An ongoing debate within the philosophy of science is the extent to which knowledge about reality that is independent of a person's subjective interpretation of it is possible. The position of critical realism is that people cannot conceive of external reality outside of frameworks of understanding that pre-exist the attempt to perceive external reality and influence what is perceived, and how it is perceived and understood. Examples of such frameworks include established scientific theories and paradigms.
Multiple frameworks of understanding can exist with regard to any given area of reality, and they can be incompatible with each other. However, unlike relativist philosophies such as postmodernism, critical realism does not take this to mean that reality is nothing more than how humans decide to perceive it. For critical realists, an independent, external reality exists, and although conceptualisations of it can be imperfect and occasionally contradictory, this is not an excuse to give up on scientific inquiry. Indeed, one of the goals of any science is to try and make existing interpretations and conceptualisations of external reality more accurate. This is what makes critical realism critical: the goal of science in critical realism is to test our understanding of reality and through better understanding of it, improve the human condition.
A key difference in natural and social sciences is the role of interpretive frameworks of understanding in their respective areas of inquiry. The natural sciences make use of interpretive frameworks, utilising them to explain findings or updating them when they do not. A classic example is the evolution of the understanding of the atom: from conceptualising them as the smallest particle that exists, to realising that atoms themselves are composed of sub-particles, in the process evolving from the "plum pudding" model of protons and electrons in an atom into the more familiar "electrons orbiting a nucleus" model that most schoolchildren still learn as the correct one, and even further into the vagaries of quantum physics (which I won't pretend to fully understand).
This use of interpretive frameworks of understanding also occurs in the social sciences. But the social scientist is studying humans. Humans make use of interpretive frameworks of understanding in every area of their lives. Therefore, scientists don't just use interpretive frameworks in their study, but study them directly. Once again, this means that social science is difficult in a way that natural science is not. For one, how do you study an interpretive framework that is very dissimilar to your own interpretive framework? Can you even make sense of it at all?
Various methods exist to try and make unfamiliar interpretive frameworks more readily accessible and understandable, not just to the social science researcher but to anyone who is actually going to read the research as well. The most famous in social science is Clifford Geertz's "thick description": studying a culture in depth and trying to describe every experience that is observed to occur in an unfamiliar culture in as much detail as possible, with as much detail to how it relates to other parts of the culture as possible. Yet even here it is difficult to touch on everything, and important details can easily left out for no other reason that the researcher doesn't know to look for them.
Even such unintended misrepresentations of the conceptual understandings of others are problematic. The claim to be able to authentically represent the mental and social world of another carries a great deal of responsibility with it, and authoritative accounts that are inaccurate can have serious negative consequences for the nature of interactions between different cultures, or even between people who share a similar culture but whose worldviews differ in some fundamental way. A particular danger here, and one that can't readily be overcome, is that a social scientist can never completely represent an external interpretive framework completely in its own terms, but will always represent it in terms of their own interpretive framework. An obvious consequence of this is that social science researchers should, in order to be able to do their job most effectively, try to cultivate for themselves as broad a range of available interpretive frameworks of understanding as possible.
And this brings up a further complication. Since social scientists are themselves social beings, any actions that they take have an effect on the society with which they are interacting. That includes the act of undertaking social research. In particular, the interpretive frameworks that a social scientist might make use of in order to explain an aspect of society that they are investigating could readily become adopted by members of that society as their own method of explanation for that aspect of their society, and potentially for other aspects of their society as well. This is known in social science as the "double hermeneutic", and it means that social scientists have a much greater ethical responsibility to practise care in their research, especially in their interpretation of their findings, than would be found in the natural sciences.
That's basically it as far as I understand the differences. I feel like I've left details out, but I think the core concepts are sound in my mind now. I don't suppose anyone else will find it particularly useful. I should get back to blogging about stuff that's more useful to other people.
Showing posts with label social theory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social theory. Show all posts
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Critical realism and scientific inquiry: natural vs social science (Part I: Open and Closed Systems)
Critical realism is a philosophy of social science originally pioneered by Roy Bhaskar. Originally quite useful in laying out a theoretical model of experienced reality that sought to explain why it is even possible to perform scientific research at all, his later work took things in a rather esoteric and, frankly, mystical direction. But the work on critical realism that did not take this "spiritual turn" is quite interesting, especially in how it seeks to explain why the methods of natural science and the methods of social science must be significantly different.
