1997:59, 69, 88; Collingwood, 1946:82). Differences remain the problem to which creating a uniform world order is the solution. And, as we shall see in the next chapter, so it is today. Closing Words To recognize Intersubjective Time would seem to preclude any sort of distancing almost by definition. After all, phenomenologists tried to demonstrate with their analyses that social interaction presupposes intersubjectivity, which in turn is inconceivable without assuming that the participants involved are coeval, i.e. share the same Time. In fact, further conclusions can be drawn from this basic postulate to the point of realizing that for human communication to occur, coevalness has to be created. Communication is, ultimately, about creating shared Time. —Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other With Columbus’s misidentification of the peoples of the New World, the use of the term Indian and its association with “wildness” or “savagery” began to multiply and cover a geographic and theoretical expanse it still refuses to surrender to a more discriminating ethnography. This we know. We seem to have forgotten, however, that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the term also permeated the internal terrain of Europe. It came to be linked to all others— Catholics, Protestants, Spaniards, Dutchmen, Gomorists, Remonstrants, peasants, witches, and, most important, to doubt itself. Vitoria’s theorizing shows us the process by which an idealist leaven is folded into the theory of imperialism. An ontic-horizontal separation is replaced by vertical temporal/historical distance: slaves become children and masters become parents, and the inclusivity of Christianity and natural law come to displace Aristotelian visions of natural slavery. Whether this idealist leaven within modern imperialism creates a nourishing, a poisonous, or a mixed loaf still fuels today’s debates. Even if the unintended consequences of his theorizing are contentious, it seems important to remember that one of Vitoria’s motives is to defend the idea that Indians possess rights. Nor is it difficult to sympathize at least somewhat with Jean de Léry. If we overlook his certainty about their eternal damnation, we can find in Léry not only an ability to admire the Indians and to use their cannibalism to create an ethnological tension within his readers, but also a deeper process in which he examines his own nagging doubts. Seeking a necessary distance from his doubts,
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he projects them onto the Tupinamba, where he can admire, reject, lament, or criticize them with skill and ease. He needs the Tupinamba, it seems, to converse with the Indian within himself. With Grotius, this conversational desire becomes more fully politicized. In the deadly debate between De Laet and Grotius, the higher or lower valuation of the Indian represents nothing less than whether Calvinism will license a public conversational space where doubt is cultivated, harvested, and allowed to nourish the body politic. Alternative practices of the good life, health, and civilization are at stake. The (perhaps) hidden parallel between the external and internal Indian does not mean that Grotius or, for that matter, Vitoria, Léry, and all of the other theorists we have mentioned were anything less than full believers in the universalization of Christianity, natural law, and/or commercial civilization. As in Rostow’s iconic The Stages of Economic Growth (1960), more than believing, they fully expected the world to be transformed in the span of a few decades. But, of course, such supreme optimism is shaken when it encounters the resistance of those occupying a degenerated space/time. When the shimmering but brittle patina of optimism cracks, we find uncovered the kind of resentful and brutal imperialism offered up by Campanella (and nineteenth-and twentieth-century imperialists, various U.S. cold warriors, and today’s crusaders against terrorism as well). Thus, the project of Christianizing others produces a heavy and unanticipated pedagogical burden. From Vitoria to Campanella and from the exultant expectation of constructing an inclusive universality to a despairing bigotry that forces others to suffer from our failed expectations, this cycle confirms Stephen Greenblatt’s speculation that the “desire for access to the real in the other’s culture is in part a deflection of desire for access to the real within one’s own” (see the epigram that opens this chapter). Certainly one consequence of this cycle is to reinforce our failure to converse with both our internal and external others, thereby guaranteeing the continued parochialism of the “empire of uniformity.” Yet, an alternative moment emerges in this cycle that allows us to swallow and absorb the critical resistance it necessarily generates—a resistance that is the daily nourishment of our internal Indian and that contains, we would like to think, kernels of our own salvation.
CHAPTER 3 IR and the Inner Life of Modernization Theory
They are mad, they want more than land, they want to change the world. —Vikram Chandra, Red Earth and Pouring Rain I had an inkling then of the real and desperate seriousness of their engagement with modernism, because I realized that the Fellhaheen saw the material circumstances of their life in the same way that a university economist would: a situation that was shamefully anachronistic, a warp upon time; I understood that their relationship with the objects of their everyday lives was never innocent of the knowledge that there were other places, other countries which did not have mud-walled houses and cattle-drawn ploughs, so that those objects, those houses and ploughs, were insubstantial things, ghosts displaced in time, waiting to be exorcized and laid to rest. It was thus that I had my first suspicion of what it might mean to belong to an “historical civilization.” —Amitav Ghosh, In an Antique Land Since the putative end of the Cold War, modernization is increasingly reimagined as a global process. The forms of this reimagination vary from liberal theorists’ account of the spread of a liberal zone of peace to claims of the inexorable workings of “globalization” in fomenting a global civil society and the emergence of global governance. In this way, new forms of modernization theory, what we call neomodernization, have emerged as important theories of international relations. Such a convergence of events and theory permits us to examine the logical overlap of IR and modernization theory, especially their theoretical treatment of the cultural difference presented by third-world others. Our investigation of this overlap builds on the growing sense that IR is not an autonomous domain. Rather than comprising a distinctive sphere of inquiry, IR theory emerges and remains embedded within a matrix of disciplines and subfields. Perhaps most prominently and intricately, IR is interwoven with political philosophy (see Walker, 1993; and Onuf, 1998b). Similarly, the case
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can be made that IR is embedded within the logic of neoclassical economics (Waltz, 1979), within the political economy tradition (Gilpin, 1987; Rosenberg, 1994; Inayatullah and Blaney, 1995), and within social theory more generally (Wendt, 1999). Our working premise in this chapter is that IR fails to herald a unique contribution to social theory because it persistently avoids and denies the historical problem from which it surfaced, namely the problem of what to do about cultural difference. Indeed, as we argued in chapter 1, IR is defined by commitments that auger ill for its capacity to avoid the reflex of Todorov’s “double movement,” where difference is translated into inferiority and equality comes at the price of assimilation. Instead of considering that cultural difference offers not only problems but also opportunities, IR extends the tradition examined in the previous chapters by assuming that difference is debilitating to the purpose of establishing order. In addition, by posing the eternal tension between anarchy and order, IR theorizing deflects the problem of difference, attempting to contain it within the boundaries of nation-states. This chapter illustrates this set of claims about the very foundations of IR in relation to a more contemporary literature: modernization theory. Though often thought to be superceded by intellectual trends (modernization theory was dominant within political science for almost three decades—from the 1950s into the 1970s and perhaps revived with the end of the Cold War), our intuition is that the key claims of modernization theory remain alive, especially within IR. More specifically, we argue that modernization theory provides an essential contribution to IR’s avoidance of the problem of difference. That contribution is both complex and interesting. Most strikingly, modernization theory takes for granted the spatial demarcations of geopolitics by which difference is contained and domesticated; that is, the problem of overcoming anarchy becomes a (manageable) problem localized within state boundaries. Less obvious, but to extend the theme from the previous chapter, modernization theory projects as natural and universal a developmental sequence through which all cultures or societies must pass. The oft-noted implication is that the velocity of this unfolding modernization can be increased through “aid” and “assistance,” at once coming from those already having traversed this path and received by those whose difference marks them as inferior. In this way modernization theory is heir to Vitoria’s innovations as well as the “four-stages theory” of the Enlightenment and later evolutionary and developmental theories. In addition, the international system itself is seen as an anarchical space—a perpetual state of nature, forever “primitive” or “barbarous” in its character (an equation we suggested in the previous chapter). The common sixteenth-and seventeenthcentury response to “savagery” appears, then, as an anticipation of later attempts to tame anarchy, including the desire for the eventual homogenization of difference into “sameness” crucial to contemporary arguments about the liberal peace, global civil society, and global governance. But there is another moment. Perhaps surprisingly, given the general reputation of modernization theory and the partnership with IR in the joint
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venture to contain and eradicate difference that we document, a careful reading of modernization theory also reveals elements of an alternative vision: an ethnological politics of comparison parallel to that uncovered in Jean de Léry (and perhaps Grotius) in the previous chapter. This recessive theme has the potential to reconnect IR to the historical problem from which it emerged, giving it a more distinctive purpose as a science and art of facing, understanding, and addressing difference.1 The next section of this chapter spells out how modernization theory attempts to eradicate difference with two, already familiar binaries—the spatial demarcation of inside/outside, and the developmental sequence of tradition/ modernity. Then we argue that modernization theory’s commitment to homogenizing cultural difference has its deepest basis in a nondialectical logic of comparison that, though presuming human commonality, resorts to the claim that commonality must be created.2 In the fourth section, the core of the chapter, we examine the recessive themes of modernization theory. We show, first, that some theorists begin to blur the inside/outside binary by treating the international system as itself an object of modernization, of the progressive differentiation, integration, and universalization characteristic of liberal modernity. This theme retains the hopes of eradicating difference, and is, therefore, less interesting to us except as a precursor to a contemporary recycling of these claims. A second theme, pursued in an analysis of the theorists Samuel Huntington, Gabriel Almond and Sydney Verba, and Clifford Geertz, involves blurring the tradition/ modernity dichotomy in ways that hint at the irreducibility of difference. Here we arrive at the suggestion that modernity may not solve the problem of difference: rather than waiting for difference to disappear, we may have to develop alternative postures toward its presence. In a fifth section, we comment on the way various neomodernization thinkers, such as the theorists of the liberal peace, global civil society, and global governance, work to reproduce the contempt and dismissal of difference associated with modernization theory. Despite such recycling, we show in the conclusion that it is possible to draw on the recessive elements of modernization theory to resist homogenization and move toward an ethnological basis for comparison. The aim of this ethnological move is to place IR squarely in relationship to its historical formulation; namely, as the theory of the problem of difference. The Unfolding of Time in International Space IR normally is treated as a predominately spatial theory, but we wish to highlight more fully the temporal dimension of modernization or development. Rob Walker stresses the temporality of IR where he suggests that the anarchy of international relations is “taken to imply the impossibility of history as a progressive teleology,” but, “[w]ithin states, the possibility of universalist claims to the good, the true and the beautiful is opened up to actualization in time” (Walker, 1993:63). In short, sovereignty provides a spatial framing, the temporal
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aspect of which is “development” (Walker, 1993:147). Nicholas Onuf (1991: 432), in his “conceptual history” of sovereignty, makes the same point. The external face of sovereignty demarcates global space as perpetually a world of states—a situation of anarchy “with its ugly propensities and deadly potential.” Yet this “fixing of the relations of states in an early modern pattern” is a condition of the internal face of sovereignty, creating the state as an indivisible territorial configuration that “enables modernity to fulfill its many possibilities within states.” IR and modernization/development appear, then, as a theoretical nexus that sharply separates inside and outside as alternative visions of social processes unfolding in space/time. In one, international or global time is frozen in a primitive state, disallowing “development” of the states-system. In the other, space is frozen while time unfolds in a particular manner within each nation-state but always teleologically funneled towards modern liberal (that is, civilized) society. Modernization theory has been characterized, therefore, as a particular “language or idiom” through which the modern, Western “global vision” has been (and continues to be) articulated (Dallmayr, 1996:149–50).3 Yet it is important to remember that modernization theory develops as a postcolonial theory—in part a response to the emergence of a multitude of newly independent states. And, like Campanella’s response to a newly discovered diversity of peoples, the strong commitment to a universal science of comparison is directly linked to the felt need to redress the problem of Western ethnocentrism. Thus, Gabriel Almond (1960:9–12) rejects a science that fails to go beyond a concern with “a limited sector of man’s experience with politics”: the “modern, complex, primarily Western states.” He sees applying the idea of “political system” uniformly as a means to move beyond the distinction of “state and non-state” that turned attention away from non-Western political forms. Indeed, Almond elsewhere identifies the increasing availability of “non-Western data” as a major impetus behind the growth of comparative politics in the postwar period (Almond, 1978: 20–24). In their study of the “civic culture,” Almond and Verba (1965:10) see cross-national study as offering an escape from “American parochialism.” Almond, Coleman, and Pye (1966:v) describe the goal of a new series on comparative politics as “broadening and deepening our understanding of the nature and variety of political systems.” Some contemporary practitioners likewise note that overcoming the problem of ethnocentrism in the face of growing interdependence is a central motivation for a systematic comparative analysis (Wilson, 1996:xiii–xiv; Lane, 1997a:2–6). The aim is to establish a comparative inquiry that is expressed in terms that are neutral and therefore universalizable. It is through this (perhaps) wellintentioned but ultimately, as we shall see, relatively uncritical search for human commonality that modernization theory and at least some prac-titioners of comparative politics remain trapped within Todorov’s double movement, deploying strategies that at once demand assimilation and mark the other as different and inferior.
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Modernization theorists attempt to establish commonality/universality by employing two binaries: the spatial demarcation of inside/outside and a developmental sequence from tradition to modernity. The first is mostly implicit. In contrast to the conventional picture of international relations—as a realm of violence and disorder—modernization theorists generally characterize their object of inquiry as the orderly and progressive community possible in a unified domestic realm. This possibility of community appears to depend on the notion that social life is necessarily a “system” (see the overview in Chilcote, 1981: chapter 5). The use of the language of “system” by modernization theorists indicates that social life is properly an integrated set of relationships, focusing attention on mechanisms and processes pro-ducing and maintaining social and political stability. Though this starting point is hardly unique, modernization theorists are especially interesting for us because they tend to presume that the particular national “society” is the most inclusive social system. They assert that subsystems are properly integrated into a unified (national) social whole and that no larger scale of social integration is feasible or compelling. As Vallier (1971: 208–9) puts it, comparative inquiry has a “special devotion to society as the unit of observation and analysis” because societies possess a logic of “integration, continuity, and order…not exhibited in other types of collectivities.” This presumption becomes clearer when the modernization literature employs a less abstract language, explicitly identifying the national political system or the nation-state as its unit of analysis. In the classic formulation of Gabriel Almond (1960), the state is conceived as a political system, comprising a set of institutions and offices (or political structures and roles) that must fulfill the functions required for the stability or maintenance of the social system as a whole (see also Almond and Powell, 1966:16–21; and Huntington, 1969:8–11, 163–64). In Almond’s words, the “political system” is not simply another term for the whole social system, but a set of “legitimate patterns of interaction” or “political structures” that work to maintain “internal and external order” (Almond, 1960:11). Though he hints of an “external order,” Almond says almost nothing about international relations. Indeed, consistent with the modernization literature generally, Almond takes the national society, a national political culture, and the nation-state (as one among many nation-states) for granted. The existence of the spatial demarcations of the state system and the binary of inside/ outside is, in terms Stephen Toulmin (1990:119) uses in a similar context, a clear “echo” or “overtone” of the modernization literature, but one “writers [rarely] take the trouble to spell out.” Underneath the quest for a nonethnocentric commonality also lies an explicit understanding that a process of political development eventuates in the achievement of a (distinctly liberal) modern society and state throughout the globe (Chilcote, 1981:180). In part this commitment is a function of the Cold War environment,4 but the embrace of liberalism is also built into the specific construction of the tradition/modernity binary. More precisely, modernization theorists capture the basic features of the liberal vision of modern statehood in
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their adoption or adaptation of Parsonian “pattern variables.” The Parsonian scheme utilizes a set of polarities that distinguishes modern social life from other —traditional or premodern—forms, and suggests a set of developmental sequences moving inevitably, if not always smoothly, from the traditional to the modern (we draw on Chilcote, 1981: 174, 180; and Dallmayr, 1996:152–54).5 The “self-orientation” of moderns entails the primacy of the individual and his or her private concerns and the replacement of premodern collective identities with liberal individuality as the mode of being social. Similarly, “affective neutrality” signals the victory of rationality, science, and calculation over emotion, superstition, and communal conflict. This neutrality requires the secularization of public life and the privatization of belief in the form of a marketplace of faiths and modes of life. The replacement of undifferentiated institutions by the increasing functional specialization and differentiation of modern social life points to numerous features of liberal society. A marketdriven division of labor is constituted as a distinct and protected sphere of social life. Individuals are constructed with competing but ultimately reconcilable interests, and specialized agencies, necessary to resolve conflicts that occur within and between social spheres, are created. The displacement of ascribed status by achievement likewise privileges the individual’s performance (particularly in the market) over traditional identities and hierarchies and normalizes the idea of liberal individuality and liberalcitizenship. The universality of modernity, as opposed to the particularisms of premodern forms, indicates a common set of rights, a uniform system of law, and a legitimate government. This conception of liberal statehood preserves the indivisibility of sovereignty and the integration of society even as it lays claim to pluralism, by forging a distinctive juxtaposition of uniformity and individualized difference. Modernization theorists claim that this liberal vision of modern statehood and pluralist society is an emerging “world culture” (Pye, 1963:19) or, as Leonard Binder (1971:12) might put it, the “great singular event” that history has become under the compulsion of European modernity. We might say that, in the hands of modernization theorists, the liberal vision of sovereign statehood becomes an account of culture itself—a universalist assertion about the limits and possibilities of diversity in the modern world. The Dialectics of Comparison Modernization theory’s assumption of a relative uniformity of political systems and sequences of development is not incidental. Rather, the idea of nation-states as “like-units” following common patterns of development is central to the way modernization theorists construct the possibility of comparison (we draw the notion of “like-units” from Waltz, 1979:95–97). Apter (1971:4–6) argues that the search for “universals” central to comparative studies requires two “methods.” First, comparability is established by “analogy,” by seeing all politics as governed by a “constitution” or organized as a “system.” Second, comparability
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is constructed by a “mind experiment” that identifies the functions that any “collectivity” would have to fulfill. It is thus natural for comparativists to turn to “discontinuous variables” and functional “requisites” as a “basis for basic comparisons of whole systems, particularly around broad themes of transition from pre-industrial to industrial society.” In other words, Apter seems to be suggesting that the possibility of a science of comparative politics rests on the capacity to imagine political activity occurring in “like-units” that are organized internally in broadly similar ways and that change along common dimensions and in a common direction. Teune (1990:38) explains more precisely the importance of these “temporal and/or spatial logics of comparison.” Where the research object is “practically the full range of human experience,” the challenge is to “reduce this variance” in order to “find patterns and relationships” (Teune, 1990:47). Teune (1990:47, 51– 55, 57–58) refers to this as the “problem of equivalence across systems”: “In order to compare something across systems it is necessary to have confidence that the components and their properties being compared are the ‘same,’ or indicate something equivalent.” Various “variance reducing schemes” have been employed to establish this “equivalence,” with systems theory, and its notion of functional requisites and (nearly) invariant sequences of development, being the most prominent. The notion of political system aims to establish the equivalence of units of political action, though operating separately and dispersed across space. The notion of political development suggests the equivalence of patterns of change occurring in these units. Though Teune doubts the success of these efforts thus far in reducing variance—the meaning of phenomena is often contextual, and units change in a context of interdependence, not independence— he stresses the continuing importance of this task to comparative inquiry. A comparable formulation of the basis of comparison is found throughout the modernization literature. Almond and Powell (1966:30), for instance, argue that if we are to extend our comparisons to “include the whole of man’s experience with politics,” we are in danger of being “overwhemed by the variety of forms, the differences in size and structural patterns, and in kinds of public policy and performance.” Thus, they suggest that we reduce this complexity by conceiving of political life as necessarily existing in the form of a “political system.” Mayer, in his standard discussion of comparative method (Mayer, 1972:86–92), identifies the nation-state as the solution to the problem of identifying the “level of analysis” for comparison: nation-states are the “systems” that “may be thought of as repositories of unspecified social, economic, cultural, and political variables.” Macridis (1978:17–18) notes that comparative analysis requires the possibility of “parallel comparisons” of “systems and institutions”—“the comparison of variables against a background of uniformity, either actual or analytical, for the purpose of discovering causal factors that account for variation.” And Kalleberg (1966:69–70) notes that the attempt to develop “a more dynamic, empirically interpreted, and truly comparative method of analysis” depends on the assumption “that there is such a thing as a political system,” across which
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types may be identified and processes of change located. With a few exceptions, this framing of the problem and possibility of comparison continues to define textbook accounts of comparative politics.6 Thus, as all too commonly practiced, comparative politics reinforces the theoretical commitments central to modernization theory. Reducing variability for the sake of developing abstractions is not necessarily to ignore or obscure difference,7 but it should come as no surprise that we are less than convinced that the abstraction “political system” avoids homogenizing human experience to a nearly singular, Western vision. Indeed, modernization theory appears to impoverish our political imagination, locking us into the world of like-units and developmental sequences. The point we want to make here incorporates this claim, but also involves a deeper criticism of the common practice of comparison itself. More precisely, we suggest that comparative politics is too often structured according to a spatiotemporal ordering that reproduces the logic of Todorov’s double movement, in which “human alterity is at once revealed and rejected” (Todorov, 1984:49–50). This claim requires some explanation. The “comparativist,” according to Todorov (1984:240), “puts certain objects, all of which are external to him, on the same level, and he himself remains the sole subject.” Though this appears to establish a kind of equality among the objects of study, Todorov’s tone hints that this is not the case. The seeming recognition of “equality” is really the assimilation of the spatially separated objects to a common model imposed by the comparativist (or, perhaps better, by the community of comparative scholars and the actors who proceed as if this imposition is natural). Thus, the scholar’s construction of “equivalence” is part of a broader process of the assimilation of the spatially dispersed political experience of humankind to a “world culture” or a “singular event.” Or, to translate this into the language of IR, treating states as like-units constitutes them as (formally) equal within international society, but simultaneously abstracts from the substantive differences among their forms of social and political organization and justifies assimilation to increasingly thick norms of statehood (Blaney, 1992). On deeper investigation, the equation of equality and sameness reflects a parallel translation of difference into inferiority. The comparativist’s implicit constitution of self, as subject in relation to objects of investigation, involves what Johannes Fabian calls “distancing.” He explains that placing the experience of humankind on the same level may appear to be “incorporative,” but actually is “founded on distancing and separation” (Fabian, 1983: 26). More precisely, the claim of “comparative method” to scientific status, with its attendant “neutrality and detachment…permitting the ‘equal’ treatment of human culture at all times and in all places,” requires the “radical naturalization of time” (Fabian, 1983:16– 17). Time is simultaneously (and problematically) constructed as “a variable independent of the events it marks” and “spatialized” so that “difference” across space is temporalized as developmental “stages” (Fabian, 1983:13–15). The claim to know and the privilege of the comparativist as scientist depend on this
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spatiotemporal distancing. “There would be no raison d’etre for the comparative method,” Fabian (1983:26–27) writes, “if it was not the classification of entities or traits which first have to be separate and distinct before their similarities can be used to establish taxonomies and development sequences.” That is, by the deployment of a spatiotemporal scheme, “variance” is reduced so as to expose comparable patterns and relationships. This practice of distancing involves a politics of comparison that denies the “coevalness” of peoples and cultures. Fabian (1983:85–86, 99) reminds us that these spatial and temporal “classificatory schema” are not innocent, but hierarchical. By placing the other at a distance, non-Western, “underdeveloped” peoples and cultures are excluded from participation in the dialogue of scholars except in the terms of the comparativist. Todorov (1984:240, 250) argues that the comparativist’s construction of its objects precludes “an affirmation of the other’s exteriority which goes hand in hand with the recognition of the others as subject.” “Comparison,” he continues, “does not put the Other on the same level as oneself and does not call into question one’s own categories.” Therefore it cannot contribute “to the reciprocal illumination of one culture by another.” Nandy’s (1987b:12–15) more general assessment is relevant here and makes the point more dramatically. The culture of the modern West, in our time no less than in the sixteenth century, presents itself “as the framework, tool or theory for understanding the other.” Thus, this “hegemonic, parochial vision” operates “paradoxically by rejecting the otherness of the” non-West—“accepting them as earlier stages in the evolution of the self.” Reciprocal or genuinely dialogical interactions between self and other are made impossible by the presumed “pecking order of cultures.” We should not be surprised, then, by Teune’s (1990:58) judgment that the lessons a country learns from comparison will most likely be drawn from those countries most like it. Where difference is seen almost singularly as backward or dangerous, one learns only from similarity. However, we might be more unsettled by Shils’s (1963:8) hope that comparative studies, founded on uniform categories that “postulate the fundamental affinities of all human beings,” will contribute to the creation of U.S. policy toward the world. Perhaps more haunting is Pye’s (1968:15, 19–20) claim that academic work on economic and political modernization is the “intellectual [basis] of [U.S.] foreign economic aid”—“the closest example of academic theory guiding public policy which has ever existed in international relations.” Thus, he feels he can speak of “the university” as the key agent of the creation of a “world culture.” This suggests that commonality, though claimed as preexisting, must actually be nurtured. Those to whom difference is attributed must be taught, and, if unwilling, they must be forced to recognize that assimilating to the “sameness” of Europeans is good for them. This remains the white man’s pedagogical burden— a burden carried by the politics of a particular type of comparison.
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The Ethnology of Space/Time and the Play of Difference As we have shown, modernization theory tends to turn on a certain spatial demarcation and temporal sequencing of cultural forms. The modernization theorist’s image of modernity as a singular world culture requires that we hold onto both the counterpoising of the anarchy of international relations and the developmental possibilities of domestic space as well as the duality of tradition and modernity as largely incompatible and successive forms of life. However, no tradition is univocal in its aspirations and desires. Indeed, for those who look, even modernization theory contains resources for thinking beyond the confines of the double movement. The dominant practice of turning difference into either sameness or inferiority is countered at points by alternative and opposing lines of inquiry. Blurring Inside/Outside: Modernizing IR A number of authors directly address questions of IR within the broad framework of modernization theory. Much of this work implicitly challenges the spatial demarcation of inside/outside by blurring the distinction between foreign and domestic politics and/or suggesting the impact of modernizing processes on the character of the international system. In effect these authors conceive of forces that modernize international relations itself. This possibility depends on conceiving the international system as a “premodern” form subject to its own modernization parallel to and interwoven with the modernization of individual states (Riggs, 1967:326). These hints in the earlier modernization literature seem now to have been precursors of contemporary advocates of a liberal peace, global civil society, and global governance, a point introduced here but developed further in a later section. Modernization theorists of IR see the mosaic of “relatively modernized” and “relatively non-modernized” states as the “social background” or “setting for international relations” (Levy, 1966:2, 4). As modernization creates greater commonality and interdependence among societies, the relative stability of the states they support is increasingly important in explaining the character of international relations. It is crucial, then, that the process of modernization be managed so as to secure the stability of states as a condition of a more peaceful international relations (Levy, 1966:8–9, 31–32; Von Vorys, 1967:352–53). Though many structural realists would consider this an illegitimate recourse to “second-image” thinking, this type of analysis suggests that domestic processes of modernization have clear international implications. If so, the domestic/ international boundary of community and anarchy becomes increasingly difficult to defend and the character of international relations can no longer be understood apart from the “social background” of modernization. Modernization within states becomes the antidote to anarchy, the means to pacify the international system.
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The close resemblance to contemporary “liberal peace” arguments seems worth mentioning. The liberal peace depends on the claim that the extension of the logic of domestic liberal practices across the globe has the consequence of pacifying the relations between states (Chan, 1997). And, conversely, where liberal economics and political institutions are absent we can expect the logic of anarchy to continue to hold sway (Singer and Wildavsky, 1996). Thus, the liberal peace proposition may be read as a partial shift in political imagination, vitiating the clear distinction between political community and international relations even as liberal peace theorists explicitly hold onto the inside/outside distinction (Blaney, 2001). Stronger claims, emphasizing processes of convergence, growing interdependence, and global integration, are also common. Though careful to eschew a picture of immediate global homogeneity, theorists point to modernization as an engine of substantial interdependence and integration (Rustow, 1967:2–4; Inkeles, 1975; Moore, 1979). The consequence is a profound tension between modernization as a global process and the nation-state as a site of authority and a container of social processes. More precisely, the growing “integration of most aspects of human activity within a larger framework, in some cases embracing all of mankind,” constructs “social relationships and cultural institutions [that] overlap national confines” (Black, 1971:23) and challenge “sovereignty and power,” “national individuality and independence” (Rustow, 1967:239). Authors making such claims are divided, however, about the extent of the impact on the international system. Most see a continued role for the nation-state and resistance to full global convergence (Rustow, 1967:280–82; Black, 1971:23). Others suggest a more dramatic transformation. Edward Morse (1976:192–93), for example, asserts that “international society” is “undergoing continuous and persistent change.” More specifically, the classical, Westphalian configuration of “statecraft”—exclusive sovereignty, nation building as heroic task, the primacy of foreign policy, and the balance of power—is gradually giving way. Under the pressures of modernization, an increasing economic interdependence undermines both the autonomy of state action and the claim of the state to be the sole subject of international relations (Morse, 1976:10, 45). In the place of a state-centered system and the problems associated with anarchy, modernization generates “inexorable tendencies toward centralization in the mechanisms of international control.” Such mechanisms are crucial if a “global society” is “to be subject to rationalized direction.” The form these mechanisms will take is not yet clear; Morse suggests the possibility of “world or regional federalism” or, perhaps, the steady proliferation of an “international infrastructure…organized around particular issues areas,” if not the imaginings of the World Order Models Project. What is clear is that substantial institutional growth and change will be required to coordinate state policies directed “toward transnational and common problems” (Morse, 1976:193–94). Thus Morse concludes, though with some qualification, that “history seems to validate the predictions of most theorists of
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modernization: universalism replaces particularism and imbues institutions with a basic transnationalism.” This is not to forecast complete homogenization of the world in a global space, but to announce the arrival of a “[u]niversal culture” living “in a symbiotic relationship with fragmented countercultures” (Morse, 1976:15–16). At least a quarter-century old, these claims echo earlier imaginings of a universal order as well as anticipate much of contemporary discussion of globalized capitalism, global governance, and global civil society. They foreshadow the idea that we are in the midst of a radical restructuring, driven by technological progress, expansive market forces, and global cultural flows. These processes (of modernization) erode state sovereignty and overcome the problem of anarchy by spurring the arrival of the world as a single economic unit, a global society, and a global political space (see Rosenau, 1990; 1997; and Mittelman, 1996). What is clear in both earlier modernization theorists and many contemporary accounts is that globalizing the modernization process undermines the spatiotemporal framing of politics (Held, 1995). Thus, the model of the development of the modern, liberal “political system” is no longer confined in the container of the nation-state; rather, it is loosed upon the world as, perhaps, a global civil society (Lipschutz, 1992). However, as Morse reminds us, it is there that it confronts numerous countercultures. In today’s parlance, we live in an age of both “globalization” and “fragmentation,” of a liberal globalizing project and multiple forms of resistance (see Brecher, Childs, and Cutler, 1993; Walker, 1988; and Crush, 1995). Lucian Pye takes a somewhat different and quite interesting approach to the inside/outside relationship. In Communications and Political Development (1963), he explicitly connects the state-system and modernization in a way suggestive of Walker and Onuf’s initial formulation: anarchy outside, development inside. He chides fellow scholars of political development for failing to take the trouble to spell out the relationship of the modernization literature to the idea of the states system, an oversight he attributes to the tendency to treat the nation-state as “natural” (Pye, 1963:12). Especially interesting is Pye’s (1963:19) explicit identification of “the evolution of the nation-state system as a basic element supporting the gradual diffusion throughout all societies of what we might call a world culture “entailing the usual components of enlightenment science and reason, unending technological progress, and liberal political, religious, and social forms. Pye elaborates this claim about the evolution of a world culture in a later book, Aspects of Political Development (1966). Here we find a dramatic story of the modernization of international relations, highlighting the necessity of territorial sovereignty and uniform constitutionalism as key to modernity as a genuinely world culture (1966:6). A deep suspicion of difference informs his account, becoming an alibi for the violence and imposition of colonialism as a means to eradicate spaces ungoverned by modern law and state structures. Pye
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(1966:6–7) describes the process (reproducing both the tone and the sense of earlier imperial discourse): Fundamental among the many themes running through the exceedingly complex story of the diffusion of Western civilization throughout the world and the establishment of the era of Western colonialism would be the persisting demand by Europeans that human relations, and more particularly the management of disputes, should fall under explicit and universally-based laws. As Europeans moved restlessly into the nonWestern world—as traders and merchants, missionaries and adventurers— they carried with them the conviction that all societies should properly be organized as states possessing attributes of sovereignty and adhering to rules of law. Wherever the European went, one of his first revealing queries was, “Who is in charge here?” According to the logic of the European mind every territory should fall under some sovereignty and all people in the same geographic locations should have a common loyalty and the same legal obligations. Also, in the early clashes of culture the European response was to search for legal redress, and the absence of a recognizable legal order must have made life uncomfortable for these early European adventurers. For the past three hundred years a constant theme recurring throughout the apparently haphazard process of Western contacts with the rest of the world has been the stubborn and ceaseless efforts of the European state system to transform all societies into replicas of the nation-state. To the European mind it was inconceivable that anyone might not be governed by an impersonal state and not feel a part of a nation. The European system required all territory to fall under some specific jurisdiction, every person belonging to some polity, and all polities to behave as proper states within the family of nations. Wherever Europeans have gone they have generally displayed their impatience with any other arrangement of social life and devoted their surplus of energy and resources to the end of bringing others in line with the standards of the modern nation-state. Throughout this period men who felt a responsibility for maintaining the stability and the easy working of the nation-state system regarded as a fundamental threat all domestic forms of authority which failed to meet minimum standards of nation-statehood. This concern has left its mark on the European mind. It is reflected in the intolerance of Westerners toward all who fail to meet these minimum standards—a feeling which is at the same time disturbing to Westerners, acutely conscious as they are of the evils of ethnocentrism. It is also reflected in the Western insistence that societies that do not voluntarily act as nation-states must be compelled to do so even if this means direct assistance and open intervention in their affairs.
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What is immediately jarring is the juxtaposition of, on one side, candor about the violence involved in the “evolution” of the state system and the “diffusion” of modernity and, on the other, an absence of serious doubt about the inevitability of this violence or serious reflection about the particularity of modern political forms. We are left to wonder about the “uncomfortable” consequences of these nonajudicable clashes for the other peoples and cultures and the disturbances of mind of the “acutely conscious” victims of colonization. And we see nothing less than a formula for the homogenization of global space, by force if necessary. Apparently, part of the necessity of colonialism is explained by the final outcome of this process. In the conclusion to his book Pye allows himself to imagine the completion of this evolutionary and diffusionary process. Noting the frustrations, setbacks, and dangers associated with political development in the south, he nonetheless ends on a more optimistic note that reiterates the inexorability of modernization and its fruits (Pye, 1966:188– 89). Most important, Pye (1966:199–200) claims that the inexorability of modernization is the basis for a transition of international society to a state of relative cultural equality and peaceful, mutually beneficial interactions: Once these minimum standards are achieved and as countries increasingly resolve their basic problems of national identity and find increasing pride in their evolving cultures, then the relations of all parochial cultures to the world culture will take on a new form. No longer will it be possible to confuse the world culture with the particular cultures of Western societies. Instead it will be possible to appreciate the diversities of mankind under terms in which it is possible to recognize the reality of man’s equality. Under these conditions people everywhere according to their individual talent can in actuality contribute to the enrichment of the world culture and thus of all human life. What are we to make of this teleological drive toward a global version of liberal pluralism—a vision worthy of the post-Cold War globalist/idealist imagination (see, for example, Linklater, 1998)? While our inclination is to embrace Pye’s commitment to the equality of peoples and cultures, his vision of diversity as a human good, and his intimation of a productive dialogue of cultures, it is clear that Pye continues to approach cultural difference within the frame of Todorov’s double movement. That is, in Pye’s modernized states system equality is achieved only at the price of assimilation to Western, liberal modernity. And while this is not to deny certain gains that might result from such assimilation, nor to reject that the insights of Western modernity may contribute to numerous ongoing human projects, we may hesitate in accepting the assumption that equality necessarily requires “sameness.” To fail to reject this equation is to make the equality of the non-West depend on a condition that perpetually awaits fulfillment and, thereby, serves as the continuing basis for characterizing nonWestern difference as inferiority. And, as Pye makes clear, this attribution of
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inferiority has and will continue to be an apology for violence and cultural imposition. Thus, following Nandy, we see Pye’s vision of a modernized states system as a hegemonic one, proposing his version of modernization, backed by the power of the West, as the framework within which cultural interactions and negotiations must take place and be judged. Despite the hopes it raises, it is a framework that retains the idea of a “pecking order” of cultures, and the implicit idea of dialogue remains a “dialogue of unequals.” All of these authors within the modernization tradition suggest that the logic of modernization extends beyond the domestic “political system” to encompass and transform international relations. International relations loses its timeless and tragic quality and modernization works its magic as a global system. Not surprisingly, the envisioned transformations of the global system are largely seen in terms central to modernization theory: from anarchy to social integration, functional differentiation, universalism and uniform standards, human rights, and a distinctly liberal pluralism. However, to paraphrase Morse (1976:15–16), this universalizing culture exists only in relation to numerous particularized others. Thus, the problem of difference is less solved by a globalized liberal modernity than defined in opposition to it. Unfortunately, as we shall see below, this remains true of recent theories that recycle the central components of modernization theory into new forms. Blurring Tradition and Modernity: Mixed Modes Modernization theorists, in response to much criticism, protest that tradition and modernity are merely ideal types.8 If we accept this hint—that this duality serves at best an heuristic purpose and that, in practice, features of tradition and modernity necessarily blur—we will find the idea of modernity as a world culture or singular event more difficult to sustain. We do not aim merely to embrace the idea of multiple modernities (Berger and Dore, 1996; “Multiple Modernities,” 2000). Rather, in the spirit of searching for the other voice within modernization theory, we focus on the work of several authors—Huntington, Almond and Verba, and Geertz—who appear in various ways to complicate the usual spatiotermporal framings and thereby disrupt the simple historical story of the march of modernity. Samuel Huntington stands somewhat apart from the modernization tradition— and is even considered revisionist—because he foregrounds the stresses and crises of political development. Instead of treating the stability of the political system as an axiom, Huntington is obsessed with political order as an ongoing problem for political life. For Huntington (1987:9–10), order appears as an especially serious problem for developing countries, since we cannot assume the “compatibility” of the various widely accepted goals of development. Indeed, Huntington (1987:10, 12) considers naive the idea that “all good things will, in some way, go together.” Development embroils us in “dilemmas, choices, tradeoffs, crises, and even vicious circles” that lead to conflicts that are difficult to
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resolve. In this move, Huntington appears to embrace some version of “moral pluralism”—the idea, as we have seen, that the human good is “irreducibly diverse”; that goods may be “rivalrous” or component parts of ways of life that are incompatible; and that there is no way of reconciling conflicts in a way that will be readily acceptable to everyone (Gray, 1998:20). This view is even clearer in his more recent work on the inevitability of the “clash of civilizations” (Huntington, 1993). What is crucial here is that moral pluralism is a challenge to the liberal idea that the basic political settlement defining a liberal society is neutral and hence, in principle, acceptable to all. Not surprisingly, then, Huntington (Huntington and Nelson, 1976: 18–19) rejects the “Benign Line” of “the liberal model of development” that presumes a smooth transition from tradition to modernity and an easy reconciliation of key political values: socioeconomic development, relative material equality, democratic participation, and political stability. What is key, in his view (Huntington and Nelson, 1976:18–19, 160–61), is that “expansion of political participation” is not “a generalized good for society as a whole,” but “a good competing with other goals” or “a means that may be useful in achieving some goals but not others.” While it often supports greater material equality, increased participation can slow economic development and generally puts a strain on political authority and, hence, political stability. Huntington therefore warns against imposing the value of participation on developing countries. Nevertheless, it is important to note that this line of argument does not force a revision of Huntington’s commitment to a developmental thesis. He claims that the “economic and social forces feeding the expansion of political participation seem to be global and inexorable in the long run” (Huntington and Nelson, 1976: 170). Consistent with an embrace of “moral pluralism,” Huntington’s explanation of what is at stake does not restrict the problem of political order to developing countries. Rather it appears to be a general problem of political life: political participation is valued differently in different societies. Where it is thought to be a desirable goal, the expansion of political participation involves costs and tradeoffs in terms of other goals, and these costs and trade-offs will vary in different societies at different levels of overall modernization or development (Huntington and Nelson, 1976:17). Huntington (1975:62–63, 102) makes this more clear in his analysis of “the democratic distemper” in the United States. The crisis of democracy in the United States is presented as partly cyclical, an ongoing tension among competing values and principles of political organization: “power and liberty, authority and democracy, government and society.” The problem of political order is not, then, merely a function of modernization—something to be outgrown—but a lasting feature of modernity (if not social life) itself. This complication of the tradition/modernity polarity is a useful corrective. It appears to open space for treating more equally the different weightings of competing values integral to modernity and various nonmodern (or not fully modern) forms of social life. If there is no universalizable means for reconciling
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conflicts among diverse human goods, it is difficult to claim any particular weighting—such as liberal modernity—as intrinsically superior. However, Huntington seems to foreclose this possible implication. The eternal tension among the values associated with development leads Huntington to embrace power, authority, and government at the expense of liberty, democracy, and society. Control over the population—the power to rule—is logically and empirically prior for Huntington. This priority is made abundantly clear in his peculiar formulation of the problem as the “governability of democracy” (Huntington, 1975:63–64, 113). Democracy is less a form of governance than a value that must be moderated, a set of practices to be disciplined by some prior claim to authority. Huntington’s (1969: chapter 4) reflex appears to be Hobbesian: because no final reconciliation can be made between competing values and because only power can establish an orderly politics, we have no choice but to privilege the dictates of power in the service of order. Thus, in domestic politics Huntington wants to use power to tame the lurking, disruptive, and ungoverned forces of democracy within the American ethos and society. Or, in parallel, he justifies “praetorian rule” in developing societies as a means to restore order in the face of the conflicts generated by the trade-offs involved in modernization. And in international politics he sees the conflicting values represented by civilizational forces as irreconcilable—coexistence requires the mutual isolation of the parties or the subordination of one to another (Huntington, 1993:27, 48–49). Though made to appear to be a “neutral” necessity, Huntington’s vision is deeply partisan in that he privileges one set of values—associated with his anxieties about disorder—over all others. However, because his partisanship is largely illiberal and disruptive of the rosier picture of development associated with modernization theory, Huntington’s view also partly dissolves the distinction between international and domestic politics. That is, his pessimistic reading of modernity seems to threaten the idea of domestic society and polity as a purified or protected site for liberal modernization. While there should be something to recommend any view that breaks down the inside/outside distinction (though Huntington would likely claim that we give a contentious reading), we find little of direct value here. Rather, we see Huntington as giving expression to the desire to eradicate the other. Read in conjunction with Pye’s narrative of European intolerance toward disruptive, ungoverned political forms and the early modern European views of the Amerindians, Huntington appears to continue to justify exertions of power against the non-West in a vividly paranoid post-Cold War form. What is striking about Huntington, nevertheless, is that the violence of international relations against an external other is simultaneously turned inward against the ungovernable other within, whether in the developing world or at home in the United States. To reinforce a point made in the previous chapter, the other is always both external and within. And, if there is a lesson, it is portentous: turning violence against an external other all too easily slides to turning violence against the other within (see Campbell, 1992; and our
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discussions of religious war and imperialism in chapters 1 and 2). Or, more strongly, one cannot do violence to the other without also risking unleashing violence against the self.9 We can locate Gabriel A.Almond and Sydney Verba’s The Civic Culture (1965) more readily within the modernization framework. Throughout the book, the authors betray an overriding concern with the stability and efficacy of liberal democratic political institutions in the face of competing alternatives (Almond and Verba, 1965:v; see also Brint, 1991:112; and Girvin, 1989: 32). They trace this emphasis to doubts about the inevitability of democracy (though apparently not about its moral superiority), particularly in the new nations in Africa and Asia. It is not that Almond and Verba question the basic developmental assumption of modernization theory. Rather, they assume the inexorability of the relative eclipse of parochial and subject cultures by a more modern, participatory culture via a worldwide process of growing enlightenment (Almond and Verba, 1965:3–4; see also Rosenbaum, 1975:60). Thus, they, like Huntington and Pye, are concerned with the difficulties and possibilities of balancing elements of traditional political cultures and the increasingly dominant modern, relatively participatory forms (Brint, 1991: 112). But in the end, Almond and Verba’s assessment is quite optimistic, by comparison with Huntington’s or Geertz’s (as we shall see). Almond and Verba’s optimism is not simply a more tranquil acceptance of the inevitable incompleteness of modernity. Rather, it involves the claim that this incompleteness is in fact quite desirable. Specifically, the “civic culture” (characteristic of the United States and the United Kingdom in particular in their account) supports stable democratic institutions, precisely because rational and participatory orientations to politics do not replace but are tempered by the continuing role of “passivity, traditionality, and commitment to parochial values” (Almond and Verba, 1965:7–8, 131–32). This conception of a relatively passive and deferential liberal democratic political culture has come under much criticism, particularly from those advocating a more participatory and egalitarian vision of political life (Gibbins, 1989: 7–8). Though we are sympathetic to this criticism, and we are tempted to give a reading akin the one given to Huntington, we want to highlight something different about this text: Almond and Verba’s hint that purportedly temporally ordered cultures, rather than being genuinely successive, may and should coexist in the present. Almond and Verba (1965:6– 7) themselves refer to the “civic culture” as a “mixed modernizing-traditional” political culture and argue that the culture of the West is necessarily “pluralistic” in this sense. In a move reminiscent of Aristotle’s embrace of the “mixed” polity, they propose “balance” and “combination” as the proper relation between these competing strands. It appears that the authors do not mean by the idea of “mixed” culture a simple integration of the plural elements, but recommend, instead, a “blending of apparent contradictions,” a mixing that “enables them to interact and interchange without destroying or polarizing each other” (Almond and Verba, 1965:6, 31–32, 476).