The premise of critical realism is realist: it presumes that there is a reality "out there" that exists independently of our knowledge of it. The means by which we learn about this reality is fallible, affected (but not determined) by our pre-existing theories about it, and different aspects of reality have different methods through which those aspects can be studied. Critical realism, as a theory about scientific inquiry, puts forward some ideas about the different nature of physical and social objects of study, and these ideas demonstrate differences in the way that scientific inquiry ought to work for the natural and social sciences.
Open vs Closed Systems
In natural sciences, the preferred method of study is the laboratory. In the terminology of critical realism, this is referred to as a closed system: a single aspect of reality is to be studied, so parts of reality that are irrelevant to that study are artificially removed so as not to affect the outcome. Even in situations where study isn't specifically in a laboratory, the goal is still much the same: close the system so as to be able to focus specifically on one aspect of external reality. In critical realist terminology, the goal off the closed system is to isolate and prove the existence of a "causal mechanism". In natural science terminology, a causal mechanism is a scientific law.
Closed systems are artificial environments. This becomes problematic when the object of study is social reality. According to critical realist philosophy, most attributes of social reality are not the result of simple, easy to isolate causal mechanisms, but stem directly from the interaction of multiple causes; each cause by itself would not produce even remotely the same effect by itself. Additionally, some effects may be actually negated by other causes, effectively removing evidence of the effect, even though the cause of the expected effect is present and salient. While isolating and testing a single cause-and-effect relationship can be done in some situations, there are a whole host of causal mechanisms that cannot be isolated for study, as the emergent effects of the interactions between those mechanisms forms a vital part of the picture of what is going on. This may not be so bad if there are only a few such interacting mechanisms, but in even the simplest social system, there are a whole host of them. And different social systems and situations can have entirely different causal mechanisms in operation.
To complicate matters even further, social reality is in part defined by its relationship to other parts of that reality, social or otherwise. Even before critical realism, an ongoing criticism of laboratory social science was that social scientific laboratory experiments don't explain what people do, but only what people do when they're in the social environment a laboratory. Trying to close off a social system for study potentially changes how that social system works, which means that any results from such a study cannot readily be generalised to social systems which have not been artificially closed off in the same way.
The goal of social scientific study, similar to attempts in natural science to uncover scientific "laws", is to discover causal mechanisms that explain the observed behaviour of an external reality. But while the natural scientist can observe closed systems and interpret them through deduction, along with some amount of induction (i.e. to consider how generalisable the experimental findings might be), the social scientist has to observe open systems. And while the social scientist may be able to make some deductive conclusions from such observations, they must make make much greater use of inductive reasoning to try and figure out what causal mechanisms are present and salient in a particular social system. In order to consider what causal mechanisms might even potentially be present, they must also make use of what critical realists call "retroduction": the attempt to explain an aspect of reality by positing what pre-conditions are necessary for such an aspect of reality to exist.
Both induction and retroduction are less reliable tools of inquiry than deduction, As social science must rely on these tools to a greater extent than natural science, the claims of social science tend to be less reliably true than claims made in the natural sciences. Such "laws" as can be posited from these methods of inquiry are also much harder to test across different social systems and situations. This means that the explanations provided by social science are much more tentative than in natural science, and the extent to which findings from the study of one area of social reality can be applied to a different area of social reality is much less clear than in it is in the study of reality undertaken by the natural sciences.
I actually wrote this in an attempt to clarify my own understanding of critical realism's understanding of the differences between natural and social science. It's worked (I think), but it's taken longer for me to explain the first difference between them than I expected it to. The other main difference - the element that interpretation plays as both something that is applied to findings in all types of scientific study, and as something that is also studied by social science - will have to wait for Part II.
The premise of critical realism is realist: it presumes that there is a reality "out there" that exists independently of our knowledge of it. The means by which we learn about this reality is fallible, affected (but not determined) by our pre-existing theories about it, and different aspects of reality have different methods through which those aspects can be studied. Critical realism, as a theory about scientific inquiry, puts forward some ideas about the different nature of physical and social objects of study, and these ideas demonstrate differences in the way that scientific inquiry ought to work for the natural and social sciences.