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These are intriguing phrases that may provoke an alternative reading of the political and ethical possibilities of the present from those explicitly embraced by Almond and Verba. That is, this subtext of The Civic Culture may be interpreted as disrupting the idea of development sequences, as central to modernization theory as it is to the earlier “four-stages theory.” The traditional coexists with the modern in the present, not merely as a survival of the past but as a living set of cultural materials that may be combined usefully with the modern in various ways. Almond and Verba seem to assume the predominance of the modern in any such mix, but this preference is related to an initial political judgment of the superiority of Anglo-American political forms. We need not accept this judgment. Likewise, though Almond and Verba seem to restrict this interaction and interchange to the relations among cultural strands within domestic political systems, we may find less necessity for doing so. We might assume, instead, a relative equality of different cultural forms (both within and across nations and states) as a basis for, in Almond and Verba’s terms, a nondestructive and nonpolarizing interaction and interchange between relatively traditional and relatively modern political regimes or, in our terms, a more reciprocal interchange or dialogue. Clifford Geertz’s “The Integrative Revolution,” like many of the sixteenthcentury texts examined earlier, provides just a hint of this possibility. Geertz’s framing of the problem of modernization in the new nations is similar to Pye’s understanding of the difficulty of reconciling statehood and a sense of cultural integrity, but is more precise and provoking. For Geertz (1963:108), “the peoples of the new states are simultaneously animated by two powerful, thoroughly interdependent, yet distinct and often actually opposed motives—the desire to be recognized as responsible agents whose wishes, acts, hopes, and opinions ‘matter,’ and the desire to build an efficient and dynamic modern state.” Based on this statement, we pursue two lines of inquiry in our examination of Geertz: one focusing on his understanding of the opposition between these desires; the other looking at his account of their interdependence. We divide our presentation in this way because it allows us to highlight two related ambiguities in Geertz’s thinking: an inversion of the teacher and the taught and the idea that the other is both within and without. These explain Geertz’s hint late in the article about the importance of the experience of the new nations for the older ones. Geertz (1963:108) concretizes the opposition as between “primordial sentiments,” by which he means that “peoples’ sense of self remains bound up in the gross actualities of blood, race, language, locality, religion or tradition,” and “civic politics”: the “practical” project of modernization located in and directed by the “sovereign state” as the key “positive instrument for the realization of collective aims.” More precisely, the fact that the state has attained this central importance in the modern era does not mean that this emerging “sense of self” must be, or is best, expressed in or within the form of the sovereign state. Rather, that sense of self must be actively integrated into the modern state:
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The network of primordial alliance and opposition is a dense, intricate, but yet precisely articulated one, the product in most cases of centuries of gradual crystallization. The unfamiliar civil state, born yesterday from the meager remains of an exhausted colonial regime, is superimposed upon this fine-spun and lovingly constructed texture of pride and suspicion and must somehow contrive to weave it into the fabric of modern politics. (Geertz, 1963:119) Importantly, this process of weaving a civil state risks serious loss for these peoples: To subordinate these specific and familiar identifications in favor of a generalized commitment to an overarching and somewhat alien civil order is to risk a loss of definition as an autonomous person, either through absorption into a culturally undifferentiated mass or, what is even worse, through domination by some other rival ethnic, racial, or linguistic community that is able to imbue that order with the temper of its own personality. But at the same time,…the possibility for social reform and material progress they so intensely desire and are so determined to achieve rest with increasing weight on their being enclosed in a reasonably large, independent, powerful, well-ordered polity. The insistence on recognition as someone who is visible and matters and the will to be modern and dynamic thus tend to diverge, and much of the political process in the new states pivots around an heroic effort to keep them aligned. (Geertz, 1963: 109) Using Todorov’s language, we can translate the alternatives into the figure of the double movement. Recognition as a player on the world scene—the moment of commonality and equality—demands assimilation to the conjunction of the civil politics of a sovereign state and the modern social practices (science, market,) required for material progress. Asserting one’s identity as distinct from modernity —the moment of difference—risks internal fragmentation, limited material “progress,” and, what follows, designation as an inferior or backward region (or, in more contemporary terms, as a “quasi-” or “failed state”). Geertz’s (1963:119) construction of the interdependence of these oppositions builds on this interplay between commonality and difference. The problem faced in theorizing this tension is that its solution—“political modernization”—is also the source of the problem, in that it “tends initially not to quiet such [primordial] sentiments but to quicken them.” More precisely, the introduction of civil politics is a “transformation of the whole pattern of political life” that changes the relations of identity and rule. Geertz (1963:120) argues that “it is the very process of the formation of a sovereign civil state that, among other things, stimulates sentiments of parochialism, communalism, racialism, and so on,
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because it introduces into society a valuable new prize over which to fight and a frightening new force with which to contend.” After reviewing the experiences of six countries, Geertz reiterates this common pattern. He notes that modernization aggregates “traditional primordial groups…into larger, more diffuse units, whose frame of reference has now become the ‘nation’—in the sense of the whole society encompassed by the new civil state.” This process also transforms a localized sense of “primordial similarity and difference” into a diversity of groups “interacting within the framework of the entire national society” and setting “the stage for a direct clash between personal identity and political integrity in the new states” (Geertz, 1963: 153–54). With this move, Geertz (1963:119–20) connects the two sides of this opposition as a feature of the modernization process itself. This connection also allows him to consider the relationship of the experience of the new states with that of Europe. On the one hand, the parallel is strict. The oligarchic rulers of the new states are engaged in a process that, like early modern Europe, requires them to simultaneously legitimate their rule in an integrated society and create that integrated society. The new states are also seen to be on a common developmental path with the West, leading not to the complete elimination of primordial sentiments (“this tension…probably cannot be entirely dissolved”), but to their domestication via a strategy of delegitimizing nonmodern identities within the politics of a notionally neutral or universal state. Geertz (1963:128) recognizes that this goal is “not fully achievable” anywhere, but the example of the industrialized states suggests that “it is relatively so.” This “relatively” is quite important, because it suggests to Geertz (1963: 128– 29) that we cannot take too seriously the conventional dichotomies embodied in the polarity of tradition and modernity; it is simply wrong to claim that “the expansion of one” occurs “at the expense of the other.” If so, we may be able to consider reconciliations of this tension that involve less loss than Geertz initially suggests and a primordial “sense of self” may find more room within a society than the social and political requirements of a modern civil identity allows, as Almond and Verba seem also to suggest. But Geertz (1963:155) backs away from this logic when he concludes that a “simple, coherent, broadly defined ethnic structure, such as is found in most industrial societies, is not an undissolved residue of traditionalism but an earmark of modernity.” The possibility of integration without domestication—without assimilation—is lost. We are still caught within the double movement. Other aspects of the account suggest that we should pursue the avenue Geertz seems to foreclose. His initial conception of primordial sentiments—as historically crystallized meanings and identities—suggests the value of this sense of self. That he compares Europe’s emergence from premodernity with the contemporary “integrative revolution” might lead us to think that what is being superceded now (as in Europe) is not simply a creation of modernity itself, but also contains aspects of a previously (and currently) valued form of life as
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Europeans of the time, including Léry, sensed. Combined with his strong assertion that primordial sentiments are never fully eclipsed, we might read Geertz as supportive of a different understanding of both the new and the industrialized states: both as offering varying reconciliations of the primordial and the civil, with varying costs and gains. In this way, Geertz moves against the work of the previous centuries, reconverting time back into space; he moves from seeing difference as erased by developmental sequences to regarding difference as a potential resource. The difference between states, we might say as a way to paraphrase Geertz, is a resource for all states. Geertz implicitly authorizes such a reading (made explicit in his later work, as we shall see in the concluding section) when he hints that the experiments in the new states form part of the store of humanity’s answers to a general problem. And, however alarming the directions taken by these experiments, Geertz (1963: 157) warns, “can they be viewed, especially by members of a society that has notably failed to resolve its own most troublesome primordial problem, with either indifference or contempt[?]” Given the U.S. publisher and the 1963 date, we assume that Geertz’s reference is to racial issues in the United States. The inversions that this suggests—that tradition is not simply out there, but also inside; that the supposed teachers and models may need to be taught and can learn from the experiences of their purported students—suggests a very different vision of a “world culture” and a very different interpretation of modern history than as a “singular event.” The texts examined in this section, though exemplary of the modernization literature in many respects, allow a reading that also moves against the polarity of tradition and modernity. If modernity does not finally settle conflicts of values, or is necessarily incomplete, exiting only in various “mixed” modes, or requires its traditional other as a source of self-reflection, sustaining the notion of an invariant development sequence or the idea of a cosmopolitan liberal order becomes difficult. In these recessive understandings within modernization theory, as with those recovered from the thinkers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, we may find the resources for a political imagination that eschews the universalist pretensions of liberal modernity as a domestic or global arrangement. Recycling Modernization Theory in Contemporary IR As we have already hinted, modernization is increasingly reimagined as a global process, and new forms of modernization theory—neomodernization, in our terms —have emerged as important theories of IR. It seems doubtful that displacing the temporal dynamic of modernization from the state to the globe will change the pernicious logic of comparison at work. Indeed, there is much to recommend a skeptical response to neomodernization theory in its various forms. Though overlapping in many respects, we discuss three streams of neomodernization
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thinking: theories of the liberal peace, global civil society, and a pluralistic global community. Reminiscent of some earlier modernization theorists’ blurring of the borders of foreign and domestic policy, liberal peace theorists contend that the extension of the norms and institutional patterns characteristic of liberal democratic polities to international relations will transform the interactions of states as they come to operate within the confines of a “transnational democratic culture” (Russett, 1990:127).10 Thus, the liberal peace theory seems to promise that a process of global modernization, spreading liberal regimes across geopolitical space, will produce “a revolutionary impact on world politics, making international war obsolete,” but only, as James Lee Ray (1997:61) reminds us, “if the world becomes uniformly democratic.” The landscape of world politics can be understood, then, in terms of a binary that recycles the content of modernization theory into a new, international form: between a zone of peace, democracy, and wealth and a separate zone of anarchy, turmoil, authoritarianism, and (optimistically) development (Singer and Wildavsky, 1996:x1, 3; Russett, 1990:120). Indeed, this opposition is often thought to be central to the liberal “ideology” that is at work as a causal mechanism in producing peaceful relations among liberal states (Owen, 1997:95). As John Owen explains, the political and moral visions held by policymakers and the wider public are “always formulated in contrast to an opposite,” and liberals form as a group via a process of “exclusion and opposition” (Owen, 1997:14, 29). More precisely, liberal states are “believed to be reasonable, predictable, and trustworthy,” while nonliberal states “are viewed prima-facie as unreasonable, unpredictable, and potentially dangerous” (Owen, 1997:96), just as the Amerindians of an earlier age were. In this updating of modernization theory, the relationship between liberal democracies and their ex-colonies is staged as a kind of “morality play” of purity and pollution. That is, the cultural conceptions of Western liberals are constructed as normal or natural in relation to today’s “barbarians,” the marginalized and anarchical peoples and regions, perpetually on the road to mature liberal selfhood (Forment, 1996:314–17, 321–23). And, as Uday Mehta (1990:429–30) makes clear, the purported universality of liberal conceptions of human capacities and values hides a set of “social credentials” that the nonEuropean world seems to never quite possess, thereby settling the boundary between who is included and who is excluded as properly liberal (and, in this case, peaceful). This construction of the opposition moves against even those possibilities suggested by the recessive voices in earlier modernization theory, as Tariq Banuri explains, by denying the pervasiveness of mixed modes of social being and by purifying the individual in liberalism of its “traditional” features (Banuri, 1990:77–81). In all of this, then, the liberal peace literature exemplifies the reflexes characteristic of modernization thinking and the double movement. As Tanji and Lawson (1997:151) summarize the processes of “othering” at work,
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the “answer” to the question of what constitutes “true democracy” is implicit in the model of democracy assumed by the thesis—a model that has been used to demarcate the borders of a democratic community in world politics. Thus, what “democracy” means in the thesis is authoritatively assumed in advance, posited as an unassailable universal, and deployed as the foundation of a moral high ground in the global sphere. Staking claims to the moral high ground on the basis of a vision of “true democracy,” however, often serves to intensify the hostile attitudes on the part of those who are effectively excluded, or consigned to the category of “the uncivilized.” …[S]uch practices only rationalize the most repugnant aspects of identity politics. Enemies and friends can be constructed by stressing particular cultural identities that in turn feed into tendencies to dichotomize insiders/outsiders, democratic/non-democratic, tradition/ modernity, Asian/Western, and so forth. Thus, we should not be surprised that liberal peace theory is part of a larger infrastructure of thought and practice promoting (or imposing) liberal democracy as a global standard (see Parekh, 1992:160; Linklater, 1993:30; Young, 1995; Watson, 1997; Gong, 1998; Barkawi and Laffey, 1999:419–23; and Blaney 2001). More strongly, perhaps, John Gray (1998:34) suggests the consequences of the “belief in the universal legitimacy of [liberal] institutions”: “Liberal policies animated by such universalist beliefs are bound to treat all other regimes and ways of life as rivals or enemies rather than legitimate alternatives. Liberal morality is not a formula for coexistence among regimes that contain a diversity of ways of life. So long as the world contains a diversity of regimes, it is a prescription for conflict.” This incitement to violence against nonliberals is clear even to liberal peace theorists. Doyle (1983:324–25) refers to a characteristic “liberal imprudence,” and Russett (1990:129–32, 142) acknowledges the existence of a democratic “xenophobia” by which nonliberals are constructed as sites of legitimate intervention for liberal purposes and objects of violent moral crusades. We see this as an extension of the kind of fear of difference we have highlighted throughout this work and characteristic of the politics of comparison central to modernization thinking. And it is not inappropriate to suggest a connection between the most recent liberal crusades in a post-Cold War era and a long history of violence aimed at the other (Pagden, 1995:198–200; Chandler, 1999; 2001; Mayall, 2000:74–75; Brown, 2000:7). Contemporary proponents of a global civil society display a similar aversion to cultural difference, even as they explicitly embrace notions of diversity and dialogue. The balance these thinkers strike is instructive, as it mostly reproduces the politics of comparison characteristic of earlier modernization theory. The “ongoing project of civil society,” as Ronnie Lipschutz (1992: 391) describes it, is “to reconstruct, re-imagine, or re-map world politics.” Though he (rightly) hedges when tempted to predict the future (Lipschutz, 1992:419–20; 2000:5), an
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emerging global civil society seems to involve the spread of a set of “common norms or codes of behavior” and a “global consciousness” characteristic of a “civilized community” (Lipschutz, 1992: 398–99). Richard Falk (2000:317; see also Falk, 1995) also sees the forces of global civil society as crucial to the rehabilitation of the emerging world order via the creation of “humane governance,” involving the application “on a global scale” of “widely shared ethical standards and societal goals.” However, these gestures claiming the “human” and toward the “global” are tempered somewhat in their accounts. Lipschutz (1997:98–99; 1999:226– 27; 2000:181), for example, evokes the neomedieval analogy to indicate the multiplicity of identities, activities, and modes of regulation likely to be involved in a global civil society. Falk is far more scrupulous in acknowledging the challenges posed by difference; he argues that “humane governance” is impossible without a consensus among very diverse groups, something achieved only via “an open-ended dialogue” (Falk, 1995:2, 4; see also Falk, 2000:325–26). There are good reasons, nonetheless, to doubt that Lipschutz or Falk has moved very much beyond the politics of comparison central to modernization thought (see Pasha and Blaney, 1998; and Blaney and Pasha, 2000). Indeed, in a form of putatively secular providentialism, both authors rely on an account of a global process of modernization to ground the democratic and transformative possibilities they attribute to transnational social movements, global NGO networks, boundary-hopping public interest groups, and so on (noted also by Keck and Sikkink, 1998:33). For Falk (1997:125– 26), “globalization” is inevitable; what is at stake is the character global order will assume. By simultaneously weakening the state and fostering social life on a truly “planetary scale,” globalization establishes a “global village” and the “potential for humane governance” (Falk, 1995:11, 19, 119; 2000:318– 19). Lipschutz is more expansive. Global civil society, in his account, is made possible by a radical transformation of global social space by technological change and the spread of free-market liberalism. Indeed, he pictures a “borderless world,” containing a newly globally interdependent humanity—a global community of fate (Lipschutz, 2000:159, 97–98). This erasing of boundaries is accompanied by a dramatic diffusion of liberal political culture (individualism, markets, and civil society)—a process of “global liberalization” in which the sovereign state is replaced by “the sovereign individual” (Lipschutz, 2000:3–4, 135). Lipschutz (1992:407) goes so far as to say that liberalism has become the “newly dominant ‘operating system’ in global politics”; the “principles of economic and political liberalism thus come to represent something like the jus civille of the civilized community, existing above the laws of individual states.” What is clear in both Lipschutz and Falk is that the world is already one, and it is against such a register of (liberal) unity that their (limited) commitment to diversity must be understood. Lipschutz’s (1992:407) notion of pluralism—“a high degree of diversity and heterogeneity, and a broad number of activities”— centers on the “everyday social and ethical behavior” of modern individuals, not
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on space for the peaceful coexistence, if not less fruitful interactions, of multiple and competing forms of life. Likewise, Lipschutz (2000:156, 160, 173–74) recognizes that the world will remain a messy place—of “many political communities, some based on place, others on affiliation.” But all this messiness is immersed in a “politics of people” poised, in parallel to the earlier emergence of the sovereign state and national citizenship, to realign authority relations between an emerging global civil society and an extensive system of global governance; that is, replacing anarchy with governance. We would not dispute Lipschutz’s view that the spatial demarcations of international society fail to exhaust or contain the political imagination or energies of the present. Nor has it ever done so, as we argue in these first three chapters. What we question is Lipschutz’s impulse, common to both his global politics of neomodernization and the IR of modernizing states he rejects, to contain, domesticate, and eradicate diversity within a vision of a “global cosmopolis” (see Walker, 1993: 179). With Lipschutz, we travel from one empire of uniformity to another. Despite Falk’s (1995:4) expressed repudiation of “all efforts to associate otherness with evil” his respect for difference, as in the earlier period of confrontation with the other, proves to be relatively “stingy, cramped, and defensive” (we borrow the phrase from Connolly, 1995:xii). Several of his formulations are exemplary. Like Campanella, Falk (1995:2) proposes that emerging global forces “must be both respectful of and celebratory toward cultural diversity,” but this injunction is qualified immediately by the directive to be “mindful of human solidarity and planetary unity” that appears to take logical and practical precedence. Similarly, Falk (1995:11–12) suggests that globalization works to reveal a “heterogeneity of human experience,” making possible “oppositional encounters for learning about the other.” We would certainly embrace this sentiment, until we discover that the real point of such encounters is “rediscovering the universal in the affirmation of the particular” or “transcending, while appreciating difference.” And where Falk (2000:318, 326) stipulates an “overlapping consensus” or “overlapping and convergent ideas” as the precondition and basis of humane governance, he employs a tried and true liberal strategy of “imposing a public identity that is constituted by what enables us to agree,” while placing important and often life-affirming values that vary or compete beyond political life (Bickford, 1996:7–8). As Fred Dallmayr (1996:24, 27) puts this objection, “sameness of identity is presumed to persist on the level of general principle,” while “historical cultures and beliefs” are “progressively ‘defoliated’ or shunted aside into folklore.” Foreclosed are the possibilities of being changed by “oppositional forces” or admitting the existence of difference beyond the political/ethical register of global civil society that cannot be transcended or assimilated. Falk’s vision instead involves folding otherness into the framework of a presupposed planetary unity. Thus, when he speaks of “political struggle” (Falk, 1995:13–14) or the “mobilization of diverse democratic forces” (Falk, 2000:319), the reference is less to a deliberation or dialogue about the character of possible world and local orders and more to a
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process of implementing (if not imposing) a preexisting global vision (see also Masicotte, 1999). That is, in Rob Walker’s (1994b:673) terms, global civil society is read as the agent of “some supposedly already existing world politics or universal ethics” that can “cast off” the “grungy skin of modern statist politics… to reveal some essential or potential humanity beneath.” As with Lipschutz, Falk’s argument about the role of global civil society amounts to the turning of a global variant of modernization thinking against the older, repudiated version of a universalizable order. If we accept the critiques of the political/ethical implications of the modernization theory of the postwar era, we might be equally wary of the universalist pretensions and marginalizing moves of this newly fashionable version of the modernization project. And, like the liberal peace, civil society is itself a touchstone for a mutually supportive missionary network of official policymakers and aid agencies, professional activists, policy analysts, and private foundations (“Sins of the Secular Missionaries,” 2000; Encarnacion, 2000). Perhaps there are other theoretical and practical options, as we will suggest below. Liberal modernity also presents itself in an updated (more globalist) version of Pye’s international cultural pluralism or Campanella’s universal empire. Andrew Linklater (1998:2–3), for example, has incorporated a strong call for “greater respect for cultural differences” as part of his “unapologetically universalistic” vision of global community. But, like Pye, his strategies for reconciling these imperatives are familiar ones that embrace pluralism but only in a very truncated form. It is tempting to argue (more strongly) that respect for difference plays little role in Linklater’s work. Like Campanella, he spends most of his efforts intertwining various philosophical and sociological claims to create a narrative of the inexorable march of humanity toward universalism. In part, this is a story of the expanding scale of human interactions: here, globalization is only the latest phase in a process that began with the tribe, continued with the rise of national citizenship, and now encompasses humanity as a whole (Linklater, 1982:165–68, chapters 9, 10; see also 1990; and Linklater and MacMillan, 1995). As discussed by modernization theorists like Morse (whom Linklater [1995:250] cites favorably), we are in the midst of a “revolution in statecraft” triggered by the forward march of modernity, along now familiar lines. Linklater notes the progressive advance in humanity’s capacity to manipulate nature, the rapid diffusion of industrialization, the spread of commercial interactions on a world scale, and, perhaps key, moral learning that disposes humanity to a more universalistic perspective (Linklater, 1990: 143–46; 1998:28–33, 122). Though humanity now exists in a state of true interdependence, where the actions of individuals or groups have repercussions that cross borders (Linklater, 1998:104; 1999:474–75), the problem is that our political/ethical conceptions are only beginning to catch up. For Linklater (1998:122–23, 119), this gap is part of the “unfinished project of modernity,” since what is required is less a move beyond modernity and more a retrieval of the inclusive global community
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“already contained within the moral and cultural resources of modernity.” More precisely, the elements of this “transcendent universalism” are immanent within the existing organization of international society (Linklater, 1998:23–27). Thus, though Linklater (1990:136) sometimes speaks of the “nation-state, the society of states and a community of humankind” as “competing visions” of human community, they appear more convincingly in his writing as successive stages of human political/ethical development. We find ourselves once again in a world of advanced and backward ideas, identities, and regions (see Jahn, 1998:641). Given our argument thus far, Linklater’s claims seem an unpromising basis for responding to difference as anything but a sign of inferiority or backwardness, but he does hope to do better. A universal community, in his view, would “display sensitivity to the variations of culture, gender and ethnicity which has been all too infrequent in the past” (Linklater, 1998:5). The difficulty Linklater faces is that he imagines the problem of difference as exclusively one of discriminatory exclusion. Thus, he reads the imperative of universalism as not attaching “deep moral significance to differences of class, ethnicity, gender, race and alien status,” regardless perhaps of the wishes of the individuals and groups involved (Linklater, 1998:5). And he analyzes the third-world movement of the early postcolonial era as only an appeal for a more inclusive universal order (Linklater, 1998:24), not as also an expression of the desire to live, at least partly, separately (see Bull and Watson, 1984; and Bull, 1984). It is not surprising, then, that dialogue functions only to break down barriers and moral estrangements (Linklater, 1998:4), never to reveal (perhaps irreconcilable) conflicts in values, identities, and forms of life. Consistent with the liberal tradition, in both its early modern and contemporary variants, Linklater seems unwilling to accept the risks and uncertainties attendant upon a genuine confrontation with difference or to face the possibility of “permanent estrangement” that might be revealed in such encounters (see Mehta, 1999:23–27). Indeed, a cosmopolitan response to the states system seems to be prefigured by everything in Linklater’s texts. Diversity is shunted aside as all evidence and argument points, in his eyes, to the necessity of a universalist response (Walker, 1999). And having prefigured a substantive political outcome, it is not clear what purpose dialogue can serve (Lensu, 1998).11 Linklater (1998:4) would surely protest that what he proposes is really nothing more than a set of “procedural universals” that work to support dialogue by breaking sharply “with any substantive vision of a good [global] society.” But this response is deceptive, as is the similar appeal to a “thin” proceduralism in liberal thinking generally, including that in Grotius, Hobbes, and Locke. Rather than being neutral and thereby capable of being embraced by all, regardless of ethical or political view (see Linklater, 1996b:113; and Rawls, 1996), it is clear that procedural liberalism entails a peculiarly liberal vision of the individual and the cultivation of a peculiarly liberal set of virtues that may be at odds with and threaten alternative modes of life (see Galston, 1986; Nandy, 1990; and Hopgood, 2000). Iris Marion Young (1996:123–24) would add that the idea of a
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dialogic community as a deliberative device also presumes and privileges certain ways of speaking (formal, general, and rationalistic). Those for whom passion and play are crucial to their styles of communication and persuasion simply cannot be heard unless they conform to liberal norms (see also Bickford, 1996). Thus, the claim of neutrality or universal consent “misrecognizes the partisanship on which it rests” (Connolly, 1995:124), and Linkater’s universalism appears as only a particular (relatively thick and substantive) vision among many. Interestingly, Linklater is quite aware of this critique (see Linklater, 1996a:290– 92; and 1998:87–100), but he seems to mostly brush such concerns aside as he returns to his single-minded pursuit of a cosmopolitan view. Thus, as with Pye, Linklater’s (global) liberal modernization appears, in Nandy’s terms, as the hegemonic framework within which all other forms of cultural life are judged. And, as we would expect given our argument thus far, deviations from the global liberal vision are judged (at least implicitly) as backward, regressive, or corrupt unless assimilated to the dominant vision. Conclusion: An Ethnological Politics of Comparison Unfortunately, relocating the spatial domain of modernization from the national to the global has not altered its central temporal dynamic. The recycling of this idea of a (now globalized) temporal dynamic sustains the slight of hand that deflects attention from what we take to be the central problematic of IR theory, namely how to uncover a politics of comparison that treats difference neither as the soon-to-be-eradicated opposite of European civilization nor as the soon-to-beassimilated prior European self. That is, a hegemonic global politics of comparison replicates the reflexes of the double movement: difference is almost preconsciously treated as simultaneous with disorder, fear, suspicion, and condescension. If so, why shouldn’t we greet the contemporary global redeployments of modernization thinking with the same derision heaped upon the earlier variant? Can’t we resist the seemingly eternal deferral of the problem of difference and instead cultivate resources supportive of an alternative, more “ethnological” politics of comparison? Fortunately, the lessons of the more recessive voices within modernization theory can also be applied in the present. While not rejecting the existence of human commonality in many respects, nor disallowing the possibility of general (if at times impermanent) agreement in various areas of human endeavor, the other voices within modernization theory suggest cultivating a sensibility or political imagination that more fully recognizes, understands, and nurtures difference. Building on Geertz’s hints above, we wish to stress the cultivation of an ethnological mode of comparison, in which the primary (though not sole) posture is toward using comparison as a source of critical self-reflection. Todorov reminds us, as we noted in our work on Léry above, that when we are more sensitive to difference knowledge is never simply of the other; it is always also
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of the self: “The very opposition between inside and outside is no longer relevant; nor does the simulacrum of the other that my description produces remain unchanged: it has become a space of possible understanding between the other and myself” (Todorov, 1995:15). Thus, Todorov calls us to an ethnological stance that establishes a “dialogue” between self and external others and among the self’s internal others (see also Ashis Nandy, 1987b:17, 55). Such a dialogue requires a heightened consciousness of the dependence of our knowledge on prior judgments (that is, “prejudice”), the relativity of our own categories, and the historical and cultural (perhaps “ethnic”) specificity of our understanding (Todorov, 1995:15). Geertz, in a more recent article (Geertz, 1986:111–12), elaborates this point and makes explicit what is only implicit in his earlier work on modernization. He calls us to draw “near to other people, engaging them, seeking to grasp them in their immediacy and difference” because diversity has the power, when engaged, to make it clear to us “at what sort of angle” we and others “stand to the world.” The power of diversity is magnified, since, as Geertz (1986:120–21) notes, “rather than being sorted into framed units, social spaces with definite edges to them, seriously disparate approaches to life are becoming scrambled together in ill-defined expanses, social spaces whose edges are unfixed, irregular, and difficult to locate.” Where “those worlds and alien turns of mind are mostly not elsewhere, but alternatives for us, hard, nearby…a certain readjustment in both our rhetorical habits and our sense of mission would seem to be called for” (Geertz, 1986:119; emphasis added). More precisely, this situation asks that we give up the immediate recourse to invidious comparisons that justify the “application of force to secure conformity to the values of those who possess the force,” without falling into a “vacuous tolerance that, engaging nothing, changes nothing” (Geertz, 1986:118). Rather, we can engage others imaginatively and “explore the character of the space between us” as a prelude to living together and separately, better and more peacefully (Geertz, 1986:118–19). We propose, then, that the idea of mixed modes can also be applied quite readily to our efforts to evaluate and reimagine the global political landscape. We take up this theme more fully in chapter 6, where we discuss the idea of multiple and overlapping sovereignties, but we can draw some preliminary conclusions at this point. When we bear in mind that cultural/political practices are always heterogeneous and complex, mixing modes and balancing competing (and perhaps irreconcilable) human goods and values, we can resist current doctrines of “containment” (of today’s cannibals, the rogue states), “democratic enlargement,” or current treatments of human rights, respect for rule of law, and good governance that construct regimes of purity and pollution. We can also reject the temptation to immediately embrace the usual options—either a world of national particularisms or a world of cosmopolitan principles and world government (or global governance, in the latest iteration). We might instead look toward appreciating arrangements of global space that welcome mixed modes. This means recognizing and protecting difference by allowing the use of
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boundaries for the protection of the multiple modes of human existence. However, we do not mean to reinstate an order of absolute sovereigns that repudiates the recognition of the overlap of self and other. Rather, a world of the mutual coexistence of multiple forms itself takes on the character of a mixed mode— neither quite international society nor a global cosmopolis. We may imagine heterogeneous (global, regional, and local) social processes and political arrangements, involving complex ways of demarcating and negotiating separate, shared, and overlapping authority (Blaney and Inayatullah, 2000; Inayatullah, 1996). In prior work, we make theoretical and institutional suggestions for alternatives to the current state of IR (Blaney and Inayatullah, 1994; Inayatullah and Blaney, 1996). Institutionally, we call for an IR based on the creation of conversations among cultures; theoretically, we call for a practice that, while taking seriously both global structures and the meanings and intentions of actors, also focuses on the actual history of cultural contact. However, as our work proceeds, we recognize ever more that the potential utility of such calls runs into opposition from powerfully entrenched prior commitments within European-derived cultures. These include a failure to recognize a historical and theoretical aversion to facing the opportunities and problems of difference; a lack of awareness that this aversion produces a cycle of theories (for example, modernization followed by neomodernization) that result in sustaining this aversion; a theoretical blind spot, that, by eliminating the possibility of difference as a potential resource, fixes difference as fundamentally productive of chaos; and the ubiquitous use and abuse of a politics of comparison that rely both on force and temporal displacement to eliminate disorder and difference. If these contentions are plausible, we can conclude that alternatives to the current institutions and theories of IR might better proceed from a fuller and more holistic understanding of difference and an ethnological understanding of the politics of comparison. Such a reformulation may allow us to uncover IR not merely as composed of the residual stuff of other social theories but rather as a necessary point of departure for all forms of global theory and practice. We see the remaining chapters in this book as efforts to sustain such a reformulation.
PART II Studies in Difference and Contemporary IR
CHAPTER 4 IPE as a Culture of Competition
Competition is taken to be the central principle of international political economy as well as being endemic to the anarchic structure of international relations (see Gilpin, 1987; and Waltz, 1959; 1979). As members of an international society, states are constituted as independent actors who must rely on their own resources and efforts to achieve their goals and purposes. This requirement of “self-help” becomes “competitive self-help” when the goals and purposes of states become incompatible. If, as we are often told, states under anarchy are compelled to define important goals in terms of gains relative to others, then competition assumes a prominent and defining role in international life. This characterization is only bolstered when we consider that states are embedded within a capitalist global division of labor. Although the expansive and integrative logic of capitalism is incorporating the globe into a single economic space, a genuinely world economy, political boundaries continue to demarcate this singular space into national units, in part because these boundaries operate as distributive devices. States compete for market shares for their firms and regions in the world market and they promote and attract the development of technologically advanced and high-profit firms and industries within their boundaries (Strange, 1992; Reich, 1991; Prestowitz, 1994; Pellegrin, 2000). Whether we see the state as guarantor of the economic welfare and security of its citizenry or as concerned primarily with enhancing its own capacities, competition retains its force as a prominent feature of international society. This does not mean that competition among states exhausts the character of international social life. While alternative practices, involving multilateral cooperation, transnational movements, local resistance, and regional and global governance, are increasingly widespread, nevertheless there is a tendency among the dominant strains of IR to understand these only against the backdrop of competitive relations (Keohane and Nye, 1977; Haas, 1990; Buzan, 1991; Goldstein and Keohane, 1993; Katzenstein, 1996; Waltz, 1999; Keohane, 2001).1 Very few within the mainstream of IPE would question that “competition” remains a core concept in the social theory of IR.
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The field treats competition as a given, thereby indicating the hold that a culture of competition has on our imagination. In this chapter we begin to redress this absence of theory by arguing that competition should be seen as part of a meaningful scheme—as a social practice that juxtaposes certain values and principles while centering a certain type of self and framing its relations with others. More specifically, we propose that IPE is a particular cultural form characterized by an ongoing attempt to mediate the opposition between the principles of equality and social hierarchy and between identity and difference through the staging of competitions. On the one hand, the modern practice of competition constructs actors as formally equal and independent competitors in contradistinction to a model of a premodern world with relatively fixed and ascribed status hierarchies. On the other hand, such competitive practices still incorporate social hierarchy. They continue to join this formal status of equality to a hierarchy that, instead of being ascribed, is now revealed within a social process of staging competitions. Thus, the hierarchies uncovered in modern competitive practices betray an uneasy tension expressing both the equality of actors and as the substantive denial of that equality. Given the long and hallowed history of economism within IR (Ashley, 1983; Inayatullah and Blaney, 1997), we are aware that embedding the structures and processes of international political economy in the “cultural” remains controversial, despite the increasing concern with cultural questions within IR (Walker, 1990; Rengger, 1992b; Huntington, 1993; Katzenstein, 1996; Lapid and Kratochwil, 1996; Jahn, 2000). Although culture has arrived as a topic of conversation, its status as a relevant category within IR/IPE theory remains unclear. Though establishing culture as indispensable to IR/IPE is a task beyond the ambitions of this chapter, if not this book,2 we hope that the plausibility of our account of the logic of IPE as a culture of competition and a competitive hierarchy of cultures moves theory in the direction of a cultural IR/IPE, a topic we pursue more fully in our discussion of Karl Polanyi’s work in the following chapter. Our purpose in this chapter is to redescribe IPE as a culture of competition in order to make a set of theoretical, political, and ethical claims about the antinomies of competition and the possibilities beyond a culture of competition. We organize our discussion into three parts. The first section sketches out the structure of meanings and purposes that define the cultural logic of competition. In a first subsection, we emphasize the way a peculiar juxtaposition of the principles of formal equality and competitively revealed social hierarchy is central to the social practice and purposes of competition. We note that a culture of competition appears to be an attempt to wed the two polarities of Todorov’s “double movement”—joining equality and sameness with difference and hierarchy. We draw on numerous theorists and analysts, especially the work of Friedrich Hayek, in developing an account of this cultural logic. Although we challenge Hayek’s political conclusions (as can be seen in the second half of this section and in the conclusion), we find him invaluable as an “informant” about a
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culture of competition. In a second subsection, we show how Adam Smith and Hayek formulate difference in largely parallel formulations. Both treat difference —in labor and knowledge, respectively—as an opportunity as well as a problem to be resolved by a modern society. However, the possibility that difference might offer alternatives to a culture of competition is foreclosed by limiting modern society to an order of ontologically separate and individualized persons. The processes of exchange and competition thereby become the only possible and appropriate resolution of the problems created by difference. In the second section, we demonstrate that the interweaving of the logics of sovereignty and the capitalist global division of labor within the theory and practice of an international society likewise counterpoises principles of formal equality and revealed hierarchy. International social life is constituted as a culture of competition and simultaneously as a competition and hierarchy of cultures that works to foreclose any alternative visions of social life. Finally, we conclude that the sense of “natural” inferiority and superiority attached to formally equal individuals is the central social contradiction of a culture of competition. Highlighting this contradiction focuses our attention on the failure of modern society to come to grips with the transition from traditional hierarchy to modern equality—a confusion that drives the modern social actor to construct the other as ripe for subordination and exploitation. We close by reinterpreting competition as a spur to the pursuit of excellence internal to the self but catalyzed through contact with others. The Meaningful Structure of Competition In the introduction to this book, we argue that bringing the language of “culture” into IR draws our attention to the construction and maintenance of meaningful and purposive schemes—forms of life—as a common, yet always multiple human project. We can, thereby, begin to think about what it would mean to construct IPE as a culture of competition. First and foremost, it becomes clear that competition is not a fact of nature.3 Rather, social practices involve a particular structuring of meaning and purpose that give competition its central role within the cultural logic of modern society. The idea that the social world is a world of meaning and purpose does not entail that agents acting on the basis of a particular set of meanings and purposes will necessarily achieve their intended results. Therefore, in our account of competition, we do not focus so much on possible agents of competition—states, multinational corporations, producers of knowledge, and so on. If we point to a source that is shaping and perpetuating our current practice of competition, it is the deep confusion about the meanings and purposes that lies at the heart of a modern culture of competition. More precisely, we point to our4 willingness and/or compulsion to act out a powerful confusion where the very pursuit of equality generates social hierarchy. Further, we point out that the identity of modern individuals as “competitors” treats their socially constructed difference as logically prior to society so that social
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inequality is seen as normal and natural. The confusions of meaning and purpose intrinsic to the practice of competition appear in our reading, then, as analogous to a structural constraint. We wish to stress, though, that we conceive such a structure as constitutive—as both constraining and enabling of a certain kind of agency and individuality.5 Our point of departure, then, is that competition is not a fact of nature, but a social practice.6 In the two parts of this section, we will sketch out the meaningful and purposeful structure of competition in modern social life. Although our desire to expose the antinomies of this cultural logic is quite foreign to Friedrich Hayek’s or Adam Smith’s aims, their voices loom large in our account because they, individually and read in tandem, stand as insightful explorations (and defenses) of the meaning and purpose of competition. Indeed, their account of the cultural logic of competition is mostly supported by others who have been compelled to lay out that logic as a prelude to apology or critique. Hierarchy Naturalized In our age competition presumes and expresses the formal equality of the individuals brought into competition. At the same time, competitive situations assume and establish a ranking (or hierarchy) of achievement and value— winners and losers, gold, silver, and bronze, top-ten lists, and so on. Can these opposing principles be reconciled? They can. However, as we shall see, the reconciliation reproduces the impulses of the double movement (Todorov, 1984). Within the cultural logic of competition, hierarchy is thought not to violate the formal equality of individuals when that inequality is seen to be revealed instead of being created by or within a social process. How a culture of competition tries to join formal equality and revealed hierarchy requires examination. Friedrich Hayek (1979:67–68) helps us understand this logic where he describes competition as a kind of experiment, as a “discovery procedure.” The staging of competitions both assumes and is a means of discovering individual differences; that is, competitions require that individuals adopt competitive strategies to mobilize and display their particular quality and quantity of ability, skill, and effort. Where a ranking is established in relation to individual efforts and achievements, the individual’s position in the hierarchy is taken as a sign of the self’s merit and value relative to others,7 although we cannot assume, as we shall see, a perfect correspondence between merit and rewards due to the contingencies of human interaction (Hayek, 1976:72–78, 115; Knight, 1936:56). In a modern society, the individual establishes his or her value by comparison with others—a comparison made possible by the staging of competitions (Lane, 1991:221). However, competition is not to be seen as the ultimate source of social hierarchies. The true origins of modern inequality are preexisting differences among individuals. As Hayek explains, the rankings produced by competition merely reflect “one of the most distinctive facts about the human species”—“the
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boundless variety of human nature” and “the wide range of differences in individual capacities and potentialities.” Indeed, these differences are treated as logically prior to the competition itself. A competition appears, then, as a set of rules designed to reveal what is given by nature but remains latent.8 There is ambiguity here. The idea of the presocial character of differences seems to undermine the earlier claim that the social status produced by staging competitions is socially determined. While the presociality of individual differences certainly exists in some tension with the idea of the social character of competition, such a tension is partially diminished due to what occurs within the competitive process. Within this process individuals may be spurred to enhance their combination of skills and effort, perhaps adopting the methods of successful competitors as models—the “demonstration effect.” In addition, because competitions are ongoing throughout life, the possibility of social mobility across successive competitions becomes real. Competition partially retains its character as a social process because the competitive process works to uncover and stimulate the “development” or display of intrinsic differences among individuals (Hayek, 1960: chapter 6; the quoted phrases are from 86). We will return to this ambiguity shortly. Hayek also embraces competition because it promotes individual liberty. The market, as a discovery procedure, embodies and expresses the status of competitors as equally individual and independent (albeit needy9) selves. Competitors come to the market with a right to property, as property owners and “freely contracting individuals” (Knight, 1936:49). For Hayek (1976:107), then, the market is both an expression of and the unintended outcome of the particular, independent, and voluntary actions of free and equal individuals.10 Hayek further values the discovery procedure employed by the market because it produces important social goods. The system of rewards organized by the market not only unleashes human productive efforts, as we have noted, but also directs those efforts to producing the things needed by others, fostering a situation of economic interdependence. The market exposes less productive efforts while validating more productive ones, thereby providing models of effective competitive strategies and generating greater wealth at the cost of fewer resources and efforts. As Hayek explains, the competitions staged in the market are valuable because they generate wealth and improve the chances that each individual will have his or her “separate and incommensurable ends” met.11 In this way, the market realizes certain values and produces a particular version of the good society. In sum, the culture of competition generates a wealthy society via competitive mechanisms that endorse, support, and produce selves that are independent, formally equal, and free. Given these advantages, the fact that this regime also produces unequal rewards seems an acceptable cost. The drawback of accepting such a formulation of the benefits and costs is that it hides a deeper problem, namely, that Hayek’s combining of equality and inequality rests upon opposing ontological foundations. Within a culture of competition, formal equality is socially constituted and explicitly endorsed as an
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intrinsically necessary social value of market society. Inequality, however, is social only to the degree that competitions express, reveal, and realize differences. The origins of these differences are left unconnected to any social processes and are produced, ultimately, by nature. These nature-given differences are then translated by the market into inequality and hierarchy. Two consequences result from employing this mixed ontology. Because Hayek establishes that in a culture of competition hierarchy has both natural and social components, critics can find difficulty in challenging the injustice of hierarchies when those hierarchies can be shown to result from social rules of competition. At most, we can question specific rankings based on either the inadequacy of particular sets of rules to perform the task of ranking (a poorly designed experiment) or on violations of adequate rules (cheating) or because the rules fail to recognize the formal equality of the competitors (discrimination) (Hayek, 1976:71, 123–24; see also Nozick, 1975:150–82). In a culture of competition we are led to consider hierarchy and hierarchies as beyond ethical concern, since they are treated as given and thereby not amenable to human determination. Social inequality is thereby naturalized and depoliticized. The second result of this mixed ontology is that winners and losers can claim different parts of the mixture. While reveling in what they deem as their justly deserved results, winners can point to what, in principle, are fair processes of social competition. Meanwhile, losers, rather than accepting the result can instead intuit that competitive processes, even when fair, manage only to translate, presocial, nature-given characteristics of individuals. This powerful political clash will persist because the deeper source of its tension remains unexplored, depriving the disputing parties of impetus to transform the social order (Kramnick, 1981). We can connect this formulation to the double movement. Equality is translated as a formal legal status that submerges the differences between actors. Though submerged, differences cannot be ignored; they surface as an unaccounted for prior substance which the market reveals as the basis for inequality. The two sides of the double movement—equality/sameness and difference/inferiority—are thus weakly stitched together in a culture of competition. The idea that difference might not be translated into rankings of higher and lower but might, instead, be seen to offer an alternative vision of social life is precluded by treating difference as an individualized and pre-social trait in relation to market society. This naturalization of inequality assures that differences can have little political and ethical relevance in the present, except as examples of unproductive and outmoded ways of being and doing. That is, the status of formal equality/sameness underpins the creation of the future out of the present; differences are seen as an underlying reality revealed in the future as inequality or as residues of past failures to compete.
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Differences in the Competitive Process Though this formulation of the antinomy of formal equality and substantive social hierarchy captures something central to the logic of a culture of competition, it does not fully explore the role of differences in a market society. To do so requires a closer look at the ideas of a division of labor and a division of knowledge. We turn to Hayek and Adam Smith in order to tease out their understandings of the problem of difference. They construct difference as a modern problem—a problem resolved only by market competition. In the initial chapter of his 1776 Wealth of Nations, Smith (1976: book I, chapter 1) imagines the Amerindian “savage” as a jack-of-all-trades. In body and mind, the “savage” bears the skills and knowledge of a hunter, cook, carpenter, clothier, and so on. The distinction between individual “savages,” therefore, is merely formal—they differ only in that each occupies a different body and a different space. In a “civilized” society—one in which, as Smith emphasizes, the division of labor has “thoroughly” taken place—each individual carries different and specialized skills: he12 is a carpenter but not a smith; or a clothier but not a potter; or a gunsmith but not a baker. The “civilized” individual has specific skills and bears only particular knowledge. This specialized difference in skill is a source of wealth. Note the change in tone we mentioned at the end of chapter 2, namely that difference might be treated as a resource instead of an unconvertible problem. However, these differences in labor, while the source of wealth, also come to be the problem a “civilized” society must resolve. The question for Smith is how can the different specialties of labor come to be productive for the society as a whole? That is, given that each individual specializes only in a particular skill, how does each individual provision all of his or her needs? His “solution” is to assert that market exchange operates so that commodities circulate to all laborers and so that everyone’s needs are adequately provisioned. How Smith arrives at this conclusion requires some elaboration. Smith begins the Wealth of Nations by comparing two abstract nations. The project is to explain why one is poor and the other affluent. He focuses on the character and quality of labor in the two nations. If labor is divided—that is, if there is a functional differentiation of tasks and specialization within the community—wealth will be produced. If no such differentiation occurs and each person must carry out all tasks individually, this “unity” or “sameness” of labor results in poverty. To illustrate the wealth-producing power of the division of labor, Smith (1976:8–9) uses the famous pin-factory example at the beginning of book I, chapter 1. Where each workman performs all the operations involved in the manufacture of pins, Smith observes that he “could scarce, perhaps with his utmost industry, make one pin in a day, and certainly could not make twenty.” But where the process of pin making “is divided into a number of branches,” perhaps as many as “about eighteen distinct operations” in Smith’s account, the individual can produce anywhere from two hundred to eight hundred times as
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many pins.13 The lesson is clear: the division of labor associated with industrial production is the route to affluence and a “civilized” society. Within “civilized” society, we find a similarly salutary lesson about market exchange. Where the market operates, the wealth of society finds its way into the hands of all workers. In this way, the differences of labor are brought together to create a wealthy society and meet the needs of all the different and specialized laborers. As Smith explains, It is the great multiplication of the productions of all the different arts, in consequence of the division of labor, which occasions in a well-governed society, that universal opulence which extends itself to the lowest ranks of the people. Every workman has a great quantity of his own work to dispose of beyond what he himself has occasion for; and every other workman being exactly in the same situation, he is enabled to exchange a great quantity of his own goods for a great quantity, or, what comes to the same thing, for the price of a great quantity of theirs. He supplies them abundantly with what they have occasion for, and they accommodate him as amply with what he has occasion for, and a general plenty diffuses itself through all the different ranks of society. (Smith, 1976:15; emphasis added) However, there is something quite peculiar about this account of the diffusion of “universal opulence.” Smith seems to regard the workers as independent producers, who, owning their own means of production, have surplus to exchange. Indeed, it is not until book II of Wealth of Nations that Smith reveals the social relations involved in this example. There we find that laborers work at the pin factory because they have no other property but their labor-power to sell; they earn their wages performing specialized tasks within a functionally differentiated structure that is controlled by an owner of stock (or a capitalist). Wages are set in a contract between those whose only property is their labor-power and those who also own capital, usually to the advantage of the latter. The neglect of social relations in the first chapter allows Smith to think of workers within the factory as independent producers and not as wage earners selling their labor-power to capitalists; he then presents the distributional consequences of the division of labor as a process of bartering among independent producers rather than consumption by wage laborers. Contrary to the long passage above, the barter of the surplus production of independent individuals and the spending of wages for subsistence by wage-laborers do not “come to the same thing.”14 A general plenty of wealth naturally diffuses itself to all members of society only because Smith ignores the actual social conditions of the individuals in the factory in the first chapter of the Wealth of Nations. The parts that were functionally different and dependent on the contract with the capitalist suddenly become equal and independent—not only do they own their own means of production but they also exchange surpluses.
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To summarize, by grafting the requirements of a technical division of labor (that is, the pin factory) with those of a social division of labor composed of independent actors, Smith is able to arrive at the “trickle-down” principle of wealth acquisition. He is able to “solve” the problem of how different skills in individuals come to serve the general good in society by making two distinct moves. First, the creation of wealth is the result of differences between laborers, as shown in the pin factory example; and second, the distribution of that wealth to the “different ranks of society” is the result of exchanges between independent producers. The numerous exchanges involved, while appearing to be capricious processes, are actually governed by the salutary laws of political economy. These exchanges bridge the difference between individuals, allowing each to be a resource for others. Others’ differences serve, then, as the source of each individual’s wealth and the basis of a wealthy society. If Smith’s response to difference moves in a laudable direction by understanding difference as an opportunity for a modern society instead of simply a danger that must be erased, this recognition is limited and has a darker side. Like Hayek, Smith tenuously weds the formal equality of actors with substantive inequality. Sustaining this juxtaposition of equality/sameness and difference/inequality depends on an act of “splitting” (see Benjamin, 1988), though Smith’s account is relatively ambiguous, casting doubt on the very polarity he introduces. More precisely, Smith opposes the independent individual of civilized society to the social being of primitive society but simultaneously muddles the status of laborers in a market society. Independent individuals are translated into independent producers at certain points, but revealed as immersed in a system of social relations or social structures at other points. We need to examine this problem more closely. On the one hand, for Smith the modern man is individualized and separated by the achievement of the division of labor. In direct opposition to the “savage” who is completely subsumed by the group, the modern man stands independently of the group and differentiated from every other individual by his specific set of skills. This polarity—the splitting into the purely group-being of the “savage” and the purely independent and individualized actor of modern, “civilized” society—is crucial for Smith.15 By purifying modern individuals of their social being, Smith obscures the social relationships and social structures involved in production. Once the social relations of production are obscured, the modern individual appears as an independent producer. And only by seeing the distribution of gains as the result of a bargaining process among independent producers can he derive the salutary conclusion that the general opulence will trickle down. Thus, it is the purification of the opposition between the social “savage” and the “civilized” individual that leads Smith to translate the separation and individualization of labor into the independence of producers, making possible his resolution of the problem of divided and different labors as beneficial to all.
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On the other hand, though this polarity between the “savage” and the “civilized” and the associated developmental schema are central to the presentation of the Wealth of Nations (see our discussion in chapter 2), Smith does not consistently sustain this distinction in its purest form. With the introduction of the social relations of the factory in book II, we find laborers occupying a position that contains some of each side of the polarity. The “free” laborer is not bound to land or master, yet in actual social condition he is compelled, by lack of other means, to contract to sell his labor-power to the capitalist. That is, this status shares something of the modern ideal of the free and independent individual, rewarded for individual effort, and, like the “savage,” dependence and subordination to a larger social system.16 More than a simple confusion, this splitting and grafting at once promises the relative equality of a diffusion of the “general plenty” and sanctifies the inequality of society divided by a market-produced status hierarchy. Hayek’s formulation is similar to Smith’s, but he shifts the emphasis from labor to knowledge. If for Smith what constitutes the wealth of nations is “the division of labor,” then for Hayek that wealth is constituted by “the division of knowledge.” We have already seen in Smith that a “primitive” or premodern society is characterized not by a division but by a unity or sameness of labor. Accordingly, Hayek characterizes primitive society as similarly suffering from a uniformity of knowledge: only in small groups of primitive society can collaboration between the members rest largely on the circumstance that at any one moment they will know more or less the same particular circumstances. Some wise men may be better at interpreting the immediately perceived circumstance or at remembering things in remote places unknown to the others. But the concrete events which the individuals encounter in their daily pursuits will be very much the same for all, and they will act together because the events they know and the objectives at which they aim are more or less the same. (Hayek, 1973:13–14; emphasis added) By contrast, knowledge in civilized society—what Hayek calls the “Great or Open Society”—is specialized: The situation is wholly different in the Great or Open Society where millions of men interact and where civilization as we know it has developed. Economics has long stressed the “division of labor” which such a situation involves. But it has had much less stress on the fragmentation of knowledge, on the fact that each member of society can have only a small fraction of the knowledge possessed by all, and that each is therefore ignorant of most of the facts on which the working of society rests. Yet it is the utilization of much more knowledge than anyone can possess, and therefore the fact that each moves within a coherent structure most of
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whose determinants are unknown to him, that constitutes the distinctive feature of advanced civilizations. (Hayek, 1973:14) As with Smith, and as should be familiar from earlier chapters, a sharp distinction is drawn between the modern and the primitive. We discuss Hayek’s use of this distinction more fully below. Though Hayek’s preferences for “advanced civilization” are clear, he, like Smith, recognizes that this division or difference of knowledge constitutes the central problem to be resolved by modern societies. It is only when knowledge can be brought together that it is useful; knowledge is unprofitable when it “exists only dispersed as the separate, partial and sometimes conflicting beliefs of all men” (Hayek, 1960:25). As Hayek (1960:26; see also 1973:16; and 1979: 68) puts it, “The more civilized we become, the more relatively ignorant must each individual be of the facts on which the working of his civilization depends. The very division of knowledge increases the necessary ignorance of the individual of most of this knowledge.” However, in contrast to Smith, Hayek is less concerned with defending a trickle-down idea as part of the solution to the problem posed by differences of knowledge. If Smith overcomes the division of labors with the salutary laws of polititical economy, Hayek overcomes the problem of the division of knowledge with competition. To build on the previous section, the role of competition as a “discovery procedure” is crucial because we have no other acceptable means to identify which knowledge possessed by individuals is valuable: “It is because every individual knows so little and, in particular, because we rarely know which of us knows best that we trust the independent and competitive efforts of many to induce the emergence of what we shall want when we see it” (Hayek, 1960:29; emphasis added). The key word in this quotation is best—a term through which Hayek introduces an explicit social hierarchy within modern society. Hayek is arguing that while it is true that each difference contains some part of knowledge, it is not the case that we need the knowledge of each equally. Some carry knowledge that is better than what others hold. Indeed, those who know what is best for society as a whole should lead: a progressive society, while it relies on [a] process of learning and imitation, recognizes the desires it creates only as a spur to further effort. It does not guarantee the results to everyone. It disregards the pain of unfulfilled desire aroused by the example of others. It appears cruel because it increases the desire of all in proportion as it increases its gifts to some. Yet so long as it remains a progressive society, some must lead and the rest must follow. (Hayek, 1960: 44–45) The problem is to understand how we can come to know this difference between leaders and followers. The solution comes, of course, through competitions staged in the market. Competition reveals the relative worth of different
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individualized knowledge and thereby, Hayek hopes and believes, produces progress.17 It must be the “progress” itself that justifies competition, because, as we noted above, Hayek does not pretend that the market produces rewards that accurately reflect individual merit. Smith and Hayek seem joined in their view that the problem of difference in a modern society—be it difference of labor or knowledge—is best and readily resolved by the operation of the market. They also share the impulse to purify the distinction between the primitive and modern. For Hayek, his very statement of the problem of difference depends on the assumption that all knowledge is individual and separate. The problem would be less stark, or of a much different character, if knowledge within modern society was also partly communally shared—either as something tacit, bequeathed by language, tradition, and lore, or as a kind of collective subconscious. Hayek (1960:45–45) rejects this possibility: “Knowledge exists only as the knowledge of individuals. It is not much better than a metaphor to speak of the knowledge of society as a whole. The sum of the knowledge of all the individuals exists nowhere as an integrated whole.” In this assertion, Hayek makes his commitment to ontological individualism abundantly clear. Any dialectical or mutually constitutive relationship between parts and wholes is ruled out. The parts exist only as separate, independent entities; the whole is not allowed to be the context within which the part emerges and is sustained. Almost silently, Hayek inserts an exclusion of any middle ground that might recognize the role of both parts and wholes. A crucial purpose is achieved with this exclusionary move. Though mostly implicit, this exclusion of the middle operates to enforce the purity of the distinction between the modern and the “primitive.” This duality of modern and “primitive” constructs two options: either knowledge is a whole that subsumes the individual, as in “primitive” society, or knowledge is divided among individuals, with no residue of the social. With this act of splitting, Hayek creates the logical form onto which he attaches another polarity—between an unfree and a free society. In this way, the historically external other of the “primitive” and the historically internal others of modern “civilization”—visions or practices that assume strong solidarity or the overlapping of selves (for example, socialism and mysticism)—are fused analytically as enemies of the unique features of the “Great or Open Society.” Hayek argues, then, that any action to bridge the problem of difference that involves political authority in the name of society is utterly destructive of the project of individual liberty (Hayek, 1944). Only ontologically separate individuals, through their own volition, must build bridges toward the knowledge of others. As we have seen, certain processes alone facilitate this bridging: exchange among freely contracting parties and the staging of competitions. Hayek thus limits us to two, polar options as resolutions of the problem of the division of knowledge. Either the dispersion of knowledge is reintegrated by the submission of the individual to the social whole—the “road to serfdom”—or the process of overcoming division and separateness is achieved via the free and voluntary actions of individuals in the
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market.18 To find space in the middle would be to cast doubt on Hayek’s claim that the market provides a uniquely appropriate and desirable solution. Part of our task here is to begin to undo this exclusion.19 Hayek seems to imply that giving any ground to the notion of the “social” in a modern society is to commit a category mistake. Hayek cannot (or will not) acknowledge the weight of social structure, as Smith is led to do in book II of Wealth of Nations. Where the social relations of production shape the status and actions of economic actors so that specialized laborers confront owners of stock, the idea of an ontologically separate individual verges on myth, if not deception. Our point is not to dismiss completely the equality and freedom possible in modern society. Rather, we wish to highlight that, refusing the polarity that Hayek enforces and thereby recognizing the weight of the social, it is no longer possible to innocently see social hierarchy as an ontological prior revealed through the staging of competitions. Nor is it possible to view inequality simply as a natural result of the independent and voluntary actions of individuals. Inequality instead could be seen as one of the social conditions of modern individuality and the social basis for the staging of competitions in a market. The equality and freedom of the individual in modern society appear to be circumscribed and constitutively interwoven with social inequality. The competitions staged in the market lose their sacrosanct character—as beyond political question—and we can begin a process of weighing their strengths and weaknesses and the proper extent of their use. This stricture on the “social” also works to rid our political imagination of any alternative to a market society. The individualization of knowledge is used overtly as a weapon against the pretensions of philosophers or political theorists who claim to imagine a better society. Hayek (1960:30) writes, All political theories assume, of course, that most individuals are very ignorant. Those who plead for liberty differ from the rest in that they include among the ignorant themselves as well as the wisest. Compared with the totality of knowledge which is continually utilized in the evolution of a dynamic civilization, the difference between the wisest and that which the most ignorant can deliberately employ is comparatively insignificant. But Hayek’s wielding of this weapon produces much collateral damage, leaving us with no resources for imagining different forms of life. Where knowledge is strictly individual, groups cannot share identities and traditions, providing cultural values and visions that inform distinctive social practices, except as organized competitions. It also becomes less than clear how individuals can know how to “go on” in social life without having acquired (at least tacit) social knowledge (Wittgenstein, 1958:151, 179; Giddens, 1979:5). If, as we argued in the introduction, our capacity to respond critically to social life depends on a backdrop of at least some common values and meanings, the social critic is left mute as an isolated individual. The possibility of a dialogue among social
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criticisms is equally disabled, for how can our knowledge of and response to suffering be anything but an individual trait? Cosuffering and the overlap of self and other are ruled out by definition. And, finally, by treating all knowledge as the possession of relatively ignorant individuals, Hayek eliminates any other (both external and within) that might serve as a critical mirror for a market society. Since the end result of human progress is to transform all “primitive” societies into “civilization” (and all “savages” into modern men), Hayek’s treatment of such differences as a significant starting point works to exclude the alternatives these others pose as continuous resources for critical reflection. Having thereby cleansed the modern of contamination by the primitive, the other is nothing but a collection of independent individuals who, being uniformly ignorant of the design of any society, can offer us only a reflection of our own ignorance. All wisdom is placed in the workings of the market. For its decisions, there is no recourse but an appeal to heaven. Both Smith and Hayek take stances that contain a strong commitment to the progressive achievements attained by the exploitation of difference. Unlike the sixteenth-and seventeenth-century interpreters of the Bible, faced with the “discovery” of the New World and unfamiliar peoples, Smith and Hayek make a significant bow to the importance and power of difference. Nevertheless, each theorist’s stance toward difference also contains the powerful tension we identified earlier: the tension between equality and hierarchy is mediated only by grafting the opposing poles of the double movement. Equality as legal sameness operates to produce and justify a translation of difference into relations of inferiority and superiority. Sustaining this tension requires a kind of deception that we have discussed at some length. Social hierarchy must be latently present in the individuals, revealed by the staging of competitions. Inequality cannot be allowed to be seen as primarily a social fact—the consequence of the creation of market society itself. The voluntary actions of individuals must be made the cause of social inequality, erasing from view the notion that inequality is a condition of the status of free and formally equal individuality. And all this is justified by reference to the production of the social good of a wealthy society. Quite strikingly and interestingly, both Smith and Hayek admit that something like this “deception” operates at the heart of a capitalist society. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith (1979:183) acknowledges that the power and wealth created by the division of labor should be considered quite “contemptible and trifling”: “Power and riches appear then to be, what they are, enormous and operose machines contrived to produce a few trifling conveniencies…[that] keep off the summer shower, not the winter storm, but leave him always as much, and sometimes more exposed than before, to anxiety, to fear, and to sorrow; to diseases, to danger, and to death” (Adam Smith, 1979:182–83). Yet few are able to perceive this deception created by wealth, because such a vision requires a facility with abstraction and philosophy. Adam Smith (1979:183–84) regards this
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failure of popular vision with a bitter irony, for without it “civilization” could neither be created nor advanced: It is this deception which rouses and keeps in continual motion the industry of mankind. It is this which first prompted them to cultivate the ground, to build houses, to found cities and commonwealths, and to invent and improve all the sciences and arts, which ennoble and embellish human life; which have entirely changed the whole face of the globe, have turned rude forests of nature into agreeable and fertile plains and made the track less and barren ocean a new fund of subsistence, and the great high road of communication to the different nations of the earth. This deception, combined with the “invisible hand,” leads the rich to create “civilization” not just on behalf of themselves, but to the benefit of society as a whole. Hayek’s proviso about a market society involves a similar functional deception. If Smith pessimistically notes a lack of connection between wealth and welfare, Hayek locates a similar break between individual effort and reward: It certainly is important in the market order (or free enterprise society, misleadingly called “capitalism”) that the individuals believe that their well being depends primarily on their own efforts and decisions. Indeed, few circumstances will do more to make a person energetic and efficient than the belief that it depends chiefly on him whether he will reach the goals he has set himself…. But it leads no doubt also to an exaggerated confidence in the truth of this generalization which to those who regard themselves (and perhaps are) equally able but have failed must appear as a bitter and severe provocation…. It is therefore a real dilemma to what extent we ought to encourage in the young the belief that when they really try they will succeed, or should rather emphasize that inevitably some unworthy will succeed and some worthy will fail—whether we ought to allow the view of those groups to prevail with whom the over-confidence in the appropriate reward of the able and the industrious is strong and who in consequence will do much that benefits the rest, and whether without such partly erroneous beliefs the large numbers will tolerate actual differences in rewards which will be based only partly on achievement and partly on mere chance. (Hayek, 1976: 74; emphasis added; see also 1960: 44–47). One is left to wonder about “mere chance”—the circumstances that, while beyond individual control, bear quite a weight in shaping social outcomes. It may be that one is simply in the wrong place at the wrong time—random factors that bear no explanation. Or it may be that being in the wrong place at the wrong time says much about individuals’ relative command of information and geographical
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mobility. And these are less a matter of luck than of social position and prior command of wealth. Perhaps the real dilemma is to decide if we should discourage those who have little prospect for chance smiling upon them by disabusing them of their illusions.20 As argued throughout this book, for much of European cosmological inquiry into the one and the many supports the conclusion that the problem is difference and the solution is unity. Smith and Hayek, by contrast, highlight the productive power of difference, understanding that difference can act as a resource for others. Though they tend to obscure the tensions between equality and social hierarchy that their vision entails, they stress that a division of labor/knowledge produced by differences is instrumental in promoting “civilization.” They do recognize, however, that the productivity, power, and wealth of this “civilization” come at some cost. There is no guarantee that wealth will satisfy deeper yearnings. Nor does one’s labor/knowledge directly translate into individual reward. Maintaining such fictive linkages, however, are necessary deceptions in the folktales and lore of a culture of competition. IPE as a Culture of Competition The logic of competition seems also to be a central feature of the culture of international life. Pursuing this description of IPE allows us to highlight the way the interweaving of the logics of sovereignty and global capitalism reproduce the antinomies of a culture of competition. Sovereignty promises the realization of the equality and independence of political communities in a society of states, but this is juxtaposed with the hierarchical orderings of a capitalist global division of labor revealed in the competitions staged in a world market. Together these interwoven practices form the “constitutive horizon” (Walker, 1993:9) of international social life as a culture of competition. The idea of sovereignty—the independence of states and the absence of a supreme political authority21—conjures up for most international relations theorists the image of a war-filled “state of nature,” billiard-ball states, and the anarchy problematic (Ashley, 1988). But ironically, and despite protests of the eternal problem of anarchy, this “state of nature” was “founded.” We share Cornelia Navari’s (1978:119) concern: is not there something odd about the “state of nature” which constitutes international relations—namely, the fact that it did not always exist? The fact that it was an established state of nature which emerged out of something that went before…[?] And indeed the state of nature did have to be founded. It was scarcely natural to the men of the time that social organization be cut off from external authority, formed into billiard balls and the space between emptied. The notion of the state as a billiard ball is a convention; it was instituted. That condition of affairs is maintained by other conventions,
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such as non-intervention and recognition which were also instituted. To say simply that the space between is “empty” is not true. It is “empty” in the sense that for certain purposes the state is a billiard ball. But the space is full of conventions which maintain that image. It is also full of the convention that societies must become states for certain purposes. As this makes clear and as is crucial to Hedley Bull’s distinction between “system” and “society,” a society of states is more than merely a pattern of interaction among otherwise isolated political communities (Bull, 1966; 1977: chapter 1; Watson, 1987; 1992). Rather, a society of states is a set of historically constructed social practices stabilized by and made meaningful in terms of a more or less common form of (international) social life. In terms closer to Bull’s, a society of states requires that there be a set of recognized norms and principles, of common values and purposes, which give shape and meaning to the interactions among states and give the society its value and meaning to the participants. Thus, a society of states is a culture in that it stands as a specific way of assigning meaning and value, a specific way of organizing international social life such that states are constituted and valued as billiard balls.22 To be more precise, the principle of sovereignty is understood as the culmination of resistance to the hierarchical social order of Christendom, the idea that outside forces (God, pope, emperor) determine the life of each “community,” weaving them into a single “Christian Commonwealth” (Gross, 1968:54). The establishment of a society of sovereign states gave force to the idea that final authority should rest within each independent community, that each community is in this sense self-determining. The idea is that each political community should be governed by rules, norms, goals, and purposes that belong to it in some strong sense, that express the “values and visions” implicit in the community’s conception of the good life (Walzer, 1980; see also Jackson, 1990a). Ideas of national, popular, or territorial self-determination are all versions of this idea implicit in sovereignty (Tamir, 1991; Buchanan, 1992).23 The principles of the equality of states and the obligation of tolerance appear as corollaries of sovereignty and community self-determination. Leo Gross (1968: 54, 59–60) explains that the principles of equality and the coexistence of separate political communities were made central to the society of states: “In the political field, [the Peace of Westphalia] marked man’s abandonment of the idea of a hierarchical structure of society and his option for a new system characterized by the coexistence of a multiplicity of states, each sovereign within its territory, equal to one another and free from any external earthly authority.” And “[i]t is this conception of an international society embracing, on a footing of equality, the entire human race irrespective of religion and form of government which is usually said to have triumphed in the seventeenth century over the medieval conception of a more restricted Christian society organized hierarchically, that is, on the basis of inequality.”
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In principle at least—and we have suggested the limits of such tolerance and equality in chapters 1 and 2—in international society each political community is recognized as a sovereign equal, possessing the same rights and duties. This equality of status implies a duty of each political community to respect the sovereignty of others (Hinsley, 1986:258; Wight, 1977:135), to allow different versions of the good life to be played out—mostly free from unwanted interference—behind the protection of sovereign boundaries. Of course, various forms and degrees of unwanted intrusions continue to occur, but the principle of sovereignty allows us to identify these as “interventions” (see Weber, 1992) and, to the extent that sovereignty directs state action, the principle allows a relatively safe place in which a community’s vision of itself can be implemented. It is in this sense that the principles of equality and tolerance of difference are constitutive of and made manifest in a society of states. We must stress again that in an international society states are treated as formally equal and independent sovereigns because of their presumed value as sites or receptacles for the realization of the particular values and traditions of peoples. That values and traditions or, to put it crudely, “cultures” neatly map onto states or that states can adequately represent or contain cultures remain very problematic ideas and are sources of some dissatisfaction with sovereignty. We took note of this initially, where we suggested the cultural and ethical “complexity” of global social life. Yet, in international society “nation-ness” remains “the most universally legitimate value.” In fact, the force of the logic of sovereignty compels that forms of life be “imagined” primarily as political communities (bounded in relation to others and equally sovereign as states), as nascent states, or as relatively autonomous actors within multination states (Anderson, 1983; see also Anthony Smith, 1979; and Walzer, 1980; and 1994). Thus, whatever the limits of the state as a container of the “values and visions” of a political community within international society, it is principally as or inside a state (acting within a society of states) that a form of life seeks to realize the traditions and practices that express and construct its identity. It is in this sense that each state or political community is thought of as an independent and equal self, with a sense of itself and a series of projects or goals and values associated with expressing that identity. Any such identity has implications for economic “policy” The identity of a political community might incorporate or exclude capital accumulation and economic growth for its own sake, represented, for example, by developmentalists and ecological movements, respectively. Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that even simple reproduction, or zero growth, requires the creation of wealth; that is, realizing the projects, values, and visions of any political community depends on some degree of wealthiness, compelling wealth creation as a necessary element of social life. The idea of sovereignty accounts for this compulsion by reserving and protecting the state’s rights to its own resources and efforts as means to realizing its purposes. Charles Tilly (1993:29) notes that this idea is central to the principle of self-determination: “If…a people controls a state of its own, it has the collective
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right to exclude or subordinate members of other populations with respect to the territory and benefits under control of that state.” It is not unfair, then, to see sovereignty as the attribution of a “collective property right” within IPE: “The requirement of respect for a state’s domestic jurisdiction functions as a kind of collective property right for the citizens of that state—it entitles the state to exclude foreigners from the use or benefit of its wealth and resources except on terms that it voluntarily accepts” (Beitz, 1991:243). Sovereign boundaries thereby demarcate a space for the pursuit of a community’s identity as well as bounding and protecting the resources and efforts to be drawn upon as means to realizing that form of life. In addition, the claim of this right by a state establishes by implication an equal right of other communities to reserve their resources and wealth for their own purposes. In this way, sovereignty constitutes and demarcates forms of life as discrete political and economic units.24 The rule that each state must rely on its own resources and efforts is often labeled as the requirement of “self-help.” This requirement, although sometimes a hardship, is also defended as a virtue practiced by the truly independent and as supportive of the self-realization of the community. In other words, the independence of political communities is thought to be more secure and more fully realized where the community is largely self-supporting. However, the requirement of self-help also places political communities into competition. IPE often thinks of competitions among states as being staged in two separate spheres —the world economy and the strategic sphere of military competition. We need to examine in some detail the structuring of meaning and purpose that links and differentiates these two spheres of competition. We can then identify the place competition occupies in defining the nature of political communities and the relations between them in an international society. Economic competition takes place within the world market, a system of mutual dependence in which each political community must produce for the needs of others in order to secure its own livelihood. Thus, each political community is established as both producer and consumer, as both needy and provider of the needs of others, within a global division of labor (Inayatullah and Blaney, 1995; Vernon and Kapstein, 1991; Moore, 1989; Reich, 1991). It might be thought that the world economy is more appropriately seen as an economic interaction of individuals and firms. While this characterization is not inaccurate and is useful for many purposes, our point is to highlight that the practice of sovereignty within an international society authorizes states as collective economic actors. The consequences of such an authorization are outlined and bemoaned by Hayek (1944:220): It is neither necessary nor desirable that national boundaries should mark sharp differences in standards of living, that membership of a national group should entitle us to a share in a cake altogether different from that in which members of other groups share. If the resources of different nations are treated as exclusive properties of these nations as wholes, if
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international economic relations, instead of relations between individuals, become increasingly relations between whole nations organized as trading bodies, they inevitably become the source of friction and envy. Indeed, the idea of the “trading state” is seen as a crucial concept in understanding the history, particularly the contemporary history, of international relations (Rosecrance, 1986). States, as sovereigns and thereby as trading bodies within a competitive world market, are assigned a complicated role in both maintaining/policing the competitions staged by the world market and in participating as producers and consumers in those competitions. As the guardians of a competitive international economic order, states must establish the group of enabling conditions, the “social structure of accumulation,” that sets the rules of the competitions and gives the world market its purpose as a generator of wealth on a global scale. This includes a role as guarantor of the property rights of individuals and firms, including the establishment and maintenance of a set of international economic institutions that ensure the stability and enforce the rules of a competitive world economy.25 Once secured by the actions of independent states, the market is thought to operate as a discovery procedure on a global scale, rewarding the uses of resources and efforts that best serve the needs of others. As an independent producer, each political community acquires its share of global wealth according to the market value of its contribution (that is, the contribution of its individuals, firms, and regions) to global production in the meeting of needs within the world economy. As an independent consumer, each state is able to draw on global wealth to support its cultural self-expression only to the point allowed by that market valuation of its contribution. Because each state must provide and develop its own capacity to realize its purposes, state is pit against state in an effort to acquire shares in global production. It is not surprising, then, that states engage in an intense global competition to create conditions within their boundaries and for their firms globally to secure world market shares and promote the development of technologically advanced and high-profit production capacities by their firms and within their boundaries (Strange, 1992; Reich, 1991; Prestowitz, 1994; Krugman, 1996: chapter 6; Cerny, 1995; 2000). Although not properly described as a zero-sum game (Krugman, 1996: chapter 1), these processes of “competitive self-improvement” (Bright and Geyer, 1987) secure gains for some states at the expense of others in the near and far term, relatively and absolutely in varying combinations. In this way, the competitions staged within the world economy appear to uncover not only a hierarchy of individuals and firms but also a hierarchy of political communities. As in a single society, competition is applied in a world market in order to realize important purposes and express basic values. First, staging economic interactions as competitions is seen to spur global production and enhance the possibility of meeting the needs of political communities and their members. The
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reasoning is that because the market reveals and rewards (even if imperfectly) a hierarchy of resources and efforts devoted to meeting needs, each state (the individuals, firms, and regions within it) will direct their resources and efforts to producing those things to which both the rewards are greatest and their given capabilities are best suited. And, as Adam Smith teaches, because wealth is limited by the extent of the market, securing the operation of a world market promotes the expansion of wealth and increased chances of meeting needs on a global scale. In this context, the ongoing economic competitions staged within the world market are valued because they are seen to increase global wealth and the chances for each political community to acquire the wealth it requires to express and realize its form of life (Smith, 1976: book IV, chapter 4; Murphy, 1994). Second, a competitively revealed hierarchy of states is valued because it is seen as providing models for the proper and successful organization of political communities as economic actors. Where the success of cultural self-expression depends on “competitive self-improvement,” the resultant hierarchy of state and group capacities appears also to be a valuation of cultures (Esteva, 1992; Lummis, 1992). This feature of international political economy is captured in a vocabulary of gradations of economic success and potential. Advanced economies are contrasted with backward economies. Modern societies are contrasted with the traditional, where modernization represents a strategy for future economic success. Likewise, countries are developed and less developed, or somewhat optimistically characterized as developing. On one side, this conceptual vocabulary suggests that the hierarchy revealed by competition is a hierarchy of cultural forms, abilities, and efforts. On the other side, this hierarchy suggests a model (or some set of models) for organizing cultural forms as relatively successful economic competitors (see Hayek, 1960:46–47). A political community’s chances of realizing its form of life within the world economy comes to depend on adapting its own values and traditions to accommodate competitive development strategies or industrial policies. The revealed hierarchy of cultural forms provides information to political communities about what works and what doesn’t in a culture of competition, thereby contributing to the process of wealth generation around the globe. Third, this hierarchy of political communities is also validated because it expresses and is a realization of the sovereignty of political communities. The independence and formal equality of communities is expressed in their status as economic units, possessing a sovereign property right. The sovereign property right recognizes and constructs the individuality of political communities, demarcating the space within which the distinctive traits of each separate community are contained or realized. Relevant individual differences in productive resources, capacities, and efforts are treated thereby as logically prior to or separate from the global competition itself (perhaps even as facts of nature).26 Thus, the competitions staged by the world market retain their legitimacy because competition can be seen as uncovering the hierarchy latent in the individual differences of multiple forms of life.
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We might say, then, that the economic competition proper to an international society largely reproduces the peculiar juxtaposition of the principles of equality and hierarchy that animates a culture of competition. Competitions staged by the world market among formally equal bearers of property rights produce a ranking of forms of life as the revelation of a hierarchy latent in the individual differences of independent communities. Thus, in international society, as in Smith’s and Hayek’s accounts of national society, competition reproduces the impulse to mediate equality and hierarchy by trying to hold together both sides of the double movement. At the same time, and in parallel to Smith and Hayek, alternatives to a culture of competition are largely erased. The “revealed” hierarchy of cultures, as we have hinted, is constructed as a relationship between teachers and students. Though weaker competitors might have some economic strengths relative to stronger competitors, these advantages in primary products and labor-intensive products largely mark them as less developed.27 For these countries, their forms of governance, financial regulations, systems of property rights, and modes of individuality and family life all become subjected to scrutiny and proposed reform, based on models offered by experts who peddle an orthodoxy rooted in the self-understandings and policy pronouncements (if not necessarily the actual practices) of the advanced economies (Silbey, 1997; Young, 1995; Williams, 1994; 1999; Nieuwenhuys, 1998; Hopgood, 2000; Pupavac, 2001). Snared within this framing of teachers and students, models and sites to which they must be transferred, aid givers and aid recipients, the differences offered by those low on the competitive ladder are precluded from serving as a critical resource for those more advanced. A culture of competition is thereby treated as the natural and normal order of things. Difference is at once confined to that relevant to economic competition or targeted for eradication via development (Sachs, 1992; Escobar, 1995; Rist, 1997). Competition in the military sphere is entangled with economic competition in an international society, but also stands as an analytically separable expression of the cultural logic of competition. In a society of states, each state must be concerned with protecting the identity of its members, to secure through “selfhelp” the well-being and safety of its community. Interactions between communities may be experienced as threatening to the identity of each because the other community represents an alternative set of values and traditions that may spill over boundaries. A culturally defensive attitude is sharpened where some communities attempt to impose their way of life on others, an unfortunate but all too common occurrence in a society of states. Such impositions may be motivated and legitimated by the claim of a hierarchy of forms of life presumably uncovered by the successful conquest itself or as revealed in some other sphere thought of as competitively discovering a latent superiority and inferiority. Such threats and violations are made increasingly severe because the principle of “self-help,” while limiting the state’s ability to realize and defend the identity of the political community to its own resources and efforts, provides the
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means by which some states may effectively lay claim to the resources and efforts of others. More specifically, as David Levine (1991:39) warns us, inequalities in wealth-acquiring capacities between communities may generate conflict “when the boundaries between the communities limit…access to wealth.” Those with less access to wealth given current boundaries might channel their resources so that they could attempt to forcibly alter their borders and their access to wealth. Those with greater capacities might use their advantage in resources and wealth as a tool for pillaging those less favored and less capable of resisting such intrusions. In Hayek’s (1944:220–21) terms, this demarcation of states as political and economic units creates a “contest of force” and “clashes of power.” Such a context of threats and resort to force prompts states to organize themselves in part as “units of protection,” erecting “fortifications and fortresses” in order to deflect these threats (Herz, 1959:14,40). Some have referred to this mutual vulnerability as a “security dilemma” (Ashley, 1988; Jervis, 1978; Herz, 1950). In a security dilemma, each state’s effort to defend the integrity of its political community appears to be a potential threat to other states’ efforts to do the same, prompting augmentation of each state’s fortress and a greater threat to all others. In such a situation, though the security of the political community is a crucial aim of each state, it is fully achieved by none. Strategic competition is destructive, then, not only physically, but also of important social purposes of IPE. At the same time, for apologists of a culture of competition such an assessment stands as only a partial analysis of a society of states. Though potentially creating varying degrees of mutual insecurity, strategic competition is seen to give order to the system and thereby promote (perhaps paradoxically) the survival or security of its individual units. We need to examine these two sides of the social practice of strategic competition more closely, because this purported purpose of competition in IPE has no direct parallel in a market society in which government is taken for granted. On one side, strategic competitions establish a hierarchy of states, a ranking of “powers.” Inequalities among powers become de facto bases for the exercise of threats or the deployment of force by the stronger in order to coerce the weaker. Where such coercion operates, the stronger are able to dictate to the weaker, including dictating in part the rules and principles ordering international relations. States appear to be divided between those that can dictate the laws and those that must obey them, violating the idea of states as sovereign equals and leaving the relatively weak subject to the threats of the stronger. In this sense, processes of strategic competition do less to realize and express the values of sovereignty (independence, equality, and tolerance) and more to transgress them (Clark, 1989:218–19; Bull, 1977:205). On the other side, the hierarchy uncovered by strategic competition is understood to fulfill an important social purpose: it is said to support order and the norms and principles of a society of states by identifying those states capable of playing a key role in maintaining that order. The staging of strategic competitions allows distinctions to be drawn between great, middle, and small
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powers.28 The necessity of strategic competition is claimed because, where such distinctions are blurred, strategic competitions are required to clarify the relative position of states (adapted from Blainey, 1988: chapter 8). Such clarification is crucial because in a global culture of competition powerful states are recognized as having a special responsibility to bear in maintaining international order. In Bull’s (1977:202) terms, great powers are recognized by others to have, and conceived by their own leaders and peoples to have, certain special rights and duties. Great powers, for example, assert the right, and are accorded the right to play a part in determining issues that affect the peace and security of the international system as a whole. They accept the duty, and are thought by others to have the duty, of modifying their policies in the lights of the managerial responsibilities they bear. The role of the great powers, then, is “to contribute to international order…by managing their relations with one another…and by exploiting their preponderance in such a way as to impart a degree of general direction to the affairs of international society as a whole” (Bull, 1977:207). This special managerial role is possible only where states are joined in a society of common norms, values, and goals so that the special contribution of these powers in maintaining that society is recognized and accepted by other states, although force also plays a substantial role in maintaining this situation.29 That there is widespread acceptance of this role, at least by those states giving direction to international order but also by many that value that order, is suggested by the continuing incorporation of this “diplomatic norm” into the organizational structures of international society—the Concert of Europe, the League of Nations, the United Nations (Bull, 1977:202; Clark, 1989:113, chapters 6, 8, 9)— and continuing calls for today’s great powers to assume their role as guarantors of international peace and security, even perhaps at the cost of (re)colonization (Jackson, 1990b). This analysis exposes the central role of force in strategic competitions and simultaneously in maintaining (for the most part) the independence (if not the equality) of states. We should not conclude that force is unbridled in this situation. Rather, force is at once recognized and utilized as well as constrained (Clark, 1989:21). The legitimacy of the special role of the great powers depends on their ability to constrain themselves and moderate the destructive consequences of strategic competition across the globe.30 That competition is indeed moderated is suggested in that the collapse of the “fortress” in the event of attack does not “ordinarily presage the destruction of the state as such or of the ‘way of life’ of its inhabitants.” Rather, the preservation of each political community has been given increasing weight not only as norm, but in the practice of states, including that of the great powers (Herz, 1959:61, 71–75). What is normally at stake in strategic competitions is the status of states as
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“powers” and the role each state will play—marginal or substantial—in the management of the affairs of international society or some regional context. Thus far, we have treated strategic competition as if it were primarily a matter of military strength. However, for IPE economic capacities are crucial to longterm strategic competitiveness.31 It is also the case that economic competitiveness alone, as well as the need to secure the conditions for the world market, has received increasing weight in the postwar era as a component of the state’s responsibility to protect its political community. Because economic competitiveness is also treated as a strategic concern, the logic of great powership is applied in the economic sphere as well. The great powers (including economic powers without substantial military clout) have come to act as guardians of the rules governing the world market. The predominant role that the advanced industrial societies, their corporations, and citizens play formally in the management of the international financial and trading institutions and informally via the various mechanisms for consultation and economic regulation is an illustration of the implementation of this principle (Clark, 1989:175–78; Watson, 1992: chapter 25; Patel, 1995; Scholte, 1997; Roberts, 1998). The debates about the relative status of Japan, Germany, and China as great powers, and the relative role of Russia, the United States, and the Europe in defining the military and economic security of Europe (and the world) stand as attempts, although contentious, to apply this thinking (Agnew and Corbridge, 1995: chapter 6; Pauly, 1999; Xia, 2001; Yan, 2001; Bergsten, 2001; Kurth, 2001; Wallace, 2001). Consistent with the logic of a culture of competition, competition and the competitive processes we take either as given in themselves or as the causal effect of the structure of anarchy reveal themselves as a certain structuring of meaning and purpose. IPE can be understood then as a peculiar intertwining of the principles of equality and hierarchy mediated by the staging of competitions. The internal logic of an international society mingles together the two polar responses to difference. The formal equality and independence of actors (in their role as sovereign competitors) expresses the essential “sameness” of states. However, the differences among states are translated into a hierarchy of cultures revealed by the competitions staged in the world market. And, as with Smith and Hayek, the other of the advanced competitors is reduced to a status of backwardness that shields a culture of competition from criticism rooted in alternative values and traditions. In an international society, uncompetitive actors, reduced to mendicancy, neither set the terms of assistance, nor serve as partners in critical reflection on the existing order and the building of a new one. Beyond Competition or Sustaining Competitive Tension? What, then, is the significance of seeing competition as “cultural” and IPE as a culture of competition? Our analysis is that the cultural logic of competition involves a very precarious balancing. First, a culture of competition is formed by
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holding together an understanding of important purposes and values as social while treating individuals as ontologically primitive, as in some sense natural. The essential traits of the individual—independence, equality, and freedom—are similarly treated as logically prior. Social institutions are charged with realizing this preexisting individuality; to the extent that it fails to respect these traits, society is judged to have overstepped its bounds, to be oppressive of the individual. A society based on market exchange and competition is said to express and realize the freedom, equality, and independence of individual actors as competitors. At the same time, the competitions staged in the market uncover rankings of achievement and effort—differing quantities and qualities of labor and knowledge—as spurs to the creation of wealth. Thus, the “discovery” function of competitions is harnessed by society to serve important purposes: to guard and promote the ethics of freedom, equality, and individuality, and to promote the creation of wealth necessary to the achievement of a “great” or “civilized” society. Whatever its origins or its status in relation to some idea of human nature, competition is given a social character; it is seen to embody social meanings and is harnessed to serve important social values. In this formulation, the individual is treated as the receptacle and source of differences that are mostly prior and external to competition. Indeed, the power and value of competition is that it reveals these preexisting differences within a process that in principle is open to all. Because the process of competition is seen as independent of and therefore not responsible for the inequalities in character or traits of individual actors, social inequality is treated as a given and the ontologically primitive individual is largely separated from the social process. To put it in other terms, the self is constructed as logically prior to and separable from the social, and social inequality is naturalized. IPE expresses this tension in the opposition between the construction of the social meaning and purpose of the outcomes, structures, institutions, and regimes produced by the interactions of individual actors and the presocial quality of these actors and their motivations and needs.32 Thus, a culture of competition is understood (paradoxically and problematically) as requiring the construction of the social world by ontologically separate individuals. Second, and building on this paradox, a culture of competition rests on an uneasy juxtaposition of the principles of equality and hierarchy. Individual actors are socially constituted as equals in form; each is formally equal as a property owner interacting competitively within the market or as a sovereign political community within a (competitive) society of states. The social hierarchies constructed within a culture of competition are not thought to violate this initial social condition because hierarchies are treated as prior and external to the social condition of equality. Thus, hierarchy is not really deemed a social condition. Rather, hierarchies of wealth and power are constructed as natural and treated as givens of IPE.33 However, this “solution” to the problem of inequality in a culture of competition succeeds only to the extent that we allow the construction of social
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life by logically prior individuals. As we have seen, the idea that hierarchy is socially constructed is disallowed by treating the needs, motivations, and capabilities of individual actors as presocial. If, instead, we come to see both the self (the individual, the sovereign political community) and the hierarchy of selves (whether domestic or global) as constituted within social life, as we have suggested, the project defined by a culture of competition begins to totter, if not collapse. The sense of “innate” inferiority and “natural” superiority attaching itself to (socially) equal individuals or political communities is revealed as the central social contradiction of a culture of competition. If this account of the structuring of meaning and purpose in competition and competitive self-other relations is correct, then it appears that we have yet to come to grips with the meaning of the claim that we have replaced traditional hierarchy with modern equality that simultaneously constitutes the individual as self and the political community as sovereign. It is this continuing inability to make sense within our modern idea of equality that enables and compels the modern social actor to construct itself as a competitor in relation to others and to construct others simultaneously as dangerous and threatening and as ripe for subordination and exploitation. We might see this as a consequence of the failure to move beyond the possibilities suggested by the double movement. In a culture of competition, the other is treated as an (at least formal) equal whose difference is effaced, except for that knowledge or labor relevant to the market. When those differences are marked as inferior by the results of market competition, difference is subjected to management or eradication via correction. And, as we have suggested at a number of points in earlier chapters, what one imposes on the other tends to redound to the self: the other within also must be erased, degraded, or subjected to reform. Indeed, Smith and Hayek seem to recognize the possible degradation of both self and other. Smith suggests that the necessarily widespread, if not universal, pursuit of wealth and its accouterments in a modern society fixates the individual on the “trifling.” Hayek suggests that we embrace a market society in the name of self-seeking that fails to sustain a systematic relationship between skill/effort and reward, except as a necessary social myth. In either formulation, the very fictions of a market society we impose on others we already and continue to impose on ourselves. Even if a culture of competition is progressive for society in some respects, it may be, in the view of two of its most notable proponents, a sustained act of self-deception and a denial of the alternative (and perhaps better) selves we might be and become (see also Lane, 1991:318–19). In sum, within the structure of competition the individual is compelled to use and exploit others as well as to use and exploit him or herself as a means to promote human progress as or through the pursuit of wealth. Thus, and to highlight the central concerns of this book, though differences serve as both opportunity and problem in Hayek and Smith, both narrowly circumscribe that opportunity. The differences among individuals—in labor or knowledge—contain inequalities waiting to be revealed and utilized in the
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market as rankings of valuable and lesser knowledge and labor. As we have seen, the losers in the competitive process are not just banished to oblivion; they become parts of a pedagogical and emulative project in which the winners become teachers and models for the losers. This pedagogy of competition, however, works to partly erase the very difference that it claims to value. Difference is flattened into the division of labor or knowledge, providing a useful resource for society from which any may learn. Differences in forms of life that might offer alternative understandings of the meaning and purposes of human existence are treated less as opportunities and more as signs of backwardness, underdevelopment, irrationality, or a dangerous delusion that is duly both “punished” by the market and subjected to reform. Hayek’s fear of coercion and homogenization is thereby realized by the very institutions meant to avoid it. Hayek and Smith might protest still that the freedom and equality of the market, though partly illusion, are preferable to any effort to impose a utopian ideal (Hayek, 1976:73–74). Such “realism,” of course, is the mainstay of IR, where theorists often argue that an international hierarchy of states is an acceptable and necessary cost of constraining the imperial ambitions of would-be conquerors, crusaders, and others with missionary designs. We wonder, though, if it is possible to have the gains of such “open” or “anarchical” societies without the violence and exploitation. What Hayek cannot allow is Todorov’s, Nandy’s, and Benjamin’s insight that self and other are mutually dependent and overlapping; for Hayek the principle of the excluded middle is absolute. An individualist ontology precludes the possibilities of competing visions of social life that divide individuals and groups but also reveal points of overlap and connection between self and other. The self is treated as an internally homogenous billiard ball, interacting with but not interpenetrating other selves. Access to the experience of others and to self-knowledge through introspection, perhaps catalyzed by dialogue with others both within and beyond, is foreclosed. Learning is limited to the results of competition. Put differently, there is no expressive totality of which each person is a differing but contributing part, no communally shared experience, no collective subconscious, and no internal and external traveling from one form of experience to another. The only way to learn is via experimentation, drawing lessons from the failures and victories of one’s own and others’ market projects. For Hayek there are social experiments but there is no social experience. In an alternative ontology, one we offer for consideration in this book, the other is both external and within. Coming to know may involve two modes: experimenting, or learning by doing, including competition as Hayek expresses it; and dialogue with others, whose differing experiences and visions’ of the world can catalyze self-reflection—an introspective process that provokes traveling simultaneously away from and toward the self, where movement toward the other beyond the self leads one back to the other within. Though the competitive practices advocated by Smith and Hayek may spur excellence in some respects, particularly in terms of material progress, they leave other aspects
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of ourselves impoverished. We may be able to minimize the circumstance under which we come to treat others as means to “trifling” ends and engage in social comparisons that place ourselves and our others into hierarchies of value, but only if we can reimagine competition as a process of comparison internal to our selves (see Dallmayr, 1996: chapter 10, especially page 248; Nandy, 1987b:35; Lane, 1991:221–22). By bringing forth different parts of ourselves, we can foster a creative tension. Quoting Henry David Thoreau, but also echoing Schumpeter’s idea of “creative destruction” we might say that this internal “competition” “is essentially revolutionary”—a “change for the better, like birth and death, which convulses the body” (in Love, 1998:376–77). But unlike Schumpeter’s notion, this is not simply spurring a circumscribed notion of progress within a given form of life; nor need it degrade or purge competitors. Rather, this revolutionary process of internal competition holds onto the ultimate other—doubt—even as it opens new vistas and charts new directions. Pursuing other paths can sustain rather than weaken the tension between various parts and dimensions of the self. This tension can be a nonexploitative source of creativity. In addition, by rejecting an ontology that assumes an absolute ontological separation of self from other, we can restore a dialectical vision in which separation necessarily coexists with overlap and connection and treat the various disjunctions and overlaps among selves as resources for an internal “competition.” Without this overlap/social connection, we might feel compelled to accept Hayek’s view that learning occurs only through processes of experimentation where our own and others’ individual successes and losses within the market provide hard lessons. If this overlap/social connection exists, then we may learn not only through competitive experiments but also through sharable experiences. The experiences of others can become, as we argue more fully in the next chapter, a lesson for us—a lesson that need not result in the creation of a competitively revealed hierarchy. Where this sort of learning predominates, perhaps we can resist translating difference into rank—as inferiority or superiority. Perhaps we can redeploy our competitive skills as a search for excellence within, such that the rich difference of the other becomes a catalyst for appreciating the potential richness of the other within the self (and vice versa). Difference, and its deepest manifestation, namely doubt, will always pose a challenge for humans. Yet, when we can learn to engage instead of eradicate doubt, we may come to see differences as renewable sources of infinite creativity.
CHAPTER 5 Toward an Ethnological IPE
In recent years, the salience of Karl Polanyi’s work appears to have increased for both international political economy and critical development studies. Much of his reputation among scholars of IPE rests on his 1944 book, The Great Transformation (Polanyi, 1957), where he explores the rise of the free market project in late-eighteenth-and early-nineteenth-century Europe. Polanyi saw this set of historical events as an opportunity to reflect on the nature of liberal thought and practice. His critique is now well known: implementing the liberal vision of a free market disembeds the economy from so ciety; this threatens human livelihood and the natural environment and calls forth a societal selfdefence, or what Polanyi calls the “counter-movement” or “double movement” and the counter-movement provides the seeds for a more encompassing democratic project of reembedding the economy in social life and human purposes. IPE theorists establish the contemporary relevance of Polanyi by drawing a parallel between the nineteenth-century “great transformation” and the late-twentieth-century neoliberal globalizing project that has provoked equally myriad forms of resistance and efforts to restrict the scope of unconstrained market relations (see, for example, Ruggie, 1994; Gill, 1996; Hettne, 1997; Bernard, 1997; Latham, 1997; Birchfield, 1999; Helleiner, 2000; and Soederberg, 2001).1 Others, more focused on the discourse of development, read Polanyi’s work a bit differently. They emphasize his discussions of nonmarket and nonEuropean cultures and his distinction between substantivist and formal understandings of the economy.2 They draw on Polanyi in this way to support a defense of culture (or difference) in the face of a normalizing, if not in fact homogenizing, project of modern development (see, for example, Escobar, 1995: chapters 3, 5; and Sachs, 1992). Though overlapping, the IPE and critical development analyses tend to be treated as distinct or disparate readings. We suggest instead that both readings should be seen as central to Polanyi’s thinking, as intricately intertwined aspects of his (in our terms) double critique of capitalism (see also Berthoud, 1990:171; and Topik, 2001:82). On one side, we read Polanyi as engaged in part in a project of immanent critique: finding the sources of critique inside the (European) cultural project of development/ political economy itself. Development is seen to undermine the social life and natural environment of the very society it constitutes and is seeking to develop.