Open vs Closed Systems
In natural sciences, the preferred method of study is the laboratory. In the terminology of critical realism, this is referred to as a closed system: a single aspect of reality is to be studied, so parts of reality that are irrelevant to that study are artificially removed so as not to affect the outcome. Even in situations where study isn't specifically in a laboratory, the goal is still much the same: close the system so as to be able to focus specifically on one aspect of external reality. In critical realist terminology, the goal off the closed system is to isolate and prove the existence of a "causal mechanism". In natural science terminology, a causal mechanism is a scientific law.
Closed systems are artificial environments. This becomes problematic when the object of study is social reality. According to critical realist philosophy, most attributes of social reality are not the result of simple, easy to isolate causal mechanisms, but stem directly from the interaction of multiple causes; each cause by itself would not produce even remotely the same effect by itself. Additionally, some effects may be actually negated by other causes, effectively removing evidence of the effect, even though the cause of the expected effect is present and salient. While isolating and testing a single cause-and-effect relationship can be done in some situations, there are a whole host of causal mechanisms that cannot be isolated for study, as the emergent effects of the interactions between those mechanisms forms a vital part of the picture of what is going on. This may not be so bad if there are only a few such interacting mechanisms, but in even the simplest social system, there are a whole host of them. And different social systems and situations can have entirely different causal mechanisms in operation.
To complicate matters even further, social reality is in part defined by its relationship to other parts of that reality, social or otherwise. Even before critical realism, an ongoing criticism of laboratory social science was that social scientific laboratory experiments don't explain what people do, but only what people do when they're in the social environment a laboratory. Trying to close off a social system for study potentially changes how that social system works, which means that any results from such a study cannot readily be generalised to social systems which have not been artificially closed off in the same way.
The goal of social scientific study, similar to attempts in natural science to uncover scientific "laws", is to discover causal mechanisms that explain the observed behaviour of an external reality. But while the natural scientist can observe closed systems and interpret them through deduction, along with some amount of induction (i.e. to consider how generalisable the experimental findings might be), the social scientist has to observe open systems. And while the social scientist may be able to make some deductive conclusions from such observations, they must make make much greater use of inductive reasoning to try and figure out what causal mechanisms are present and salient in a particular social system. In order to consider what causal mechanisms might even potentially be present, they must also make use of what critical realists call "retroduction": the attempt to explain an aspect of reality by positing what pre-conditions are necessary for such an aspect of reality to exist.
Both induction and retroduction are less reliable tools of inquiry than deduction, As social science must rely on these tools to a greater extent than natural science, the claims of social science tend to be less reliably true than claims made in the natural sciences. Such "laws" as can be posited from these methods of inquiry are also much harder to test across different social systems and situations. This means that the explanations provided by social science are much more tentative than in natural science, and the extent to which findings from the study of one area of social reality can be applied to a different area of social reality is much less clear than in it is in the study of reality undertaken by the natural sciences.
I actually wrote this in an attempt to clarify my own understanding of critical realism's understanding of the differences between natural and social science. It's worked (I think), but it's taken longer for me to explain the first difference between them than I expected it to. The other main difference - the element that interpretation plays as both something that is applied to findings in all types of scientific study, and as something that is also studied by social science - will have to wait for Part II.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Homosexual visibility and beyond the concept of "coming out of the closet"
The rising tolerance of the existence of homosexuality has perhaps invalidated, or at least significantly modified, the expected experience of LGBT people's lives. Homosexuality need no longer be hidden in as many social mileux as it once was, prompting academic author Steven Seidman to describe contemporary western society as gradually becoming a "post-closet society".
In his book, Seidman uses "closet" in a way that I don't often see these days: a "closeted homosexual", per Seidman, is someone who has accepted their homosexuality and engages in same-sex relations, but conceals it totally from people in their everyday, "normal" life. In my experience, most times "closet case" these days instead refers specifically to someone who still hasn't admitted their own sexuality to anyone at all, perhaps not even to themself. I find the evolution of language telling: there is less of a need for a term to describe someone who accepts their homosexuality but conceals it from everyone. Is this because such a thing is gradually ceasing to exist?