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Or, put differently, the modern project of realizing the freedom and equality of the individual—a “culture of competition,” in our terms—becomes destructive as soon as freedom and equality are so tightly linked with the effort to disembed the economy from society. However, as we argued in the introduction, the idea of immanent critique obscures the multiplicity of visions and traditions that form the backdrop of ethical argument. Likewise, while the characterization of Polanyi as an immanent critic captures an important aspect of his project, it does not fully appreciate the way he locates his critique in the “contact zone” of cultural encounters (Pratt, 1992)—partly outside or beyond the project of development/ political economy. Polanyi understood that his critique of capitalism aimed to retrieve lessons from social forms prior to and outside of the modern West, including drawing connections between resistance to unregulated markets in Europe and resistance to the imposition of colonial economic structures in Africa and elsewhere. And, more significant, he finds in others’ critiques of his own traditions the possibility of greater self-understanding and potential alliances against oppression that engage both self and other. Thus, we should not treat Polanyi merely as a political economist or relegate his work to economic anthropology alone. Indeed, only by being both does Polanyi’s work stand as a whole and establish an intellectual legacy for both fields. We read that legacy as suggesting that it is in the space of the overlap of political economy and economic anthropology—in an ethnological IPE—that we can find resources for a contemporary double or dialogical critique of capitalism. A Dialogue of Traditions We highlight the dialogical element central to Polanyi’s form of double critique by returning to the work of Tzvetan Todorov and Ashis Nandy. Though neither political economists nor anthropologists, their understandings of cultural difference and the perils and possibilities of cultural comparison help us illuminate Polanyi’s own efforts to uncover qualitatively diverse forms of social life and to treat these diverse forms not simply as a source of intellectual comparison, but as a source of a critical politics. Todorov (1984) and Nandy (1983; 1987b), in a strikingly parallel fashion, locate a space for dialogue in the contact zone through resisting the effort to construct a Manichean universe of pure forces of oppression and counter-oppression. In the introduction, we drew somewhat briefly on their portraits of historical figures—Columbus and Cortés for Todorov, Kipling and Orwell for Nandy—to illustrate the polarizing reflexes of the double movement and its relation to colonial oppression. Colonial discourse slides between two polar responses: difference is translated as inferiority or a kind of equality is recognized, but at the expense of assimilation of the other to the self. These responses perform an act of “splitting” (Benjamin, 1988:63), where self and other appear to be mutually exclusive options. The boundary between self and other is rigidly drawn (the possibility of overlap denied), carefully policed,
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and mapped onto the difference between “civilized” and “barbarian,” masculine and feminine, advanced and backward, teacher and student. The other appears, then, to be suitable for exploitation and colonial tutelage, if not (in more “civilized” times) enslavement. At best, we find ourselves in a dialogue of unequals. If Todorov’s and Nandy’s assessments of the possibilities of cultural interaction exemplify splitting, Polanyi challenges this practice in a specifically political economic form. On the one hand, he targets an “economism” that attempts to purify (the) economy of opposed elements because this form of splitting justifies both the predominance of market economics theoretically and the homogenization of social space as market society in practice. On the other hand, he resists envisioning an alternative to market society as a simple inversion —a purely nonmarket form of life. To further prefigure our discussion of Polanyi below, we might say that Todorov and Nandy allow us to see the deepest source of oppression generated by this interconnected opposition of “economism” and “romanticism” as the failure of dialogue. Thus, for Todorov, Nandy, and Polanyi (as we shall see) restoring dialogue itself becomes an ethical imperative. Todorov and Nandy construct the possibility of dialogue against the antidialogism of colonialism and its various contemporary resonances. Todorov (1984:247) imagines a dialogue based on knowing and treating the “other-assubject, equal to the I but different from it,” transforming the polarized framing of the other within the double movement. This dialogue entails a search for “truths” not as a “point of departure” that subordinates one participant to the view of another, but as a regulative ideal of establishing an “understanding,” a “common horizon” that transcends “one’s partiality and one’s parochialism” without eliminating the particularity of the participants (Todorov, 1984:160). Nandy (1987a:118), like Todorov, calls for reshaping the “space in public discourse” so that the parties to the “civilizational encounters of our times” meet on grounds of equality. Indeed, the fact that the “powerful seldom contemplate sharing the world with the powerless” is countered with a plea that self and other “must come together to make culture-to-culture dialogue a reality, to establish a new plural future through cross-cultural dialogues” (Sardar et al., 1993:90). Given the weight of the past and the inequalities of the present, how is such dialogue possible? In contrast to the polarity of self and other within the double movement, Todorov and Nandy present a series of historical figures who, representing spaces of overlap of sameness and difference, indicate a range of alternative possibilities that move us toward the pole of dialogue and the practice of critical and reciprocal cultural illumination that we, following Todorov, associate with ethnology. At the beginning of The Conquest of America, Todorov (1984:3) suggests the ubiquity of “the discovery self makes of the other” including “the other in ourselves,” as well as “exterior” others, both distant and near. For Todorov (1995:12, 46) recognizing the “other as other” is crucial not only for knowing the other, but also for knowing the self. As a first step beyond the double movement,
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the self, aware of its own identity, seeks to know the other without assimilating it to itself (Todorov, 1995:15). But this recognition of the other as different does not exhaust the opportunities attendant on our experience of self and other, as Todorov illustrates in reference to figures from the conquest. The transformation that Bartolome de Las Casas, the Dominican bishop of Chiapas, experiences in his life moves his understanding away from the strict oppositions of the double movement (Todorov, 1984:185–93, 240). Though earlier an assimilationist in his “love” for the Indians, later in life he injects what Todorov calls a sense of “perspectivism” into his religious views. He appeals to principles of (for him and his fellows) apparent universality—human religiosity and a desire to worship God—against which he constructs a defense of the Indian variants of these practices. Las Casas’s reasoning reveals, in Todorov’s words, “the religious rather than religion,” relativizing culture by placing the religious experience of the Spanish and the Indians side by side, but without assimilating the Indian to the Spanish or suggesting the inferiority of the Indian. In this, Las Casas remains, in Todorov’s terms, a “comparatist.” Though he finds room in his understanding to express the difference of the Indians, Las Casas does not use or allow the religious experience and categories of the Indians to inform an interpretation and critique of his own Christian conceptions. Las Casas’s recognition of difference thus falls short of a dialogue that transforms not only how he sees the other but also how he sees himself. For Todorov (1984:219–41, 250) the Franciscan teacher Benardino de Sahagún advances beyond Las Casas and points us to a higher, ethnological phase of knowledge of self and other. Sahagún enters into a pedagogical dialogue with his Nahuatl-speaking students of Latin through which he learns Nahuatl. His assessment of the Indians as equal but different (in that they possess a distinct set of strengths and weakness) leads him, unlike so many others, to condemn the Spanish conquest. Though never giving up his commitment to conversion, he engages in a project of representing as well as preserving the culture of the Indians. In his History, Sahagún draws on various witnesses and reports in presenting three parallel but also divergent accounts of the events of the conquest: written narratives in both Nahuatl and Spanish and visually through drawings. Todorov writes that the book “allows us to hear a voice whose multiplicity is internal to it.” Sahagún’s viewpoint is complex, incorporating elements of the values and visions of the Indians. However, this internal multiplicity is not fully employed for critical self-examination. Voices are juxtaposed but not made to interpenetrate in a critical process of selfreflection. Thus, Sahagún heralds—without quite achieving—the ethnological stance; there is too little evidence of an attempt to establish the kind of conversation that “contributes to the reciprocal illumination of one culture by another,” that makes “us look into the other’s face” (Todorov, 1984:240–41). Todorov (1995:15) calls us to precisely this ethnological task as a regulative ideal:
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I no longer desire, nor am I able, to identify with the other; nor can I, however, identify with myself. The process can be described in these terms: knowledge of others depends on my own identity. But this knowledge of the other in turn determines my knowledge of myself. Since knowledge of oneself transforms the identity of this self, the entire process begins anew: new knowledge of the other, new knowledge of the self, and so on to infinity. Engaging the other in this way destabilizes our perspective, without eliminating perspective. Our sense of identity in relation to the other shifts as well: “I read myself in quotation marks. The very opposition between inside and outside is no longer relevant; nor does the simulacrum of the other that my description produces remain unchanged: it has become a space of possible understanding between the other and myself” (Todorov, 1995:15). Though there is no endpoint to this process, this ideal motivates it and gives it a “specific direction,” so that the “universality” that is lost in various moments of the process is “recovered elsewhere: not in the object but in the project” (Todorov, 1995:15). Nandy’s discussion is remarkably similar, though, as we shall see, he translates a dialogue of cultures—Todorov’s ethnological moment—into an explicitly critical, political practice. Nandy’s stories about historical figures unfold against the backdrop of British colonialism in India and the “dialogue of unequals” that it constructs. For example, Girindrasekhar Bose was a pioneer of the theory and practice of psychoanalysis in India; Nandy calls him “the first nonWestern psychoanalyst.” However, the introduction of psychoanalysis, which might be seen as simply a cultural imposition via a transfer of technology, becomes much more complicated in Nandy’s view. Bose’s embrace of psychoanalysis responded in part to the needs of a rising Indian middle class, uprooted from traditional modes of sociality and healing. But, somewhat ironically, his “dramatic therapeutic success” with this class has been attributed to his capacity to reinvoke “the guru-sisya relationship in his analytical encounters” (Nandy, 1996:359). In this way, Bose’s development of psychoanalysis also involved a serious revaluation of Indian traditions in the face of colonial degradation. However unsuccessful finally, he attempted in his writings and practice to resist the British effort to devalue things Indian “by rediscovering an older version of the psychological man in a traditionally psychologically minded society” (Nandy, 1996:380). Thus, Nandy’s (1996:342) assessment is that Bose’s psychoanalysis “had to serve as a new instrument of social criticism, as a means of demystifying aspects of Indian culture that looked anachronistic or pathological to the articulate middle classes, and as a dissenting Western school of thought that could be turned against the West itself.” Yet, according to Nandy (1996:361–63, 369–72), the story reveals an even greater irony. The special power of Freud in European culture is explained by the fundamental challenge it posed to Victorian sensibilities—the effort to “legitimize” the “previously disowned underside of the self.” By contrast, the
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less dramatic reaction to and the lesser influence of Freud’s teachings in India are explained both by their easier resonance with some Indian traditions and their acceptance as merely a part of the technological tool-kit of the European world. By means of such stories, Nandy means to illustrate the critical potentials of such overlapping cultural spaces, of both self and other. Culture, even if “shared” in some important sense, is more like an “open-ended text” than a “closed book.” A cultural vision is a layered phenomenon, comprising “different levels or parts,” or dominant and recessive moments (Nandy, 1987b:2, 17; 1987a: 118). This layering makes possible or, rather, calls forth a dialogue internal to the culture—among competing orthodoxies and heterodoxies, dominant and suppressed voices—providing a source of creative tension and critique within the cultural vision. As he puts it, “The gap between reality and hope which such a vision creates becomes a source of cultural criticism and a standing condemnation of the oppression of everyday life to which we otherwise tend to get reconciled” (Nandy, 1987b:3). Thus, Bose’s confrontation with psychoanalysis is in part a dialogue within Indian cultural visions—a conversation of self and the other within. Leaving it at this ignores the role of the external other and its layered and multiplex cultural vision. Bose’s establishment of psychoanalysis in India and his interpretations of that tradition’s meaning for India posed at least an implicit challenge to the European ownership of psychoanalysis and its theoretical and practical evolution—a challenge mostly brushed aside by Freud himself (Nandy, 1996:364–65). But others have responded differently, finding support for a conversation within one’s own traditions in a dialogue across traditions, and vice versa. That is, a dialogical process within the self is made coeval with and can be sustained ultimately only in conjunction through a dialogue between self and other: the search for authenticity of a civilization is always a search for the other face of the civilization, either as a hope or a warning. The search for a civilization’s utopia, too, is part of this larger quest. It needs not merely the ability to interpret one’s own traditions, but also the ability to involve the often-recessive aspects of other civilizations as allies in one’s struggle for cultural self-discovery, the willingness to become allies to other civilizations trying to discover their other faces, and the skills to give more centrality to these new readings of civilizations and civilizational concerns. (Nandy, 1987b:55) Exemplary of this capacity for dialogue in the face of cultural domination are C.F.Andrews and Mohandas K.Gandhi. Nandy sees Andrews as among the very few of the British in India who were able to gain distance from the colonial project. They utilized Indian “versions of religiosity, knowledge and social interaction” to assist in a critique of their own society and to envision social and political possibilities beyond the present (Nandy, 1983: 55). Andrews was
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especially adept in that he found in India a critical mirror for himself, his own culture, and for India. In establishing a connection between his own Christianity and the anticolonial struggle, he not only uncovered a continuity between Europe and India in general (and between his British and Indian selves in particular) but also strengthened his Christian devotion. The paradox in these relationships is captured well by Nandy (1983:37, 48): “When Gandhi described him as an Indian at heart and a true Englishman, it remained unstated that it was by being a true Englishman that Andrews became an Indian.” But it is Gandhi who comes closest to exemplifying Nandy’s ideal of a critical conversation of cultures. Gandhi’s capacity to create alliances between recessive traditions in the West and themes in Indian culture allowed him to offer a vision simultaneously of the liberation of India and of salvation for Britain. Gandhi saw that “some of the recessive elements of Christianity were perfectly congruent with elements of Hindu and Buddhist world views and that the battle he was fighting for the minds of men was actually a universal battle to rediscover the softer side of human nature, the so-called non-masculine self of man relegated to the forgotten zones of the Western self-concept” (Nandy, 1983:49). Thus, Gandhi fought on two fronts. He appealed to the West in terms it could understand (turn the other cheek), thus summoning an Indian (and also British) resistance to colonialism that avoided as much as possible colonial understandings and methods rooted in domination and force. Though his resistance was often put in very British terms, it was also a reinterpretation of Indian traditions—so framed in order to “establish his version of non-violence as ‘true’ Hinduism” (Nandy, 1983: 51). Gandhi was able largely to succeed in this task. The figures of Andrews and Gandhi represent, for Nandy, the achievement of something like Todorov’s ethnological moment, but also give that stance an explicitly critical and political cast. Nandy argues that both were able to uncover the other within the self as a source of critical self-reflection and cultural transformation. Their sensitivity to their own suffering allowed them not only to discern the suffering of the other, but also to make overcoming of suffering (of both victim and victimizer) central to their thought and action. Andrews was able to fight for India while enriching the heritage of Britain; Gandhi was able to think about and fight for India’s liberation as coterminous with the liberation of Britain. Thus, knowledge of the other is not merely a source of self-knowledge; it is also a prelude to the hope of a future conversation of self and other. Or, put differently, all three elements—self-knowledge, knowledge of other, and the hope of dialogue—are equally necessary parts of a political and ethical process that is informed by common suffering but aims at establishing a relative commonality of horizons around which a struggle against oppressions may be organized. To return to a theme developed in the introduction, dialogue may flourish in the “cultural closeness” made possible by the “experience of co-suffering.” For Nandy (1987b:13, 22, 54) this recognition of the other calls forth a form of cultural communication that draws on each culture’s more or less articulated
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view of and response to oppression and exploitation—to join a dialogue among “social criticisms” and civilizational “utopias.” Even more strongly, he argues that the realization of a civilization’s “authentic vision of the future and its own authenticity in future” depends on a recognition of this unfortunately ubiquitous experience of human suffering, exploitation, and oppression, whether as victimizer or victim. Todorov and Nandy share a commitment to dialogue as an ethical imperative. Both see that dialogue requires placing self and other on an equal footing within the conversation. This is the capacity to simultaneously find the other within and engage the other outside in a process of self-reflection and/or cultural transformation. Though Todorov emphasizes the former and Nandy the latter, both knowledge and cultural transformation are central to a critical IPE of the kind that Polanyi’s work points us toward. We find in his challenge to economism and his double critique of capitalism a heralding of the kind of dialogue of cultures that Todorov and Nandy recommend. Polanyi’s Double Critique of Capitalism We divide our discussion of Polanyi’s double critique into three moments, though our point is the importance of reading his work more holistically. We argue, first, that Polanyi’s questioning of economism leads him to an ethnological stance that resists a specifically political-economic form of splitting: between “real” and “ideal” human motivations and the polarity of free-market society and romanticized alternatives. The second subsection examines the defense of difference central to Polanyi’s critique of “the great transformation,” his analysis of the counter-movement, and his vision of a reembedded economy. The free market is condemned precisely because it threatens to homogenize social life, destroying the multiplex institutions that secure human existence. Finally, we reject the charge that this defense of difference is a lapse into romanticism. Rather, Polanyi’s deployment of a double critique—both internal to and from beyond industrial society—embraces the coexistence of mixed and overlapping modes of social life and points to a possible dialogue among them. For Polanyi, the coexistence of difference and dialogue is not about a return to the past but the basis of a “new civilization.” Denaturalizing the “Economistic Fallacy” In The Livelihood of Man (Polanyi, 1977), a posthumously published synthesis of his thinking from the 1950s and 1960s, Polanyi centers his complaint about our age on a conceptual error, what he calls “the economistic fallacy.” This “logical error” involves, in principle, the common practice of confusing “a broad, generic phenomenon” with “a species with which we happen to be familiar,” and, specifically, “of equating the human economy in general with its market form” (Polanyi, 1977:4–5). Challenging the tendency to assimilate the
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other to the self is at the heart of Polanyi’s double critique, both as an internal assessment of market economics as theory and practice and as a move that allows us to engage the political and ethical resources of other forms of social life in our response to capitalism. As if echoing both Todorov and Nandy, Polanyi (1977:11) argues that this confusion has “fatefully warped Western man’s understanding of himself and his society.” Most basically, the economistic fallacy obscures our capacity to recognize and validate the richness and variability of human motivations. This possibility is foreclosed because economistic thinking is predicated on the splitting of human motivations. The “real,” “material motives” of economic life are set in opposition to and purified of the “distant and shadowy” motives (characterized as “ideal”) that “cannot be relied upon to operate in the vital business of production” (Polanyi, 1977:11; see also Polanyi, 1968c). Any space between is emptied and, without recourse to a more variegated understanding of human motivations, we are driven to choose the “real” over the illusory “ideal.” Modern market society likewise becomes generalized as human society per se —“economic desiderata form the central locus of meaning permeating all social activity” (Stanfield, 1986:93): “State and government, marriage and the rearing of children, the organization of science and education or religion and the arts, the choice of profession, the form of habitation, the shape of settlements, the very esthetics of private life—everything had to comply with the utilitarian pattern or at least not interfere with the working of the market mechanism” (Polanyi, 1977: 12). This contributes,according to Polanyi (1977:14), to “the triumph of economic rationalism and, inevitably, an eclipse of political thought” such that our “institutional creativeness” and our “social imagination” are imperiled (Polanyi, 1968c:71): For what else could such a society be other than an agglomeration of human atoms behaving according to the rules of a definite kind of rationality? Rational action, as such, is the relating of ends to means; economic rationality, specifically, assumes means to be scarce. But human society involves more than that. What should be the end of man, and how should he choose his means? Economic rationalism, in the strict sense, has no answer to these questions, for they imply motivations and valuations of a moral and practical order that go beyond the logically irresistible, but otherwise empty, exhortation to be economical. (Polanyi, 1977:13) In Polanyi’s (1957:57) phrasing, society is seen and run as “an adjunct of” the market.3 We would interpret this imperiling of imagination, following Todorov’s analysis of the connected oppositions of the double movement, as a tendency to swing between polarized options: either to assimilate all forms of life to an “economistic” logic (as, perhaps, in Smith and Hayek) or, as we shall examine more fully below, a complete repudiation of market logic and a recourse to romanticized pre-, anti-, or noncapitalist economic forms.
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How should we as scholars respond to the economistic fallacy? Polanyi (1968b; see also Polanyi, 1977: chapter 2) suggests that we begin with, what has become a well-known distinction between “substantive” and “formal” meanings of economy. The substantive conception highlights the process of providing the livelihood of the human being—“the interchange with his natural and social environment, insofar as this results in supplying him with the means of material want-satisfaction” (Polanyi, 1968b:139). By contrast, “[t]he formal meaning of economic derives from the logical character of the means-ends relationship, as apparent in such words as ‘economical’ or ‘economizing’” (Polanyi, 1968b:140). Modern economic theorizing tends to collapse this distinction, as noted above, but Polanyi means to pry it apart. Rather than taken as a given of human experience, the place given to the motives, processes, and institutions of economizing in modern society appears to be a particular historical form, as “the seeds of a whole culture” (Polanyi, 1977:8–10). Thus, not unlike Las Casas’s use of the distinction between the religious and his own religion, Polanyi distinguishes between substantive and formal meanings in order to relativize our understanding of the economy, adopting a “perspectivism” (in Todorov’s terms) that opens up the social sciences to a study of the varied “empirical economies of the past and present” (Polanyi, 1968b:140). Polanyi’s perspectivism is not a simple embrace of the pole of difference or some form of exoticism. Rather, the study of a multiplicity of economic forms is joined to a claim about the universality of the pursuit of human livelihood as a social process. Polanyi expresses this idea variously: “that man’s economy, as a rule, is submerged in his social relationships” (Polanyi, 1957:46; 1968c:65); that the economy is “an instituted process,” possessing a “definite function in society” that “vests that process with unity and stability” (Polanyi, 1968b:146, 148); that the “human economy, then, is embedded and enmeshed in institutions, economic and non-economic” (Polanyi, 1968b:148). As a commentator summarizes Polanyi’s point, “The economy is always instituted by a socialization process which moulds individual character toward the ethical, aesthetical, and instrumental norms, standards and practices which are needed to participate in the economy” (Stanfield, 1986:107). In this way, Polanyi situates the effort to understand economy in a substantive sense within the larger study of human existence. But we should not see this as a slide back to the pole of commonality and assimilation. Rather, Polanyi uses this language as a way of highlighting the variability and plurality of human society and culture. What varies for Polanyi’s purposes is the “place occupied by the economy in society,” or, in similar language, “the manner in which the economic process is instituted at different times and places” (Polanyi, 1968b:148). That is, these forms of economy are different, not simply earlier stages of our contemporary market society.4 Rather than temporally distancing himself from the other, these forms are seen as alternatives, throwing our image of market society into relief and raising doubts about its necessity.5 For Polanyi, then, an investigation of diversity—joining economic history and social anthropology—
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constitutes a critical project of “universal economic history” (Polanyi, 1977:xxxix, note 4)6 or, as we would prefer, an ethnological IPE. This theoretical move shifts our understanding of both self and other in a way that opens us to critical self-reflection. Polanyi (1977:10; 1968c) refuses any attempt to take the ideology of market society—our “market mentality” or “marketing mind”—as the basis or standard by which we understand other societies or even our own past. Nor does he find that dominant, contemporary understandings adequately illuminate our own situation. Rather, conflating the economizing market with economy per se leads us to reify current social arrangements as natural, as the inevitable outcome of a species imperative.7 Polanyi exposes us to the diversity of human experience, dereifying and denaturalizing market society. The “perspectivism” made possible produces not a mere “comparatism,” “where we take account of difference only in our own terms, but a genuinely ethnological stance, where our own categories and our very selves are profoundly changed by confrontation with difference. Defending Difference: The Great Transformation and the Counter-Movement Polanyi builds on this perspectivism to develop a critical, political response to capitalism, most notably in The Great Transformation. Though the bulk of his own research on economic history postdates that book, it seems clear that this later project was an attempt to validate the earlier work (Pearson, 1977: xvii–xx; Polanyi-Levitt, 1995:4; Stanfield, 1986:17). Indeed, our contention is that Polanyi’s ethnological sensitivities, so essential to his response to the economistic fallacy, profoundly shaped his critique of laissez-faire capitalism in The Great Transformation and elsewhere. Because the main outlines may not be familiar to all, we will provide a sketch as the backdrop for an examination of Polanyi’s critical method (see also Inayatullah and Blaney, 1997:72–74). Polanyi recognizes that his intellectual and political project recalls Aristotle’s defense of the good life integral to the household and polity against the idea of the generality of the motive of material gain. Inspired to a comparable effort, Polanyi (1968a) defends the rich texture of any form of social life against the consequences of implementing an unconstrained market. In other words, the freemarket ideology must be set in opposition to the findings of an ethnological IPE, that, as above, the provision of human livelihood is always enmeshed in a particular set of social meanings and practices—for example, household and polity, village and clan, or modern industrial society and state. Thus, the idea that the provision of human livelihood might be governed by the pure logic of economy in the formal sense is not just misleading; it is also dangerous. As Polanyi (1957: 3) puts it, separating the economy as a distinct and self-regulating sphere creates “a stark utopia.” Nonetheless, the modern period has been peculiar in that it has witnessed periodic and partly successful efforts to disembed the economy. Just as the polarization of self and other becomes an
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alibi for violence and colonization, Polanyi demonstrates that the logical error that purifies social life of anything but the logic of the market sets the stage for a similar process of destruction and assimilation. In The Great Transformation, Polanyi gives an accounting of this process as it unfolded in the early nineteenth century. The results for human society were devastating, as the logic of an economizing market quickly threatened to envelop social life as a whole. More specifically, subordinating society to the logic of the self-regulating market required that land and labor—that is, nature and human beings—be treated as commodities, as if they were fundamentally goods produced for exchange. As “fictitious commodities,” in Polanyi’s (1957: chapter 6) terms, human beings and nature found their fates determined by the market. In place of inextricably “mixed” individual motives (self-seeking and altruism; material and ideal)8 and always intertwined social purposes (the production of material well-being and the perpetuation of a community’s meanings and hierarchies), the production and acquisition of material goods came to be governed by the expectation of gain or profit (Polanyi, 1968c:64–66; 1977:11– 12). For the most vulnerable, their motives were reduced to hunger, weakening if not destroying social practices (centering on principles of reciprocity or redistribution) that tended to secure human livelihood as a matter of course, if not entitlement.9 Polanyi (1957:73) rather dramatically describes the impact: The alleged commodity “labor power” cannot be shoved about, used indiscriminately, or even left unused, without affecting also the human individual who happens to be the bearer of this particular commodity. In disposing of man’s labor power the system would incidently dispose of the physical, psychological, and moral entity “man” attached to that tag. Robbed of the protective covering of cultural institutions, human beings would perish from the effects of social exposure; they would die as the victims of acute social dislocation through vice, perversion, and starvation. The capacity of nature to support human social life is similarly degraded by its commodification (Polanyi, 1957:141). As powerful as Polanyi’s account of this devastation may be, more telling is his observation that this attempt to institutionalize a pure market society necessarily failed. The effort to disembed the economy from social life always spawns substantial resistance; threats to society inevitably call forth a movement of societal self-defense: “Such an institution could not exist for any length of time without annihilating the human and natural substance of society; it would have physically destroyed man and transformed his surroundings into wilderness. Inevitably society took measures to protect itself” (Polanyi, 1957:3– 4). Far from puzzling, as it may appear to the “marketing mind,” this countermovement is a “spontaneous reaction” of multiple social protests, humanitarian gestures, self-interested concessions, and desperate efforts to stabilize social life in the face of the free market. Contrary to Hayek’s market gospel, the
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implementation of capitalism was not at all spontaneous, but a function of concerted action, especially by a liberal state. Polanyi’s (1957:141) memorable phrasing “Laissez-faire was planned” hints at the existence of a space that avoids the extremes posited by the “economistic fallacy.” A series of largely unconnected social actions and legislative acts counter laissez-faire policies. Together they slow the implementation of, as well as regulate and restrict, the play of the market. For some interpreters, the counter-movement, and its circumscription of the market, seems a necessary and continuing condition of the successful and stable institutionalization of the role of the market in social life, however contrary to human nature this appears to be to liberal political economists (Stanfield, 1986: 123; Sayer, 1995:104; Ruggie, 1998: chapter 2). But Polanyi is not simply a social democrat (see Mendell, 1990). He also makes clear that efforts at social protection “impaired the self-regulation of the market, disorganized industrial life, and thus endangered society in yet another way.” This leaves modern society caught in a “dilemma”: the swing between counter-movements for social protection from the free market and movements to restore the operation of markets by disembedding them from social institutions (Polanyi, 1957:3–4; see also Lacher, 1999a; and 1999b). Moving beyond this dilemma requires acknowledging that “a self-regulating market system has proved unworkable” and developing the social mechanisms and institutions to reembed the market in society (Polanyi, quoted in Mendell, 1990:75). The idea of an embedded market appears paradoxical only to those, like Hayek and, to a lesser degree, Smith, who exclude the very possibility that human livelihood and well-being might be secured through the subordination of the market to processes of social regulation and planning. The paradox is only apparent, troubling only where the possibility of an embedded market—an overlapping space of complex purposes and mixed institutions—is excluded by the kind of splitting that Polanyi has taught us to challenge.10 The contrast with Smith and Hayek can be drawn more clearly. Polanyi, like Smith and Hayek, is concerned about social integration (Neale, 1990: 158). He likewise sees that the problem of social integration involves securing the practices by which individuals’ material needs are met. However, where Smith and Hayek commit the economistic fallacy, arguing that bridging the divisions of labor or knowledge uniquely requires competitive exchange in a free market, Polanyi (1968d; 1977: chapter 3) points out that the process of material provision has been instituted in human society in various ways and according to various principles. More specifically, the economy has been embedded in social practices that involve combinations of house-holding, reciprocity, and redistribution, as well as market exchange. Though one tends to be dominant, all forms of social life have integrated material need production through multiple principles institutionalized in complex practices. What Polanyi sees clearly (and we argued in the previous chapter) is that attempting to integrate society with the principle and practices of market exchange alone produces devastating
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consequences for human livelihood and well-being, vitiating the promised freedom and equality of modern society. Preserving freedom and individualism means, then, resisting the economistic fallacy that dogmatically narrows our options, and working instead to integrate society according to a different and more complex set of principles and practices: of reciprocity, redistribution, and local self-sufficiency that necessarily shape and restrict, though without eliminating, the role of market exchange. It is this aspect of Polanyi’s work that has influenced critics of neoliberal globalization and modern development alike, as we noted at the outset. Polanyi (1947:102) claims that we are faced with a profoundly ethical project of creating a new civilization. Creating this new civilization requires a reinvigoration of our social imagination, the resources for which can be found in the multiple visions of an embedded economy drawn in part from historical noncapitalist societies and in part from the multiple contemporary efforts to resist the implementation of a free market. In this move, Polanyi clearly repudiates liberal political economy: he resists the homogenization of the human being entailed by economic rationality and he condemns the destruction of human community and the security of human livelihood by the free market. Thus, the market must be subordinated to the purposes of human community if we are to restore “the fullness of life to the person, even though this may mean a technologically less efficient society” (Polanyi, 1968c:72). Resisting the Romantic Pole: Overlapping Spaces and a Dialogue of Social Criticisms This kind of language has led Polanyi to be criticized for romanticizing nonmodern or nonmarket forms of life (Booth, 1994; Katz, 1997; Humphreys, 1969; Hechter, 1981).11 The substance of this charge is that the distinction between embedded and disembedded economies partakes too much of a polarity of community and society proposed by the sociologists who influenced Polanyi, where the move to modern society “entailed a loss of a certain vital quality that typified earlier societies.” This construction supposedly leads Polanyi, as well as later “moral economists,” to counterpose two caricatures: an economy embedded in a thickly textured, ethically rich community characteristic of much of economic history and a disembedded economy, enveloping the entire society in an instrumentalized, ethically empty way of life (Booth, 1994:655–57). We share this concern—though more for his followers than for Polanyi himself—since, as we noted above, there is a temptation to swing to the pole of difference, to embrace an ideal defined in opposition to and purified of any market elements. We have argued elsewhere that critical development theorists, many of whom draw inspiration from Polanyi, do seem tempted by this polar position (Blaney, 1996). Though some of Polanyi’s formulations do make his work vulnerable to these charges, we find these readings one-sided and ungenerous. The polarity of
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embedded-disembedded must be made consistent with his claim that the economy in a substantive sense is always enmeshed in the values and visions of the society. Disembeddedness can never be complete, as the dilemma posed by the counter-movement so powerfully illustrates (Polanyi, 1968b: 148–50; 1968a: 82; however, consult Sayer, 1995:218–20). Thus, Polanyi’s suggestion that the formal meaning of the economy has relevance for the modern era does not mean that he accepts its adequacy as an understanding of even that era (see Polanyi, 1968b:144–45). And we should not conclude from the passion behind his critique of capitalism, which leads him often to compare modern society unfavorably with alternative historical possibilities, that he therefore advocates a return to the “primitive.” His use of organic images of the “social” might best be seen as metaphorical, pointing to a complex of concrete protective processes and reactions that are possible in the modern era (Block and Somers, 1984:71). Indeed, Polanyi’s vision of an embedded market is quite nuanced. He clearly recognizes and appreciates the achievements of the modern era and partly defines the goals of the new civilization he advocates as internal to modern political economy (Block and Somers, 1984:51). The point, Polanyi (1936:364– 65; 1968c:74–76) suggests, is to secure “the substance of Individualism “by guaranteeing human livelihood and promoting individual well-being as well as largely preserving the political and civil rights promised by modern liberalism (Lomnitz, 2000; Matjan, 2000).12 Though the communities where people live must be protected, this also means building institutions—whether local, national, or regional (Polanyi, 1945; see also Block and Somers, 1984:66–68; Hettne, 1997; and Congdon, 1990)—that “transcend the self-regulating market by consciously subordinating it to a democratic society” (Polanyi, 1957:234). By this Polanyi means a complex democratic process of bargaining and negotiation among stakeholders (Rosner, 1990; Congdon, 1990; Cangiani, 2000), including extending “civil liberties into the industrial sphere” (Polanyi, 1947:102; see also Mendell, 2000; and Congdon, 1990). This democratic process requires an ongoing critique of the ideology of market society and ongoing experiments in the creation of an embedded market society in order to properly gauge the “limitations of the significance of the economic” (Polanyi, 1977:xlvi). Realizing greater freedom for the individual, a project unleashed by the rise of modern liberal society, requires, paradoxically, drawing on the varied human experience of living within and attempting to create an embedded economy (Block and Somers, 1984:77–78; Lomnitz, 2000; Topik 2001:85; Mendell, 2000). Only in this way, Polanyi suggests, can we return “man’s fate to the variegated social, political, and cultural institutions of society” (Pearson, 1977:xxxvi; see also Polanyi, 1945), in order to restore the “wholeness of life” (Polanyi, 1977:84). Thus, the charge that Polanyi embraces the pole of difference—a romantic “primitivism”—misses what we see as his central ethical strategy: the practice of double critique. One passage in particular is worth citing as an introduction to the problem of more precisely characterizing his method. In “Our Obsolete Market Mentality,” Polanyi (1968c:71–72) writes: “Only since the market was permitted
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to grind the human fabric into the featureless uniformity of selenic erosion has man’s institutional creativeness been in abeyance. No wonder that his social imagination shows signs of fatigue. It may come to a point where he will no longer be able to recover the elasticity, the imaginative wealth and power, of his savage endowment.” This is certainly a passionate and powerful lament of modern market society, and one that might be misread as involving an embrace of the pole of difference: the appeal to a noble savage. However, Polanyi’s use of the term savage is ironic, employed (as Léry used cannibal) to suggest at once the savagery of modern market society and the possibility of learning from our own past and from other cultures. Again and again in his writings, he explicitly rejects a return to “primitivism” or to any historically prior state. For Polanyi (1977:59– 60) the world is an ongoing human construction; there is no natural state to which we can return. The task of creating a “new civilization” is tied, then, to an engagement with our own “society and history” as a source of “moral community” (Stanfield, 1986:22–23). Our claim is that, if Polanyi (1977: xlvii) calls us “to see with the eyes of the historian” and to make comparisons between industrial and nonindustrial societies based on the ethnographic record (Dalton, 1968:xi–xii, xix), he is pointing us less to a nostalgic retrieval of the past than toward a process of the kind Todorov and, especially, Nandy suggest—engaging both internal and external others in a process of self-reflection and cultural transformation. Polanyi, like Todorov and Nandy, illustrates this process with reference to a historical figure—Robert Owen (Polanyi, 1957:158, 167; Mendell, 1990: 73– 74). For Polanyi, Owen is exemplary of the intellectual and political countermovement to the market mentality and, thereby, an inspiration for the continuing project, described, recognizably though not in these precise terms, as finding the other within as a source of critique and resistance. Owen is characterized at once as a practical man of industry and, in Nandyesque phrasing, as someone “also open to an inner vision” (Polanyi, 1957:127). Most important, Polanyi credits him with the discovery of society as an “emergent reality” despite “the veil of market economy” and the increasingly dominant Christian and liberal fixation on “individual responsibility.” Indeed, Owen uses this notion of “society” that is revealed by the very destructiveness of the market as a principle of opposition to an emerging capitalism (Polanyi, 1957:95, chapter 10). He thereby transcended the individualism of the Christianity of his era, drawing on earlier, more cooperative modes of economic organization to inform his vision of protecting and restoring “society” through industrial cooperatives (Polanyi, 1957:129, 169). And, based on this “appreciation of man as a whole,” embedded in his social circumstances, Owen attempted to locate industry within a similarly broad and ethically rich social context (Polanyi, 1957:167–68). That is, Owen’s movement was neither explicitly political nor economic, for he refused the distinction that was being born. His was an “industrial revolt by peaceful means,” but not therefore simply economic; his was an effort to “redeem society in the face of the cruelty of the market” (Polanyi, 1957: 168–72). In this move, Owen marked out
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a position for himself, both within modern market society and opposed to the institutionalization of modern capitalism. Though a model for Polanyi’s own intellectual and practical project, Polanyi goes beyond Owen by also seeing more clearly that the connections between the other within and the external other serve as a critical resource. We argued above that Polanyi’s perspectivism establishes market societies as particular cultural forms—always a particular and somewhat uneasy overlapping of disembeddedness and counter-movement. This contributes not only to our understanding of multiple modes of social embeddedness—the varying ways “real,” economic/material and “ideal,” cultural/political motives are combined and enmeshed within social life. It also forms a vantage point for seeing the similarities and differences among the “social catastrophes” (the “co-suffering,” in Nandy’s terms) brought on by varying attempts, across time and space, to replace these forms with a self-regulating market. That is, contrary to most assessments, Polanyi (1957:157–58) sees the consequences of the liberal economic project of the nineteenth century as “primarily cultural.” He compares the “economic earthquake” fomented by the industrial revolution and the dislocations created by the colonial cultural contact. Reading this record Polanyi finds that, though there are important differences—“a social class forms part of a society inhabiting the same geographical area, while culture contact occurs usually between societies settled in different geographical areas”—“[i] ntrinsically, the conditions are the same”: Not economic exploitation, as often assumed, but the disintegration of the cultural environment of the victim is then the cause of the degradation. The economic process may, naturally, supply the vehicle of the destruction, and almost invariably economic inferiority will make the weaker yield, but the immediate cause of his undoing is not for that reason economic; it lies in the lethal injury to the institutions in which his social existence is embodied. The result is a loss of self-respect and standards, whether the unit is a people or a class, whether the process springs from so-called “culture conflict” or from a change in the position of a class within the confines of a society. (Polanyi, 1957: 157–58) Thus, European colonialism amply provides Polanyi (1957:157–58) with examples of this “parallel” “The condition of some native tribes in Africa carries an unmistakable resemblance to that of the English laboring classes during the early years of the nineteenth century”; “contact with white civilization” brought “cultural debasement.” More specifically, Polanyi (1957:159) demonstrates that the instruments of colonial cultural degradation in the twentieth century are comparable to those utilized in nineteenth-century Europe:
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The catastrophe of the native community is a direct result of the rapid and violent disruption of the basic institutions of the victim (whether force is used in the process or not does not seem altogether relevant). These institutions are disrupted by the very fact that a market economy is foisted upon an entirely differently organized community; labor and land are made into commodities, which, again, is only a short formula for the liquidation of every and any cultural institution in an organic society. Just as centuries earlier in Europe the “principle of freedom from want” is gradually eroded by the colonizer’s introduction of “the scourge of hunger,” the colonists may decide to cut the breadfruit trees down in order to create an artificial food scarcity or may impose a hut tax on the native to force him to barter away his labor. In either case the effect is similar to that of Tudor enclosures with their wake of vagrant hordes Now, what the white man may still occasionally practice in remote regions today, namely, the smashing up of social structures in order to extract the element of labor from them, was done in the eighteenth century to white populations by white men for similar purposes. (Polanyi, 1957: 163–64) And the failure of native populations to respond “rationally” to higher wages receives treatment akin to that meted out to European workers resisting long hours in the factory. In both cases, “rational” incentives are replaced by “corporal punishment, if not physical mutilation” (Polanyi, 1957:164–65). The underdeveloped “Indian,” in need of often violent tutelage, is both within and beyond. Though the outcome in each situation is “cultural debasement,” Polanyi also highlights certain especially destructive features of the colonial experience. Where Europeans possessed some status in their own society and had some access to political institutions with a capacity for societal self-protection, colonialism weakens these considerably for the colonized. “Cultural degradation can be stopped only by social measures,” including the restoration of land to people and “the isolation of the community from the influence of capitalistic market methods” (Polanyi, 1957:292–93). However, local control of these matters was mostly ended by the colonial relationship: “[t]he political and social conditions of their existence have been destroyed, they are dying from boredom… or wasting their lives in dissipation. While their own culture offers them no longer any objectives worthy of effort or of sacrifice, racial snobbishness and prejudice bar the way to their adequate participation in the culture of the white intruders.” (Polanyi, 1957:158). Though this passage unfortunately fails to capture many of the nuances of agency and resistance uncovered in contemporary characterizations of the colonial era, Polanyi (1957:182–83) does recognize the agency of the local population in another respect: the “revolt against imperialism” is seen as “an attempt on the part of exotic peoples to
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achieve the political status necessary to shelter themselves from the social dislocations caused by European trade policies.”13 What is important about this is not so much that Polanyi shows the similarities between the experiences of colonialism and early-nineteenth-century Europe, though others have noted this strength (Dalton, 1968:xx). Rather, Polanyi’s power is that he moves beyond “comparatism” toward an ethnological stance— using this similarity of self and other as a basis for reevaluating his own society and its traditions and history. As Polanyi (1957: 290) writes, Several authors have insisted on the similarity between colonial problems and those of early capitalism. But they failed to follow up the analogy the other way, that is, to throw light on the condition of the poorer classes of England a century ago by picturing them as what they were—the detribalized, degraded natives of their time. The reason why this obvious resemblance was missed lay in our belief in the liberalistic prejudice which gave undue prominence to the economic aspects of what were essentially noneconomic processes. For neither racial degradation in some colonial areas today nor the analogous dehumanization of the laboring people a century ago was economic in essence. Drawing the connection to colonial oppression is crucial because it reveals to us something about our own history and our current circumstances. We learn that the destructiveness of the self-regulating market is fundamentally cultural. And we can enlist this understanding in a struggle against the intellectual and practical consequences of the economistic fallacy, precisely where Polanyi believes we must begin. Though he may not quite achieve the dialogue of equals advocated by Todorov and Nandy, for the voice of the other is not fully present, other scattered remarks suggest that he was conscious of the reciprocal importance of the colonial and postcolonial experience and his own project. Harry Pearson (1977:xviii) says that Polanyi believed that resisting the economistic fallacy in modern, Western society meant equally resisting the application of inappropriate categories to substantially nonmarket societies and the neocolonial practices this engenders. Polanyi (cited in Pearson, 1977:xix) also sensed that the struggles of colonized and newly independent peoples were crucial to his own battle against capitalism. Indeed, he says that the “Asians, Latin Americans, and Africans” are instructive for us because, having “learned the lesson” of social protection prior to industrialization, they have attempted to set “the safety of society above the requirement of maximum technological efficiency” (Polanyi, 1977:1). Here, others are neither assimilated nor romanticized. Rather, the resistance of colonized peoples serves, at once, as a mirror for cultural self-reflection, an example of the kind of struggle we must also fight, and a potential ally in that struggle.
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This stance toward the other as a potential partner in a critical and dialogical process is made more explicit by Polanyi very late in his life. In terms close to Nandy’s, Polanyi (quoted in Polanyi-Levitt, 1990:259–60) describes the “cultural encounters” of the West “with the world at large” as “barren” and as a “monologue.” He says, “What matters here is not the level of [the West’s] achievements in literature and the arts, which flourish as only rarely before, but the weight and influence of its life values with the rest of mankind. The material and scientific products of the West are consumed by the new nations, but with an unconcealed contempt for the valuations and interpretations set upon them by ourselves.” “Western universalism,” he notes, “received a massive content when the West became the bearer of an industrial civilization that, capitalist or socialist, soon comprised almost half the planet. We were somehow thinking about and for the planet. It was not a conversation. It was a monologue” (Polanyi, quoted in Polanyi-Levitt, 1990:260). However, with decolonization, Polanyi (quoted in Polanyi-Levitt, 1990:260) believed that the “monologue” had ended; the world now required “all the creative imagination of mankind to devise new institutions that can harness the dynamic social forces unleashed within a framework of peaceful co-existence.” What Polanyi imagined was a kind of “economic modus vivendi” where multiple forms of economic life might coexist and become mutually supportive (Polanyi-Levitt, 1990:261–62). Though Polanyi wrote in a time of Eastern and Western blocs and an emerging third world, his vision of the coexistence of multiple forms of social and economic life as a counter to the hegemony of market society seems especially compelling today (for a similar view, see Amin, 1989). Though Polanyi’s announcement that market society was being eclipsed has proven no more prescient than his belief that postcolonial societies would be successful in resisting the onslaught of marketization, it is his critical method (drawing on the other as mirror for the self) and his political project (of forging alliances among co-sufferers) that has significance today.14 What we have called his double critique represents a striking example for the political economy tradition of an effort to engage in the kind of dialogue of traditions explored and recommended by Todorov and Nandy. Polanyi is able to avoid simply projecting the economic norms and understandings of his own society onto others by introducing certain categories—that is, the “substantive” meaning of the economy; the idea of “instituted process”—that introduce a perspectivism into our understanding of economic life. These categories simultaneously allow Polanyi to establish connections between the cultural destruction within societies and across cultures by the effort to implement market relations. In the degradation and resistance fomented by colonialism, Polanyi finds a key to reinterpreting the European experience of early capitalism, including rejecting the economistic fallacy that supports the various free-market projects at work in the world. Thus, at his best, Polanyi teaches us to take an ethnological stance, finding in the other, both within and outside, resources for critical reflection on
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our own understanding of economic life and potential allies in the struggle to create a new civilization. Toward an Ethnological IPE Though perhaps claimed as a forebear, Polanyi cannot be unproblematically digested by IPE as a canonical figure, because his work stands partly outside of and in opposition to the canons of political economy.15 That is, to take Polanyi’s “universal economic history” seriously is to find oneself on ground more often associated with economic anthropology. But, as we have seen, this comparative component of Polanyi’s project is central to his legacy for political-economic inquiry. Our claim is that Polanyi’s capacity to position himself in the overlap of political economy and economic anthropology is precisely what gives his work its uniquely critical power—its ethnological character, in the terms we have used here. This complicated legacy brought by the productivity of this intersection of fields is what we wish to retrieve for a critical IPE. More precisely, we call for reconceiving political economy as an ethnological IPE. To return to where we began this chapter, our examination of Polanyi’s contribution would indicate that we should read the two strands of his contemporary legacy together, not separately. In parallel to Polanyi’s work, it is the potentially fertile overlap of critical IPE and critical development studies that indicates the direction anethnological IPE might take. What does this mean for an ethnological IPE? Contemporary IPE seems to have abandoned or become disconnected from the idea that the economy has ethical content and purpose. Abandonment seems the operative term where, as Polanyi clearly saw, positivist political economists, especially rational choice theorists, turn the economy (and rationality) into an endless instrument. Disconnection, as opposed to abandonment, seems more apt for the Marxian or historical materialist tradition, which Polanyi also distrusted despite his deep intellectual debts, where ostensibly critical analysis remains mostly uncomfortable with inquiry that probes the ethical character of the economy. By contrast, the Polanyian voice, within and somewhat to the side of canonical IPE, calls us to a critical and explicitly ethical project. And while this project finds resources within political economy—the liberal legacy of equality and freedom, for instance—it also calls us to hear the voice of the other beyond the practice and theory of modern political economy. It is here that critical or postdevelopment scholars can be crucial allies, since they take as a central part of their task the recovery and representation of alternative voices, now marginalized by the hegemonic discourse of the free market (see, for example, Escobar, 1995; Sachs, 1992; Rist, 1997; Marchand and Parpart, 1995; Crush, 1995; and Alexander and Mohanty, 1997). Even more so, these critical scholars and marginalized voices should be seen as potential allies in the continuing project of both denaturalizing capitalism and envisioning alternative ways of life. The recent turn against the idea of development, represented in part by critical development studies, suggests a more specific set of points of connection and
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tension that might shape the agenda of an ethnological IPE. What critics of development express very clearly is the Polanyian view that the various forms of resistance to neoliberalism (and to earlier waves of capitalist expansion, for that matter) are attempts by people to defend their ways of life against powerful, often both internal and external, forces. From these accounts, we may begin to draw a more complex and variegated picture of the social and political bases for processes of reembedding the economy. The complicated alliances that may be possible are suggested by the fact that we find similarly richly expressed concerns about the fate of communities radiating from the heartlands of capitalism (Fitzgerald, 1986; Bellah, 1985). Or, we might simply follow Todorov’s and Nandy’s powerful leads in refusing to polarize our understandings of oppressor and oppressed. Polanyi himself rejected the idea of a heroic class actor, painting instead a picture of alliances across class groupings. Things seem even more complex through contemporary lenses, requiring attention to struggles organized around multiple identities: age, gender, race, class, and ethnicity. Thus, by drawing on critical development studies an ethnological IPE might be diverted from the temptation to translate Polanyi’s counter-movement into a mechanical, economistic process, however dialectical (see also Lacher, 1999a; and 1999b). As discussed, the defense of community central to critical development studies risks a lapse into nostalgia—an appeal to an unreclaimable past. However, an ethnological IPE possesses the resources to resist this swing to the pole of difference. From the postdevelopment literature, we find the notion of “hybridity”—a condition formed at the margins of modern society, produced by the responses and adaptations of local people to the successive waves of the global expansion and intensification of capitalism. Broadly consistent with Polanyi’s understanding of the counter-movement, this condition cannot be defined in simple opposition to capitalism or modernity. Instead, it represents the kind of mixed or overlapping space of interest for an ethnological IPE. We might even extend this idea by drawing on work in political economy that examines diverse forms of capitalism that may be demarcated locally, nationally, and/or regionally (Hannerz, 1996; Berger and Dore, 1996; Hettne, 1993). As in Polanyi’s double critique and in parallel to Todorov’s and Nandy’s dialogism, the marginalized others of global capitalism are both within and beyond. Just as modern capitalism finds within itself a protest on behalf of human wholeness, both from its heartland and its excluded margins, the postcolonial “hybrid” other may find a partly modern, liberal self within. In the face of neoliberalism, for example, some reservoir of business acumen may allow local people to locate a niche within a wider market that preserves, even as it changes, their community. Whether this capacity is attributable to “traditional” commercial practices or the influences of modernity is perhaps undecidable. What is crucial is that only when we resist the temptation to purify marginalized peoples and spaces of their mixed and overlapping character can these “hybrid” voices and practices serve as the sources of critical and reciprocal illumination required by an ethnological IPE.
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While the existence of multiple, overlapping spaces at the margins of capitalism may refine our understanding of the counter-movement somewhat, we should not lose sight of Polanyi’s insight—derived from the juxtaposition of the European and colonial experiences—that reembedding the logic of economy depends on a wider and effective set of social and political institutions. In particular, he points to the importance of the state and regional and global institutions, as would the political economy tradition generally. We would add that it is increasingly acceptable to imagine, if still difficult to adequately theorize and realize, more generous forms of federalism, allowing greater local autonomy, but nested within regional and world schemes of overlapping political authority (see Hettne, 1993; 1997; Cerny, 1995; 2001; Brenner, 1999a; 1999b; Swyngedouw, 1997; and Mann, 1997). This vision, certainly more palatable than the continuing exercise of power by dominant states and well-heeled movements and groups, nonetheless depends on authoritative political forms. But this raises as many questions as it resolves. Contemporary neoliberal globalization is no less a political project of the state and various regional and global institutions (Murphy, 1994; Helleiner, 1994). We would emphasize once again the importance of opening up our investigation of the counter-movement to include the multiple and variegated political possibilities suggested by the overlapping space of an ethnological IPE, but add the qualification that this investigation cannot be restricted to the local. We will look more closely at the issue of overlapping political authority in the next chapter. Finally, all of this raises the issue of how we might demarcate the boundaries of the overlapping voices comprising an ethnological IPE.16 Polanyi’s practice suggests that we must include the myriad texts that make up the ethnographic archive. Our own inquiry suggests that we should draw more on the case studies and theories of development studies, particularly in its more critical, postdevelopment version. The objection might be that we remain far from fully including the voice of the other. The ethnographic archive, as well as the findings of critical development studies, are produced by Europeans (or by predominantly European-trained scholars), in European languages, for mostly European readers. Many of the alternative visions and forms of life that might serve as interlocutors in a dialogue among traditions remain relatively inaccessible to critical political economists—in languages, texts, and places out of easy reach. Further, we are not generally accustomed to speak to those “specialists” (within or beyond academe) who might speak from or on behalf of these voices; nor are they necessarily accustomed to or interested in speaking to the questions we wish to ask. Our work with Todorov and Nandy suggests that this problem is difficult but not, in principle, insurmountable. Polanyi’s work indicates and illustrates the path—uphill and winding, from which it is all too easy to stray—toward such an ethnological IPE.
CHAPTER 6 Multiple and Overlapping Sovereignties
Rob Walker argues that “[t]he modern political imagination is in trouble because it has become so much more difficult to believe in the magic of straight lines” (Walker, forthcoming: 63). Building on Jessica Benjamin’s (1988) discussion of “splitting,” we have argued that straight lines separate self and other, devaluing and purifying the self of the traits defined as other. Straight lines fail to work their magic, in part, because the presence of the other within the self makes pure forms illusory. As we maintained in part I of this book, attempting to produce purity creates violence that, while aiming at erasing the other, necessarily redounds also to the self. Throughout the book we examined various efforts to manage or erase difference with the use of straight lines, yet we also pointed to alternative and less destructive paths that locate the other as a resource in a process of critical self-reflection. This tension defines the space within which we reconsider the question of sovereignty raised in chapter 1. However, rather than reject sovereignty, we hope to reimagine it in a way that works against “the empire of uniformity” imposed through the reign of straight lines. Moving beyond the reign of straight lines means resisting the impulse to strictly separate self and other, inside and outside, or mine and yours. These dualities inform the parallel between sovereignty and property mentioned briefly in chapters 1 and 4. Indeed, the language of “parallel” does not quite capture the intimacy of the relationship between sovereignty and property. To portray this intimacy we draw once again from earlier centuries in European experience. The increasing independence of the princes of late medieval and early modern Europe endowed rulers with “heightened dominance,” not only “over their subjects,” but also “over the estates of their lands” (Thomson, 1963:791). More precisely, the emergence of sovereign statehood, as Kurt Burch (1998:ix, 1) argues, is a transition in the deployment of property rights; sovereignty is articulated and partly instantiated as a “property right of rulers.” The sovereign’s rule, initially personal and later associated more fully with depersonalized institutions, is derived from dominium—a special case of the more general understanding of relations of entitlement or property (Burch, 1998:74–76, 143– 44; Kratochwil, 1995:23–28). As in Roman law and in gradually emerging liberal forms of property, sovereignty appears as an “exclusive property right,” bundling together rights to
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ownership, use, and the right to convey property freely via exchange or gift (Kratochwil, 1995:25–26; see also Hann, 1998:1–2, 8). Since the model for imagining sovereignty was generally landed property (Hann, 1998:5; Brewer and Staves, 1995:2), the exclusivity of rights associated with sovereignty take on a distinctly spatial or territorial character in that the territory of the ruler/political community is subject to his/its exclusive jurisdiction (Kratochwil, 1995:26, 269, note 10). As Nick Onuf (1998b:131) explains, drawing on eighteenth-century sources, “The law of territorial jurisdiction grants each state a protective shell for the exercise of sovereignty. If states are sovereign, then they have rights of possession and use with respect to their own territory but not the territory of others, except of course by agreement. Sovereign states function like rightsbearing individuals in liberal circumstances.” Similarly, Charles Beitz (1991: 243) refers to “a state’s domestic jurisdiction” as a kind of “collective property right for the citizens of that state,” with all the powers of exclusion that follow, and Barry Buzan (1991:93) speaks of the territory of the state, including its population and resources, as “national property.” At the same time, F.H.Hinsley’s (1986:158) analysis of the relation of internal and external sovereignty suggests that the claim of a state to exercise final authority in its own territory depends logically on extending the same right to other states,1 though colonial relations provide a significant exception to this rule, as we note in earlier chapters (see also Keene, 2002). On the one hand, sovereignty constitutes states as existentially separate in that, by promoting their own sovereignty, they constitute themselves as discrete entities. On the other hand, by accepting the status of sovereign, states simultaneously constitute others as outside, alien, and competitors, but, nevertheless, in Hinsley’s story, as sovereign others. This act of reciprocal recognition is necessary to create the condition in which states treat each other as discrete, disparate, and self-helping entities. The creation of an international society is an inherently social process and sovereignty a social relationship. Thus, sovereignty, like the status of property owner (Hann, 1998:4), does not imply a set of primordial, independent actors, possessing a set of naturally given rights. Rather, it involves a set of social actors whose claims to independence and the possession of exclusive rights are made possible by their embeddedness in a set of social relations—an asocial sociality, if you will.2 The seeming separation and isolation of states from one another is further undermined because the intimate connection between sovereignty and property also entails the integral relationship (discussed in chapter 4) between sovereignty and the capitalist global division of labor. Burch (1998: 144) explains that early modern sovereigns, in an attempt to secure their rather fragile rule, could draw upon their “property” only by extending property rights to various subjects of the realm in return. Most important, this involved recognizing the rights of a rising merchant class in order to secure its allegiances to centralized rule. In the process, sovereigns gradually established the realm as a kind of social body—a distinct and legitimate state. The social body of the state was constructed from
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individual and corporate bearers of rights to productive assets, either tied to the land or as more mobile forms of capital. In this way, early modern notions of property rights are crucially interwoven with the emergence of the states system and global capitalism. The ruler’s domain is demarcated from the “outside” of the international system, but the property relations necessary to (global) capitalist production and exchange also are put into place (Burch, 1998:23– 24, 140). That is, though this move may have reinforced the separateness of political communities, securing a kind of property right in the resources and productive activities of the territory, it also unleashes processes of production and exchange that move across boundaries. In chapter 4 we examined the way this interweaving of sovereignty and a capitalist global division of labor forms a culture of competition in which a social (and global) process of wealth production is treated as a series of separable and, in some sense, presocial contributions. Here again, the reign of straight lines is critical: it naturalizes the status of actors as individual producers. Indeed, hiding the social and relational character of wealth production is a deception integral to a culture of competition. In this chapter, we challenge the assumption that property/sovereignty should be governed by the logic of straight lines. In the second section, we engage, tentatively at least, in the sort of ethnographic inquiry recommended in the previous chapter. We examine the understandings of and practices surrounding space, land, and sovereign territory in two parts of India—Bengal and the Ceded and Conquered Territories (now a part of the Indian State of Uttar Pradesh). More precisely, we examine the contrast between what we take to be an overlapping, heterogeneous, and relative understanding of property in land in preBritish or Mughal India and a more modern—more discrete, homogeneous, and absolute—idea of landed property imposed by British rule. We argue that the older, more disaggregated understanding of landed property provides a corrective to our understanding of the naturalness of the reign of straight lines. It is possible, then, to begin to recover alternative possibilities to modern understandings of the meaning of property and territory. We might separate the various qualities of landed property, such as, for example, its habitational and revenue-generating aspects. Rather than linking identities and wealth acquisition only to exclusive and purified conceptions of property and territory, meaning and livelihood might instead be built upon overlapping claims such that different parties can obtain or draw on different aspects of the same property. These two types of conceptions— exclusive and overlapping—may even be combined to create a “mixed mode” of organization. In the third section, we suggest that such possibilities are increasingly relevant for contemporary world politics. We note that various proposals for the future of Jerusalem envision such a combination of elements—of partitioned jurisdictions and shared and overlapping spaces within an undivided city—as a response to its status as a “frontier” or “contact zone” between competing and interacting groups. The rest of the world is, perhaps, not altogether different from Jerusalem. Visions of a world reshaped by flows of people, goods, and capital
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are suggestive of similar transformations in the meaning of global space. If transnational social processes and multilayered modes of global governance point to a postmodern return to more fluid spatial relations—that is, multiple and overlapping sovereignties—they continue to reproduce and legitimize the inequalities of a modern culture of competition. If so, an unbundling of ownership rights might work to support existing rights or retrieve prior social practices that allow more secure access to shares of the wealth produced in global structures of production. Retrieving Multiple and Overlapping Claims to Territory Land claimed by sovereign states embodies multiple meanings. As a “homeland” it grounds memories and provides a site for the expression of identities and ways of life. Occupation also has a material aspect, since land holds buildings, contains resources, and serves as the site for production processes generating the goods and revenues that support life. Despite this multiplicity of meanings and purposes, we have come to understand land, territory, and space as pure categories; employing the idea of sovereignty we divide space and bundle its varied meanings into discrete, homogenous, and absolute cultural units. Thus, sovereignty is often treated as an answer to the problem of adjudicating competing claims to land or territory, as, in chapter 1, between the warring religious and political forces of the Thirty Years’ War. Conventional international relations theory teaches the virtues (and dangers) of the division of the globe into sovereign units. However, these virtues and the conventional responses to the dangers of conflicts between sovereign states (that is, diplomacy or balancing power) are rendered mostly irrelevant when conflicts turn on competing claims to territory between governments and subnational or cross-national groups. For better and worse, the sovereignty solution to ethnonational conflict promises the fragmentation of global space into smaller and smaller sovereign territories, but we can recover recessive themes that serve to contest this dominant conception of territory. Here, we examine the tensions between the images of and practices surrounding land in pre-British India and British visions of proper landed property. By retrieving such recessive images and practices, we highlight that territorial spaces are historically constructed, entailing a set of social relationships and processes, and not a universal and fixed category within a Euclidean geometry or a Newtonian cosmology (Agnew and Corbridge, 1995). Thus, alternative constructions of space—as overlapping, heterogeneous, and relative—may compete with modern visions that subscribe to the magic of straight lines. Heterogeneous Landed Property in Pre-British India Mughal rule in India lasted from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century. Given the relative autonomy of village life under the Mughals, the idea of “rule” differs
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from our modern associations. By comparison with a “civilizing mission” or, as the British historian W.H.Moreland (1968:xii) terms it, in contrast with a sense of “administrative philanthropy,” rule in the Mughal context implies a minimalist imperialism verging on indifference toward the political economy and culture of village life. Mughal rulers primarily concerned themselves with assessing, measuring, and collecting their share of the revenue generated from agricultural production. As long as revenue flowed, most, though certainly not all, aspects of village life were left to the dictates of local elites, traditions, and cultures. If the economic lifeblood of such empires seems all too close to our modern sense of “extortion,” it is possible to see such extortion as relatively benign compared to what yesterday passed for the “administrative philanthropy” of European colonialism and what today passes as the charitable condescension of neocolonialism. In other words, the particular virtue of older empires may be that they cared mostly if not exclusively about flows of revenue. The mode of generation of revenue and the local culture’s understandings of history or the human relationship with nature or God within which revenue generation was embedded, were, relatively speaking, a matter of indifference to the sovereign and his revenue collectors. For the Mughals, even religion, as Ira Lapidus suggests, was not a matter of conversion through force. Indeed, Lapidus (1988:244) submits that “conversion by force, while not unknown in Muslim countries, was, in fact, rare. Muslim conquerors ordinarily wished to dominate rather than convert, and most conversions to Islam were voluntary.” This was especially true in the subcontinent due to the thinness of the Muslim elite and the lack of massive Muslim migrations to India. The result was that “the social structure of the conquered peoples remained intact” (Lapidus, 1988:248; 443–52). Imperial indifference to local culture, politics, and economics should not surprise us if we remember, as noted in earlier chapters, that the ordering principle of premodern life was not equality but status hierarchy. The modern ideal, seeing the other as potentially equal to the self (as with Vitoria’s overturning of the doctrine of natural slavery and modernization theory’s response to an emerging postcolonial era), releases an intrusive idealistic philanthropy and a global civilizing mission. If, however, the other is considered different and intrinsically inferior, then conversion merely adds contestants to the privileges of the imperial group. The imperial culture’s indifference to local culture serves, then, to deny the latter access to imperial resources. In turn, those belonging to an out-group may convert in an attempt to access these privileges. While Mughal dynasties did not penetrate into the villages, they did successfully impose a system of revenue extraction. Two characteristics present in Indian life prior to Mughal conquest facilitated this. First, the system the Mughals imposed was familiar to Hindu peasants (Moreland, 1968:16). Prior rulers had established the practice in which a third of the produce was claimed by the sovereign. Second, such traditional practices were seen as prescribed by sacred texts:
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The Sacred Law presents King and Peasant in a bilateral relationship, which is defined more precisely in regards to duties than to rights. The duty of the peasant is, firstly, to raise produce, and secondly, to pay a share of his produce to the King. Performing these duties, he can expect the King’s protection, and he can enjoy the balance of his produce…. The King’s paramount duty is to protect his subjects; and, while he does so, he is entitled to claim a share of the Peasant’s produce. (Moreland, 1968:2) This important passage lets us see the stress placed on status relationships and obligations rather than rights and it checks two potential misinterpretations. First, the mention of the king’s share of the “produce” or “revenue” refers to the gross. Net yields were not calculated, since the very category of a net return seemed irrelevant when the produce of the land was treated as a natural “bounty” and human goals and interventions were subordinated to the cycles of nature. This pre-Physiocratic notion recognizes the product of the land more as a windfall and less as a rational or scientific return on labor and capital. The idea of a windfall is crucial to the logic of the hypothetical “state-of-nature” constructions of Hobbes and Rousseau (and in Locke’s “state of nature” prior to the invention of property). It is not until the Physiocrats and classical political economy that we detect an alternative relationship, one in which nature is clearly treated as a means within a cycle of human ends. Second, the passage from Moreland refers to the produce of the land but says nothing about the social conventions governing occupation and cultivation. The king could expect a cut of the produce of the land but could not detenure a cultivator even when the cultivator failed to contribute to the royal cut of agricultural production. Indeed only two conditions allowed for forfeiture of occupational claims on land: harboring thieves or participating in rebellion against the sovereign (Sinha, 1962:4). The essential point is captured by the famous Indian saying: “the revenue belongs to the king, the land to the cultivator.” The maxim overstates the point, as the ruler’s claims are limited by the subsistence needs of the cultivator since this is a necessary condition for the ruler’s own revenue. Nevertheless, the conceptual separation between revenues that flow from the land and the claims to perpetual occupation and cultivation may seem counterintuitive and therefore instructive for our modern minds. Distinguishing between revenue generated from the land and the land as a relatively fixed site of habitation begins to open a crack in our natural inclination to think of land as discrete, homogenous, and absolute property (see Sjaastad and Bromley, 2000; and Hann, 1998). Before exploring this distinction further, a contemporary image or two may help us conceptualize the separation between revenue-generating and habitational aspects of land. John Locke would have us believe that our body is our property. Not only do we live within it, but it is part of what we are. Is the revenue that my body generates through labor also my property? An easy “yes” to this question is the result of a connecting narrative supplied by Locke’s labor theory of property
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(Locke, 1988: book II, chapter 5), which assumes that my body is my property and that “mixing” my labor with natural objects also makes those objects mine. If we hesitate to commit to Locke’s assumptions or to his connective narrative, or if we construct an alternative narrative, then we can separate the habitable versus the revenue-generating aspects of a human body. That is, I live in my body, but the work of my body can also generate income, which, depending on our assumptions, may or may not belong to me. The point is to theorize the separability of the housing versus the income-generating functions of my body. Or, to take a slightly different example, I can inhabit the apartment I own and lay claim to the revenue it generates if I use it otherwise—for example, as a rental unit or home office. Our modern minds naturally combine claims of habitation and revenue generation because we tend to see them as both vested in an individual owner. But this bundling of elements is a modern habit, and noticing its historical nature may help us to consider alternatives. Upon their arrival in India, the British well understood the separation of the revenue-generation versus the occupational aspects of landed property. Sulekh Chandra Gupta, whose Agrarian Relations in Early British Rule in India (1963) we rely on heavily, notes that in the early British period (from about the 1760s to the 1820s) British officers understood “that property in land as understood in England did not exist in India” (Gupta, 1963: 48). Indeed, Gupta (1963:48–49) cites the governor general of the Ceded and Conquered Provinces in an 1832 text, emphasizing that Indians do not think of property in a properly English fashion as the fusion of the powers of occupancy and rent in one person: “The word property, as applied to land in England, usually implies in the person possessed of it the right of regulating occupancy and appropriating rent. It can be used with propriety only when both incidents attach to the substantive matter thus designated, the term is not strictly applicable to the interest in land possessed by the individuals who in common parlance are called proprietors in India.” Because, in India, property’s qualities were disaggregated and distributed to different persons, even the rulers’s power over agricultural land was not absolute and unlimited. The reason he could not divest anyone of the habitational and cultivational rights over land was because he himself did not own the land in such an absolute sense. To the degree that land was his property it was only the revenue-generating stream over which he had a claim. Gupta explains the overlapping and multiple claims to land and property by reference to the relationships between the respective claims of the state and the cultivators of the village and the various types of property operating within the village. Key to these relationships are the statuses of “zamindar” and “rayat.”3 Derived from Persian, zamindar means “owner of land.” It may be worth repeating that ownership here means something different from what we have come to expect. It does not mean that the zamindar, in fact, possessed all the powers associated with landed property in a modern sense. Sirajul Islam (1988: 2) quotes Irfan Habib: “the possessors of zamindari rights were not possessors of a visible article of property, like any other, but of a title to a constant share in the
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production of society.” Rather, Islam (1988:2) explains, “Zamindars were merely farmers of government revenue on a hereditary basis. In this sense a zamindar was only a hereditary intermediate agent between government and the [rayat].” The word rayat or ryot means “cultivator” and signified the cultivational and occupational claims the rayats held in the land. Such claims, though heritable, were not transferable. This meant, according to Gupta (1963:55), that “they could occupy and cultivate land in their possession from generation to generation but could not alienate it by gift, mortgage, or sale.” Landed property, Gupta (1963:50–51) argues, was held thereby via a set of multiple and overlapping claims by the state, the state and its intermediaries, and the cultivators. As we have seen, the state appropriated some portion of the gross agricultural produce, but did not have the authority to regulate occupancy or cultivation. Complicating things further, “property in land in India was vested in the State and was jointly shared [through the will of the sovereign] by intermediaries.” The shared power to appropriate the produce of the land in a sense vested the mass of intermediaries (mainly zamindars) with property in land. However, if we think of property as the claim to perpetual occupancy and cultivation—limited only by payment of revenue from the produce of the land to the state and its assignees and officers—“then there is no doubt that the right to property in this sense was vested in the [cultivator].” The British responded in three ways to what they no doubt saw as messy and backward, a position shared by many of today’s development economists (see Ferguson, 1994:235–36; Sjaastad and Bromley, 2000; Anderson, 1991; and McCay and Jentoft, 1998). First, the British worked to sever the obligatory, binding, and customary relationship between the state and the zamindar. Second, they severed the same type of organic relationship between the zamindar and cultivator. And, finally and importantly, they commodified land, making it alienable through sale. This third response was something altogether new in India, where all transfers previously required the compliance of the village community. The first two responses concentrated on separating the intermediaries (henceforth referred to, for convenience’s sake, as zamindars, even though zamindars were only one group within the category of intermediaries) from the state above and from the cultivators below. Taken together, these “reforms” made the zamindars into something akin to property owners in a modern sense. The British collapsed the revenue-generation and occupational aspects of land, vesting both in the zamindars and, in so doing, hoped to transform them into the model of European landlords. The collapse of the two aspects of ownership of land also had the effect of severing the zamindar’s paternal dependence on the state as functionaries. Neither, however, was the state—in this case the East India Company—obligated to the zamindars in other than strictly contractual terms. The government could and did confiscate and sell the land of zamindars when, for example, due to droughts or floods, they did not meet the state’s revenue requirements. Further, with strengthened ownership rights, the
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zamindars gained the equivalent of the state’s right to “evict” in their own relationships with cultivators. However, the right of eviction was more readily exercised by the state. While British administrators were able to sell zamindari lands at public auction, the zamindars, despite their recognized rights, were usually unable to evict recalcitrant cultivators in the face of a fierce and desperate defense of their sole source of livelihood. Thus, with British intrusion we have the creation of purer, more analytically distinct categories of rights in land, associated with state dominion, landed property ownership, and the tenancy of landless cultivators, that work to eliminate the overlapping sets of claims and obligations associated with the previous social relationships. The British polarized and purified these statuses by overlooking separable qualities of landed property and fusing land’s revenuegenerating with its occupational and cultivational aspects. The newly constructed bundle of rights in land was then attached to the newly constituted category of private landowner (with the usual limits set by sovereign authority). These moves created (or left) two types of property in the village—what Gupta (1963:52–53) calls “privilege property” and “joint property.” Privilege property was specific to the zamindar who now held the right to cultivate particular fields as well as to occupy that land. These rights were heritable but had their ultimate source in the will of the state, which always commanded its portion of the gross revenue. However, even inheritance was not automatic; it continued to be regulated by local laws and restricted according to the religion of the family. Common or joint property was vested in all classes of the village collectively. These were customary rights over “commons”—village wastelands, gardens, ponds, forests, and so on. While the village headman controlled the distribution of the produce of the common land, all members of the village community enjoyed access to the commons. In a telling digression, Gupta (1963: 53) mentions that “[t]he rights of trees and their fruits were vested in those who planted them and their descendants, irrespective of the rights in land on which they might have been planted.” Thus, property relations remained complex within the’village. It is worth quoting Gupta (1963:53–54) at length in order to visualize the overlapping and mutually constituting aspect of the property relations within and beyond the village: The rights of occupancy and cultivation were vested in the family and the right of each family was interlinked with that of another. Such interlinking arose because if a sharer died without heirs, his lands were at the disposal of the rest of the sharers of his division. Naturally, therefore, every household in the division or sub-division was affected in such a circumstance Thus, the right of the individual cultivator was limited by the rights of the family, of the village community, and of the State. Similarly, the right of the State was conditioned by that of the village community, which in turn was nothing more than an aggregate of the various
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interconnected rights of different families. Moreover, these rights were subject to numerous restrictions of law and custom and were based on prescription and usage. The emerging picture of this narrative is a “totality of certain common rights to certain common privileges subject to certain common obligations” (Gupta, 1963: 53). Despite British efforts to create a system of private property, social relationships and ownership rights remained “mixed” in form and meaning. The British Project and the Eclipse of Mughal Flexibility The British wholeheartedly embraced the Mughal idea that the state was entitled to a share of the annual produce of every unit of land. This entitlement became the major form of taxation and the central source of revenue for colonial administration and the profits of the East India Company. Under Mughal tradition, however, the precise share of the produce taken by the state varied. Its maximum practical limit was set by the danger that too large a tax would lead to a decrease in overall revenue. The state could not afford to let the size of its share be a disincentive to the cultivator, all the more so because land was never scarce (Moreland, 1968:xii). Actual claims by the state depended upon local conditions, including the presence or absence of rains, variations in cropping patterns, and availability of irrigation (Gupta, 1963:9; Moreland, 1968:15). Since the state disposed of a large percentage (usually a third, but perhaps as much as half) of the crop, “next to the weather, [the state] was the dominant fact in the economic life of the country” (Moreland, 1968:xii). The method of assessing the state’s share necessitated a large bureaucracy of officials and functionaries “who were either the employees of the State…or its dependents” (Gupta, 1963:9). The Mughals assessed revenues due by both estimation and direct measurement. Officials, in collaboration with village officials and leaders, often assessed the cultivator’s liability well before the product was ripe. The liability thus estimated was to be paid in cash after harvest and sale. The measurement procedure called for a calculation based on the size of the panel of land and the application of a schedule of rates prepared on the basis of average yields per unit for each type of crop. Thus, in assessing revenues, the Mughal regime also took into account the variability of soil fertility, types of crops grown, and the average prices “prevalent in any locality over a number of years and took measures to collect these data on its own initiative” (Gupta, 1963:14–15). To modern eyes the Mughals show a remarkable degree of flexibility in accounting for the specificity of the local. This complicated their revenue collection and burdened their bureaucracy. Why did they not simply apply a standard universal rate? We can guess that such flexibility makes sense where, as we have noted, produce is seen primarily as the “bounty” of nature. A tax on the bounty of nature could hardly be conceived as fixed across time and space, but would be linked to the variability in the windfall of the bounty itself.
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In contrast, if the product of the land is seen to be principally the product of human activities and to lie within human control, a more standardized calculation for taxation becomes possible. Beyond the local specificity of soil, product, and prices, the Mughals showed mostly indifference toward, if not respect for, local culture. The state, according to Gupta (1963:15), “showed deference to the rules and regulations of the village communities in which the classes of rural society enjoyed differential privileges in matters of revenue assessment and rights to land.” More important, as we have seen, the state did not intervene in village life as long as the appropriate amount of revenue was collected. There was no effort to change the village practices of occupation, cultivation, inheritance, and transfer of land. Gupta (1963:16) concludes, “So long as the payment of State Revenue was ensured, the members of the village communities were left free to regulate their own affairs according to their own traditions and customs.” It is decisively in this regard that the British did not follow the Mughals. They brought quite different conceptions of space and time. Having so recently rationalized their own relationship to nature, the British seemed to find it impossible not to impose their vision on the local cultures of India. While they shared with the Mughals, indeed with all colonial projects, the need to derive revenue from the colony, British motives included the strong civilizing, utopian, or simply idealist moment we have identified in modern Western social and political thought. The British, we might say, were caught dangling between the poles of hierarchical and egalitarian views. Without some commitment to civilizational hierarchies and a sense of the other as a usable object, the colonial project could not have set sail. This much the British shared with the Mughals. However, without an additional idea—an understanding of the other as a temporally prior self (and, therefore, as potential equal)—the civilizing mission of the British is difficult to account for. Of course, it is possible to regard the British intrusion more economistically, as a product of the need for increasing surplus value unleashed by the logic of capitalism. The requisites of capital accumulation require that capitalists intervene in every pore of the earth’s productive surface, transform conceptions of space and time, and assimilate local cultures and places into the rhythms of universal capital. However, we can view the re-creation of space and time also as an idealist moment within capitalism itself. Such an argument about capitalism, therefore, is not nearly as economistic as it first seems. Recall capitalism’s (partial and formal but nonetheless, in our view, real) commitments to freedom, equality, justice, contract, and individuality. In this sense, the economistic aspects of capitalism may be seen as possessing a cultural logic and might be described, as we have, as a culture of competition. The imposition of capitalist logic on local spaces is, as Polanyi makes clear, the imposition of a cultural system that regards economics as separable from both nature and the fuller complexities of social life. Thus, whether we see their imposition in economistic or culturalist terms, the British differed from the Mughals in their design to transform the face of social and cultural life in order
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to enhance the flows of revenue. In this way, as we have noted before, imperialism receives its idealist leaven. British policy in India began to assume this idealistic tone by the end of the eighteenth century. Of particular importance was the Permanent Settlement Act of 1793, instituted in Bengal. British intentions, as we described above, were to create a propertied class in the zamindars that would be both loyal to and dependent on British rule. Equally, they hoped that the zamindars would function as a capitalist middle class, investing in the land and promoting a general prosperity that would fill state (in this case, British East India Company) coffers. Because production was now being organized increasingly within the flow of modern systems of human activity, uniform tax rates that ignored the vagaries of local conditions might be safely applied (Islam, 1979:xi; Gupta, 1963:71–74). For zamindars to fulfill the function of capitalist farmers or landlords, it was crucial, as mentioned above, that the occupational and revenue-generating aspects of property in land be formally and officially collapsed and vested in the zamindars. Improvements to the land could now be justified because the resulting benefits would be captured exclusively by its owner. And land, now being alienable by its owner, might be transferred to and concentrated in the hands of the most productive users. In this way the British created a type of European property in land. What was before accomplished through hereditary practices, and through careful negotiation between the state, the zamindars, the cultivators, and the village community, was now increasingly left to be done through contract, sale, and the supply-and-demand mechanisms of the market (Gupta, 1963:71). The philanthropic and developmental purposes attached to these “reforms” is made clear in the Preamble to Regulation II of the Permanent Settlement Act: In the British territories in Bengal,…[most of the produce is] the product of the land: it follows, that the commerce and consequently the wealth of the country, must increase in proportion to the extension of its agriculture. But it is not for commercial purposes alone that the encouragement of agriculture is essential to the welfare of these provinces. The Hindoos, who form the body of the people, are compelled, by the dictates of religion, to depend solely upon the produce of the lands for subsistence; and…[those not Hindoo but who are a part of the lower orders] are from habit or necessity, in a similar predicament. (Quoted in Gupta, 1963:72) The passage reflects both continuities and contrasts with the previous conquerors. The Mughals and the British both drew revenue from the land, but it was the British alone who believed they could substantially affect the rate and volume of revenue flow. And strikingly, however much they may have misunderstood and misrepresented local practices, the British officially embraced a concern for the “welfare” of Hindus and others who occupied the lower rungs of society. The preamble goes on to suggest that the pressing problem to be addressed is periodic crop failures and the accompanying famines. In this situation, “the
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country must necessarily continue subject to these calamities, until the proprietors and cultivators of the lands shall have the means of increasing the number of the reservoirs, embankments, and other artificial works, by which…the ultimate cessation of the periodical rains may be provided against, and the land protected from inundation” (quoted in Gupta, 1963:72). In contrast to this social and technological intervention, the Mughals must have seen droughts and floods more as part of the cycles of nature to which even the Mughals themselves had to adjust. Thus, part of their response to droughts and floods was not only to bend their demand accordingly but often also to provide remissions and loans (Islam, 1988:10). For the British such flexibility is unimaginable because it undermines their self-conception as modern beings. Indeed, the preamble sets its “primary objective” as “improvements in agriculture” (quoted in Gupta, 1963:72). This objective is not simply a change in administrative structure or practice, but reflects a desire to transform the Indians’ relationship to the cycles of nature itself. Though the administrative language of the Permanent Settlement obscures the character of this aspiration by focusing on “technical” issues of incentive structures, organizational practices, or technology, the British project involves nothing less than altering the very fabric of Indian social and cultural life.4 Like all colonial pedagogy, the force of British ideas about “improvements” was accompanied by more tangible mechanisms of enforcement. According to Ratnalekha Ray (1979:80), the most revolutionary innovation of the Permanent Settlement was the creation of a network of disciplining offices and magistracies that took their notes and taught their lessons: “Each Raja [and, presumably, each large zamindar] now found a British officer who was permanently stationed in the Sadr breathing down his neck, examining his accounts, ordering his officers, selecting his farmers, receiving petitions from his raiyats, in short telling him how to run his zamindari.” In fact, the British were quite unforgiving of poor performance by zamindars.5 While the state could not, under the Permanent Settlement, raise its rate of taxation, it was inflexible if that rate was not met. The zamindar “was not entitled to any remission on the plea of loss by any natural calamity. If he fell into arrears in the payment of his installments his land would be sold in liquidation of the balance A small calamity was sufficient to lead to failure in the payment of the state installments resulting in the immediate sale of the property” (Sinha, 1962: 158). If the standardization of practices and inflexibility of response changed the fabric of agrarian relations, the Permanent Settlement, nevertheless, did not create quite the capitalist landowner of British design. Instead, there was a largescale transfer of property from hereditary zamindars and rajas to the urban mercantile class. Nor did members of this class become full-fledged agricultural capitalists. This gap between design and outcome is partly explained by the resistance of cultivators to the appropriation and commodification of their cultivational and occupational claims (Ray, 1979: 287–88; Gupta, 1963:123–24). Despite their resistance, the cultivators gradually lost “their right to common property in wastelands, fisheries, forests, gardens and trees” (Gupta, 1963:77).
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Gupta (1963:77) is careful to point out that, while the fabric of village communities was already unraveling in numerous respects, it was the Permanent Settlement—with its intention to replace custom with contract and competition— that irretrievably altered the social order. It is not difficult to mount a defense of the British. Even Marx, so sensitive to the exploitation reaped by colonialism and capitalism, felt that such growing pains were necessary for India to be brought into the modern fold (Marx, 1978). Perhaps so. But it is unnecessary to enter into the great debates over the costs and benefits of colonial contact and the consequences of modernity. Whatever our calculations of the net results, unquestioning compliance with the imperatives of modernity is now no longer possible. This does not mean that modernity offers us no guidance for life or lacks any critical purchase. It means only that the question of what we keep and what we discard from the heritage of modernity needs explicit and ongoing discussion. In this light a defense of the British is rather beside the point. What we need instead are some alternative tools, including alternative conceptions of landed property, and, derivatively, sovereignty. Consistent with an ethnographic approach, our discussion of India suggests that we can examine the past—in this case, a complex mixture of historical self and cultural other—in order to begin to imagine a meaningful future. More precisely, we highlight that the historical construction of property as discrete, homogeneous, and absolute contains retrievable traces of its past life as overlapping, heterogeneous, and relative. Toward Alternative Conceptions of Property and Sovereignty Premodern empire offers retrievable elements. This in itself may be a startling proposition for those of us steeped in historiographies of progress. We would not, however, want to ignore the many unappealing elements of premodern empires, like that of the Mughal’s. The predominance of “personal rule” often left populations subject to the capricious will of rulers, despite the proscriptions of custom. High levels of taxation often had relatively stagnating effects on agricultural production and development. The hereditary statuses that defined social obligations and claims (kings, zamindars, and rayats in this case) are too inegalitarian to hold much appeal. All of which is a way of saying that empire’s commitment to a relatively fixed hierarchical social order seems intrinsically set against the possibility of expanding the range and depth of human freedoms and the recognition of human equality. There are, however, numerous qualities of premodern empire that may seem inviting: the metaphor of wealth as “bounty”; the flexibility and sensitivity of the state to the specificities of space and time; the embeddedness of the economy in cultural life; the guarantee of access to income and a livelihood; and the practice of assigning property’s separable qualities to different persons or groups. The first of these—thinking of wealth as bounty—we find ourselves more ambivalent about than the others. On the one hand, we can-not afford to think about wealth,
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and especially agricultural production, as simply the bounty of nature. This risks romanticizing nature’s indifference—an indifference that can be experienced as hostility by its various species. It also disregards the keenest lesson offered by the Physiocrats, classical political economy, as well as by Hegel and Marx, that it is human labor that creatively transforms nature to meet human needs. On the other hand, the metaphor of wealth as a bounty stands perhaps as a necessary corrective to the pretensions of modernity. After all, in many locales the power of nature looms large, and wealth, especially agricultural production, remains mostly natural bounty. Further, the metaphor of wealth as a bounty reminds us that what we achieve is not simply a matter of individual labor, effort, and just reward but also, as Smith and Hayek suggest (see chapter 4), a matter of social processes and circumstances. Given the use of individualist notions of merit to rationalize vast inequalities, it seems valuable to retrieve the notion of “bounty” in this case as a “social bounty,” as a reminder of how many, if not most people actually experience wealth acquisition. We will return to this theme below. Also interesting and instructive is the Mughal empire’s flexible approach to tax assessments rooted in a sensitivity to the specificity of local circumstances. The “rule of law” provided by the British did, in theory, overcome the ad hoc nature of imperial decisions (see Moreland, 1968:xii), but its rule-boundedness also made it inflexible and insensitive to the specificity of local conditions. We noted earlier that the imposition of the rule of law on supposedly lawless “natives” is often part of modern society’s efforts to homogenize social space (see chapters 2 and 3). Can we retrieve the Mughal sensitivity to the concrete without losing the British (and liberal) commitment to universal principles of justice? That is, can we create a context that errs neither on the side of ad hoc particularism and hierarchical injustice nor on the side of insensitive and intolerant universality? This is perhaps the question of our time and hence too big to tackle all at once. Our present discussion of landed property nonetheless does open up important lines of inquiry. Relative to our modern conception, pre-British India understood landed property in a more nuanced and precise manner. The distinction between the revenue-generating and the occupational and cultivational aspects of landed property seems a partial but important bow to the insight that nonmarket forms of social organization tend to secure access to livelihood and to recognize a claim to share in the wealth of the community (see chapter 5). The recognition of such a “right” in contemporary society would require achieving a greater degree of substantive equality and move us toward embedding the economy in social life. The pre-British distinctions among the components of ownership also remind us that claims to the various aspects of landed property need not be vested in a single entity. Perhaps it is here that a more heterogeneous, overlapping, and relative sense of landed property can help us rethink sovereign territory. The ideal of sovereignty constructs the territorial state as a discrete and homogeneous space, serving not only as a site of habitation but also as a source of revenue. However, this reign of straight lines is challenged by our world in ways that obscure both aspects (see Agnew, 1999). Flows of capital and goods demonstrate
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that many sources of revenue generation are constructed beyond the territory of the state. Flows of refugees and labor migrants suggest that the territorial state need not be defined in terms of habitation, either. Within this context we can begin to explore how an implicit recognition of the multiple aspects of landed property, space, and territory alter claims of meaning, identity, and interest. Indeed, we might say that aspects of all five of the appealing characteristics of premodern empire, rather than being buried by the past, continue to live a hidden life within the “empire of uniformity.” Within and Beyond an “Empire of Uniformity” The appeals and problems of an “empire of uniformity” have recurred as themes in this book. We argued (in chapter 1) that a resort to the boundaries of sovereignty merely defers the problem of difference that remains pervasive. The bounded political community constructs (and is constructed by) the other both beyond and within its boundaries. The external other lurks as a perpetual threat in the form of other states, foreign groups, imported goods, and alien ideas. Differences within, vitiating the presumed but rarely, if ever, achieved “sameness,” are managed by some combination of hierarchy, policing, eradication by assimilation, expulsion, massacre, and tolerance. The external other is left to suffer or prosper according to its own means, interdicted at border crossings, and preempted, balanced, or deterred. Our responses to the other seem perpetually drawn toward the equation of difference, inferiority, and eradication. As we have argued again and again, this inside/outside logic performs an act of splitting—an exclusion of the overlap of self and other that works to deflect our responses to difference in the direction of the “purifying hatred” so well illustrated by the religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the ethnic, religious, and civilizational struggles of our own times. Policing the boundaries of self as an exclusive and homogeneous space impedes our capacity to fully acknowledge and affirm the other that always lies within, or to appreciate and claim the self that exists as part of the other beyond those boundaries. The implication seems clear: unless we can respond creatively to this exclusivity of self and other, by exposing and cultivating the points of connection and the spaces of overlap (while still respecting the divergences and incompatibilities), we may not find our way toward an understanding in which equality and differences coexist and overlap. Put differently, if we can reimagine our relationships to property and territory along the lines suggested in the previous section, there is no reason to remain bound to a narrow understanding of difference as disorder or to perpetuate the “wound” of difference. Jerusalem: Living Together Separately6 Beruit, Sarajevo, and Jerusalem stand as poignant examples of cities that have been or continue to be torn by mutually excluding claims made by opposing
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social groups. Each of the competing parties claims the right to inhabit the same land, use it as an economic resource, and derive their identities and history from that use and habitation. So long as the sides to such conflicts demand “solutions” that assume a modern conception of landed property/sovereignty it appears that this type of conflict will remain intractable, short of conquest or ethnocide. However, this seeming intractability may hide existing “mixed modes” of property and territory that signal possible alternatives to purifying the space of the other. Jerusalem stands at the center of a contest over territory by national groups. The city is also a site of religious tensions and class divisions that often reinforce but also may cross-cut the nationalist struggle. It is this potent combination of economic, political, and symbolic elements that constitutes the city of Jerusalem as such an “iconographic” site of struggle (Klein, 2001:10). However, alongside “confrontation and animosity” the “sparring entities in the city have developed mutual relations of exchange” (Klein, 2001:11). The experience of “mutual fear, violence, prejudice, and conflict” is mingled with the necessity of “working together” and “intermittently a mutual groping for understanding” (Romann and Weingrod, 1991:3). The moments of overlap of self and other that coexist with the straight lines drawn as part of the struggles suggest to us possibilities lying both within and beyond the logic of an “empire of uniformity.” The recent history of Jerusalem might be thought to leave little room for the recovery and cultivation of these moments of overlap. The outcome of the Six Day War in 1967 led many in Israel to celebrate the long-sought recovery and reunification of Jerusalem. However, several former city officials and a local journalist note that, “in the euphoria over retaking historic Jerusalem,” Israelis “paid little attention to the 68,000 Palestinians they had conquered as well, and who also called the ancient city home” (Chesin, Hutman, and Melamed, 1999:7). The Arab population of (mostly) East Jerusalem could not, however, be ignored by national and city policies. Rather, via land expropriation and evictions, the establishment of new Jewish neighborhoods, manipulation of municipal boundaries, systematic discrimination in the provision of city services, and periodic police and military repression, government policies attempted to maintain or improve the demographic balance between Palestinians and Jews in the city. Chesin, Hutman, and Melamed (1999:30–37, 58–62, chapter 7) describe this as a policy of “Palestinian containment” that aimed to foster Jewish resettlement and force increasing numbers of Arabs out of Jerusalem (see also Klein, 2001:19–22). The policy fell far short of expectations. Over the initial three decades the Jewish proportion of the population of Jerusalem actually fell somewhat (Klein, 2001:22; Chesin, Hutman, and Melamed, 1999:66). Jerusalem proved a less attractive site of residential migration for Jews than was thought, and the Palestinian population proved more persistent than was expected. Holding onto their homes in spite of adverse conditions, the Palestinian population also generally refused to cooperate with Israeli officials, defending the autonomy of
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East Jerusalem schools, organizing locally, and providing support for the intifada against the Israeli occupation (see Chesin, Hutman, and Melamed, 1999:85–116; see also Klein, 2001:72–76). Neither Israeli policies nor Palestinian resistance has eliminated the mutual dependence between the groups, though it has fueled ethnic divisiveness. Eliminating the international boundary after 1967 worked to increase the flow of labor into Jewish areas, establishing an integrated (if dual) labor market (Romann and Weingrod, 1991: chapter 4). In fact, East Jerusalem has become a’ key source of labor in Jewish neighborhoods, and Arab incomes rely heavily on Jewish employers (Klein, 2001:22–24). However, this economic interaction and interdependence is highly asymmetric (Klein, 2001: 67). Joined with relative residential segregation, economic inequality between the groups produces a form of “structural pluralism” (Romann and Weingrod, 1991:27–29) that reinforces ethnic identities: In deeply polarized urban environments, aspects of division and power relations take extreme forms. Spatial segregation is not confined to residence, but includes many urban, economic, and public functions. Territorial ethnic boundaries are clearly marked, and the use of urban space assumes primordial significance. The exclusionary practices of the hegemonic group are responded to, in turn, by similar practices by subordinate group members, designed to strengthen their own separate institutions and intragroup cohesion. Socioeconomic gaps and competition for public resources are largely interpreted in terms of ethnicity rather than social class. To be sure, daily movement and interactions across ethnic boundaries take place as dictated by mutual needs and interests. Yet, as a general rule, deeply divided cities are characterized by dichotomous urban, social, economic, and perceptual spheres, where ethnic identity invariably plays a crucial role in everyday encounters. (Romann and Weingrod, 1991: 31) Thus, though the flows of labor and other commercial activities work to integrate Jerusalem in some respects, ethnic identities remain relatively rigid (Romann and Weingrod, 1991:70). However, many of the boundaries ethnic groups must cross in Jerusalem are more “permeable, soft, and flexible” than an account of ethnic divisions suggests and may offer hope of ameliorating the conflict between groups (Klein, 2001:40– 41). Even before the Oslo agreements, when Israel claimed the existence of Jerusalem as a single municipality within the larger Israeli state, the Israeli Ministry of Education had never been able to secure control over schools in East Jerusalem. Private and religious schools were relatively easily integrated into an already decentralized Israeli system, granting substantial autonomy to private institutions and schools differentiated by Jewish ethnicities, distinctive religious beliefs, and vocational emphases. Successive efforts to regulate public schools in
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East Jerusalem produced such protest that they continued to operate with a Jordanian curriculum (Chesin, Hutman, and Melamed, 1999:101–18; see also Klein and Kuttab, 2000: 73–90). Religious differences also shaped the very administration of justice within Jerusalem, despite efforts to impose a uniform system of courts. Most prominent, Sharia law continued to exercise substantial authority in East Jerusalem (Romann and Weingrod, 1991:150–51; Dumper, 1997:43–44). The many holy and historical sites in the city likewise have remained places of competing and overlapping meaning and authority. Muslim religious authorities and guards and Israeli administration and security forces “negotiate” divided and shared responsibilities for many holy places (Dumper, 1997:45–46), and the Old City remains a joint project of Israelis and Palestinians in many respects (Klein, 2001:3). Early steps implementing Oslo I and II did not alter this complex situation (we draw here on Klein, 2001:39–40). Though the new arrangements at once formally defined and separated the relative scope of Israeli and Palestinian Authority (PA) in Jerusalem, this was not simply the application of the reign of straight lines. Rather, blurred jurisdiction and authority continued to play a central role. Four zones of control were established. Zone A, including the cities of Jericho, Bethlehem, Beit Jala, Ramallah, and Al-Bireh, lying outside of the official municipality, were placed under the exclusive control of the PA. In Zone B, another patchwork around the edges of Jerusalem, the PA was granted political and civil authority, while security was left in the hands of Israel. Other lands—in and around the first two zones—constituted areas where the powers of the PA remained to be negotiated, though the PA worked to assert its authority in various ways. The area within the official municipal boundaries remained formally under Israeli jurisdiction, but East Jerusalem continued to challenge that status. Public schools in East Jerusalem virulently defended their autonomy and, because they shared a common curriculum with West Bank schools, gradually came under the influence of the PA, despite its lack of any official jurisdiction (Chesin, Hutman, and Melamed, 1999:119–20; Klein, 2001:71–72). Similarly, religious matters continued to evade full control of the Israeli government, and holy and historical sites retained their peculiar status (Klein, 2001:57–60). In general the enhanced status of the PA allowed it to use its authority in the zones outside of Jerusalem to begin to assert influence within East Jerusalem (Klein, 2001:40). The consequence is less a city clearly divided by ethnicity or religion and more a “frontier” (or, in the terms we have used, a “contact zone”) along which the groups compete and coexist (Klein, 2001:14). The eventual arrival of a Palestinian state is unlikely to remove the need for a complicated arrangement for Jerusalem. Rather, plausible resolution of the conflict over Jerusalem may depend on drawing on the lessons of premodern India—disaggregating the various meanings of land and refusing to grant exclusive rights to any group. The imperative of political rule by a state or states competes with additional imperatives: the historical importance of Jerusalem to the identities of various groups, the presence of sites of religious importance that
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transcend the claims of either national group, and the economic and social importance of an undivided city. To respond to the competing political demands, Mo’az (2000:4) suggests that “Jerusalem ought to be the undivided capital of the two peoples” in which the components of sovereignty are “scattered” among various authorities along functional lines. As Sari Nusseibeh (2000:9–10) explains, this would require the residents of Jerusalem to act not only as national citizens but also as custodians of Jerusalem’s special character. Residents would be divided by nationality—Israeli or Palestinian—and by any number of other differences, but would share the identity of Jerusalemite and the various responsibilities linked to that commonality. To support this shared custodial identity—as Jerusalemites but not nationalist rulers—the Israeli and Palestinian states would have to “transfer privileges to the city’s government, reinforcing the city’s special status.” And, accordingly, a Jerusalem city government could only help heal wounds where past discriminatory practices are ended and municipal functions are divided between those “run jointly” and those “run separately” in ways that augment “the human quality of life” for all residents. Jerusalem, then, would be somewhat like property in pre-British India— mixing premodern (overlapping) and modern (exclusive) forms. For purposes of commerce and transit the city would remain undivided—a common area from which all groups might draw their livelihood—though it is expected that substantial residential and business segregation would continue. If economic opportunities circulated more easily and fairly across this united economic space, socioeconomic divisions might serve to connect currently competing national and religious groups in professional and civic associations, partly blurring the boundaries of the groups for social and residential purposes, if not necessarily for purposes of national citizenship. For political purposes, the city would be partitioned into exclusive zones of rule, but the common character of the space as an economic zone would require that certain city functions be treated as a shared responsibility. For functions that might include transportation, the regulation of commerce, the electrical grid, and perhaps water and sewage, rule would have to be negotiated between the nationally demarcated authorities on an ongoing basis or turned over to a separate institution that represents both national groups simultaneously. In areas of great historical and religious significance authority might be shared with or placed in the hands of religious authorities with a special interest in those sites. In this Jerusalem, rights and responsibilities are not simply bundled and assigned exclusively to a particular actor. Rather, they are disaggregated by meaning and purpose and distributed across actors, creating a patchwork of exclusive and shared claims, rights, and responsibilities. Given the current level of animosity and bloodshed, such an outcome may seem unimaginable. However, it has been noted that hardened hearts on the negotiability of Jerusalem often mask views that suggest greater convergence and a basis for more serious accommodation (Segal, Levy, Sa’id, and Katz, 2000:vii–x). Perhaps the most compelling vision for the future dispensation of
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Jerusalem emerged from negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian officials outside of the mediation of the Camp David process. Referred to variously as the Beilin/Abu-Mazen understandings (Klein, 2001) or the Taba proposals (“After the War Is Over,” 2002), after the negotiating heads or the site of the negotiations, respectively, the understandings reached at Taba pointed, at the time, to substantial common ground on the issue of Jerusalem. Beyond exposing the continuing gap between the sides over the relative size of various land swaps (“After the War,” 2000:26), Taba would have expanded the municipal borders of Jerusalem to incorporate Palestinian areas now placed outside the city. This move would create greater parity between the Israeli and Palestinian populations, though an Israeli majority would remain. An “umbrella” organ (with an Israeli majority) would administer the enlarged Jerusalem. The municipality would then be divided into five different “political-municipal areas,” including the two political capitals, the Temple Mount, the Old City, and the Arab and Jewish neighborhoods on the city’s east side. And rather than a simple partition of the city between sovereign entities, sovereignity would be overlapping and divided: in each of the “five areas there was a variable, differential level of Israeli and Palestinian sovereignty” (Klein, 2001:301–2). Indeed, authority would be partitioned largely along functional lines. The umbrella organ would be responsible for “master” city plans, main roads, sewage, and other city services, while the submunicipalities might have substantial autonomy for action in other areas consistent with the principle of maintaining an undivided city. The electrical power grid would likely remain under the control of Israelis, given the lack of any alternative, and two distinct but not competing transportation systems might remain in place. It is expected that the Israeli shekel would remain the dominant currency in use, though two currencies would likely circulate. Sharia law would share the legal sphere with government courts and a diverse set of educational institutions, reporting to multiple authorities, would continue to operate (Klein, 2001:305–6, 312–16). The Old City might be expanded to incorporate other holy sites and granted a special status making it open to people of all faiths. Daily life at these sites might be duly managed by representatives from the religious groups—Christian, Jewish, and Muslim—who feel special ties to these places. This is an outcome supported partly by the economic importance of the holy sites to the financial health of the entire city (Klein, 2001:304; Dumper, 1997:270). Some similar solution, securing the rights of Muslims, Jews, and Christians, might be found for the Temple Mount (“After the War,” 2002:27). The “beauty” of this patchwork of separate, multiple and overlapping authorities sketched out at Taba, Klein (2001:306) argues, is not only that it calls for the mutual recognition of the political capitals, but also that it allows competing groups to “share” more equally by “dismantling Jerusalem into its principal components” and promoting a “game of give and take.” Most important, the functional patchwork also responds to potential conflict over the symbolic meanings of the space of Jerusalem. The Taba proposal avoids the trap
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of seeking an “overarching…resolution on the symbolic level.” It “distinguishes between partial and full realization of rights, aspirations and symbols, and different levels of municipal administration and definition of the municipal space.” Thus, “[n]either side will fulfill all its dreams, but neither will either side be forced to abandon its viewpoint, which it will realize in some way” (Klein, 2001: 306–7). Thus, Jerusalem might become a space shared among contending groups, if the impulse to fully homogenize territory is resisted. The need for some partitioning of jurisdictions might be thought to employ an aspect of our modern notions of space. Though these borders define administrative competencies and reflect residential segregation, they are porous to the movement of goods and peoples within an undivided Jerusalem. Contrary to modern notions, other spaces are shared administratively and socially; some, because of their world religious importance, are given a transnational and transfaith status. Applying a notion of absolute space ignores the complexities of the contact zone and risks exacerbating polarization and conflict rather than tempering it. By contrast, the separate and overlapping character of group relations and ambitions might be recognized and negotiated where relative notions of space—disaggregating the components of ownership—also are put into play. Jerusalem as the World We have, following Hinsley, suggested the reciprocal quality of sovereignty. Indeed, the requirement and problem of the constitution of political units via a process of reciprocal recognition is definitive of a Westphalian system (Strang, 1996:22–23). This process of social recognition turns on the reign of exclusive space and straight lines, on recognizing peoples and political communities as distinct and separable entities. However, the boundary between self and other appears to be less a straight line and more a contact zone or frontier. These are spaces of competing visions, interdependencies, asymmetries of domination and subordination, and overlaps of peoples, faiths, and spaces. The image this suggests is closer to the frontier character of Jerusalem than the archetypal Westphalian states system. This theme increasingly dominates the popular and academic literatures on “globalization.” Flows of goods, productive and finance capital, and labor make borders “porous,” and, it is claimed, alter fundamentally the character of state capacities and the shape of social processes and identities (Harvey, 2000:35). Some describe these changes in functionalist terms. Nicholas Onuf (1995:58; 1998b:123–24), for example, sees the transformation of the state as a continuation of modernist processes of functional specialization by which authority is disaggregated and dispersed to experts working in functionally differentiated and spatially complex domains. Others, wishing to rebut facile claims of the demise of the state and/or territoriality itself, emphasize the role of “dialectical” processes of deterritorialization and reterritorialization that
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reconfigure and rescale the spatiality of capitalist processes (Brenner, 1999b; Swyngedouw, 1997). More precisely, Neil Brenner (1999a:53) claims that capitalist processes are located at scales “jumping at once above, below, and around the national scale.” “Consequently,” he continues, “state territoriality currently operates less as an isomorphic, self-enclosed block of absolute space than as a polymorphic institutional mosaic composed of multiple, partially overlapping levels that are neither congruent, contiguous, nor coextensive with one another.” In this way, “territoriality is redifferentiated and reparcelized among multiple institutional forms that are not clustered around a single predominant center of gravity” (Brenner, 1999a:66). Finally, authors focus attention on the increasing saliency of local, transnational, and cosmopolitan identities made possible as social processes and relationships operating across, above, and below national spaces increase in importance (Friedman, 1990; Hannerz, 1996; Cheah and Robbins, 1998; Shapiro and Alker, 1996; Mandaville, 1999). The resulting political space is “no longer simply a states system” Cerny (1995:595) asserts, but a “plural or composite,” or “‘plurilateral’ structure.” In this structure, the capacity for decision making is “increasingly determined not within insulated units, i.e., relatively autonomous and hierarchically organized structures called states,” but “derives from a complex aggregation of multilevel games played on multilayered playing fields, above and across, as well as within state boundaries” (Cerny, 2000:100). An emergent “multilayered web of governance” engages formal and informal transnational institutions and actors, but also “reaches down to regional and local levels”; it “increasingly subsumes domestic policy processes themselves and incorporates domestic actors into wider, cross-cutting arenas” (Cerny, 2001:398). Scholars often speak of these claimed transformations in the character of capitalism and global social and political space as harbingers of a postmodern era (Harvey, 1989; Ruggie, 1998: chapter 7). However, and central to our claims in this chapter, the unbundling of the components of sovereignty also bears “some resemblance to the ascending levels of corporate existence which modernity long ago supplanted,” suggesting “a certain symmetry in modernity’s rise and decline” (Onuf, 1998b:136). James Anderson (1996: 143) suggests similarly that we might see “the political progression from premodern to modern to postmodern” as “a movement from relative to absolute and then back to (new) relative conceptions of space.” In this movement, the premodern is not simply recapitulated. Space may regain some of the fluidity characteristic of the premodern era, but the unbundling of sovereign territory is likely to be only “partial and selective” (Anderson, 1996:144, 147; see also Onuf, 1998b:136). Nor are spatial relationships likely to be hierarchically nested, where “people were members of higher level collectivities by virtue of their membership in lower level bodies.” Rather, “people are often directly members of international networks, not via national bodies; regional groups and institutions deal directly with their counterparts in other states without the respective states necessarily having any involvement” (Anderson, 1996:150). Thus,
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[t]he contemporary world is not a ladder up or down which processes moves from one rung to the next in an orderly fashion, the central state mediating all links between the external or higher levels and the internal or lower ones. That was never the case, but it is even less true today. Not only are there more rungs but qualitatively they are more heterogeneous; and direct movement between high and low levels, missing out or bypassing “intermediate” rungs, are now a defining characteristic of contemporary life. (Anderson, 1996:151) This is precisely what Anderson (1996:143) terms a situation of “multiple and overlapping sovereignties” and is suggestive of the patchwork of identities and authorities we associated with Jerusalem. Great anxieties and passionate hopes are often attached to these purported trends. Most commonly, the eclipse of the state as a locus of policymaking and a potential repository of the public good is bemoaned (Marglin and Schor, 1990; Reich, 1991; Peck and Tickell, 1994), as is the erosion of the principal space for democratic organization and participation (Hirsch, 1995; Scholte, 1997; Dahrendorf, 2001). In stark contrast, some authors (like those surveyed in chapter 3) see the processes of global modernization more as opportunities for remaking democracy and creating humane forms of governance on a cosmopolitan scale (Falk, 1995; 2000; Held, 1995; McGrew, 1997).7 Though seemingly polar views, those who bemoan the eclipse of states and those who see renewed opportunities for a global order that overcomes the fragmentation of the states system share an infatuation with straight lines and embrace an “empire of uniformity.” For the former, boundaries keep the other at bay, deferring the problem of difference. For the latter, global order is the final solution to the problem of differences among political communities. Our reading of the political and ethical possibilities associated with such trends differs dramatically from these, perhaps reflecting the alternative hopes and anxieties expressed in this book. In a world where straight lines no longer reign, we may be able to address the challenges of the contact zone more directly and more fruitfully. Drawing on our discussion of Jerusalem, a world of multiple and overlapping sovereignties seems to offer opportunities for ameliorating the violence and domination characteristic of intercultural encounters in the modern era. The policing of boundaries, we demonstrate, tends to inhibit our capacity to see spaces of overlap between self and other. Iris Marion Young (2000:260–62) argues similarly that if all groups are to flourish in our world of “heterogeneous and multicultural” places, we will be required to give up the notion that “each people has a right to sole governance of a single, bounded, contiguous territory inhabited only by members of their own group.” As in Jerusalem, “jurisdictions can be spatially overlapping or shared, or even lack spatial reference entirely.” Martha Minnow (1990:7–13) elaborates, in terms remarkably close to Todorov’s, that drawing and defending rigid boundary lines impoverishes our thinking and makes difference a problem for modern social and political thinking.