Perhaps such total concealment is getting phased out, but this is not to say that concealment is no longer necessary. In fact I think the situation now is more complicated that a binary closeted/out dichotomy can properly describe. Jon Lasser and Deborah Tharinger performed a study of LGB youth, published in the Journal of Adolescence (volume 26, issue 2, April 2003, pp 233-244), called Visibility Management in School and Beyond: A qualitative study of gay, lesbian, bisexual youth The concept of "visibility management" that they came up with seems to offer a richer understanding than that of the traditional concepts of the closet and of coming out.
Visibility management differs from coming out of the closet in several ways. First, where coming out is an event, visibility management is a proces: "While 'coming out' functions as a common expression for simple disclosure of one's sexual orientation, visibility management captures the complexity of the strategic and continuous process that GLB youth employ over time" (Lasser & Tharinger 2003, p237).
This is as much about non-verbal cues as it is about verbal announcements of one's sexuality. Dress and speech were all described by the study participants as influenced by how visible they wanted their orientation to be: "participants modify dress, speech, and body language to manage their visibility. They use subcultural symbols, euphemisms, humour and references to pop culture to manage their visibility" (Lasser & Tharinger 2003, p238)
Second, visibility management occurs on a continuum: "the extreme points of the continuum are most restrictive visibility management and least restrictive visibility management ... most participants (N=16) placed themselves between the endpoints" (Lasser & Tharinger 2003, p238). Rather than being "closeted" or "out", the youth studied had disclosed their sexual orientation to some people, but not to others. Further, and logically, they had to monitor and manage their disclosure in order to ensure that only people that they wanted to know about their sexual orientation would know about it. This of course further entailed decisions about who they wanted to know, and why.
Lasser & Tharinger didn't go into specific detail about what influenced these decisions, beyond describing it as an outcome of their interactions with their environment. This is a pity, as I think it's important, and should be a part of any more general theory of how LGBT people engage in visibility management.
Examples tI've come across in my day to day life of the kinds of pressures influencing the decisions of LGBT people about how to manage their visibility include: issues of safety, the issue of "why is it other people's business anyway?", the desire to dispel myths and fears about homosexuality by being open about it with friends and acquaintances, or simply the desire to let a potential significant other know that you swing the same way they do. There are almost certainly others, and I'd be interested in finding out what they are.
In his book, Seidman uses "closet" in a way that I don't often see these days: a "closeted homosexual", per Seidman, is someone who has accepted their homosexuality and engages in same-sex relations, but conceals it totally from people in their everyday, "normal" life. In my experience, most times "closet case" these days instead refers specifically to someone who still hasn't admitted their own sexuality to anyone at all, perhaps not even to themself. I find the evolution of language telling: there is less of a need for a term to describe someone who accepts their homosexuality but conceals it from everyone. Is this because such a thing is gradually ceasing to exist?
Perhaps such total concealment is getting phased out, but this is not to say that concealment is no longer necessary. In fact I think the situation now is more complicated that a binary closeted/out dichotomy can properly describe. Jon Lasser and Deborah Tharinger performed a study of LGB youth, published in the Journal of Adolescence (volume 26, issue 2, April 2003, pp 233-244), called Visibility Management in School and Beyond: A qualitative study of gay, lesbian, bisexual youth The concept of "visibility management" that they came up with seems to offer a richer understanding than that of the traditional concepts of the closet and of coming out.
Visibility management differs from coming out of the closet in several ways. First, where coming out is an event, visibility management is a proces: "While 'coming out' functions as a common expression for simple disclosure of one's sexual orientation, visibility management captures the complexity of the strategic and continuous process that GLB youth employ over time" (Lasser & Tharinger 2003, p237).
This is as much about non-verbal cues as it is about verbal announcements of one's sexuality. Dress and speech were all described by the study participants as influenced by how visible they wanted their orientation to be: "participants modify dress, speech, and body language to manage their visibility. They use subcultural symbols, euphemisms, humour and references to pop culture to manage their visibility" (Lasser & Tharinger 2003, p238)
Second, visibility management occurs on a continuum: "the extreme points of the continuum are most restrictive visibility management and least restrictive visibility management ... most participants (N=16) placed themselves between the endpoints" (Lasser & Tharinger 2003, p238). Rather than being "closeted" or "out", the youth studied had disclosed their sexual orientation to some people, but not to others. Further, and logically, they had to monitor and manage their disclosure in order to ensure that only people that they wanted to know about their sexual orientation would know about it. This of course further entailed decisions about who they wanted to know, and why.