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Individuals are treated as ontologically separable units whose political and legal equality depends on seeing them as essentially the “same.” To be different is to be classed, then, as somehow “unequal or even deviant” (Minnow, 1990: chapters 1, 2; the quotations are from page 50). Minnow (1990: chapters 3, 9, afterword) instead directs our attention to the relationships among individuals and groups, since those always escape and overflow the boundaries that divide and construct self and other. The challenge, in Minnow’s (1990:19, 293) view, is to engage participants in a perpetual conversational process of renegotiating boundaries so that they promote relationships that recognize both equality and difference. Such negotiations are unlikely to fulfill the cosmopolitan dreams of neomodernization theorists, however. Our “predicament” will continue to involve “patterns of integration as well as assertions of particularity” (Kratochwil, 2001:163). To impose global order is to ignore and repress the world of cultural and ethical complexity—of competing, interacting, and partly overlapping visions of local and global spaces that form and circulate within and across multilayered social, economic, and political terrains. This contact zone seems to call for a different strategy. No longer treated as a homogeneous substance, sovereignty might be divided and distributed to create complex jurisdictional arrangements involving settlements that must be continuously renegotiated as well as uncertainties that must be navigated by dialogue.8 However, an initial assessment of the political implications of these “postmodern” transformations bodes mostly ill for the already least advantaged in the world. That is, if this world of multiple and overlapping sovereignties calls for dialogue, it appears that it will continue to be, in Nandy’s terms, a “dialogue of unequals.” The emerging, multilayered structures of decisionmaking concentrate power in the hands of those actors that most effectively control space at crucial scales. More precisely, the dispersion of authority to global and local scales creates a “geometry of social power” that privileges transnational capital, G-8 governments, and the “more autocratic, undemocratic, and authoritarian (quasi-) state apparatuses” that control scales above and around the state; all these work to disempower authorities at lower scales and more localized action (Swyngedouw, 2000:68–70; see also Jones, 1997; Low, 1997; Ó Tuathail, Herod, and Roberts, 1998; Murphy, 1999; and Pauly, 1999). This gloomy assessment might be partly mitigated by an emerging politics of resistance to these concentrations of power (Roberts, 1998). But, consistent with the prognosis above, if resistance is to prove at all empowering and emancipatory, it needs a politics of space, creating alliances across scales in order to contest exclusions and inequalities in a world of multiple and overlapping sovereignties (Swyngedouw, 1997; 2000; see also Harvey, 2000:50–51). The language of establishing networks, creating connections, spawning movements, and forging alliances is repeated again and again, by both critical theorists (Walker, 1994a; Connolly, 1995:156; Cheah, 1998: 37; Low, 1997:263–64) and theorists of more conventional activism (Keck and Sikkink, 1998; Wapner, 1996). The UN, in its
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various efforts, also lays emphasis on the role of networks, bridges, and solidarities (see Ruggie, 2001; 2002; Annan, 2000; and Ottaway, 2001). These efforts to theorize resistance do have interesting implications for a politics of equality and difference. On the one hand, scholars and activists imagine a democratic or representative politics that moves beyond, though without completely supplanting, an “areal” vision of a political community bounded by the sovereign state. The call is for the creation of representational and democratic practices to match the transnational flows, localized and globalized identities, and multiscale institutions said to define the contemporary era (Low, 1997). Indeed, a world of overlapping and multiple sovereignties may be a site for unleashing new democratic energies beyond those associated with bounded political communities. And these energies might found a politics organized around movements that “connect, converse, and learn from each other,” but avoid translating a “politics of connection” into a “united front” (Walker, 1994b:699). On the other hand, we remain circumspect, since the contours and potentials of this new democratic imaginary are far from clear (Walker, 1994b: 699;Connolly, 1995:160–61; Low, 1997:272). The danger is that these movements, networks, and connections operate to largely reproduce patterns of domination and subordination and a dialogue of unequals. That is, today’s movements and networks seem to privilege mobile citizens of the wealthy cores. Already marginalized peoples, less able to move across scales, continue to be excluded, unless financially enabled by more privileged sponsors when the marginalized prove willing to absorb the teachings and conform to the dictates of a (now charitable) transnational, liberal modernity (see chapter 3; Pasha and Blaney, 1998; and Comor, 2001). This is unsurprising where the logic of a capitalist global division of labor holds sway. Though the meanings and purposes of sovereign boundaries may be unbundled in creative ways in our times, we cannot say the same about property. The returns from global flows of labor, goods, and capital are distributed primarily according to dictates of a culture of competition. Income and wealth are treated as rewards to the “presocial” differences in labor or knowledge of individual producers. The market is seen as simply a social mechanism that uncovers, values, and rewards accordingly these individual contributions to meeting the needs of others. The dominance of markets in social life and the (often vast) inequalities that result are legitimated by this understanding of actors as fundamentally, even ontologically, isolated. Sovereignty, however else it may have been transformed, still partly functions as a kind of national property right, as we have argued. States that are able to attract and sustain concentrations of high-profit activities within their boundaries can secure generally higher living standards for the populations within their borders and access to a larger tax base on which to build their own capacities.9 Thus, the “games” played on multilayered fields, to return to Cerny’s image, tend to empower those actors privileged by spatial concentrations of wealth—be they great powers, corporate
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empires, well-heeled advocacy groups and networks, or super-empowered individuals. Failure to compete or effectively represent oneself on the playing fields of capitalism and global governance is all too readily translated as a sign of some personal or cultural deficiency for which help is available. Material and political inequalities are thereby interwoven and reinforced by discourses of development and humanitarian assistance. A world of multiple and overlapping sovereignties that remains interwoven with the logic of capitalism will continue to perpetuate a dialogue of unequals. Conclusion Sovereign boundaries seem far from simple or absolute. Rather, we see increasingly complex and relative borderlines, shaped by transnational flows and multilayered processes and institutions that construct varied kinds of multiply scaled mediations between the inside and the outside of political communities. In this setting, premodern modes of understanding and organizing space become more than a source of critical self-reflection on the modern spatial imagination; their continued existence as recessive modes allows us to highlight their potential and promote their realization in the near future of world politics. We might also apply premodern lessons more directly to our understandings of property rights.10 Modern property rights empower their possessors to provide for their own needs and wants. Though all are equally bearers of property rights, the capacity of each actor to meet its needs and wants is limited by the extent of its property ownership, the distribution of which proves to be highly unequal. A culture of competition that rewards each according to the property she or he posseses is, thereby, intrinsically a world of unequal capacities to meet needs and wants and of unequally valued selves. At its most stark, it is a world of great powers and powerful groups, on one side, and marginalization on the other. Yet it is often difficult to connect this result directly to individual or collective effort and merit. We might instead come to think of this outcome more as a product of a social, in this case capitalist process of wealth production. The more we tend to this latter view, the less we might be convinced that access to income and wealth should be determined solely as a return on individual or collective property holdings.11 If we were to recover the idea of wealth as a “bounty,” we might also be able to retrieve the idea that access to livelihood should be embedded in complex social relationships that constitute the obligations and legitimate claims of individuals, groups, and institutions. To place this idea in a contemporary context, we might imagine access to income and wealth as a guarantee. This guarantee would be implemented within the multileveled social and economic processes and institutions of governance in order to secure the needs of individuals and/or groups as social actors (see Gilbert, 1989; Fraser, 1990; and Levine, 1988 for narratives that link social needs to income or livelihood secured as a right).
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How we would secure access to income and livelihood depends partly on how we think of the social process of wealth production. By highlighting the idea of wealth as a social bounty, produced in a social process by social actors, we might be led to define needs and wants less as physical necessities and more as the amount of income and wealth deemed essential for an individual or group to function as relative social equals (see Levine, 1988). However, as we saw above, there are dangers in carrying this metaphor of a “bounty” too far. Just as it is dangerous to romanticize nature as a process beyond our control and indifferent ultimately to the survival of any particular species, we risk obscuring the role of human initiative in the production of wealth and the important human purposes wealth serves. If we were, instead, to place greater emphasis on human initiative, we might try to secure access for all individuals and groups to the skills or capabilities required to acquire wealth and status within what remains otherwise a market society (see Sen, 1999). Though this effort to secure opportunities for all citizens aims at a less dramatic challenge to the hegemony of modern property rights, it does attempt to break cycles of a failure to compete in a market economy that are perpetuated across generations. It also recognizes a social responsibility to intervene to promote greater equality. Perhaps a similar strategy involves the effort to link human rights and development (UNDP, 2000; Hamm, 2001). Emphasizing this link would require efforts to secure the capacities for communities, however demarcated in a postmodern era, to transform themselves into healthier, wealthier, and more competitive communities. Pushing more in the direction of respecting difference are calls to preserve or enhance “commons” from which many derive their sustenance (Shiva, 1992; Esteva, 1992). Though the defense of commons is often in the name of “the local” this is not essential. We have also seen international efforts to promote the claim that certain resources and knowledges comprise a “common heritage” upon which all peoples may freely draw in the realization of their own distinctive ways of life (Murphy, 1984; Schachter, 1985). These responses to the inequalities and deprivations of a culture of competition or market society are not exhaustive of possible responses; nor are they mutually exclusive. They might be employed in varying combinations in varying circumstances. Thus, they fall far short of a universal vision for reembedding the global economy, to borrow Polanyi’s term. Rather, these possible responses are examples of the sort of critical resources that may be recovered through the ethnographic IPE that Polanyi’s work inspires. The past, as Polanyi suggests, is not simply buried. It exists with resources that are recoverable in a critical practice that puts recessive aspects of self in dialogue with both cultural and historical others. We may find connection among aspects of the visions and practices of dominant groups—as we do with the Mughal’s partial sensitivity to variations in local conditions. Or, we may find certain alignments between the resistance of Indian cultivators and similar historical and contemporary defenses of rights to livelihood or access to capacities to compete from within and beyond Western histories and traditions. Our hope is that such critical engagements may
196 • INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND THE PROBLEM OF DIFFERENCE
help inform efforts to creatively imagine the future not as a simple unfolding of the logic of the present, but as a process of rediscovery and reimagination. This book is not so much that process itself, but a defense of its possibility. Reimagining the future requires entering much more perilous terrains in the contact zone.
Epilogue
The call for dialogue may seem insufficient in the face of a powerful question: Why should the dominant heed such a call? Given the assumption that the oppressor benefits from oppression, it may be difficult to understand what the dominant could gain by listening to the oppressed. Sustaining oppression seems to depend on evading or refusing the call to find in the other a source of critical selfreflection. Indeed, the overlap of self and other that makes possible this critical dialogue is precisely what is denied in a relationship of domination. A dialogical response to domination, then, seems misguided—a noble but futile gesture at best, a deadly miscalculation at worst. It appears that we leave the oppressed with only two alternatives: to submit to oppression or resort to violent resistance.1 We continue to advocate dialogue as a response to oppression even in the face of such a powerful objection. Our persistence rests on two claims that may “ground” both the possibility of and need for dialogue, even for the dominant. First, we have argued that self and other necessarily overlap. It is not only that identity always owes a debt to alterity, but that the other always exists within as a source of internal difference and dissonance. Second, whatever its appeal, domination also involves self-denial and self-repression. One can oppress only by disavowing parts of the self, by denying oneself access to some of the resources of the self. If so, we can come to see the interest of the dominant self as broad and ambiguous. The broader interest of the dominant self surrounding oppression appears to us, then, not simply as a barrier to, but also as the possibility of, even need for, dialogue. Engaging and activating this broader interest is a burden that falls on the recessive, denied, or oppressed self. This is because it is the oppressed that are more likely to be successful in uncovering the denied and recessive aspects of self that can bring the dominant to dialogue. We do not see this obligation as a reversal—a kind of “brown woman’s burden”—but instead as the means to double liberation. We turned at several points to Ashis Nandy’s description of Gandhi’s dialogical practice as motivation for this claim. The appeal of Gandhi is not simply his astute use of nonviolent resistance. Rather, Gandhi uses nonviolent action (and the expected British response) as a way of drawing the English self into a dialogue with its own recessive and repressed elements. This also required work on the Indian self, acknowledging but restraining those
198 • EPILOGUE
aspects of self that, like the British, are drawn to violence and domination. In this way, the liberation of India from British rule could be made simultaneous with opening the English self to its humane side and minimizing the role of domination in independent India. Based on this account, we can further specify the character of the burdens that the oppressed must carry. The potential success of this strategy requires that the challenges to oppression begin by directly engaging the oppressor in his or her own language and in terms of his or her own self-interest. Partly, this means having a substantial mastery of the vernacular of the dominant. Sharing to some degree the symbolic world of the dominant makes it easier to draw connections between recessive aspects of the dominant self and the ideals and goals of the oppressed. However unfair the demand that the oppressed must bear the burden of adapting their communication to the language of the oppressor, the additional demand—that the oppressed must appeal to the self-interest of the dominant, who maintain (we presume) an interest in their oppression—must seem too much to ask. And what makes us think that such an appeal can be successful? We can provide a provisional answer that grows from the work of this book. In a world of cultural and ethical complexity, it is difficult to “make sense,” to know how to “go on,” if one is not able to listen to the voice of others. We argued at the outset that the ethical challenge of our era is the multiplicity of visions of local/global space. The expectation of reaping the rewards of a wellplanned and effectively initiated project depends not only on our vision of the local/global, but on a capacity to “read” the world. The more limited our capacity to read the world, the more likely that our projects will have unintended consequences, since we will be unable to anticipate the reactions and behaviors of others as our local/global visions intersect with theirs. Any imperial project is thus faced with a deep dilemma. On one side, the closedness to the voice of the other at the heart of domination also imperils the capacity of the dominator to act effectively. On the other side, the very capacity to hear the other undercuts over time the project of domination itself. Thus, one way for the imperialist to escape this dilemma is to get out of the imperial game. Despite the self-defeating character of imperialism (in the long run at least), listening to others will not be easy for the dominant. It is painful to hear alternative interpretations of events and ideals that are held precious, even sacred, particularly where those interpretations paint the self as cruel or unjust. The dominant self will suffer if it seriously entertains the possibility that others regard its history and ideals as direct obstacles to their learning, thriving, and mutual coexistence. However, the recognition of one’s own participation in another’s pain can create a sense of mourning with two positive consequences. This recognition can acknowledge a wound to the dominant self wrought (that is, self-inflicted) by the denials necessary for complicity in domination. Acknowledging this wound seems to be a prerequisite for any move toward selfhealing. It also may allow the dominant self to avow its overlap with the other and give it access to those recessive aspects of self that it has previously disavowed.
EPILOGUE • 199
We might read this as an overcoming of the loneliness and alienation that accompanies the denials necessary to domination. To mourn for others and for self due to complicity in such suffering can begin to reduce the temporal distancing that precludes, as Fabian explains, co-presence with others. In midst of this copresence, one can no longer sustain the idea that the self—its values and visions —are an exclusive whole. This may appear to the dominant self as a loss, but it is a precondition of a more substantial gain. Shedding one’s claim to exclusivity is in fact the price of participation in the whole. Recognizing one’s particularity is one step toward the realization of the universal in the self. In such a move, the language of self-interest comes to overlap with the language of ethics. Working to establish this overlap theoretically has been a task of this book. Working to make this overlap real in the world is a challenge for us all.
Notes
Preface 1. The use of the term third world has been challenged because it tends to homogenize the varied experiences of countries, regions, and peoples. It is not clear, however, that other terms, including postcolonial, are preferable, since they similarly group and summarize the unsummarizable. In our view, the term third world has the merit of bringing to mind the long and continuing experience of Western imperialism and neocolonialism as well as resistance to domination. For a similar argument, see Shohat and Stam (1994:25–27). We do use the term postcolonial at points, but mostly in reference to a particular theoretical genre. 2. Although consider this critique in correspondence from Himadeep Muppidi: “Why not say more pointedly what you believe regarding ‘Indianness’ vis-à-vis race, class, and gender? That historically, race, class, and gender also came together in the identity of the European to conspire/collude against and erase the Indian. That these other axes were not necessarily critical but also complicit in the project of Indianization and that your focus on the Indian seeks to keep that moment alive in analysis, to recover the Indian from under the combined and crushing weight of the Europeans. For example, ‘Saving Private Lynch’ brings together race, class, and gender but at the cost of lives of many Indianized Iraqis.” 3. Again Muppidi: “From my perspective, the book does rise to the challenge of intersectionality in its reconstruction of the theoretically and historically significant figure of the Indian—an identity that appears otherwise as a lack against the Europeanness sedimented/constituted (however unevenly but always very powerfully) through race, class, and gender. What [this] book does not seek to do— and hence the criticism from some sections—is probably show that the European woman was also oppressed. Implicit in this demand is the subsidiary claim that she was as oppressed as the Indian. Maybe so. But that’s the specific part that can be left for others to play into your [rhythm].”
Introduction 1. Terms like West, non-West, and third world will be used for want of much better alternatives (see Shohat and Stam, 1994:25–27). One of the major themes of this
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2. 3.
4. 5.
6. 7.
8.
9.
10. 11. 12.
13. 14.
book, however, is to highlight the mutually constituting and overlapping character of self/other dichotomies. See, for example, Blaney and Inayatullah (1994; 1996; 1998) and Inayatullah and Blaney (1995; 1996; 1999). Walker (1993:110–24) locates the appeal of canonical realist authors like Carr and Morgenthau in their suspicion of the certainties of enlightenment modernism—in their affirmation of difference, their recognition of the plurality of social life, and their sensitivity to the constant flux of becoming. For example, Carr’s inability to do much more than reproduce Weber’s understanding of the disenchantment of modernity (see Walker, 1993:54–6). Some visionaries of IR as a positivist science might aspire to such an outcome. By contrast, we would highlight that the canonical texts of IR (e.g., Carr, 1964; Morgenthau, 1951; 1963; Bull, 1977) stress the eternal presence of threat and danger and the tragic consequences for the relations between political communities. In this context, a realistic ethical outlook dictates prudence—that citizens and leaders by necessity prefer order and safety to justice and the welfare of compatriots to the welfare of others. There is, therefore, a presumption for minimizing the ethical scope of the agenda of international politics, but no demand for erasing ethics from IR. See, for example, David Held (1995), Falk (1995), Linklater (1998), Dunne and Wheeler (1999), Wapner and Ruiz (2000), and Albert, Brock, and Wolf (2000). We attempt here to implement Iver Neumann’s (1999:xi) conclusion that, though “the self/other dichotomy can aid the understanding of collective identities,” we should also recognize the dangers of “reifying” identities in simple self/other terms and, thus, the need to “destabilize and move beyond it.” It is worth noting the resemblance to the discussions of the mutual constitution of colonizer and colonized in Memmi (1967) and Fanon (1968), though Pratt’s emphasis on improvisation seems to move beyond these accounts. Both Nandy (1983) and Todorov (1984) present their claims largely in terms of a set of exemplary figures: for Todorov it is Columbus, Cortés, Las Casas, Duran, and Sahagún; Nandy focuses on Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Rammohun Roy, Bankimchandra Chatterjee, Kipling, Orwell, Andrews, and Gandhi. Though we summarize their claims with only limited reference to their brilliant sketches of these characters, we are much influenced by their method, as is clear below and in chapter 2 of this book. The complications of reading Columbus are also clear. See Zamora (1993). Except in regards to nature. See Todorov (1984:16–19). In a “narrow, technical” sense “splitting” refers to an “individual psychic process” in which internal “objects” are disowned or “parts of self are split off and projected elsewhere.” However, Benjamin suggests that this analysis of splitting also possesses a “broader metapsychological and metaphoric meaning,” applicable to “supraindividual” contexts (Benjamin, 1988:63). Todorov makes this point rather clearly in his work on literary interpretation (Todorov, 1987). We wish to follow Chakrabarty (2000:27–28, 43) in treating the “West” as a “hyperreal” term, in that it refers “to certain figures of imagination whose geographical referents remain somewhat indeterminate.” This does not, however, reduce the importance of this referent.
202 • NOTES
15. We borrow this phrase and its meaning from Dipesh Chakrabarty’s very impressive recent book (2000). A key aspect of this process, to paraphrase Chakrabarty (2000: 43), is to make possible alliances between dominant conceptions and subaltern peripheral ones, a challenge we try to take up in this book. Rob Walker (1993) has already set the standard for work exposing the self-evident character of IR. Our efforts build on his in many respects. 16. This process has now begun in earnest in IR. See, for example, Walker (1990), Rengger (1992b), Lapid and Kratochwil (1996), Jacquin-Berdal, Oros, and Verweij (1998), Neumann (1999), Jahn (2000), and Chan, Mandaville, and Bleiker (2001).
Chapter 1 1. Popular accounts include Barber (1995), Greider (1997), and Friedman (1999). The academic literature is increasingly drawn to such conclusions. See Macmillan and Linklater (1995), Lyons and Mastanduno (1995), Falk (1995), Lipschutz and Mayer (1996), Weiss and Gordenker (1996), Weber and Biersteker (1996), and Shapiro and Alker (1996). 2. Blaney and Inayatullah (1996; 2000) and Inayatullah and Blaney (1995) represent earlier efforts to make this sort of argument. 3. Andreas Osiander (2001) argues convincingly that the idea of a Westphalian state system is more a foundational mythology of IR than a historical reality. Our project accepts Westphalia as a point of origin, at least strategically, so as to reread that mythology—perhaps constructing an alternative mythology—in the service of reimagining IR. 4. See, for example, Gross (1968:47), Bull (1977:27–38), Morgenthau (1963: chapter 19), Herz (1959:43–44), Holsti (1991: chapter 2), Ruggie (1998:188), Linklater (1998:23–24), Van Creveld (1999:86, 159–60), and Spruyt (1994:178–79, 191– 92). However, various protests have arisen recently within international relations. The first, exemplified by Stephen Krasner’s “Westphalia and All That” (1993), takes aim at this narrative in order to dispute the decisiveness of ideas in constituting the state system. His discussion of the ambiguities of the Peace of Westphalia—its failure to break fully with the medieval order—is instructive, though not at all sufficient to defeat the idea that theory and practice are inextricably intertwined. His later (Krasner, 1999) claim that sovereignty has always been honored in the breach, accommodating various forms of rule, is similarly important. More telling is his conclusion (Krasner, 1999:235) that “[c] onstitutive rules never exclude alternatives.” Ironically, Krasner imagines that his dissenting views about sovereignty support IR orthodoxy. By contrast, David Strang (1996:45) takes this contestability as definitive of a “constructivist” approach. David Campbell (1992: chapter 2) similarly makes clear that the narrative of a clear medieval-modern break is used to sanctify the identities forged by the state system. Finally, Andreas Osiander (2001; see also 1994: chapter 2) provides a persuasive refutation of the myth of Westphalia and a call to examine the multiplicity of actors and institutional arrangements that populate the domain of IR. We remain intrigued (and puzzled) by Krasner’s position, but more comfortable with the views of Osiander, Strang, and Campbell.
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5. Randolph Head (1998:96) characterizes the division as not only among four major faiths—the Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed or Calvinist, and Anglican—but also among numerous “sectarian movements ranging across a wide spectrum, from the quietist Anabaptists and the communitarian Hutterites to millenarian revolutionaries like Thomas Muntzer.” 6. This principle was reformulated somewhat later in its more famous form: cuius regio eius religio (“whose reign, whose religion”). 7. On the extent and limits of Montaigne’s advocacy of tolerance, see also Skinner (1978:279– 84), Scaglione (1976), Pagden (1982:52, 85), Tuck (1988:23–24), Todorov (1993:32–44), and Boucher (1998:23). On Erasmus, see Remer (1994) and Head (1998:97); on Shakepeare, see Jorgensen (1976). 8. As noted earlier, Osiander (2001:260–68) warns that we should not see the peace treaties as establishing the reign of the principle of sovereignty. Rather, they confirmed the autonomy or relative autonomy of numerous units of rule, some beyond and some still within the hierarchical institutions of the empire. The fuller realization of sovereignty as an organizational principle would take another century or two. And we should not forget that the emerging system of international law also recognized and justified a parallel set of colonial relationships (see Keene, 2002; Anghie, 1996). 9. Of course, the development of ideas, habits, and policies for treating internal and external others was both logically reciprocal and historically simultaneous. Within this dialectic we would emphasize the Biblical assumption of a unitary human origin and the Reformation as a “wound” within Christianity in order to highlight what we feel may be the deepest reasons for Europe’s commitment to uniformity and to its deferral of the problems of difference. We explore these Biblical origins of sixteenth-century European social theory more fully in chapter 2. 10. We take Hobbes at his word and assume that he means that it is “men” who are the heads of households and negotiate the “social contract.” Though we find ourselves lapsing into more gender-neutral usage as we describe these authors, we try throughout the book to note where thinkers clearly restrict the purported generality of their thinking in this way. 11. The phrase is drawn from the title of chapter 6 of Tully (1993). We mostly follow the interpretations of that chapter and Mehta (1992) in this section. See also Gay (1964:6–8, 12–14). 12. It would be more precise to say the male child, since the education of girl children is barely mentioned. We might also add that the much noted role of tutors and servants in the education of the “young gentleman” makes clear also the class basis of his discussion. The quoted phrase is from Locke (1964:98). 13. Locke uses the language of government at several points (1964:29, 70). The point about rewards and punishments is made on page 36. 14. In his 1697 Draft of a Representation Containing a Scheme of Methods for the Employment of the Poor, the police power is invoked to coerce discipline among the underclasses (in Locke, 1993). Also, it is striking that the rod seems quite appropriate for their children (Locke, 1993: 450). 15. Locke (1976:1), quoted in Tuck (1988:33). 16. We draw primarily on the reading of Tully (1993:47–52). 17. Drawing on Grotius, as Tully explains (1993:49), Locke limits the Christian essentials to “the existence of Christ, heaven and hell and the core Christian ethics;
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18.
19. 20.
21.
22.
and that Christianity should be upheld and spread by love and persuasion only, not by force and compulsion.” This move places the doctrine of religious liberty and any claims about the specific mode of worship beyond the essentials. See Creppell (1996:202, 217–21), Wootton (1993:38–39, 106–9), Tully (1993:53– 57), Harris (1994), and Laursen and Nederman (1998:3). We also would challenge the presumption that liberalism is an unassailable doctrine, the basis of a uniquely tolerant society. Liberalism’s purported universality (or neutrality) is increasingly rejected, even by its own supporters (Galston, 1991: part II; Rawls, 1996: lecture 4). And liberal versions of religious tolerance—e.g., secularism—are no longer sacrosanct, now challenged as parochial and overly restrictive (Connolly, 1999; Chatterjee, 1995; Nandy, 1990; Nederman, 2000). We take up versions of this argument in chapter 3. We draw on Tuck (1999:170–71), Tully (1993: chapter 5; 1994; 1995a), Arneil (1994), and Bishop (1997) for this interpretation. The parallel and mutually constitutive character of sovereignty and private property is discussed at length by Kurt Burch (1998) and more briefly by Friedrich Kratochwil (1995) and C.M.Hann (1998:1–4). For additional examinations of the rights of exclusion enjoyed by political communities, see Beitz (1991:243) on resources and Walzer (1983: chapter 2) on membership. We will return to this theme in chapters 4 and 6. The point is put this way by Tully (1993:155; 1995a). That Locke ignored alternative descriptions of the Indians, available in his own library, is taken to indicate the extent to which the Second Treatise is shaped by Locke’s ambition to justify British colonial efforts in which he maintained a personal financial and political stake (Tully, 1993:140–43, 149–51; Arneil, 1994:591–95; Tuck, 1999:166– 68, 170–78). The phrase “empire of uniformity” is in the title of the chapter containing Tully’s historical account.
Chapter 2 1. We appropriate and paraphrase Ashis Nandy’s (1983) insight that the enemy is always also internal in our title for this chapter. 2. On regeneration and redemption through “mixing” with racial, ethnic, and cultural others, see Robert Young (1996: especially pages 41, 71–72, 107–9), Nandy (1983: part 1), and Honig (2001). 3. Some might protest that we underestimate the imperial imperative of discrediting the sovereignty of the native peoples. See Grovogui (1996: especially chapter 1). Later in this chapter we suggest more clearly the relationship between claims of cultural superiority and the fate of Native rights, a theme broached in the previous chapter. See also Keene (2002). 4. Ann Towns has argued rather persuasively that we have ignored the gendered character of the complexity of the original creation and the Fall. Not only are there two creative moments (and therefore “difference was built into creation”), but the Fall itself spawns a social theory in which “Woman is at fault for the Fall of Man” and “blamed for degeneration, the species taint.” Woman becomes interwoven into the idea of “wilderness and chaos which the Europeans had taken upon themselves
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5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
to police and control.” Thus, both “Woman as well as Indian were both simultaneously the sites of danger and desire,…both subjected to the temporal and spatial efforts to manage difference.” Consistent with Nandy’s arguments, mentioned in the introduction, the colonized are “feminized in the justifications of conquest.” White (1972:24) explains that the Greeks possessed a rich set of fantastic images that could be projected on the domain of barbarity or wildness. Medieval interpreters draw on this stock of images as it is transmitted to them especially via Pliny and Herodotus (see Whatley, 1990:xxii; Mason, 1990: chapters 3, 4; Hodgen, 1964: chapter 1; Pagden, 1982: chapter 2). Pagden (1982:22) explains that the medieval Christian commitment to an idea of hierarchy in nature—the great chain of being—allowed blurring at the edges of categories. “There might, therefore, be, in the interstices of these inter-locking categories…a place for a ‘man’ who is so close to the border with the beast, that he is no longer fully recognisable by other men as a member of the same species.” That is, it is not at all the case that those who favored polygenist explanations considered difference as a nourishing and valued resource. On the contrary, they fell into line in regarding difference as a problem, only imagining the origins of the problem in a different way and hoping to overcome the problem with schemes differing from those posed by the monogeneticists. We will return to this theme later in our discussion of Grotius. In Capital, Marx will follow this reasoning by letting the space/time of circulation serve a similar purpose for the “original” production of commodities. See Levine (1978). After reading this paragraph, Sankaran Krishna responded: “I am still not clear how the Mosaic/Biblical tradition came to so self-assuredly regard itself as the origin and all the others as lesser replicas of the pure originality. After Capitalism/ imperialism I can better understand this. But the source of European confidence in their originality is something worth explicating—if it can be done at all.” Krishna specifies the difficulty of the challenge. But there is room for speculation. It is perhaps a repressed lack of confidence in this vision that called forth such a powerful projection of confidence. This internal bifurcation of confidence and doubt, this deep ambiguity about the veracity of Christian truth and its relation to time and space, may help explain the unique character of European capitalism and imperialism. Or, as Nicholas Onuf recently commented in response to this footnote, “I should think it must have something to do with the Book. I was struck by the fact that in Calcutta the Brits took for granted that legal and ethical warrants, for example justifying and regulating sati, were necessarily embedded in Hindu textual materials, much to the wonderment of local religious savants. If so, then Islam, as a great religion of the Book, engenders the same confidence.” It is crucial to note, as we do just below and as Kurt Burch stressed after reading this section, that the lack of the written word was a key marker of difference and inferiority for European travelers and thinkers. Latha Varadarajan wonders too about the extent to which Japanese imperial practices or the Aryan invasion of the Indian subcontinent deviate from the European practice. It seems to us, then, that it is certainly worth studying the relative confidence of other imperialisms. For an intriguing though brief comparative history of how various civilizations have thought about others, see Friedman (1983).
206 • NOTES
10. Today, this seems a curious question, perhaps because we take cultural similarities for granted. They may be rooted in the commonalities of human genetics or the result of some random process. Or, being less concerned with the precise moment and location of a unitary origin, we take it for granted that differing cultures may arrive at similar solutions to common problems. But none of these solutions was available to the thinkers of this time period. 11. On how the term barbarian is used in a similar manner, see Jones (1971:387). 12. To borrow a phrase from Eric Wolf (1982). 13. This remains true even for the most sympathetic observers and advocates on behalf of the Amerindians, such as Bartholomé de Las Casas. Their full humanity remains a potential to be realized in European terms. See Todorov (1984: chapter 3, 185–93) and Nederman (2000). 14. Vitoria is often treated as a canonical figure in the tradition of international law (see Grisel, 1976; Marks, 1992; and Anghie, 1996). It is doubtful that Vitoria saw himself in this way, though he did have tremendous influence through his students and their students, including such figures as the Dominicans Domingo de Soto (1494–1560) and Melchor Cano (1509–60), and the Jesuits Francisco Suárez (1548– 1617) and Luis de Molina (1535–1600). Together, these thinkers “were to influence, and in many areas substantially restructure, the theological thinking of Catholic Europe” (Pagden, 1982:60). The influence is substantial on Grotius, for example, as we shall see. Our account of Vitoria’s background draws on Tuck (1979:45–49; 1993:137) and Pagden (1982:60–61). 15. As Pagden (1982:27–28) explains, “For centuries schoolmen in Spain, as elsewhere in Europe, had acted as unofficial advisers to the crown on intellectual and moral issues…. Consultation between the universities and the crown generally took the form of a junta, an open debate between the representatives of the three branches of learning which had some claim to authority in moral issues—theology, civil law, and canon law—watched over by select members of the religious orders and the royal councils. At the end of the meetings (which seemed to have consisted of formal speeches, allowing for little or no interchange of ideas, though the form may have varied) each participant would provide the king or the Royal Council with a written opinion…. What happened to these ‘opinions’ thereafter it is impossible to say.” 16. Given the common view of Indian practices and the prestige of Aristotle, it is not surprising that many writers were drawn to his understanding of the capabilities and status of barbarous peoples. Simply, it confirmed their biases and employed a familiar conceptualization. Pagden (1982:47) elaborates: “It is…easy to see how attractive Aristotle’s theory, in whole or in part, was to those who could find no place in their picture of the world for cultural forms like those of the Amerindians which were so different from their own as to defy the very premises on which human behavior was thought to be based. The Indians were clearly ‘barbarians,’ and ‘barbarians,’ said Fr. Tomas de Mercado, placing Aristotle’s theory in a nutshell, ‘are never moved by reason, but only by passion.’” The Indians were certainly barbarians and therefore, as obviously, natural slaves. 17. This is not meant to suggest that Vitoria or his followers brought this debate to a close. Rather, perhaps the most famous encounter, the Debate at Valladolid (1550– 51), pitting Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda and Las Casas, occurs after Vitoria’s intervention and after his death. For a good account, see Hanke (1959).
NOTES • 207
18. Pagden (1982:80–81) calls European interest in man-eating humans “an obsession,” which by the close the fifteenth century had “become a regular part of the topography of exotic lands.” 19. John Parry (1976) comments at length on the profound sense of responsibility Spanish thinkers expressed toward the colonized peoples. We should also note that Vitoria’s discourse on the Indians incorporates a series of other natural law claims —the right to communication, travel, and commerce—that support Spanish expansion and justify war against the Indians where they resist these dictates (Pagden, 1990:20–22; Anghie, 1996:327–31). These are key components of today’s liberal idealism. Indeed, we can trace the influence on Grotius and on international law more generally (see Grisel, 1976; and Marks, 1992). As Antony Anghie (1996:333) puts it, “The vocabulary of international law, far from being neutral or abstract, is mired in this history of subordinating and extinguishing alien cultures.” 20. Put differently, the hierarchical order of creation, captured in the idea of “the great chain of being,” is turned on its side and reconstructed as a temporal ordering. See Friedman (1983: 37) and Onuf (1998b:214). 21. Ashis Nandy (1983; 1987b) puts this set of ideas in another way. The imperial culture denies the past of the other by claiming that the other has no past but that of the imperial culture. Further, it denies a creative future to the other because the other’s future will simply unfold according to the present of the European self. That is, the other is at once very old and very young: old because, its prime now behind it, it is as archaic as European antiquity. But the other is also still in its infancy because it has neither changed nor evolved; the colonized other is developmentally on the same plane as the ancients. Hodgen seems to prefigure Nandy’s insight when she contends that a convention had emerged that “bestowed earliness and oldness upon contemporary savagery” (Hodgen, 1964:345; emphasis added). We can imagine this maneuver as the type of temporal imperialism and exploitation crucial to the creation of the “empire of uniformity.” It may be worth noting that the denial of adult status to other cultures involves a conflation of two senses of time. On the one hand, time is merely the generational flow of people and events as measured by years. Here, Amerindians are contemporaneous with Europe; they share time. On the other hand, time is being measured socially and axiologically—in terms of the relative civility of self and other. Here, the Amerindians are as young as antiquity; both are prior to and outside of Christendom. 22. Thus the Indians are part of the cause of transition from social hierarchy to equality; part of the basis of the belief in education as an equalizer; and the source of this mediating of the tension within liberalism. Thus, education serves the same function as “competition”—indeed education is a type of competition. Both work to reveal, teach, or inform us about the natural position of any person within a social hierarchy. We develop this theme in chapter 4. 23. As Janet Whatley (1990:xxi) suggests, Léry stands at the intersection of the Reformation and the “discovery” of the Americas. 24. Pagden (1982:83–4) elaborates: “Eating one’s enemies as the ultimate expression of hostility was not an unfamiliar occurrence in Europe. Galeazzo Maria Sforza had been torn to pieces in Milan in 1476 and his dismembered limbs eaten by a furious crowd. During the Wars of Religion in France worse acts were perpetuated on
208 • NOTES
25.
26. 27.
28. 29.
30. 31.
32.
33. 34.
Catholics by Protestants and on Protestants by Catholics that, as Montaigne observed, any Tupinamba ever visited on his enemies. Parts of butchered Huguenots had been sold publicly in Paris and Lyon in 1572; and in a bizarre act of ritual murder the miraculously preserved body of Saint Fulcran at Lodeve was said to have been shot full of holes and eaten at a solemn feast by local Protestants.” Stephen Greenblatt, commenting on Bernal Díaz’s claim that the interior of a native temple is full of things and events that have no European parallel, writes, “For what Bernal Díaz actually describes is not the unimaginable alien—how could such a thing ever be described?—but a displaced version of his own system of belief: temple, high altar, cult of the holy blood, statues before which offerings were made, ‘symbols like crosses.’ This is the very center of the homologies that link the invaders and those they come to enslave and destroy, and hence this is the place at which what I have called blockage must be most powerfully effective” (Greenblatt, 1991: 134; emphasis added). If we think that perhaps the opposite holds for the Europeans, that they are lost in this life even if saved in the next, then we can see here a kind of exchange waiting for the ethnological touch. We explore the possibility of learning from the other more fully in later chapters. Details of Grotius’s biography can be found in Roelofsen (1990), Tuck (1993: chapter 5), and Edwards (1981). Grotius also found other ways to elevate the value of the Indians. To account for the reported practice of circumcision among the Indians of Yucatan, he posits that rather than being Jews descended from the lost tribes of Israel, as many believed, they are shipwrecked fishermen from Christian Ethiopia. On the basis of other cultural comparisons, he also believes that Peruvian Indians come from China, still a highly regarded civilization at the time. Grotius was to receive similar treatment by later contributors to the debate, like Ogilby (see Meek, 1976:53–56). Grotius being quite partisan for the Dutch and in the employ of the Swedish crown at the time. Rubies (1991:237) elaborates and dispenses with this suggestion put forward by Gliozzi (1977). We draw here on Edwards (1981:1–8) and Roelofsen (1990:98–120). It is interesting to note that, though closely tied to the major Remonstrant figures, Grotius’s primary religious preoccupation was different: he, like the orthodox, envisioned the ultimate reunification of Christianity (Haggenmacher, 1990:145). But, as explained in the previous chapter, he believed that this reunification could not be achieved by the imposition of a single, thick theological view. Rather, in parallel to his minimalist vision of natural law and in line with his early humanist education, he sought to unify Christianity by reducing Christian belief to a minimal set of elements on which all factions could agree (Tuck, 1993: 185–86). Concerning whether the Indians could be converted to Christianity, Acosta and De Laet would have disagreed. Here the divide between the Catholics and Calvinists remains. Details of Campanella’s biography can be found in Headley (1995; 1997) and Pagden (1990: 37–63). Pagden (1993:188) claims that the discovery of America taught the Europeans “a form of despair: the recognition that the ‘savage,’ however defined, could ultimately have no place outside a world system whose character was already
NOTES • 209
35. 36.
37.
38. 39.
40.
41.
markedly European, yet could never survive as a ‘savage’ within it.” A similar cycle of an expected evangelizing success, followed by pessimism resulting from indigenous resistance, and leading to the formation of a racist essentialism by the imperial power, is demonstrated for the British in India by Francis Hutchins (1967). Many others have told parts of that story. We will reference them in the brief summary that follows. We intend to make this the subject of later work. The evolution of the theme of the noble savage from antiquity to the Americas is discussed by Stelio Cro (1994). Regarding the positive evaluation of the savage or “primitivism,” Jonathan Friedman (1983:37) reminds us that “[e]volutionism is not a doctrine opposed to primitivism…primitivism is no more than a negative evaluation of evolution, not its denial.” That the articulation of the “four stages theory” involves a transition from a Christian social theory to a secularized theory is argued by Collingwood (1946:76– 81), Forbes (1982), and Iacono (1994). Not without, however, some exacting critiques (see Berry, 1997: chapter 7). Consider Marx in the preface to the first edition of Capital: “One nation can and should learn from others. Even when a society has begun to track down the natural laws of its movement—and it is the ultimate aim of this work to reveal the economic law of motion of modern society—it can neither leap over the natural phases of its development nor remove them by decree. But it can shorten and lessen the birth-pangs” (Marx, 1977:92; emphasis added). Our account of the origins of development supports many features of later “postdevelopment” readings (Escobar, 1995: chapter 1; Rist, 1997: chapter 2; Cowen and Shenton, 1996: chapter 1), even as we extend the chronology further into the past. For a reading that argues for a strong thread of continuity between eighteenthcentury concerns and those of the thirteenth century, see Becker (1932: especially pages 31, 101–3, 130).
Chapter 3 1. Luce Giard (1991:212), following the coinage of Michel de Certeau, has referred to this science of difference as “heterology.” 2. To be clear, we make no attempt to characterize the subfield of comparative politics as a whole or its development over the past half-century. Rather, this section focuses more narrowly on the geopolitics common to modernization theory and IR. That this kind of comparison is practiced widely is, perhaps, an implication of our argument, but not one we make an effort to defend. 3. While usually only implicit, David Apter (1965:vii) acknowledges quite explicitly the embrace of a Western “vision.” We should also note that this section refers primarily to texts from the late 1950s to the late 1970s, and we mean to indicate that modernization theory is only a particular instance of what is a central component of the modern Western worldview. 4. We should qualify a bit here, since much of the early modernization literature treats the Soviet Union as exemplary of an alternative (if undesirable) form of modernity. Thus, many see their work as part of a struggle for the “hearts and minds” of the
210 • NOTES
5.
6.
7. 8.
9.