Lasser & Tharinger didn't go into specific detail about what influenced these decisions, beyond describing it as an outcome of their interactions with their environment. This is a pity, as I think it's important, and should be a part of any more general theory of how LGBT people engage in visibility management.
Examples tI've come across in my day to day life of the kinds of pressures influencing the decisions of LGBT people about how to manage their visibility include: issues of safety, the issue of "why is it other people's business anyway?", the desire to dispel myths and fears about homosexuality by being open about it with friends and acquaintances, or simply the desire to let a potential significant other know that you swing the same way they do. There are almost certainly others, and I'd be interested in finding out what they are.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
The misunderstanding of "prejudice" itself
There's a thing about "homophobia", and a general dislike for the use of the term, that's been in the back of my mind for a while. The brouhaha over race that's been simmering in the US sort of expanded that in my mind to the whole concept of prejudice generally. It comes down to two things.
First, I believe that the vast majority of people who engage in poor treatment of another on the basis of race, sexuality, gender, any difference like that at all, do it completely unconsciously. In fact, such people would get insulted at the very idea that they might want to behave in such a way, stating quite accurately that they never intended to do so. Even when they did. This applies even to people who go out of their way not to be prejudiced: there is an unconscious aspect to such poor treatment which is hard to overcome unless it can be consciously perceived.
Second, and problematically, the way we talk about prejudice utterly fails to recognise this. My perception is that using the phrase "racist" or "homophobic", or even "prejudiced", to describe a person's attitude or behaviour always implies a deliberate intent: people accused of these things supposedly want to treat a group as inferior, and think it wrong to treat them as equals. Worse, there is a significant moral sting to the words: "racism", "homophobia", "bigotry" and the like imply not just misguided ideas, not just a lack of familiarity which breeds misunderstanding, but an actual evil act.
An argument can be made that the plain definition of these words don't include these implications of a deliberate choice to commit an evil act on the part of the accused. But I'm talking about how these words are used, not some idealised definition. In actual practice, the words we use to describe prejudice, racism, homophobia and so forth all carry this moral sting: they are an accusation that a person is intentionally evil.
So how should the majority of unequal treatment that is not motivated by evil, and not deliberately chosen, be described? A phrase like "unconscious racism" is inadequate I think, as the intentional aspect of the idea of "racism" is too entrenched in the use of the word. After some thought, I think the best way to describe such attitudes and behaviour would be "thoughtless". So, to take an example from my own life, a person who might say something like "bisexuals are just homosexuals who still have one foot in the closet" isn't "biphobic", but is exhibiting a thoughtlessness about the experience and life of bisexual people.
Thoughtlessness about a group of people is not intentional, but it is difficult to overcome: the opposite of thoughtlessness if thoughtfulness, which is a conscious process. It takes effort, all the time. This fact also helps explain how a person who themselves is in a group that gets treated poorly, homosexuals for instance, can still potentially treat a different group poorly, like, say, bisexuals. In this case, a gay person is thoughtful about their own poor treatment (well they'd have to be, wouldn't they), but may remain thoughtless about the way they treat bisexuals.
None of this is to say that there are no genuinely prejudiced people out there: some people can and do deliberately and intentionally view some groups as inherently inferior to others. The task then becomes one of separating the two: of knowing who is prejudiced, and who is simply thoughtless. There is no ready-made, easy way to do that, but it needs to be done.
Otherwise, much poor treatment towards minority groups will remain impossible to solve because the description of the people engaging in it as "racist", "homophobic" or "prejudiced" will, quite legitimately, prompt an outraged defense that they see all people as equal. Many people who engage in such poor treatment genuinely do see all people as equal, and want to treat all people as equal, but won't realise that they're not treating all people equal unless it's pointed out, without rancour and without being accusative, that they are engaging in such unequal treatment unconsciously.
First, I believe that the vast majority of people who engage in poor treatment of another on the basis of race, sexuality, gender, any difference like that at all, do it completely unconsciously. In fact, such people would get insulted at the very idea that they might want to behave in such a way, stating quite accurately that they never intended to do so. Even when they did. This applies even to people who go out of their way not to be prejudiced: there is an unconscious aspect to such poor treatment which is hard to overcome unless it can be consciously perceived.
Second, and problematically, the way we talk about prejudice utterly fails to recognise this. My perception is that using the phrase "racist" or "homophobic", or even "prejudiced", to describe a person's attitude or behaviour always implies a deliberate intent: people accused of these things supposedly want to treat a group as inferior, and think it wrong to treat them as equals. Worse, there is a significant moral sting to the words: "racism", "homophobia", "bigotry" and the like imply not just misguided ideas, not just a lack of familiarity which breeds misunderstanding, but an actual evil act.
An argument can be made that the plain definition of these words don't include these implications of a deliberate choice to commit an evil act on the part of the accused. But I'm talking about how these words are used, not some idealised definition. In actual practice, the words we use to describe prejudice, racism, homophobia and so forth all carry this moral sting: they are an accusation that a person is intentionally evil.
So how should the majority of unequal treatment that is not motivated by evil, and not deliberately chosen, be described? A phrase like "unconscious racism" is inadequate I think, as the intentional aspect of the idea of "racism" is too entrenched in the use of the word. After some thought, I think the best way to describe such attitudes and behaviour would be "thoughtless". So, to take an example from my own life, a person who might say something like "bisexuals are just homosexuals who still have one foot in the closet" isn't "biphobic", but is exhibiting a thoughtlessness about the experience and life of bisexual people.
Thoughtlessness about a group of people is not intentional, but it is difficult to overcome: the opposite of thoughtlessness if thoughtfulness, which is a conscious process. It takes effort, all the time. This fact also helps explain how a person who themselves is in a group that gets treated poorly, homosexuals for instance, can still potentially treat a different group poorly, like, say, bisexuals. In this case, a gay person is thoughtful about their own poor treatment (well they'd have to be, wouldn't they), but may remain thoughtless about the way they treat bisexuals.
None of this is to say that there are no genuinely prejudiced people out there: some people can and do deliberately and intentionally view some groups as inherently inferior to others. The task then becomes one of separating the two: of knowing who is prejudiced, and who is simply thoughtless. There is no ready-made, easy way to do that, but it needs to be done.
Otherwise, much poor treatment towards minority groups will remain impossible to solve because the description of the people engaging in it as "racist", "homophobic" or "prejudiced" will, quite legitimately, prompt an outraged defense that they see all people as equal. Many people who engage in such poor treatment genuinely do see all people as equal, and want to treat all people as equal, but won't realise that they're not treating all people equal unless it's pointed out, without rancour and without being accusative, that they are engaging in such unequal treatment unconsciously.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Freedom of speech and the cartoon controversy
In my Media, Information and Law tutorial at uni I managed to get some fairly intense heat directed at me from people on both sides of the Mohammed Danish cartoon controversy. I don't know whether that indicates my independence of thought from all entrenched interests or if it just means I'm an irritating and argumentative bastard who annoys people of any political persuasion.
I did feel extremely defensive at one point when a guy in favour of publication was complaining about what I suggested was an inconsistency in his believing that publishing the cartoons was okay but publishing a phrase like "jews are the new nazis" should be illegal. His response was that talking about Nazis was an order of magnitude worse than mere publishing of caricature.
My response to that was incredibly poor: I thought not rationally, but combatively. My remark in retrospect was incredibly lame as I said something stupid about that being a subjective judgement. It's not. Or I don't think it is. Yet my response was motivated more by a desire not to let the other guy "get one over me" rather than any reasonable attempt to get at the truth.
I'm tempted to let myself believe that I did nothing wrong and that it was the other guy's combative approach that's to blame for me refusing to concede a point. But I don't think I should. And I think that the question of who's to blame for not adopting a reasonable attitude is extremely relevant to the question of the Danish caricature, and it's a question that's completely neglected by most commentators.
I wrote one of my essays last year on freedom of speech in an attempt to challenge my own extremely favourable attitude to free speech and see if there was something wrong with it. I came away from it still being extremely pro-freedom of speech, but I've gained a few insights along the way.
The first one is that in order for freedom of speech to have any meaning at all, there must be an audience for the speech. If a tyrant claims his subjects have freedom of speech because they can say whatever they like in the privacy of their own homes, is that really giving people the benefit of the freedom? Speech that no-one can hear is not really free speech at all.
Accepting that freedom of speech requires an audience immediately shows another way of looking at the cartoon issue: stop looking so much at the opinions and actions of the publishers and start looking at the opinions and actions of the audience.