10. 11.
developing nations. The anxiety about the fate of liberal democracy in its competition with the Soviets is rather clear in Almond and Powell (1966: chapter 11), Almond and Verba (1965:vii, 1–5), Organski (1965: chapter 8), Apter (1965: chapter 12), Rustow (1967:254–72), Lowenthal (1962), and Watnick (1962). This bias continues in recent, post-Cold War revivals of modernization theory as triumphal liberalism. See Pye (1990) and Diamond (1990). In addition, Christopher Simpson’s (1998) convincing effort to link studies of modernization and development to the Cold War security apparatus confirms earlier assertions by Looker (1978) and Teune (1990) that the rise of “comparative politics” is directly related to the rise of U.S. power and the Cold War. See the explicit reference to “pattern variables” and Parsonian sequences of development in Apter (1965:18–26), Almond and Powell (1966:27–28, 49–50), Kalleberg (1966), and Macridis (1978:17–19). That comparison is between political systems, or countries, or nation-states goes almost without remark. See, however, Mahler (2000:11, 14); Hague, Harrop, and Breslin (1998:5, 272); Lane (1997b:9); and Wilson (1996: chapter 1). A few texts provide a partial exception. The reader edited by Macridis and Brown (1986) supplements materials on cross-national comparison with discussions of the world economy, world-systems theory, and dependency theory. Lane’s (1997a:2–7, 34) emphasis on political systems and use of structural functionalist languages is modified at points with observations about interdependence. As we noted in chapter 2, commonality and difference necessarily coexist in the art of comparison. Criticism of this dualism as unrealistic was common at the time. See, among many others, Gusfield (1967), Whitaker (1967), Kothari (1968), and Tipps (1973). Even some of the more prominent modernization theorists accepted the merely “ideal” character of this duality. See Almond (1960:10–11) and Coleman (1971:73–74). Despite his canonical status as “realist,” many interpreters see this as the point of Thucydides’ account of the Peloponnesian War. See Forde (1992:373, 380–81) and Johnson Bagby (1994:143). This glosses a much more extensive debate about the causal mechanisms operative in “the liberal peace.” See Chan (1997) for a quite useful summary. We might read a comment by Mark Hoffman (1991:171) to suggest that dialogue for Linklater is less among individuals and groups and more a debate among theories in his own mind.
Chapter 4 1. Fortunately this is decreasingly true, as these themes come to be more central to IR. See, for example, Walker (1988); Rosenau (1997); Keck and Sikkink (1998); Wapner and Ruiz (2000); and Albert, Brock, and Wolf (2000). 2. Several recent articles attempt this more ambitious task. See Eriksen and Neumann (1993), Verweij (1995), and Lapid (1996). 3. This is an issue not so easily decided by evidence, as Alfie Kohn (1986: chapter 2) suggests, although he weighs in against the claim that competition is natural. Our argument might be stated in this way: though the physiological qualities of the species make it amenable to competition (and to cooperation, we might add), the
NOTES • 211
4. 5.
6. 7.
8.
9. 10.
11.
12. 13.
specific character of competition—its meaningful and purposeful character—cannot be read off from the “facts” of human nature. In the international relations literature it is Kenneth Waltz (1959) who makes perhaps the strongest case against reading competition as a natural fact in his rejection of “first image” thinking in Man, the State, and War. Of course, our account of competition as a structure of meaning and purpose differs from Waltz’s view of competition as a causal effect of anarchy. “Our” should be read as: human beings, with varying degrees of reflexivity and resistance. George Marcus and Michael Fischer (1992:78) approvingly cite Raymond Williams to the effect that explanations necessarily “merge…the understanding of their subject’s point of view in circumscribed social settings with the difficulties of also representing accurately the penetration of larger forces.” Following Marcus and Fischer, we aim to present the “outside forces” of political economy as “an integral part of the construction and constitution of the ‘inside’” (Marcus and Fischer, 1992:77). We continue this discussion in the next chapter, using Karl Polanyi’s distinction between “substantive” and “formal” notions of the economy. Hayek (1976: chapter 8) hopes to dispute the idea of “rewards to merit” as the legitimating value of a modern competitive society, directing our attention to other purposes, which we highlight below, although he acknowledges the general appeal of and to that notion. It should be clear by now that we do not use the terms competitive or competition to refer to the internal structure of markets. Here, competition is not a static state, as in the parameters and equilibrium solution of a model of perfect competition. Rather, competition is a process, a series of competitive struggles and strategies. See Schumpeter (1976: chapter 7), McNulty (1968), and Lane (1991:221). Needs, like the skills and efforts of individuals, are treated as given prior to or outside of the market and the competitions it stages. See Levine (1988). The political economy tradition is generally eloquent about the enshrining of the free individual, even where the idea is subject to serious scrutiny. See Marx (1977: chapter 1; 1973:243–45), Hegel (1991: part 1, sections 1, 2 [on “Property” and “Contract”], and part 3, section 2 [on “Civil Society”]), and Levine (1978: chapter 1). We express this argument mostly in language drawn from Hayek (1976: chapter 10; 1960: chapter 5). See also the discussion of the valuation of individuals and the social good of wealth production within a society centering on competition in Knight (1936:47–53) and Rosenberg (1994: chapter 5). These themes of the mutual dependence of economic actors and the spur to human production are central also to the work of Adam Smith, as we shall see in the subsection that follows. The use of he is not accidental. It is consistent with Smith’s imagination of the modern economic actor as primarily male. See Rendall (1987). In the strictest sense, no individual makes pins in the factory. Rather, pins are the result of a production process in which individual workers play a component part. Smith seems to acknowledge this when he suggests that “each person…might be considered as making four thousand eight hundred pins in a day,” when he tabulates the effects of the division of labor in the factory (Smith, 1976:9; emphasis added). This pattern of shifting between the idea of workers as independent
212 • NOTES
14.
15. 16.
17.
18.
19. 20. 21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
individuals and workers as embedded in a social structure is endemic to Smith. We return to this theme below. Smith (1976: book I, chapters 8, 9) himself suggests that the bargaining process among workers and capitalists is clearly weighted in favor of owners of stock. Bartering among independent producers, each owning his own surplus, would presumably be more equal. Smith’s image of the independent producer may actually be an amalgam of the skilled craftsman of the guild and the conditions of free labor under capitalism. As Marx (1973:158; see also pages 471–516) puts it, though capitalist society overturns relations of “personal dependence,” it replaces them with social relations of “personal independence founded on objective dependence” For Hayek, this assumption is based on a kind of faith: “Our faith in freedom does not rest on the foreseeable results in particular circumstances but on the belief that it will, on balance, release more forces for the good than for the bad” (Hayek, 1960: 31). Or: “Not all the amenities that we can today provide for the few will sooner or later be available to all; with such amenities as personal service it would be clearly impossible. They are among the advantages which the wealthy are deprived of by progress. But most of the gains of the few do, in the course of time, become available to the rest. Indeed, all our hopes for the reduction of present misery and poverty rest on this expectation” (Hayek, 1960:51). However, the distinction between voluntary action and coercion loses its value if a range of “voluntary” acts can result from coercion. If the market can make us change our plans, then we can imagine that coercion is occurring through human action but not by human design. We explore the possibilities of such a middle space more fully in our analysis of the work of Karl Polanyi in chapter 5. A quite nuanced evaluation of Hayek’s point can be found in Shklar (1990:75–77, 117–18). Hinsley (1986:26) is quite succinct. Sovereignty is the “idea that there is a final and absolute political authority in the political community…and no final and absolute authority exists elsewhere” Eriksen and Neumann (1993:239) likewise cite Bull’s notion of “international society” as an important starting point for a cultural analysis of international relations. Of course the right to secession/self-determination may conflict with the current drawing of sovereignties. For a detailed discussion of the tensions involved, see Hannum (1990). Justin Rosenberg (1994: especially chapter 5) provides a compelling account of the demarcation of the economy as a distinct sphere in relation to the political life necessary to a capitalist society. We find this description in numerous sources. See, for example, Thomson and Krasner (1989), Mayall (1982), Tarullo (1985), Agnew and Corbridge (1995: chapter 7), Jessop (1997), and Gill and Law (1993). The phrase social structure of accumulation is from Gill and Law (1993:95). The construction of productive capacities as facts of nature is clear in Ricardo. In contemporary theories, factor endowments, whether conceived as natural or constructed endowments, are treated as given outside of the process by which returns from trade are determined. See Gilpin (1987: chapter 5).
NOTES • 213
27. Though various “radical” political economies (dependency theory or worldsystems theory) have made this status crucial to a picture of international society as divided between, roughly, core and periphery, we hardly need this resort. This equation is largely taken for granted. 28. Bull (1977: chapter 9) employs all of these gradations, plus the idea of quasi states. These terms are part of the common parlance of IR, except for quasi states. The latter has become popular in academic circles due to the efforts of Robert H.Jackson (1990b). For an argument that Jackson’s work serves as an apology for global inequality, see Inayatullah (1996). 29. In Bull’s (1977:15–18) view, the great powers maintain a “hegemony” based on some combination of force and legitimacy. Bull’s usage appears somewhere between a Gramscian and a realist notion of hegemony as Stephen Gill and David Law (1988:76–80) draw the distinction. 30. The general failure of the Cold War superpowers to refrain from acting as major sources of conflict contributed to the low level of legitimacy accorded superpower conflict. See Clark (1989: chapter 9) and Bull (1977: chapter 9). Today’s great powers struggle similarly to secure the legitimacy of their role in the face of erratic or clearly self-serving behavior (Walker, 2000; Blinken, 2001; Ricks, 2001; Wu, 2001). 31. The interrelation of military and economic power in a society of states is well captured in Paul Kennedy (1987). While there is no simple correlation between military strength and a country’s wealth at any one point in time, Kennedy makes clear that economic success is necessary to sustain military strength for any length of time. Certainly, Kennedy also suggests the role that military power may play in economic success, although this relationship may be weakening in the present. 32. This case is not hard to make in relation to neorealist and neoliberal IPE. The case is more difficult to make in relation to Marxist IPE because this tradition holds to the intrinsic sociality of actors and the historical specificity of capitalist forms of labor subjugation. However, Marxist method itself tends to explain the specificities of social forms of life as particular expressions of an external and prior nature of human beings as (abstractly) social producers. See Levine (1978:8). 33. Again, this conclusion is difficult to dispute for the neorealist and neoliberal frameworks. This is not to say that individual scholars may not be concerned about the question of international inequality, but that their intellectual system of reference gives them little scope for questioning inequality. Here the Marxian tradition is at its best, although we would argue that the most fruitful construction of the Marxian critique of inequality depends on the social determination of individuality in modern social relations. See Inayatullah and Blaney (1995) for such a reading of Marx.
Chapter 5 1. This enthusiasm for Polanyi has been tempered somewhat by a series of reflections on the way Polanyi has been appropriated (Lacher, 1999a; 1999b) and criticisms of his interpretations of the nineteenth century (Halperin, 2002). 2. Although only a subtext of The Great Transformation, this work, a sample of which is collected in George Dalton (1968), is as well known, serving as inspiration
214 • NOTES
3.
4.
5.
6. 7. 8.
9.
10. 11.
12.
13.
14.
for much debate within economic anthropology. See Dalton (1965; 1990), Halperin (1984), and Wilk (1996: chapters 1, 2). Elsewhere Polanyi (1977:9) writes that “[f]or all practical purposes, the economy did now consist of markets, and the market did envelop society.” At other points, he suggests that the domination of the market is always a matter of “degree” (Polanyi, 1968c:63). We favor the latter and find the former a somewhat unfortunate formulation, an issue to which we will return. Polanyi (1977:42) explicitly rejects the idea of “necessary stages of development.” It is not surprising, then, that he saw the work of modernization theorists, like Walt Rostow, as a major target of his efforts (Polanyi-Levitt, 1990:259). See also Valensi (1981:9). We discussed the process of “distancing” (Fabian, 1983) at some length in chapter 3. See also the interpretations of Polanyi by Dalton (1981:2) and Topik (2001:85). Stanfield (1986:26–31) highlights this particular joining of disciplines in his interpretation of Polanyi’s methodology. See Polanyi’s (1957:4, 10, 12; 1977: chapter 1; 1968d:116–38) various responses to the thinking of Adam Smith and other liberal political economists. Polanyi’s work here is very suggestive, but his notion of “mixed motives” is subject to interpretation. We are influenced by Richard Wilk’s (1996:147–51) efforts to move beyond the endless debate among proponents of an innate selfinterestedness versus an innate social concern by suggesting “the possibility of mixed and ambiguous or multiple motives,” where either perfect hedonism or perfect altruism are only poles of an ideal typical continuum that may obscure the messiness of human experience. Polanyi (1957: chapter 10; 1968c:65–66) defends the idea that a generally respected “right” to subsistence was destroyed by the implementation of the free market. It is worth noting that Polanyi had Hayek in mind as he crafted these arguments (see Block and Somers, 1984:48; and Rosner, 1990). Polanyi’s historical accounts also have been the subject of much scrutiny and criticism. See Humphreys (1969), Hill (1980), and Halperin (2002). The ethnographic materials on which Polanyi relied are also the subject of much controversy within anthropology itself. See, for example, Fabian (1983), Clifford (1988), Marcus and Fisher (1992), and Marcus (1998). Polanyi (1968c:74–75) does mean to restrict some freedoms: “the freedom to exploit one’s fellows, or the freedom to make inordinate gains without commensurable service to the community, the freedom to keep technological inventions from being used for the public benefit, or the freedom to profit from public calamities secretly engineered for private advantage, may disappear.” Polanyi’s language, here and below, remains somewhat ethnocentric. That his work remained somewhat “Eurocentric” has been noted (Topik, 2001:95), though its continuing relevance and importance beyond Europe is embraced by Topik. Polanyi (1957:249; 1968c) claims the imminent end of the free market at various points. Some, like Searcy (1993), argue the case for Polanyi’s relative irrelevance in a world where market society has triumphed. At the moment, as we saw at the outset, scholarly opinion is weighted against Searcy’s claim.
NOTES • 215
15. Though difficult to classify with his tripartite dissection of the legacy of the past into liberal, nationalist, and Marxist schools, Gilpin (1987) references Polanyi extensively, at one point (page 15) describing The Great Transformation as a “classic study.” It is perhaps worth noting that, as Gilpin (2001) adopts an approach more fully in line with the economistic fallacy of neoclassical economics, Polanyi disappears from his references. Susan Strange’s States and Markets (1994) identifies Polanyi as an economic historian (page 15), but suggests that he is “justly respected as one of the pioneers of modern international political economy” (page 101). However, Polanyi is mostly absent elsewhere. See, for example, Gill and Law (1988) and Schwartz (1994). But, as noted at the outset, Gill and others have increasingly turned to Polanyi. 16. Our framing of this final point owes much to a discussion with Himadeep Muppidi.
Chapter 6 1. See our more extended discussion of Hinsley in Inayatullah and Blaney (1995). 2. In parallel, the idea that the asocial state of “anarchy” is socially constructed is suggested famously by Alexander Wendt (1992). The limits of his position— particularly his continuing resort to the idea that states are ontological primitives— is suggested by Inayatullah and Blaney (1996) and Pasic (1996). 3. A focus on respective social statuses and the duties each owe is quite natural, since property is usually understood not so much as a thing but as “social relations among people” or, more specifically, as “the rights that people hold over things which guarantee them a future ‘income stream.’” A less restrictive notion of property points to numerous “things” that may be possessed: “names, reputation, and knowledge, personal and collective identities, not to mention…currency holdings and shares in joint-stock companies.” Thus, the “word ‘property’ is best seen as directing our attention to a vast field of cultural as well as social relations, to the symbolic as well as the material contexts within which things are recognized and personal as well as collective identities made” (Hann, 1998:4–5). 4. Hiding the broader political, social, and cultural ambitions or prerequisites of projects behind “technical” matters is endemic to development discourse. See Ferguson (1994). 5. A vivid picture of such a British official and these disciplining processes is presented in one of the few Bollywood productions to be widely distributed in the United States (Lagaan). 6. We draw this phrase from the title of Romann and Weingrod (1991). 7. It is noteworthy that these heightened hopes and fears tend to be concentrated in that part of the world that has been accustomed to the presence of a strong and somewhat efficacious social democratic state. The power of external forces and actors to limit the sovereignty of postcolonial states, whether housing elected regimes or not, is hardly new (see Anderson, 1996:139). At the same time, the intensified marginalization of third-world populations, wherever they may be located, and the growing inequality repeat common patterns that are all too familiar (Hurrell and Woods, 1995; Scott, 2001). We also can hardly expect that trends that further undermine the possibility of state sovereignty in postcolonial societies will be
216 • NOTES
8.
9. 10. 11.
greeted with great enthusiasm (Kothari, 1993; 1995; 1997; Puchala, 1998; see also Inayatullah and Blaney, 1995). This picture is informed partly by scholarly accounts of the workings of various federal and consociational systems, including the EU. See Maarten and Tombeur (2000:145–46, 170–75), McKay (2001: chapter 9), and Dev (1998:258–59). This is not to forget the inequalities and divisions between core and peripheral zones within countries. This section draws selectively on our earlier work. See Inayatullah and Blaney (1995), Blaney and Inayatullah (1996), and Blaney (1996). That claims to global justice can only be sustained where global sociality is recognized is argued by Gilbert (1989), Beitz (1979), and Pogge (1989).
Epilogue 1. It might be objected that nonviolent resistance serves as a third alternative. We have argued, following Ashis Nandy, that Gandhi’s strategy is dialogical, precisely because it engages the self in a process of self-examination. We will return to this issue below.
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Index
Abel, 86 Abraham, 63 Acosta, José de, 75, 79, 229n32 Adam, 54, 77 Aforisimi Politica (T.Campanella, 1601), 81 Agrarian Relations in Early British Rule in India (S.C.Gupta, 1963), 194 Agriculture, 41, 61, 63, 83, 86, 87, 192– 193 in British India, 197–203 in Mughal India, 191–197 natural bounty, 192–193, 198, 202 See also Cultivate Albert, Mathias, 223n6, 230n Alexander VI (pope), 59–60 Alker, Hayward, 224n1 Almond, Gabriel, 96, 97–98, 100, 108, 111–112, 115, 230n4, 230n5, 230n8 Alterity, 8, 73, 85, 101, 219 Alverez, Francisco, 75 Ambiguity, 9, 11, 12, 34, 42, 50, 52, 53, 133, 224n4, 227n9 about savagery and wildness, 50, 52, 53, 57, 66–73 in Campanella, 80–85 in Gabriel and Almond, 111–112 in Geertz, 113–116 in Grotius, 73–80 in Huntington, 108–111 in Léry, 65–73 in Smith, 138–139 in Vitoria, 58–65 See also Anxiety, Certainty, Doubt, Recessive themes, Skepticism, Uncertainty
America, Americas. See New World Amerindians, x, 3, 11, 12, 25, 35, 41–42, 50–57, 61–65, 226n21, 227n13, 228n21, 229n31 akin to contemporary non-liberal states, 117 assimilation of, 79, 84 as barbarians, savages, and monsters, 50–51, 55, 57, 61, 62, 64, 85, 90, 135– 136, 227–228n16, 228n21, 229n34 challenge European self-understanding and worldviews, 48, 54, 55 as children, 65 culture of, 56, 164 as degenerate Christians, 75–76, 89 denied rights, 39–40, 41–42, 44, 77 exploitation and enslavement, 10, 59– 60 humanity of, 59, 227n13 as ignoble, 87, 89 and “internal Indians”, 77–79 as intimate allies, 74–77 key to debates within Christianity, 57, 61–62, 74, 77–80, 83 as metaphor, 90 as natural slaves, 57, 58–60, 61–63, 64–65, 76, 227–228n16 origins of, 74–76, 78 as otherness and radical others, 53–54, 57, 85, 90 as pre-civil, pre-social, undeveloped, 85, 88 as social disorder, 63 in state of nature, “original condition” of humankind, 85, 86, 88
246
INDEX • 247
status in European worldviews, 58–65, 88, 111 as wild, wild men, 50–57, 85, 90 as women, 226n4 See also Other, Tupinamba Anabaptists, 27, 225n5 Anarchy, anarchic, anarchical, 49, 50, 51, 88–89, 96, 104, 234n2 and IR, 103, 104, 119, 129 precludes development, 96, 103, 105 problematic, 94, 95, 145 without violence and exploitation, 158 zone of, 116–117 Anderson, James, 211–212 Andrews, C.F., 13, 167, 168 Anghie, Antony, 228n19 Anthropology, 66, 74, 182, 233n11 1 Antichrist. See Satan Antiquity, the ancients, 55, 56, 57, 58, 73, 75, 78, 228n21, 229n36 Anxiety, 29, 33, 49, 52, 53, 73, 212 Apter, David, 99, 230n3, 230n4, 230n5 Aquinas, Thomas, 58 Aristotle, Aristotelian, 58, 60, 62, 63, 64, 112, 172, 227n16 and natural slavery, 58–60, 61–63, 64– 65, 87, 90 Arminius, Jacobus, 78 Arneil, Barbara, 42, 226n19 Asch, Ronald, 23, 27, 32 Aspects of Political Development (L.Pye, 1966), 106 Assimilation, 10, 11, 12, 13, 42, 44, 48, 57, 79, 84, 101, 102, 107 and commonality, 171 to modern practices, 114 radical, 84 Atheism, atheists, 39, 40, 69 Authority, 22, 24, 31, 35, 38, 40, 89, 106, 109, 146, 195 bases for, 36–37, 83, 85 biblical, 54, 78, 86 blurred, 207 civil, 38, 40, 60, 207 classical, 75, 78 competing and overlapping, 31, 42, 119, 125, 185, 206, 209
as destructive solution to problem of difference, 141 dispersed, 210, 213 functional, 209 political-legal, 43, 207 and rationality/science, 35, 85 sovereign, 38, 42, 196 and state of nature, 145–146 tension with modernization, 104 See also Sovereignty, State Aztecs, 25, 59, 77 Babel, 54–55, 75 Backward (the), backwardness, x, 13 Balance of power, 32, 104, 191 Banuri, Tariq, 117 Barbarians, barbarism, barbarity, 30, 43, 50, 51, 55, 57, 62, 70, 79, 88, 226n5, 227n11, 227n16 to be civilized and/or pacified, 88, 89 contemporary, 117 international relations as, 95 moral and geographic, 50 Plutarch on, 76 Barber, Benjamin, 224n1 Baumgold, Deborah, 35 Bayle, Pierre, 66 Becker, Carl L., 229n41 Behn, Mira, 13 Beitz, Charles R., 188, 226n20, 234n11 Benjamin, Jessica, 11, 44, 53, 73, 158, 187, 224n12 Bernstein, Richard J., 1 Besant, Anne, 13 Bible, Biblical, The Book, Scripture, 24, 52, 53, 54, 55, 60, 70, 78, 79, 143 account of human origins, 86, 227n9 tension with natural law, 74 Biersteker, Thomas J., 224n1 Binder, Leonard, 99 Bishop, John D., 226n19 Blaney, David L., 223n2, 224n2, 234n1, 234n2, 234n10 Bleiker, Roland, 224n16 Body politic, 42, 58, 90–91 Bose, Girindrasekhar, 166, 167 Boucher, David, 225n7
248 • INDEX
Boundaries policing of, 6, 11, 13, 44, 55, 204, 212 renegotiating, 213 Brazil, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 73 Brecht, Bertolt, 21 Brenner, Neil, 211 Breslin, Shaun, 230n6 Britain, British, 25, 33, 74, 75, 76, 88, 111 colonial domination, 12, 226n21 in India, 12–13, 14, 165–168, 189–190, 194, 195–201, 219–220, 229n34 laboring classes akin to African ican tribes, 179 Brock, Lothar, 223n6, 230n6 Brown, Bernard E., 230n64 “Brown woman’s burden”, 219 Bull, Hedley, 6, 153, 224n4, 232n22, 232n28, 232n29, 232n30 society versus system, 146 Burch, Kurt, 188, 189, 226n20, 227n9 Butalia, Urvashi, 21 Buzan, Barry, 188 Cain, 54–55, 86 Calvin, John, 24, 26, 66, 67 Calvinism, Calvinist, Calvinists, Dutch Reformed Church, 25, 26, 27, 31, 33, 66, 67, 68, 73, 75, 225n5, 229n32 alleged intolerance, 74 opposing visions of, 78–80 Remonstrants, 78, 80, 90, 229n31 Campanella, Tomasso, 49, 57, 61, 80–85, 89, 91, 96, 120, 121, 229n33 Campbell, David, 42, 225n4 Cannibalism, 53, 57, 61, 62, 63, 65–73, 82, 84, 90, 125, 177, 228n18, 228n24 as absolute otherness, 57, 66 alien and intimate, 70 metaphor, 70–71 Cano, Melchor, 227n14 Capital, 147, 149, 189, 198, 213, 232n25 Capitalism, capitalist, 129, 178, 189, 211, 215–216, 232n24 assimilates encountered cultures, 198 chance, deceptions, fictions, illusions, myths, paradox, 143–145, 156, 157– 158, 189
critical response to, 162, 169–182 and cultures, 142–143, 151–152, 155, 189, 198, 199, 214 denaturalizing, 183 ethnological critique of, 162, 169–182 exploitation by, 201 logic of, 198, 214, 215 marginalized are within and beyond (self/other), 178–181, 184 normative commitments, 199 and sovereignty/state, 131, 174, 189, 215 spatiality of and space/time, 198, 211 See also Culture of Competition, Global capitalism, Market, Social structure of accumulation Caporaso, James, vii Carr, E.H., 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 223n3, 223n4 Cartas de Relacion (H.Cortés, 1522), 59 Catholic Church, the Church, 26, 27, 28, 70, 72, 83, 225n5, 227n14 power of, 24, 32, 68, 71 Catholics, Catholicism, x, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 40, 66, 70, 72, 73, 78, 79 as internal others in Europe, 57, 66 versus Protestants, 66, 70, 72, 73, 228n24, 229n32 Cerny, Phillip G., 211, 215 Certainty, certitude, 58, 85 and challenges of difference, 10, 23, 34 and political order, 80 quest for, 28, 34–35, 43 See also Anxiety, Doubt, Skepticism, Uncertainty Certeau, Michel de, 69, 70, 230n1 Chakrabarty, Dipesh, 224nl4 Chan, Stephen, 224n16, 230n10 Chandra, Vikram, 93 Chaos, 29, 34, 35, 62, 226n4 Charles V (of Spain, ruled Holy Roman Empire 1519–1556), 25, 27 Chatterjee, Bankimchandra, 13, 224n9 Chesin, Amir, 205 China, Chinese, 77, 79, 155 Chowdry, Geeta, x Christ, 26, 57, 63, 72, 81, 115n17
INDEX • 249
Christendom, Christianity, Christian Church, Christians, 2, 23–28, 30, 31, 38– 40, 52, 55, 57, 61, 62, 63, 81, 82, 89, 167, 178, 228n21 Amerindians as, 75–77, 229n32 Commonwealth of, 146 cosmology, 52, 55 empire of and mission, 69, 81–85 and inequality/hierarchy, 147, 226n6 Jewish-Christian synthesis, 77 and natural law, 81, 82, 90 piety, 11, 25, 26, 29, 51 recessive elements in, 167 teachings, thought, and traditions, 33, 49, 50, 51, 60, 81, 225n17, 227n9, 229n37 unity/universality of, 70, 74, 77, 79, 81, 82, 83, 84, 91, 229n31 Citta del Sole (T.Campanella, 1602), 81, 82 Civic culture and politics, 97, 111–112, 113–114 Civic Culture (G.A.Almond and S.Verba, 1965), 111, 112 Civil society (domestic), 35, 37, 38, 41, 42, 79 See also Global civil society Civilization, civilized society, civilizing, 17, 41, 91, 106, 136, 139, 181 authenticity in, 167 central problems of, 136, 139 creates ignorance, 139–140 project of, mission of, 9, 89 standard of, 88 versus wilderness, 50–57 Clark, Ian, 232n30 Clash of civilizations (S.Huntington), 109 Class, ix, 178, 179, 184 Clifford, James, 233n11 Coercion, 10, 38, 40, 44, 152, 158, 225n14 Coevality, coevalness, 90, 112, 167 denial of, 56, 102 Coexistence, 45, 119, 125, 146 of cultures, 112, 181 of difference and dialogue, 169 of mixed modes of social life, 175– 182, 204 in premodern empires, 22 Cold War, 91, 93, 94, 98, 230n4, 232n30
post Cold War, 45, 107, 111, 118 Coleman, James S., 97, 230n8 Coligny, Gaspard de, 67 Collingwood, R.G., 229n37 Colonialism, colonial, colonization, 7, 11, 49, 77, 106, 107, 117, 154, 163, 178, 179, 181, 188, 226n21 of Americas, 48, 67 antidialogism of, 163 British, 12–13, 14, 165–168, 189–190, 194, 195–201, 219–220, 229n34 colonized are feminized, 226n4 competition, 74, 76 and “contact zone”, 9, 10–11 domination, enforcement, and force in, 168, 200–201 and origins of IR, viii, 1–3, 88–89 pedagogy of, 200 projects of, 12, 17, 42, 61, 78, 167, 198 psychology of, 12 resistance to, 13–14, 162, 168, 182, 220–221 and self/other, 7, 173 similar to early capitalism, 179–180 Columbus, Christopher, 10, 83, 90, 163, 224n9, 224n10 Commerce, 37, 39, 62, 87, 88, 89, 121, 199 commercial society, 42, 91 and war, 77, 86 Commonalities, commonality (with the other), 10–13, 39, 98, 123, 171 and culture, 16–17 and equality, 114 and modernization, 103 need to create, 95, 102 Commons, 42, 196, 217 Commonwealth, common good, 36, 39, 40 Communication, 9, 17, 90 Communications and Political Development (L.Pye, 1963), 105 Communitarianism, communitarian, 5, 225n5 Communities, community, 6, 82, 119, 146 and anarchy, 103 competition among, 148 destroyed by free market, 175 dialogic, 123 forms of, 122, 147
250 • INDEX
of humankind, 122 and identity/difference, 6–7, 44, 148 and institutions, 176–177 membership and exclusion (inside/ outside), 41, 44, 61, 215 moral, 77, 177 political, 215 security of, 152–153 versus society, 175–176 and sovereignty/states, 7, 43, 44, 45, 97, 146, 147, 188 village, 195–201 and wealth, 148 Comparatism, comparativism (Todorov), 12, 15, 101–102, 164, 172, 180 Comparative politics, vii, 97, 99–100, 102, 230n2, 230n4 and double movement, 101, 123 reinforces modernization theory, 100 Comparison, 48, 96–97, 99–100, 101, 159, 162, 177 competition as means of, 133, 140, 155–156, 159 dialectics of, 99–102 difference and commonality/similarity always coexist, 55, 230n7 and ethnological politics, 95, 96, 123– 125 of functions, 99, 100 invidious, 124 logic of, 95, 99–101 methods of, 56–57, 65, 99, 100, 101 and modernization theory, 118 politics and science of, 99, 102, 118, 119, 125 problem of equivalence, 99–100 source of critical reflection, 124, 159 Competition, competitors, 1, 2, 129–130, 134, 157, 159, 231n3, 231n8 and anarchy, 155, 231n3 challenge to sovereignty, 153 as comparison, 159 as “discovery procedure” (Hayek), 133, 140, 155–156 economic, 148–152 education as, 228n22 establishes hierarchy (ranking) of achievement, 132
formal equality of actors, 132 internal, 150, 159 meanings and purposes, 231n3 military, strategic, 148, 152–155 pedagogy of, 158 promotes individual liberty and progress, 133, 140 reproduces equality/hierarchy in double movement, 151, 155 as social practice, 132, 155, 156, 159, 230–231n3, 231n8 solution to problem of difference, 131, 140 See also Culture of Competition Competitions, 130, 141, 143 in the market, 140, 148–152 military-strategic, 152–155 requires inequality, 142 reveal differences and hierarchies, 145, 156 Complexity, 28 cultural and ethical, 8, 147, 213, 220 Conquerors, conquest, 1, 9, 10, 39, 63, 152, 226n4 of America (New World), 10, 80, 165 legitimacy of, justifications for, 59, 61, 63, 76, 82 Muslim, 192 of others, 29, 44, 80 solution to difference, 80 Conquest of America (T.Todorov, 1984), 164 Conquistadors, 25 “Contact zone” (M.L.Pratt), 9, 10–11, 12, 15, 17, 57, 162, 210, 213 critical potential in, 13, 15, 212, 217 dialogue in, 12, 14, 163 Jerusalem as, 190, 207 Conversation, 91, 181 across divides, 80, 213 of cultures, 12, 125 versus monologue, 181 of self and other within cultures, 166 See also Dialogue, Ethnological moment Conversion, converts, 11, 33, 39, 57, 60, 85, 89, 192, 229n32 Cooperation, 2, 130, 230–231n3
INDEX • 251
Cortés, Hernando, 11, 59, 163, 224n9 Cosmographie Universelle (André Thévet, 1575), 67 Cosmology, cosmological, 52, 55, 58, 145 Cosmopolis, 43, 120, 125 Cosmopolitanism, cosmopolitan, 5, 6, 7, 14, 57, 61, 83, 84, 85, 116, 122, 123, 125, 211, 212, 213 “Counter-Movement” (K.Polanyi), 161, 176, 184, 185 and disembeddedness, 173–174, 178 Robert Owen as exemplary, 177–178 Counter Reformation, 27, 28, 30, 33, 47 Creation (the), 49, 54, 55, 59, 62, 70, 226n4, 228n20 myth of, 51 source of human unity, 54, 56 Creppell, Ingrid, 225n18 Critical (international) theory, vii, 4–5, 185 Criticism. See Critique Critique, 8, 14 immanent, 5, 6, 162 of IR theory, 17 source of self-understanding, 12–14, 33, 49, 66, 83, 85, 94, 115, 116, 123, 125, 136, 143, 145, 159, 162–163, 164– 168, 177–178, 182, 187, 219, 226n7 Cro, Stelio, 229n36 Crusade, crusades, ix, 37 versus idolatry, 25 internal, 23–28 moral, 6, 118 cuius regio eius religio, 31, 225n6 Cultivate, cultivation, cultivators, 39, 41 in India, 191–203 See also Agriculture Culture, cultures, cultural, x, 2, 13, 160– 17, 44, 80, 84, 94, 102, 130, 162, 168, 176, 228n21 of antiquity, 54, 55, 56 “closeness” (A.Nandy), 14, 168 complexity, 8, 147, 213, 220 consequences of cultural contact, 178– 179 conversations, 12, 125 cultural versus nature/natural, 16–17 debasement, degradation, destruction from market, 179–181, 182
democratic, 116 dialogue across, 167 and difference, differentiation, 8, 23, 42, 87, 161, 162 dominant and recessive moments, 166 encounters, 13, 17, 50–57, 125, 181 hierarchy of, 155 imposition and violence, 107–108 inattention from IR, 1, 3, 16–17 issue in IR, 130, 131–132, 232n22 as layered, overlapping, 166–167 mixed modes, 117, 124, 125 self-discovery, 9, 14 of society of states, 146, 147 and statehood, 112–113 superiority, 50, 57, 88, 226n3 as texts, 13, 166 transnational, world, 99, 116 universal, 105, 108 Western as paradigmatic, 102 wildness and, 50–57 See also Culture of Competition Culture of Competition, 2, 129–159, 190 attempts to reconcile equality/ hierarchy, 133–134, 155, 157 balance/collapse of, 155–158 central contradiction, 131, 156–157 chance, deceptions, fictions, illusions, myths, paradox, 143–145, 156, 157– 158, 189 denies alternatives, 157 generates wealth and inequality, 134, 215, 217 IPE as, 145–155 meaning and purpose in, 131–145, 156 as modern project, 162 as natural, 152 requires construction, 156 sovereignty and capitalism in, 145, 189, 214 Custom, customs, customary, 22, 43, 62, 75, 84, 194, 201 Dallmayr, Fred, 120 Dalton, George, 233n2, 233n5 De Indis (Francisco de Vitoria, 1539/ 1557), 59
252 • INDEX
De Iure Belli ac Pacis (Hugo Grotius, 1625), 39, 74 De Iure Praedae (Hugo Grotius, 1604), 35, 76 De Laet, Johannes, 74–76, 78, 79–80, 90, 229n32 De Monarchia Hispanica (T.Campanella, 1600), 81, 82 De Orbe Novo (Peter Martyr, 1530), 59 De Origine Gentium Americanarum Dissertatio (H.Grotius, 1642), 74, 76 Democracy, democratic, 117, 212 bargaining and negotiation, 176–177 enlargement, 125 and institutions, 176 liberal, 111, 117–118, 230n4 requires critique of market, 176–177 Dependency theory, vii, 230n6, 232n27 Descartes, René, 34, 36 Desire, 5, 91 and difference, 49, 52, 57 and wildness, 53 Dev, Rajesh, 234n8 Development (economic, social), 45–49, 50–91, 109, 147, 162, 183, 216 and anarchy, 96, 103, 105 causes liberal-modern forms, 98, 99, 109 discourse of, 161, 234n4 and equality, 65 in Grotius, 85 as homogenizing, 161 as imperial, 65, 87 and inside/outside, 87–88 sequences of, 99, 100, 101, 112, 116, 230n5, 233n4 in Vitoria, 57, 58–65 Development studies, vii, 194, 229n40 critical, 161, 162, 176, 183, 184 and IPE, 183 postdevelopment, 184, 185, 229n40 theories of, 52, 87, 185 See also Four stages theory, Modernization Devil. See Satan Dialogue, dialogic practice, 12, 14, 17, 107, 120, 122, 123, 142, 163, 164, 166, 168, 181, 213, 219, 234n1
in Almond and Verba, 112 catalyzes self-reflection, 158, 234n1 Dialogue, dialogic practice (cont.) in and among civilizations/communities/ cultures, 107, 123, 164, 166, 167–168 in contact zone, 12, 163 and co-suffering, 168, 220–221 and creative tension, 166 as critical politics, 165–168 depends on overlap of self and other, 219 of equals/equality, 163–164, 181 as ethical imperative, 163, 168 and ethnological stance, 124 Gandhi as model, 167–168, 234n1 in global civil society, 118, 119 goals and process of, 102, 163, 167 with oppressors, 167–168 of social criticisms, 175–182 of traditions, 162–169, 185 of unequals, 108, 163, 166, 213, 214, 215 See also Conversation, Ethnological moment Diamond, Larry, 230n4 Díaz, Bernal, 228n24 Dichotomies (binaries, dualities, polarities) adult/decrepit, 12 advanced/backward, 122, 150, 163 civilization/barbarism, 50, 163 civilized individual/social savage, 138 civilized/presocial, 138 civilized/primitive (or savage), 69, 135, 138, 140–141, 143 civil order/anarchy, 58 colonizer/colonized, 224n8 democracy/authoritarianism (or nondemocratic), 116, 117 developed/underdeveloped, 58, 150 development/anarchy, 103, 105 disembedded/embedded, 174–178 doctor/patient, 13, 84 equality/hierarchy, 130, 131, 132–135, 139, 155, 156, 157, 198 equality/inequality, 138, 139 free/unfree, 141–142 free-market society/romanticized alternatives, 169
INDEX • 253
governance/anarchy, 119 identity/difference, 114, 130 industrial/nonindustrial, 177 inside/outside, 6, 33, 41, 44, 45, 88, 95, 96, 97, 98, 103–108, 110–111, 116, 117, 124, 187, 215 inversion of, 115 masculine (manly)/feminine, 12, 163 master/slave, 63–65, 90 mastery/servility, 11, 65 mature/childlike, 12, 63–64 mine/yours, 187 modernity/tradition, 95, 97, 98, 103, 115, 116, 117 oppressor/oppressed, 12, 183 order (or community or governance)/ anarchy, 88, 94, 103, 116, 119 real/ideal, 169–170 self/other, 7, 10, 11, 12, 23–28, 73–80, 87, 125, 131, 187, 219–221, 224n7 superior/inferior, 143, 152, 159 teacher/student, 63–65, 102, 113, 115, 158, 163 Diderot, Denis, 66 Diet of Augsburg (1530), 27 Diet of Speyer First (1526), 27 Second (1529), 27 Difference, differences (problem of), 10, 12, 16–17, 23, 24–29, 32, 37, 45, 73–80, 95, 103–116, 131, 133, 134, 135, 137– 138, 141, 143, 156, 157, 162, 203–204, 226n4 as aberration and danger, 2, 23, 28, 31, 33, 80, 94 absolute or radical, 48, 54, 85 as challenge to stability, safety, and order, 2, 33, 80, 157 in competitive process, 135–145 confrontation with, 122, 172 and constitution of IR, 23, 47 deferral of, viii, 2, 3, 21–45, 94, 123, 212 as degeneration and disorder, viii, 33, 45, 49, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 94, 125, 204 as desire, 49, 52, 57 displaced into domestic realm, 32, 44, 94
as division of knowledge or labor, 158 and doubt, 80, 90, 159 and equality, 23, 45, 94, 213 as equality via assimilation, 163 eradication, 95, 111, 152 European explanations for, 54–57 fear, suspicion, threat of, 23, 27, 28, 31, 33, 35, 44–45, 49, 80, 89, 106, 118, 157, 213 as heterology, 16–17 as hierarchy (in double movement), 131, 135 and identity, 42, 130 &&& and impulse to assimilate, contain, eradicate, manage, 3, 10, 27, 28, 44, 47, 80, 84, 94, 95, 102, 120, 125 as inequality and inferiority, 10, 11, 23, 28, 44, 64, 94, 95, 101, 108, 114, 122, 138, 143, 159, 163, 164, 213, 227n9 as international difference, 6–7, 44, 89 in knowledge (Adam Smith), 131 in labor (F.Hayek), 131 overlapping of self and other, 111, 113, 117, 124, 157, 158, 159, 164, 166, 204, 205, 212, 219, 221 Polanyi’s defense of, 172–175 politics of, 214 problem of, viii, 6–7, 22, 27, 32, 33, 43, 45, 49, 89, 108, 122, 125, 131, 140– 141, 145, 157, 203–204, 212, 213, 226n7 religious, 32–43, 66 as resource, 33, 49, 83, 94, 115, 116, 123, 125, 131, 136, 138, 143, 145, 157, 159, 162–163, 182, 187, 226n7 responses to (patterns of response), 2, 44, 48, 57, 155 and sameness/similarity, 3, 23, 48, 66, 95, 102, 107 solution as conversion, 85 solution as empire of uniformity, 32– 43, 44, 89 solution as market competition, 135– 145 solution as teaching/tutoring, 85, 102 solution as uniform world order, unity, 89, 145
254 • INDEX
solution as Westphalian self-help international system, 7, 31, 32, 44, 45, 94 spatial becomes temporal, 50–57, 65, 90 and “splitting” (Jessica Benjamin), 11, 44, 45, 138, 187, 224n12 within uniformity, 80, 99 violence against other redounds to self, 157, 187 See also Double movement, Monogenesis, Polygenesis Discovery of Americas (New World), 2, 33, 45, 47, 50, 53, 57, 81, 85, 143, 229n34 of the other, 10, 229n34 “Discovery procedure” (Hayek), 133, 140, 155–156 market as, 133, 149 See also Competitions Disorder, 45, 49, 53, 59, 60, 89, 94, 125, 204 among Amerindians, 63, 84 Dissertatio altera (H.Grotius, 1643), 76 Distancing, 15, 101–102, 221, 233n5 Diversity, 16, 28, 32, 36, 40, 43, 53, 54, 77, 81, 83, 84, 89, 115, 122, 123, 162– 163, 171–172 creating space for, 74–77, 80 in global civil society, 118 power of, 124 problem of, 77, 83 and/versus universalism, 80–85 See also Monogenesis, Polygenesis Division of Knowledge, 139–143, 158, 174 Division of Labor in Adam Smith, 135–139, 143–144, 159 creates affluence and civilization, 48, 136, 137, 145, 158, 174 in global capitalism, 129, 131, 148– 149, 189, 214 in IR theory, viii requires competitive exchange in free market, 174 Domination, dominance, dominant, 2, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, 17, 188 dialogue as interest of, 219–221
as entitlement or property, 188 overlap of self and other denied, 219 responses to, 13, 219 Dominium (dominion), 58, 61, 62, 76, 82, 188 “Double movement” (Todorov), 10–12, 15, 48, 94, 97, 101, 103, 107, 113, 115, 117, 123, 135, 163, 170 attempt to reconcile equality/hierarchy, 132, 143, 151, 155 attempt to reconcile polarities, 131– 135, 143 failure to move beyond, 157–158 moving beyond, 164–165 Doubt, 12, 49, 53, 90, 227n9 Amerindians personify, 90 deepest manifestation of difference, 80, 159 efforts to quell or engage, 53, 80, 159 See also Ambiguity, Anxiety, Uncertainty Doyle, Michael, 118 Draft of a Representation Containing a Scheme of Methods for the Employment of the Poor (John Locke, 1697), 225n14 Dunne, Timothy, 223n6 Dutch. See Netherlands, the Dutt, Michael Madhusudan, 13, 224n9 Economic anthropology, 162, 182, 233n2 Economic competitiveness, 154–155 Economic modus vivendi, 181 Economic theory factor endowments, 232n26 Keynesian, vii neoclassical, vii, 94, 233n15 Economism, 130, 163, 169 “Economistic fallacy” (K.Polanyi), 169, 172, 174, 181, 233n15 based on splitting, 169 committed by Hayek and Smith, 174 resistance to, 175, 181, 182 Economy, economics, 139, 155, 216, 232n24 disembedded, 161, 162, 173, 175–176, 178, 199
INDEX • 255
embedded (in social conditions and processes), 171, 174–178, 182, 202, 203 ends-means relationships, 169, 170 formal conception of, 161, 171, 172, 176, 231n6 moral, 175–176 reembedded, 161, 169, 174, 183, 184, 217 as source of meaning and ethics, 170, 182 as stark utopia, 172 substantivist conception of, 161, 170, 182, 231n6 See also Capitalism, Free market, Market Eden, Edenic, 51, 52 Edict of Worms (1521), 27 Education, 37, 63–64, 82, 225n12, 228n22 Edwards, Charles S., 229n26, 229n30 Eire, Carlos M.N., 24, 25, 26 Empire, empires, imperial, ix, 2, 22, 27, 65, 80, 81, 88, 106, 121, 191, 202, 227n9 Christian, 81–84 denies past and future to others, 228n21 dilemma of, 220 European, ix, 2, 80, 81 intolerance of modern, 22 justifications, 63, 76, 77 tolerance of premodern, 22, 191–192, 198 as uniformity, means to uniformity, 7, 84 Empire of Uniformity, 3, 7, 32–43, 49, 80, 89, 120, 226n22, 228n21 akin to religious cleansing, 47 alternative moment within, 49 obliterates diversity, 89 parochialism of, 91 premodern elements, 203 and “straight lines”, 187, 205, 212 England. See Britain Enlightenment, 52, 65, 72, 87–88, 95, 105, 111 Enslavement. See Slavery Equality, 10, 45, 65, 107, 147, 158, 214 in capitalism, 199
and commonality, sameness, 114, 131, 135, 138, 143 creates difference, hierarchy/ inequality, 23, 130–132 from hierarchy, 131, 228n22 in modernity, 142 principle(s) of, 22 promoting problem of difference, 23 socially constituted, 134 of states, 146–147 via assimilation, 57, 94, 101, 107 Equality/hierarchy, equality/inequality, 130, 132, 135, 138, 139, 145, 156, 157, 198 reconciliation reproduces double movement, 132–133, 143, 155 Erasmus, Desiderius, 28, 225n7 Eriksen, Thomas H., 230n2, 232n22 Essay Concerning Human Understanding (John Locke, 1690), 37 Ethics, ethical, 3–4, 34–35, 36, 168, 176, 225n17 alternatives and possibilities, 4, 6, 22, 45, 53, 112, 117, 185, 212 competition and its alternatives, 130– 131, 156 complexity, 8, 147, 213, 220 dialogue as imperative, 163 in economies, 183 “everyday ethics”, 4, 119 foremost contemporary challenge, 220 and immanent critique, 162 incommensurability, 8–9, 109 inquiry as descriptive, 4 language of, 221 and pluralism, 119 of “new civilization”, 169, 175, 176, 177 as self-interest, 221 as thick and thin, 6, 14, 36, 122, 123 Tupinamba as utopia, 70 Ethnocentrism, 85, 96, 97, 106 “Ethnological moment” (T.Todorov), ethnological stance, 9, 14, 15, 49, 66, 84, 90, 168, 189, 229n25 ethnological politics (of comparison), 95–96, 123–125 in Polanyi, 169–182
256 • INDEX
Ethnology, ethnologists, viii, 12, 33, 71–72, 90, 164 of IPE, 182–185, 189, 217 of space/time, 103–116 Exegesis, 15, 60, 69 Fabian, Johannes, 58, 90, 101–102, 221, 233n11 Falk, Richard, 118–121, 223n6, 224n1 Fall (the), 50, 51, 54, 55, 226n4 Fanon, Frantz, 224n8 Feminism, feminize, vii, x Ferdinand I (of Spain, ruled Holy Roman Empire 1556–1564), 27, 30 Ferdinand II (of Spain, ruled Holy Roman Empire 1578–1637), 28 Ferguson, James, 234n4 Fischer, Michael, 231n5, 233n11 Flood (the), 77 Forbes, Duncan, 229n37 Forde, Steven, 230n9 Forms of life, 2, 7, 9, 13–14, 16, 23, 47, 77, 82, 98, 109, 122, 131–132, 142, 147, 148, 150, 159, 174–175, 183, 190 coexistence among, 42, 119, 181–182 Four stages theory, 86, 95, 112, 229n37 France, French, 25, 28, 33, 66, 67, 73, 75, 76, 82, 83, 88, 228n24 Free market (project of), 161, 233n14 counter-movement, 173–174 destroys right to subsistence, 233n9 and economistic fallacy, 182 homogenizes social life, 169 ideology, 172 Freedom, 37, 177, 179 in capitalism, 199 in market, 158 in modernity, 142 resisting economistic fallacy, 175 of the seas, 74 Freud, Sigmund, 166, 167 Friedman, Jonathan, 227n9, 228n20, 229n36 Friedman, Thomas, 224n1 Gandhi, Mohandas K., 14, 167–168, 224n9, 234n1
Gay, Peter, 225n11 Geertz, Clifford, 108, 112–116, 124 Gender, ix, 12, 184 Genesis (Bible), 53, 77, 86 Germany, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 155 Ghosh, Amitav, 93 Giard, Luce, 73, 230n1 Gilbert, Alan, 234n11 Gill, Stephen, 232n25, 232n29, 234n15 Gilpin, Robert, 232n26, 233n15 Gliozzi, G., 229n29 Global capitalism, 21, 105, 129 Global civil society, 93, 95, 103, 105 contempt for and dismissal of difference, 95–96, 118–121 and global governance, 119 as universal ethics, 120 Global economy See Capitalism, Free market, International Political Economy, Market Global governance, 93, 95, 103, 104, 105, 119, 125, 130, 190, 215 contempt for and dismissal of difference, 95–96, 121–123 Globalization, 93, 105, 119, 120, 121, 210 God, viii, 26, 28, 40, 49, 50, 51, 53, 55, 60, 61, 72, 78, 81, 82, 83, 84, 87, 146, 164 Good (the), the good life, 43, 45, 91, 109, 147, 172 Gordenker, Leon, 224n1 Governance, 37, 119 Government, 41, 99 disciplining or penal, 37, 38, 40 Gramsci, Antonio, 232n29 Gray, John, 8, 118 Great powers, 153–154, 213, 216, 232n29 Great Transformation (K.Polanyi, 1944), 161, 172–173, 233n2, 233n15 Greeks, Greek, 50, 51, 52, 55, 56, 226n5 Greenblatt, Stephen J., 9, 10, 69, 91, 228n24 Gregorio, Gil, 60 Greider, William, 224n1 Gross, Leo, 31, 146, 224n4 Grotius, Hugo, 35–36, 37, 39, 41, 49, 57, 81, 86, 90–91, 122, 225n17, 226n7,
INDEX • 257
227n14, 228n19, 229n26, 229n27, 229n28, 229n29, 229n31 ethnological moments in, 95 hypocrisy of, 39–40 theory of development, 85 and tolerance, 73–80 Grovogui, Siba N., 226n3 Gupta, Sulekh Chandra, 194, 195, 196, 198, 201 Gusfield, Joseph R., 230n8 Habib, Irfan, 194 Hague, Rod, 230n6 Halperin, Rhoda H., 233n2 Halperin, Sandra, 233n11 Hanke, Lewis, 228n17 Hann, C.M., 226n20 Hapsburg empire, Hapsburgs, 27, 28, 33, 84 Harrop, Martin, 230n6 Hayek, Friedrich, 131, 132, 133–134, 135, 138, 139–144, 145, 149, 151, 152, 155, 158, 159, 174, 202, 231n7, 231n11, 231– 232n17, 232n20, 233n10 degradation of self and other, 157 difference as opportunity and problem, 157–158 Great or Open Society, 139, 141 mixed ontology, 134 ontological individualism, 141, 158 Head, Randolph, 225n5, 225n7 Headley, John M., 82, 229n33 Hebrews, Hebrew, 50, 51, 52, 56, 77, 87 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, vii, 202, 231n10 Held, David, 223n6 Henry IV (of France, ruled 1589–1610), 28, 34 Heresy, heretics, heretical, 26, 28, 33, 38, 54, 58, 60, 74, 78 Herrera, Antonio de, 74 Herz, John, 224n4 Heterology, 16–17, 96, 230n1 Hierarchy, 12, 22, 44, 60, 63, 99, 102, 130, 131, 132, 134, 142, 143, 145, 150, 159, 198, 226n6, 228n22 ascribed versus revealed, 130, 131
of Christendom, 146, 147 consistent with formal equality, 132– 134 constrains conquerors, crusaders, and missionary projects, 158 of cultures, 148–155, 198 becomes development over time, 228n20 and ethics, 134–135 of human types, 51 naturalized (made “normal”), 132–135, 156 position as merit, 133 realization of sovereignty, 151 reconciling equality/hierarchy reproduces double movement, 132– 133, 139, 155 revealed hierarchy, 148–152, 159 as a social order, 23, 33, 43, 59, 62 in world market, 148–152 See also Inequality, Ranking Hill, Polly, 233n11 Hinduism, Hindus, Hindoos, 167, 168, 192, 199–200, 227n9 Hinsley, F.H., 42, 188, 210, 232n21, 234n1 Historia General de los Hechos de los Castellanos (A.de Herrera, 1601–1615), 74 Historia General y Natural de las Indias (G.F.de Oviedo, 1535), 59 Historia Natural y Moral de los Indias (José de Acosta, 1590), 75 History, historicity, 57, 125 as civilization and culture, 55 history-less peoples, 55, 56 theories of, 86 as universal process, 87 History (B.de Sahagún, date uncertain), 165 History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil (Jean de Léry, 1578), 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 72–73 Hobbes, Thomas, vii, 35, 36, 37, 38, 86, 88, 110, 122, 193, 225n10 Hodgen, Margaret, 48, 56, 228n21 Hoffman, Mark, 230n11 Holland. See Netherlands, the Holsti, Kalevi J., 224n4
258 • INDEX
Homogeneity, homogenize, 7, 33, 42, 44, 95, 96, 107, 158, 175 Honig, Bonnie, 226n2 Huguenots, 28, 33, 66, 67, 71 corpus on America, 71, 72 Human nature, 53, 87, 133, 167, 231n3 Human sacrifice, 25, 61, 62, 63 Humane governance, 118–119, 212 Humanism, humanists, 34, 58, 76, 80, 81, 229n31 Humanitarian intervention, 89 Humphreys, S.C., 233n11 Huntington, Samuel, 108–111 Hutchins, Francis G., 229n34 Hutman, Bill, 205 Hutterites, 30, 225n5 Iacono, Alfonso M, 229n37 Idolatry, idols, 82, 84 Catholic, 24, 26, 70 crusades against, 25, 69, 82 Immanence, 122 of Catholicism, 24, 25 everyday, 70 Imperialism, 88, 90, 91, 180, 199, 220, 226n3 See also Empire Imperium. See Colonialism, Empire Improvizations (within dominant social narratives), 224n8 Campanella, 80–85 Grotius, 73–80 Léry, 65–73 Pratt, 10 Vitoria, 58–65 Inayatullah, Naeem, 223n2, 224n2, 232n28, 234n1, 234n2, 234n10 Incas, 59 Incommensurability, 8–9, 70 India, Indians, 12–13, 165–168, 189–190, 217, 229n34 agricultural arrangements, 191–203 Bengal, 189, 199 Ceded and Conquered Territories (Uttar Pradesh), 189, 194 Mughal, Mughals, 190, 191–197, 217
Permanent Settlement Act (1793), 199– 201 relevance for Jerusalem, 207 resistance to British, 13–14, 220–221 Indians, indianization, indianize, ix, x, 50– 57, 64 as all others, 90 definitions, 64, 223n2 internal and external, 79 See also Amerindians Individualism, individuality, individuals, 36, 37, 98, 143, 155, 156, 175, 176, 177, 199 as competitors, 132, 133–134, 157 as constructed, 98–99, 142, 213 myth of in market, 142 ontological, 141, 213 in state of nature, 43 Inequality, 2, 14, 142, 152, 153, 156, 190, 214, 215, 232–233n33, 234n7, 234n9 appears “natural”/normal, 132, 134– 135 arising from culture of competition, 134, 143 and “contact zone”, 9–10 and simultaneous equality, 139 as social condition of modern individuality, 142, 143 Inferiority, 10, 179 as difference, 11, 23, 28, 44, 101, 108 “natural” among equals (contradiction), 131 Infidels, 61–62 Inside/outside, 6, 23, 41, 44, 45, 95, 96, 97, 98, 110–111, 165, 187, 215, 231n5 blurring of, 103–108, 124 form of splitting, 11, 12, 13, 23, 44, 45, 52, 53, 138–141, 163, 174, 187, 204 Inter Caetera (Pope Alexander VI, 1493), 59 Interdependence, 97, 100, 103, 121, 134 challenges national autonomy, 104 of oppositions, 114 “Internal Indians”, intimate indians, 77–79, 91 International Political Economy (IPE), vii, 148, 232n32, 232n33
INDEX • 259
as competitive hierarchy of cultures and states, 130, 150 connected logics of sovereignty and capitalism, 145 critical, 168, 182–183 as cultural form, 130, 145 as culture of competition, 129–159 ethnological, 161–185, 217 inside/outside of, 231n5 overlap with critical development studies, 161–162, 183 International Relations (IR), vii, viii, 1–2, 9, 15, 16, 31, 81, 87–88, 89, 94, 95, 96, 125, 130, 230n2 anarchical, 95, 145 constitutive features, constitutive horizon, 87–88, 89, 145 culture and, 16–17, 131–132, 232n22 as culture of competition, 145–155 as moral realm, 3–4 precursors of contemporary thinking, 85–89 site of dangerous encounters with others, 23, 89 International Relations theory, vii, viii, 3, 4, 17, 103, 123, 125, 191, 214 colonial legacy, 1–3, 15 constituted by splitting, 45, 87–88 critical task of, 3–5, 214 dependent on early modern views of politics, 89 difference and constitution of, 43–45, 47 difficulties studying differences, ix, 1– 2, 43–45, 47, 94 inattention to third world, viii, 1 and modernization theory, 2, 87, 93– 125 neoliberal, 2, 232n32, 232n33 neomodernist, 93, 116, 213 neorealist, 2, 103, 232n32, 232n33 not autonomous discipline, 94 versus political theory, 45, 48 post-Western, ix, 15 realism, realist, 3, 82, 158 reimagination of, 3, 15, 116, 217 as social theory, 89, 94, 130 spatial framing of, 87–88
temporal framing, 96–99 as theory of international and intercultural relations, ix, 17, 96 as theory of modernization, 87–89, 230n2 International society, 2, 5, 7, 23, 30, 31, 44, 104, 107, 125, 131, 146–147, 154, 155, 232n22, 232n27 constituted by sovereignty, 44, 188 reproduces equality/hierarchy, 151, 155, 188–189 as social process, 188–189 sovereignty and capitalism in, 131 states in, 101, 129, 147, 188–189 See also Society of States International system, 95 object of modernization, 95, 104 as premodern, 103 Intervention, 106 against non-liberals, 118 and sovereignty, 147 Intolerance, 25, 74, 106, 111 Islam, Sirajul, 194 Israel, 56, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209 See also Jerusalem Jackson, Robert H., 232n28 Jacquin-Berdal, Dominique, 224n16 Jahn, Beate, 224n16 Jerez, Francisco, 59 Jerusalem, 190, contemporary, 204–210 as metaphor for alternative conceptions of sovereignty, 210–215 Jessop, Bob, 232n25 Jesuits, 75, 79, 227n14 Jews, Jewish. See Hebrews John of Salisbury, 28 Johnson Bagby, Laurie M., 230n9 Jones, W.R., 227n11 Jorgensen, Paul A., 225n7 Jurisdiction, 190 territorial, 31, 188, 207 Jurisprudence, 58, 85 Just war, 59, 76 Justice, 1, 3, 76, 199, 234n11 234n11 natural, 36
260 • INDEX
as restraint, 36 universal principles, 203 within communities, 6 Kalleberg, Arthur L., 100, 230n5 Karlstadt, Andreas Bodenstein von, 26 Keck, Margaret E., 230n1 Keene, Edward, 226n3 Kennedy, Paul, 232n31 Kettenback, Heinrich von, 26 Kipling, Rudyard, 13, 163, 224n9 Klein, Menachem, 209 Knight, Frank H., 231n11 Knowledge, knowing, viii, 17, 81, 83, 124, 139–140, 142, 155, 158, 165, 168, 215 assumptions of, 140–141 as common heritage, 217 communal, 141 by competition and experiment, 158 and difference, 131, 157 fragmentation of, 139 of the other, 10–11, 164–169 rational, standpoint, 34–35 of self and other in ethical dialogue, 168 in tension with authority, 85 See also Division of Knowledge Kohn, Alfie, 230n3 Kothari, Rajni, 230n8 Krasner, Stephen, 31, 32, 224–225n4, 232n25 Kratochwil, Friedrich, 224n16, 226n20 Krishna, Sankaran, 227n9 La Peyrère, Isaac, 77–78 Labor, laborers, 41, 83, 137, 155, 179, 202 and culture of competition, 214 dehumanization of, 179–180 as dependent and independent, 138–139 and difference, 131, 136, 157, 215 as fictitious commodity, 173 status of, 138, 142 wage labor, 137, 179 Land, 41, 188, 190, 193 alienable/commodified, 195, 199 commons, 42 and cultivation, 193, 194, 195, 196
Land (cont.) as fictitious commodity, 173 and habitation (occupancy), 193, 194, 195, 196 multiple and overlapping claims to, 190–203 rayats, 194–195 and revenue, 193, 194, 195, 196 zamindars, 194, 195, 199–201 Lane, Robert E., 231n8 Lane, Ruth, 230n6 Langer, Herbert, 29 Lapid, Yosef, 224n16, 230n2 Lapidus, Ira, 192 Las Casas, Bartolomé de, 11, 12, 28, 84, 164, 171, 224n9, 227n13, 228n17 Laursen, John C, 30, 225n18 Law, David, 232n25, 232n29, 234n15 Law, lawyers, legal, 59–60, 62, 99, 106, 188 canon and civil, 60, 227n15 divine, 58, 60, 61 international, 74, 227n14, 228n19 of nature, 35, 36, 37, 40, 41 positive (human), 58, 61, 62, 88 rules of, 106, 202–203 Sharia, 206, 209 See also Natural alw Law of Nature and Nations (S.Pufendorf, 1672), 86 Lawson, Stephanie, 117 Learning (from or of others), 10, 11, 121, 158, 159, 229n25, 229n39 See also Knowledge Legitimacy, legitimation, legitimations, 25, 43, 60, 61, 76, 99, 166, 232n29, 232n30 of European conquests, 59 of states, 98, 114, 147 Léry, Jean de, 49, 57, 65–73, 90, 91, 177, 228n23 ethnological moments in, 95, 124 Lestringant, Frank, 72 A Letter Concerning Toleration (John Locke, 1685), 40 Leviathan (Thomas Hobbes, 1651), 39, 86 Levine, David, vii, 152, 226n8, 231n9, 231n10, 232n32 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 66
INDEX • 261
Liberal, liberalism, 81, 98, 99, 117–118, 119, 141, 178, 180, 183, 230n4 citizenship, 99 dichotomies within, 116–117 impediment to diversity, 43 individuality, 98, 99, 178 Lockean, 42 modern, modernity, 96, 176 and natural law, 228n19 as “operating system” of global politics, 119 proceduralism in, 122–123 resistance to, 183 thought and practice, 161 and tolerant, 117–118, 180, 225– 226n18 Liberal peace, 95, 103, 104, 121, 230n10 incitements to violence, 118 as morality play, 117 Liberation, 14 contempt for and dismissal of difference, 95–96, 116–118 double, 219 of self and other, 167–168 Liberty, 38, 142 religious, 38, 40, 225n17 Lingua Begica (A.Mylius, date uncertain), 75 Linklater, Andrew, 121–123, 223n6, 224n1, 224n4, 230n11 Lipschutz, Ronnie D., 118–121, 224n1 Listening (to other/oppressed), 17, 219, 220 Livelihood, 173, 174, 175, 190, 202 as social process, 171, 172, 216 Livelihood of Man, (K.Polanyi, 1977), 169 Locke, John, vii, 35, 36–37, 38, 40–42, 66, 86, 122, 193, 225n12, 225n13, 225n15, 225n17, 226n21 theory of history, 86 Logic of Competition. See Competition, Culture of Competition Looker, R., 230n4 Lorde, Audre, 1 Louis XIV (of France, ruled 1643–1715), 33 Lowenthal, Richard, 230n4 Luther, Martin, 26, 83
Lutherans, Lutheranism, 25, 27, 33, 60, 61, 225n5 Lyons, Gene M., 224n1 Maarten, Theo Jans, 234n8 Macmillan, John, 224n1 Macridis, Roy, 100, 230n5, 230n6 Mahler, Gregory S., 230n6 Maldonado, Juan, 63 Management (of global system), 153–155 Mandaville, Peter, 224n16 Marcus, George, 231n5, 233n11 Mare Liberum (H.Grotius, 1609), 74 Market (the), market society, 98, 99, 133– 134, 135, 138, 149, 156, 170, 173–175, 177, 178, 183, 215 chance, deceptions, fictions, illusions, myths, paradox, 143–145, 156, 157– 158, 189 competitions within, 145, 148–152 creates destruction as cultural process, 173, 175, 180–181 creates inequalities, 215, 217 as cultural form, 178 denaturalizing, 169–172 as discovery procedure (Hayek), 133, 149 equality and freedom in, 148–152, 155, 158, 175 hegemony of, 182, 215 ideology of, 172, 177 institutionalization of, 173–174, 215 as mutual dependence, 134, 148 rationality, 170, 173 reduces social life to economic logic, 173 savagery of, 177 self-regulating as unworkable, 174, 176 society as adjunct or opposition, 170, 172, 178 solution to problem of difference, 140– 141, 157 subordinate to social regulation and human purposes, 174, 175 Marsiglio of Padua, 28 Martyr, Peter, 59, 75 Martyrdom, 27
262 • INDEX
Marx, Karl, vii, 201, 202, 226n8, 229n39, 231n10, 231n16 Mastanduno, Michael, 224n1 Mathematics, 34, 35 Mayall, James., 232n25 Mayer, J., 224n1 Mayer, Lawrence C., 100 McKay, David, 234n8 McNulty, Paul J., 231n8 Meaning, meanings, meaningfulness, 10, 125, 158, 190 in/of culture of competition, 131–145, 148–155, 156–157 in international society, 146, 155 Medieval. See Middle Ages Meek, Ronald L., 86 Mehta, Uday, 117, 225n11 Melamed, Avi, 205 Memmi, Albert, 224n8 Mercado, Tomas de, 227–228n16 Mesa, Bernardo de, 60 Middle Ages, 28, 33, 52 Minnow, Martha, 213 Missionaries, missionary project, 52, 63, 66, 67, 76, 79, 81, 82, 84 of global civil society, 121 Modernity, modern, viii, 2, 23, 28, 29, 43, 57, 66, 72–73, 81, 95, 99, 131, 140, 162, 173–174, 176, 177, 211 central problems of, 23, 136, 139, 174 constituted by double movement, 48, 117 constructs others as exploitable, 131 creation myth of, 2 liberal, 95, 96, 177, 214 versus primitivism, 139, 140, 141 transition from Middle Ages, 31–32 universality of, 99, 117 as world culture, 103 See World culture Modernization, modernization theory, 2, 3, 17, 35, 45, 49, 52, 65, 73, 89, 95, 96, 98, 99, 101, 104, 105, 107, 108, 110, 111, 113– 114, 116, 118–119, 121, 131, 202, 213 antidote to anarchy, 104, 105 assumes spatial geopolitics, 94, 230n2 creating commonality and interdependence, 103
equality and freedom in, 142 and ethnological moments, 95 as global process spreading liberalism, 93, 104, 107, 116–118, 203, 212 mixed modes, 108–116, 117, 124 ordering principle of domestic politics, 50–91, 94 as postcolonial theory, 96 recessive themes, 95, 96 recycled in IR, 116–123 spatial demarcation and temporal sequencing, 99–103, 112, 116 traditional elements within, 108–116 unquestioning compliance now impossible, 201 and Vitoria, 95 See also Development, Four stages theory, Neomodernization Molina, Luis de, 227n14 Monogenesis, monogenetic, monogenism, 54–57, 75, 77, 78, 226n7 Montaigne, Michel E. de, 28, 34, 66, 72, 225n7, 228n24 Moral pluralism, 8–9, 35, 109 challenge to liberal neutrality, 109 See also Pluralism Moreland, William H., 193 Morgenthau, Hans J., 3, 4, 5, 6, 31, 223n3, 224n4 Morse, Edward L., 104, 105, 108, 121 Moses, Mosaic, 77, 227n9 Mughals. See India Muntzer, Thomas, 225n5 Muppidi, Himadeep, 223n1, 223n2, 234n1s6 Mutuality. See Commonality Mylius, Abraham, 75 Nair, Sheila, x Nandy, Ashis, 4–5, 6, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 102, 108, 123, 158, 162–169, 177, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 213, 219, 224n9, 226n1, 226n2, 226n4, 228n20 Nardin, Terry, 31 Nation-states. See States
INDEX • 263
Natural law, 35, 36, 37, 40, 41, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 76–77, 79, 82, 84, 85, 90, 91, 228n19, 229n31 justifies property, 41 natural rights, 61, 74 quasi-secular status, 85 tension with Bible, 74 as will of God, 61, 81 Natural man, 42, 72 Natural slavery, 52, 57, 58–60, 61–63, 64– 65, 76, 85, 87, 90, 192 transformed into theory of development, 58–65, 85 Nature, 134, 216, 224n11, 1, 226n6 commodification of, 173, 193 cycles of, 200 manipulation of, 121 as windfall, 193 Navari, Cornelia, 145 Nederman, Cary J., 28, 225n18, 227n13 Neomodernization, 93, 95, 116, 120, 125, 213 global civil society, 95, 103, 118–121 global community, 121–123 global governance, 95, 103 liberal peace, 95, 103, 116–118, 121 Netherlands, the, Dutch, 25, 33, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 88, 229n29 Neumann, Iver, 224n7, 224n16, 230n2, 232n22 New World, 2, 9, 25, 33, 42, 45, 48, 51, 55, 59, 62, 88, 90 colonization of, 48 conquest of, 10, 61 discovery of, 50, 57, 81, 85, 229n34 versus Old World, 69, 70, 72–73 as res nullius, 88 Noah, 56, 77 Noble, Margaret, 13 Noble savages, 86, 229n36 Nonintervention (principle of), 44, 146 Non-liberals, 116–118 violence against, 118 Nonviolence, 167–168, 219–220, 234n1 Norway, 75 Norse origins of Amerindians, 75–77, 78
Notae ad Dissertationem Hugonis Grotii (J.De Laet, 1643), 75 Novus Orbis (J.De Laet, 1633), 74 Nusseibeh, Sari, 207 On Universal History (A.R.J.Turgot, 1751– 1752), 86 Onuf, Nicholas, viii, 96, 105, 188, 210, 227n9, 228n20 Oppression, 3, 14 burdens of the oppressed, 219–220 colonial, 14, 163 of everyday life, 166 overlap of self and other denied, 219 resistance as response, 163, 168, 219 Organski, A.F.K., 230n4 Oros, Andrew, 224n16 Orwell, George, 13, 163, 224n9 Osiander, Andreas, 224n3, 225n4, 225n8 Other (the), othering, otherness, 7, 10, 17, 65, 94, 111, 117, 120, 163, 168, 181, 182, 192, 198, 219, 228n21 absolute or radical, 53, 54, 57, 85 always external and internal (inner, intimate), 111, 113, 117, 124, 157, 158, 159, 164, 177, 178, 182, 203–204, 219, 221 assimilation, 11, 12, 42, 84, 102 beyond realm of community, 44 as children, 58–65 Christianization of, 91 constructs and constructed by community, 44, 203–204 demand for recognition, 27 difference effaced, 157 eradication, 111, 204 exploitable, 131, 153, 163, 198 external (alien), as threat, 7, 27, 28, 43, 44, 53, 56, 66, 80, 157, 203–204, 212 external linked to internal, 73, 117 as inferior (uncivilized, etc.), 8, 10, 28, 58–65, 114, 157, 192 internal (within), as disorder, 7, 9–16, 32, 44, 56, 64, 66, 204 managed by assimilation, containment, eradication, 3, 10, 27, 28, 44, 47, 80, 84, 94, 95, 102, 120, 125
264 • INDEX
overlapping of self and other, 111, 113, 117, 124, 157, 158, 159, 164, 166, 204, 205, 212, 219,221 as a resource for critical self-reflection and cultural transformation, 12, 13–14, 66, 83, 85, 115, 116, 164–168, 177– 178, 182, 187, 219 responses to (patterns of response), 10– 12, 44, 48, 204 spatial versus temporal, 87, 90 and tolerance, 73–80 violence against other redounds to self, 157, 187 and wonderment, 9, 17, 69 Oviedo, Gonzalo Fernández de, 59 Owen, John, 117 Owen, Robert, 177–178 Ownership, 41, 62, 194, 203, 210 of property, 58, 188, 196, 197 of self, 58 “Pacifying politics” (Baumgold), 35 Pagden, Anthony, 48, 53, 60, 61, 69, 80, 225n7, 226n6, 227n14, 227n15, 228n18, 228n24, 229n33, 229n34 Pages, Georges, 30 Palestine, Palestinians, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209 Papacy, papal, papists, pope, 24, 27, 31, 33, 76 Parker, Geoffrey, 29 Parry, John, 228n19 Parsons, Talcott, 98, 230n5 Pasic, Sujatta, 234n2 Paz, Matías de, 60 Peace of Augsburg (treaty 1555), 27, 32 Peace of Westphalia (treaty 1648), 2, 23, 27, 30–32, 44, 47, 104, 210, 224n4 abandons hierarchy, 146–147 as creation myth of modernity, 2 deferral of problem of difference, 21– 45 historical interest in, 21 inadequacy, 43 and problem of difference in IR, 22, 31 and toleration, 31 Pearson, Harry, 181
Permanent Settlement Act of 1793 (British in India), 199–200 Persecution religious, 28, 29, 32–33, 66 Perspectivism (T.Todorov), 12, 164, 171, 172, 178, 182 Physiocrats, vii, 193, 202 Pluralism, pluralizing, 2, 6, 27, 34, 40, 99, 107 and ethics, 119 of human society and culture, 121, 171 structural, 206 See also Moral pluralism Pogge, Thomas, 234n11 1 Polanyi, Karl, 130, 161, 199, 217, 231n6, 232n19, 233n11, 233n3, 233n4, 233n5, 233n6, 233n7, 233n8, 233n9, 233n10, 233n11, 233n12, 233n13, 233n14, 233– 234n15, double critique of capitalism, 169–182 ethical and social goals, 176 internal and external critique of IPE/ development, 162 as model of cultural dialogue, 168–169 new civilization, 169, 175, 176, 177 repudiates liberal political economy, 175 universal economic history, 182 Political economy (discipline), 94, 231n10 classical, vii, 193, 202 and dialogue, 182 reconceive as ethnological, 182 Political imagination, 104, 116, 217 Political order, 108–109 chronic problem of modernity, 110 Political system, 96, 97, 99, 100, 105, 108 stability, 108–109 Political theory, political thought, 48, 213 arising from inability to live peacefully with difference, 47, 89 versus IR, 45, 48 notion of politics based on early modern interreligious conflict, 89 Political thought, 48, 213 Politics of comparison, 102, 118, 119, 125 Pollution, of liberals by non-liberals, 116–117 of self by other, 26–27, 125
INDEX • 265
Polygenesis, polygenetic, polygenism, 54, 77–78, 226n7 Popkin, Richard, 77 Portugal, Portuguese, 59–60, 67, 74, 76 Postcolonial, postcolonialism, 2, 96, 117, 182, 234n7 as appeal for inclusiveness, 122 Postmodern, postmodernism, vii, 190, 211, 213 Powell, G.Bingham, 100, 230n4, 230n5 Power, 36, 42, 82, 110, 143–144, 213, 232n31 See also Balance of power Power, Postcolonialism, and International Relations (Chowdry and Nair), x Pratt, Mary Louise, 9, 10, 11, 14, 224n8 Pre-Adamitae (I.La Peyrére, 1655), 77 Premodernity, premodern, 22, 98, 103, 208, 211 homogeneity of, 139 source of critical self-reflection, 215 Primitives, primitive, primitivism, 66, 69, 88, 89, 229n36 international relations as, 95 versus modernity, 139, 140, 141, 176 “Primordial sentiments” (C.Geertz), 113– 115 Private property, 41, 197 three forms, 86 Problem of difference. See Difference, problem of Production social relations of, 137, 138 Progress, progressive (social, economic), 86–87, 159, 202 Proletarianization, x Property, property rights, 35, 37, 41, 76, 77, 88, 134, 149, 156, 188, 190, 193, 194, 196, 203, 216, 234n3 as absolute, 194, 198–203 alternative conceptions, 190, 196, 202– 203 collective, 148, 188, 216 as dominium (dominion), 188 exclusive, 188–190 historical construction of landed property in India, 191–203 and labor, 137, 193
landed, 86, 188–203 Locke, 41, 42 overlapping, 190, 194, 196 premodern notions, 191–198, 215 and sovereignty, 151, 187, 188–189, 190, 204, 226n20 unbundling, 214 See also Dominium, Private property, Rights, Sovereignty Protestantism, Protestants, ix, 24–28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 40, 58, 66, 67, 69, 70, 81 versus Catholics, 66, 67, 70, 72, 73, 228n24 See also Anabaptists, Calvinists, Huguenots, Hutterites, Lutherans, Zwinglians Psychoanalysis, 166–167 Pufendorf, Samuel, 86 Purify, purity, purification (of self from other), viii, ix, 11, 13, 38, 138, 140–141, 163, 173, 176, 187, 204 purifying hatred, 28–32, 44, 204 regimes of, 117, 124, 195–196 See also Self/other Pye, Lucian, W., 97, 102, 105–108, 112, 121, 123, 230n4 Race, ix, 115, 180, 184, 229n34 Racialization, x Ranking (social), 23, 132, 133 See also Hierarchy, Inequality, Status Rationality, 34, 43, 81, 82, 98, 183 economic, 170 irrationality, 61 rational choice, 183 supplemented by coercion, 179 See also Reason Ray, James Lee, 116 Reason, 36, 37, 42, 60, 61, 63, 105, 227– 228n16 and Christianity, 81 of state, 82 Recessive themes, recessive voices, ix, 8, 13, 15, 57–85, 95, 96, 116, 166, 191, 215, 217, 219 ethnology of space/time, 103–116 toward ethnological comparisons, 96
266 • INDEX
within the dominant, 220–221 See also Ambiguity Reciprocity, reciprocal, 12, 102, 175, 188 Recognition (of other), 23, 27 among states, 146, 188–189 Reformation, viii, 24–25, 47, 66, 72, 75, 228n23 Reformed Church, Dutch Reformed Church. See Calvinism Reformer, Reformist. See Protestant Reimagine, reimagination, 116, 217 of IR, 3, 15 of postcolonial world, 3 of the West, ix Religion, religious, 38 conviction and military conflict, 24, 34, 35, 37, 38, 69–70, gaze, 24 liberty, 38, 40 persecution, 28, 29, 32–33, 66 and political (dis)order, 32–35, 38–39, 59, 62 religiosity, 24, 30 religious cleansing, viii, 23, 47 religious warfare, viii, 2, 3, 26–27, 28, 33–35, 37, 38, 66, 69–70, 73, 204, 228n24 theological and doctrinal conflict, 24 toleration, 31, 32, 38, 40 zealotry, 28, 30 Remer, Gary, 225n7 Renaissance, 28, 34–35, 51, 58, 80 Rendall, Jane, 231n12 Rengger, Nicholas J., 224n16 Repress, repression (psychological), 13 Requierimiento (J.L.de Palacios Rubios), 60 Resistance, 2, 8, 13, 27, 37, 39, 82, 91, 105, 130, 146, 178, 179–180, 205, 214, 229n34 armed, 25 to colonization, 162, 163, 168, 182 as counter-movement to disembedding of economy, 173–174 to homogenization, 96, 104 to the market, 162, 175, 201 as means to cultural self-reflection, 181
to neoliberal globalization, 161, 175, 183 nonviolent, 234n1 Responsio (H.Grotius, 1644), 76 Ricardo, David, vii, 232n26 Rights, 82, 99, 176, 189, 196, 226n3, 228n19 to acquisition, 36, 76 bundles of, 196 to common property, 201 to dominion (dominium), 41, 61, 76 and duties, 201 to evangelize, 82 to exchange, 188 to land, 196 to livelihood, 203, 216 to property, 35, 58, 61, 62, 134, 188, 196, 197 to (self) rule, 58, 61, 232n23 to self-defense, self-preservation, 36, 76 to/of sovereignty, 88, 188–189 to subsistence, 233n9 to trade, 76 to use violence, 76 Roelofsen, C.G., 229n26, 229n30 Romann, Michael, 234n6 Romans, Roman, Rome, 50, 55, 56, 188 Rosenau, James N., 230n1 Rosenberg, Justin, 231n11, 232n24 Rostow, W.W., 91, 233n4 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, vii, 66, 86, 89, 193 Roy, Rammohun, 224n9 Rubies, Joan-Pau, 74, 77, 78, 79, 229n29 Rubios, Juan López de Palacios, 60 Ruggie, John, 224n4 Ruiz, Lester Edwin J., 223n6, 230n1 Rule, 41, 81, 110, 188, 189, 191, 224n4 derived from dominium (dominion), 188 imperial, 22, 76 secular, 2, 34–35, 81 Russett, Bruce, 118 Rustow, Dankwart, 230n4 Sahagún, Benardino de, 12, 224n9 as ethnological model, 164–165
INDEX • 267
St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre, 67, 71 Salamanca, Salamanca school, 58, 60, 82, 85 Salvation, 40, 63, 81, 91, 167 Sameness, 3, 23, 102, 107, 204 creates poverty, 136 as equality, 138, 155 Sarpi, Paulo, 75 Satan, 25, 26, 53, 69, 81, 83 Savages, savagery, 30, 51, 55, 57, 64, 65, 66, 85, 88, 89, 90, 95, 135–136, 138, 229n34 contemporary, 228n21 as degeneration and desire, 57 as ethnological opportunity, 66 as (ig)noble, 66, 72, 73, 86, 87, 177, 229n36 Scaglione, Aldo, 225n7 Schmidt, Brian, 88 Schumpeter, Joseph, 159, 231n8 Schwartz, Herman M., 234n15 Science, scientists, 16, 81, 85, 88, 98, 105 as basis for political authority, 35 as form of certainty, 35, 36, 85 of politics, 82–83 See also Technology Scripture. See Bible Searcy, Dennis, 233n14 Second Treatise (John Locke), 36–37, 41 Security dilemma, 152–153 Self (the), 10, 11, 13, 23, 53, 101, 156 always overlap with other, 219, 221 European constructions of, 53, 58, 59, 89 learning from the other, 12, 220–221 Self-determination, 146, 148 Self-healing, 220–221 Self-help, 1, 129, 148 and competition, 148–149, 152 sanctifies inequality and cultural subjugation, 2 Self/other, 44,48, 53, 102, 131, 156, 163, 164, 187, 210 always overlap of, 125, 142–143, 157, 158, 159, 166, 180, 182, 201, 204, 205, 210, 212, 219, 220–221 and critical self-reflection, 172, 217
dialogue in/among, 124, 159, 165–168, 201, 217 European/Tupi, 66–73, 90 excuse for violence and colonization, 173 and identities, 224n7 informing political possibilities, 117, 159, 185 and oppression, 162, 220–221 spatial to temporal division, 50, 55–56, 87 and tolerance, 73–80 violence against other redounds to self, 187 See also Dichotomies, Difference, Other, Purify, Self Self-preservation, 35, 36, 37, 41, 76 Sepúlveda, Juan Ginés de, 228n17 17 Sforza, Galeazzo Maria, 228n24 Shakespeare, William, 28, 225n7 Shapiro, Michael J., 224n1 Shils, Edward, 102 Shklar, Judith N., 232n20 Shohat, Ella, 223n1 Sikkink, Kathryn, 230n1 Similarity and difference, 48, 55 Simpson, Christopher, 230n4 Singularities de la France Antartique (A.Thévet, 1556), 68 Skepticism, skeptics, 34, 35, 36, 38, 60, 85 humanist, 58, 81 Skinner, Quentin, 225n7 Slavery, slaves, enslavement, 39, 59–60, 62, 90, 228n24 of others, 11, 163 See also Natural slavery Smith, Adam, vii, 42, 86, 131, 132, 135– 139, 140, 142, 143, 144, 145, 150, 151, 155, 158, 159, 174, 202, 231n11, 231n12, 231n14, 231n15, 233n7 ambiguity and doubt in, 138–139 deception, 143–144 degradation of self and other, 157 difference as opportunity and problem, 157–158 invisible hand, 144 pin factory, 136–137
268 • INDEX
Social contract, 35, 60, 225n10 Social relations of production, 137, 138, 142 Social structure of accumulation. See Capital Social theory, social thought, 35, 48, 86, 213 and IR, 94 Society of States, 2, 5, 6, 7, 23–24, 31, 88, 156, 232n31 coexistence and equality in, 146–147 as a form of human community, 122, 146 as negative utopia of tolerance, 6, 43 sovereignty promises equality and independence of states in, 145 as spatial containment of cultural difference, 23 See also International society Sociology, 175 anthropological, 74 comparative, vii Soguk, Nevzat, 33 Some Thoughts Concerning Education (J.Locke, 1693), 37 Soto, Domingo de, 227n14 Sovereignty, sovereignties, sovereigns, 2, 32, 38, 41,42, 78, 88, 96, 99, 104, 106, 119, 125, 145–148, 187, 203, 224n4, 226n3, 232n21, 234n7 alternative conceptions, 202–203 and anarchy problematic, 145 as asocial sociality, 189 and authority, 146–147 and capitalism, 131, 189 as collective property right and common identity, 148 and common good, 36, 38 constitutes international society, 44, 188–189 defers problem of difference, 203–204 disciplining or penal, 37, 38, 40 and empire of uniformity, 187 exacerbates problem of differences, 22 external face (anarchy), 96, 188 inside/outside, 96, 187
Sovereignty, sovereignties, sovereigns (cont.)internal face (modernization/ development), 96, 188 and modernization, 104, 105 multiple and overlapping, 22, 124, 187–217 and (private) property rights, 151, 187, 188–189, 204, 215, 226n20 as (exclusive) property right of rulers, 188 as puzzle, 21, 22 recessive themes in, 191–203 reciprocal recognition of, 188–189, 210 reconfigured, 210–212, 213 site of ethical and political possibilities, 22, 212 solution to instability and uncertainty, 36, 38, 44, 190–191 and state of nature, 145 as supreme territorial authority, 31, 188 unbundling, 211, 214 use of force, 76–77 See also State Space, spatial, 203, 214 as absolute, exclusive, 210 changing political, 210–211 containment of cultural difference, 23 multiple visions of space as foremost contemporary challenge, 220 as socially-constructed social relationships in India, 191–202 symbolic meanings, 209–210 Space/time, 55–56, 87, 90, 91, 99–100, 105, 178, 198, 226n8, 227n9 ethnology of, 103–116 framing of modernity, 105, 108 reconverting time into space, 115 time unfolds in international space, 96– 99, 101–102 transformed by capitalism, 198 Spain, Spaniards, Spanish, 10, 12, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 65, 67, 72, 74, 75, 76, 80, 82, 83, 84, 88, 165, 227n15, 228n19 Specialization, 98 creates wealth, 136 functional, 210 of knowledge, 139–144 of labor, 136–139
INDEX • 269
Splitting (Jessica Benjamin), 11, 12, 13, 23, 44, 45, 52, 53, 139, 174, 187, 204, 224n12 in Hayek, 140–141 IPE forms, 169 making self and other mutually exclusive, 163 in Smith, 138–139 sustains juxtaposition of equality/ sameness to difference/inequality, 138 Spruyt, Hendrik, 224n4 Stages of Economic Growth (W.W.Rostow, 1960), 91 Stam, Robert, 223n1 Standpoints (absolute views, archimedean centers, transcendental positions), 4, 5, 8, 34–35, 49, 60 Stanfield, J.R., 233n6 State, States, 2, 7, 24, 33, 38, 42, 88, 97, 98, 100, 103, 104, 106, 113, 114, 122, 129, 149, 152, 174, 188, 189, 190–191, 197, 210, 211 as collective economic actors, 148–149 competition for markets, in world market, 129, 148–152 competitively-revealed hierarchy of, 150–151 complicated roles in global economy, 149 constitute international society, 188– 189 as container for political community (civil society), 6, 41, 44, 45, 97, 104, 147 demise of, 210–212 and domestic conformity (sameness), 32, 44 equality of, 146, 147, 155 failed or quasi, 89, 114, 213, 232n28 formation produces rivalry, 114–115 and good life, 45, 147 and identity, 147, 152 as independent consumers and producers, 149 as like-units, 99, 101 as pre-social and savage, 51 and problem of difference, 6–7, 43–44, 89
rogue, 65, 89, 125 and sovereigns/sovereignty, 7, 31, 188 statecraft, 33, 104, 121 and taxation (revenue-collecting), 195– 203 trading states, 149 translates difference into uniformity, 23, 33, 44 See also International society, Society of States, States system State of nature, 35, 37, 41, 42, 45, 86, 89, 95, 193, 198 foundations of, 145–146 original conditions and Amerindians, 86, 88 and sovereignty, 145 Statehood, 99, 101, 188 and cultural integrity, 112–113 States system, Westphalian states system, 2, 6, 23–24, 31, 98, 106, 107, 189, 210, 224n4 anarchy as ordering principle, 50 cosmopolitan response, 122 origins and purposes of, 21, 32 spatial solution to problem of difference, 21–45 and violence, 106–107 Status (social), 99, 142 ,144, 180 Strang, David, 225n4 Strange, Susan, 233–234n15 Structural realists, 103 Structures (social), 125, 142 as constitutive, 132 Suárez, Francisco, 226n14 Subordination, x, 8, 13 Subsistence modes of, 86–87 Sufferance. See Tolerance Suffering, 5, 168 co-suffering, 9–16, 142, 168, 178, 182, 220–221 knowledge of, 142 Summario de la Natural Historia de las Indias (G.F.de Oviedo, 1526), 59 Superiority cultural, 9, 88, 226n3 moral, 9
270 • INDEX
“natural” among equals (contradiction), 131 Sweden, Swedish, 29, 76, 77, 229n29 Switzerland, 25, 26 Tanji, Miyume, 117 Tartars, Tartary, 30, 75, 79 Tarullo, David K., 232n25 Teachers, tutelage, tutors (of inferior others), 63–65, 70, 102, 151–152, 157– 158, 180, 228n22 See also Education Technology, technological, 81, 129, 150, 175 and global restructuring, 105, 119 progress, 105, 200 Teleology, 49 Tensions, 11 creative, 4–5, 159, 166 Territoriality, territory (claims to), 190– 202, 203 as reparcelized mosaic, 211 See also Land, Sovereignty, Space, State Terror, terrorism, terrorists, 29, 65, 89, 91 Teune, Henry, 99–100, 102, 230n4 Theibault, John, 29 Theory of Moral Sentiments (A.Smith, 1790), 143 Thévet, André, 67–68 Third world, vii, 17, 122, 182, 234n7 and justice, 1 as others, 94 Thirty Years’ War, 23, 29–30, 32–33, 42, 45, 48, 73, 191 as internal crusade, 23–28 Thomism, Thomist, 58, 60 Thomson, Janice E., 232n25 Thomson, S.Harrison, 31 Thoreau, Henry David, 159 Thucydides, 230n9 Tilly, Charles, 148 Time/temporality, 50, 55, 58, 64–65, 87, 99–100, 112, 228n21 distancing, 221 naturalization of, 101
unfolds in international space, 96–99, 228n20 Tipps, Dean C, 230n8 Todorov, Tzvetan, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 44, 57, 94, 97, 102, 124, 158, 162–165, 168–169, 177, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 213, 224n11, 224n13, 225n7, 225n9, 227n13 and double movement, 48, 107, 113, 131, 170 perspectivism, 164, 171 See also Double movement Tolerance, toleration, 2, 27, 28, 39, 40, 43, 44, 74, 225n18 consecrated by Peace of Westphalia, 31–32, 43 corollary of sovereignty and selfdetermination, 146 others create space for, 73–80 religious, 31, 32, 38 in traditions of Middle Ages, 28 within Christianity, 39, 40, 57, 77–80 Tombeur, Herbert, 234n8 Topik, Steven, 233n5, 233n13 Toulmin, Stephen, 28, 29, 30, 43, 98 Towns, Ann, 226n4 Transnationalism, 105, 116, 119, 215 Trevor-Roper, H.R., 29 Tuck, Richard, 35, 36, 89, 225n7, 225n15, 226n19, 227n14, 229n26 Tully, James, 3, 37, 40, 42, 43, 225n11, 225n16, 225n17, 225n18, 226n19, 226n21, 226n22 Tupinamba, Tupi, 65–73, 90, 228n24 Turgot, A.R.J., 86 Twenty Years’ Crisis (E.H.Carr, 1939), 3 Two Tracts on Government (J.Locke, 1660– 1662), 38 Two Treatises on Government (J.Locke, 1690), 86 ubi unis dominus, ibi una sit religio, 27 Uncertainty, 9, 11, 34, 42, 122, 213 Uniform, uniformity, 32, 33, 38, 39, 41, 43, 139 of constitution, 44, 106 cultural, 42, 49
INDEX • 271
and difference, 80, 89 ruptures in, 54–55 See also Empire of Uniformity United East India Company, 76, 195, 197, 199 United Nations, 154, 214 United States, 102, 111, 115, 155, 230n4 Unity, 57, 36, 37, 38, 54, 81, 82–83, 136 Christian, 53, 57, 74, 77, 79, 85 of creation, 54, 56 and globalization, 120 human diversity as degeneration of original, 77 See also Equality, Sameness Universalism, universality, 6, 16, 80–85, 91, 105, 116, 120, 121–122, 136–137, 165, 181 and Christianity, 81, 82, 83, 84 as civilizing project, 9 of liberalism, 81, 116, 117, 225– 226n18 of Linklater, 121–123 of modernity, 99, 116 of moral principles, 60 Utopias, utopian, utopianism, 81, 82, 158 conversations among, 168 elements in IR theory, 3 negative, 6, 14 Valensi, Lucette, 233n4 Van Creveld, Martin, 224n4 Varadarajan, Latha, 227n9 Verba, Sydney, 97, 108, 111–112, 115, 230n4 Verdadera Relacion de la Conquista del Peru (Francisco Jerez, 1534), 59 Verweij, Marco, 224n16, 230n2 Villegagnon, Nicholas Durand de, 67 Violence, 3, 6, 14, 17, 106, 111 and cultural imposition, 107–108 incitement against non-liberals, 118 and self/other, 173 See also Nonviolence Virtue, 37, 82, 148 Vitoria, Francisco de, 49, 52, 57, 58–65, 76, 81–82, 85, 87, 88, 90, 91, 192, 227n14, 228n17, 228n19
theory of development, 57 Walker, R.B.J. (Rob), viii, 45, 96, 105, 120, 187, 223n3, 224n15, 224n16, 230n1 Waltz, Kenneth, 231n3 Walzer, Michael, 6, 22, 23, 226n20 Wapner, Paul, 223n6, 230n1 War, warfare, wars, 29, 39, 86, 116 See also Religion (religious warfare), Violence War against the Idols (C.M.N.Eire, 1986), 24 Watnick, Morris, 230n4 Ways of being, ways of life. See Forms of life Wealth, 144, 145, 148 and agriculture, 199–200 as natural bounty or windfall, 192–193, 198, 202, 216 as product of rational, human, marketbased behavior, 198–200 as social bounty, 202, 216 social processes of production, 216 from specialization, 136, 215 as “trifling” (A.Smith), 143–144, 157 Wealth of Nations (i.e., An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations) (A.Smith, 1776), 135, 137– 138, 142 Weber, Cynthia, 224n1 Weber, Max, 223n4 Wedel, K.A., 30 Weeks, Charles, 29 Weingrod, Alex, 234n6 Weiss, Thomas G., 224n1 Wendt, Alexander, 234n2 West (the), Western, 2, 15–16, 181, 230n3 civilizing, idealist, utopian elements, 198 culture, viii, 17, 181 political thought, ix, 2, 48, 198 reimagination of, ix, 16, 217 social thought, ix, 2, 48, 198 Westphalia, Westphalian. See Peace of Westphalia Whatley, Janet, 65, 68, 72–73, 228n23 Wheeler, Nicholas J., 223n6
272 • INDEX
Whitaker, C.S., 230n8 White, Hayden, 52, 226n5 “White man’s burden”, 65, 102 Wight, Martin, 45 Wilderness, 173, 226n4 Wild men, 50–57, 85 as desire incarnate, 53 Wildness, 43, 50, 52, 55, 56, 90, 226n5 as degeneration and desire, 57 Wilk, Richard R., 233n2, 233n8 Williams, Raymond, 231n5 Wilson, Frank, 230n6 Witches, x, 90 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 21 Wolf, Eric, 227n12 Wolf, Klaus Dieter, 223n6, 230n1 Wonder, wonderment, 17, 69 becomes “double movement”, 10 and otherness, 9, 10 Wootton, David, 225n18 World culture, 99, 101, 103, 105–106, 107, 116 and universality, 102 World economy, 149, 230n6 See also Global economy, International Political Economy, Market World Order Models Project (WOMP), 105 World-systems theory, 230n6, 232n27 Worship, 25, 38, 225n17 false worship, 26 Wounds, wounding, of difference, 43, 45, 204 and oppression, 220–221 psychic, 29 of religious wars, 2, 29, 35, 48 Writing, written word as civilization and history, 55 socially privileged, 34, 63, 227n9 Young, Iris Marion, 5, 123, 212 Young, Robert, 226n2 Zamora, Margarita, 224n10 Zeno of Venice, 75 Zizek, Slavo, 65 Zumárraga, Juan de, 47, 49