This is where the dispute really lies when it comes to whether or not to publish the Danish cartoons: on the extreme pro-publication side, it is axiomatic that the members of the audience who feel offended by the cartoons are themselves responsible for "taking it too personally", with no real responsibility for the publisher. On the extreme anti-publication side, it is just as axiomatic that the audience members who feels offended and hurt can justly place the responsibility for that hurt, and for subsequent reactions to that hurt, on the publishers for "deliberately attacking Muslims".
I suspect that most people wouldn't be found on either extreme, and would only lean one way or the other. But I think that's a better starting point for the discussion of the issue: who is responsible for the feeling of harm and/or offense caused by the publication of the cartoons, and why? The answer may not be as straightforward as people think. My own experience above, where I was tempted to think it reasonable to blame my own poor actions on somebody else's speech, makes it harder for me to come down on the pro-publication position of believing the Muslim audience is "taking it too personally" than it otherwise would. I still strongly lean in favour of publication, though.
I did feel extremely defensive at one point when a guy in favour of publication was complaining about what I suggested was an inconsistency in his believing that publishing the cartoons was okay but publishing a phrase like "jews are the new nazis" should be illegal. His response was that talking about Nazis was an order of magnitude worse than mere publishing of caricature.
My response to that was incredibly poor: I thought not rationally, but combatively. My remark in retrospect was incredibly lame as I said something stupid about that being a subjective judgement. It's not. Or I don't think it is. Yet my response was motivated more by a desire not to let the other guy "get one over me" rather than any reasonable attempt to get at the truth.
I'm tempted to let myself believe that I did nothing wrong and that it was the other guy's combative approach that's to blame for me refusing to concede a point. But I don't think I should. And I think that the question of who's to blame for not adopting a reasonable attitude is extremely relevant to the question of the Danish caricature, and it's a question that's completely neglected by most commentators.
I wrote one of my essays last year on freedom of speech in an attempt to challenge my own extremely favourable attitude to free speech and see if there was something wrong with it. I came away from it still being extremely pro-freedom of speech, but I've gained a few insights along the way.
The first one is that in order for freedom of speech to have any meaning at all, there must be an audience for the speech. If a tyrant claims his subjects have freedom of speech because they can say whatever they like in the privacy of their own homes, is that really giving people the benefit of the freedom? Speech that no-one can hear is not really free speech at all.
Accepting that freedom of speech requires an audience immediately shows another way of looking at the cartoon issue: stop looking so much at the opinions and actions of the publishers and start looking at the opinions and actions of the audience.
This is where the dispute really lies when it comes to whether or not to publish the Danish cartoons: on the extreme pro-publication side, it is axiomatic that the members of the audience who feel offended by the cartoons are themselves responsible for "taking it too personally", with no real responsibility for the publisher. On the extreme anti-publication side, it is just as axiomatic that the audience members who feels offended and hurt can justly place the responsibility for that hurt, and for subsequent reactions to that hurt, on the publishers for "deliberately attacking Muslims".
I suspect that most people wouldn't be found on either extreme, and would only lean one way or the other. But I think that's a better starting point for the discussion of the issue: who is responsible for the feeling of harm and/or offense caused by the publication of the cartoons, and why? The answer may not be as straightforward as people think. My own experience above, where I was tempted to think it reasonable to blame my own poor actions on somebody else's speech, makes it harder for me to come down on the pro-publication position of believing the Muslim audience is "taking it too personally" than it otherwise would. I still strongly lean in favour of publication, though.
Monday, February 25, 2008
From uni: thoughts on online activism
At my university tutorial today we managed to get onto the subject of social activism, particularly online activism. I was curious to hear an opinion that online activism was a reason for a reduction in physical, more visible, one might even say "real", activism. I can understand the reasoning: the ability to pop up a "Causes I support" application on Facebook or put an e-mail address onto an online petition is much easier and, in theory, has much less impact than a person actually showing up to a protest or putting their verifiable name and address onto an offline petition. The argument seems to be that such actions aren't an indication of real commitment, but a shallow, insufficient one which gets mistaken as sufficient commitment because, hey, at least we're doing something. Consequently no actual sufficient commitment is made.
I'm not sure I agree. Online activism, as opposed to what one might (inaccurately) call "real" activism, has a much lower barrier to entry in terms of participation. What that means is that while the effect might not be as great per person, there is a much greater chance of getting more people onside. Any offset in people's willingness to actually get away from the computer to do some sort of offline activism has to be weighed against the people who wouldn't otherwise be particularly engaged in any kind of activism but can be persuaded to display your little "Cause" app, sign your petitions, join your mailing list, and from there perhaps even become an offline activist as well as on online one. You might actually gain a body at a physical protest rather than lose one.
There were other reasons put forward for what seems to be a decline in offline activism as well, such as the increased competitiveness of everyday economic life leaving people less time and effort away from the rat-race that they can put towards a non-economic agenda. An opportunity for a less time-consuming form of activism is helpful under such circumstances, if admittedly not as appealing to the especially dedicated.
But overall, I think that the decline in offline activism has mostly been from a perception that it isn't working anymore. The signature example is the Iraq war. The mobilisations against that invasion were some of the most impressive protests that I can remember, but the invasion wasn't stopped. In the wake of the US government's intransigence on the issue, people I think have been forced to working at the most basic level of person to person to try and keep people engaged on the issue. The less imposing, lighter form of activism that is online activism is I think a response to the inability of offline activism to readily effect the social change desired.
It remains to be seen whether this form of activism is definitely abetter or worse at that goal than more traditional forms. But I think that in the context of the current Western social milieu, it is necessarily a better choice.
I'm not sure I agree. Online activism, as opposed to what one might (inaccurately) call "real" activism, has a much lower barrier to entry in terms of participation. What that means is that while the effect might not be as great per person, there is a much greater chance of getting more people onside. Any offset in people's willingness to actually get away from the computer to do some sort of offline activism has to be weighed against the people who wouldn't otherwise be particularly engaged in any kind of activism but can be persuaded to display your little "Cause" app, sign your petitions, join your mailing list, and from there perhaps even become an offline activist as well as on online one. You might actually gain a body at a physical protest rather than lose one.
There were other reasons put forward for what seems to be a decline in offline activism as well, such as the increased competitiveness of everyday economic life leaving people less time and effort away from the rat-race that they can put towards a non-economic agenda. An opportunity for a less time-consuming form of activism is helpful under such circumstances, if admittedly not as appealing to the especially dedicated.
But overall, I think that the decline in offline activism has mostly been from a perception that it isn't working anymore. The signature example is the Iraq war. The mobilisations against that invasion were some of the most impressive protests that I can remember, but the invasion wasn't stopped. In the wake of the US government's intransigence on the issue, people I think have been forced to working at the most basic level of person to person to try and keep people engaged on the issue. The less imposing, lighter form of activism that is online activism is I think a response to the inability of offline activism to readily effect the social change desired.
It remains to be seen whether this form of activism is definitely abetter or worse at that goal than more traditional forms. But I think that in the context of the current Western social milieu, it is necessarily a better choice.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Obama and the "we" generation
I've been struggling to articulate the question of Barack Obama's alleged lack of policy detail and how this actually makes him more favourable to some people, including myself, but found that Henry Jenkins has already explained it, and more besides.
Jenkin's posts tend to be long (academics, huh?), but I think this one is worth reading in its entirety. Here's the section dealing specifically with how I, and assume many others, view Obama's less than fully-detailed policy plans:
Jenkin's posts tend to be long (academics, huh?), but I think this one is worth reading in its entirety. Here's the section dealing specifically with how I, and assume many others, view Obama's less than fully-detailed policy plans:
...the fact that the vision is blurry and not yet well defined is a virtue rather than a limitation: it is a virtue if we set up processes which enable us to collaborate to find further solutions. I look on Obama's more vague statements as something like a stub on wikipedia -- an incitement for us to pool our insights and to work through a range of possible solutions together.
After eight years which have sought to revitalize the once discredited notion of an Imperial President, it is refreshing to imagine a more open, participatory, and bottom up process. In such a model, the experience of the leader is less important than the ability to channel all of those voices and the commitment to make sure that everyone is heard. This is like the difference between older notions of expertise (based on monopoly and control of information) and newer notions of collective intelligence (based on creating a self-correcting and inclusive process by which we collect, evaluate, and distribute knowledge.) This may be what commentators are groping towards when they talk about a generational shift or discuss Obama as the candidate of the future.
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