Reginald's essay collection, Orpheus in the Bronx: Essays on Identity, Politics, and the Freedom of Poetry, has just been named as a finalist for the award in criticism by the National Book Critics Circle. Although I'm obviously saddened by the fact that he didn't live to see this, I'm pleased to see the positive attention his work has received.
Follow this link for more details.
Showing posts with label freedom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label freedom. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Hope on Slavery
It’s rare to encounter encouraging news about contemporary slavery. Wherever unpaid forced labor arrangements occur, whether in Mauritania or the U.S., they usually occur as part of informal sectors of society and the economy that are difficult to observe, and with limited enforcement of laws and policies for a variety of reasons. The article “Mauritania: The Real Beginning of the End of Slavery?,” from AllAfrica.com, offers at least the hope of real change on this issue in that national context.
The following is from the article:
“Four months after the passing of a law criminalising slavery in Mauritania, anti-slavery activists hope newly-announced funding for the reintegration of former slaves will address the many problems they continue to face in Mauritanian society.
"Quite obviously, we're very pleased with the announcement," said Biram Ould Dah Ould Abeid, member of the anti-slavery organisation SOS Esclaves, which has been leading the fight against slavery in Mauritania for years. "The government is sending slaves a strong signal and it is also proof that the authorities have heard our calls."
When slavery was criminalised in August, human rights and anti-slavery organisations urged the government - as they had been doing for years - to adopt accompanying measures for the law to be effective.
Officially abolished in 1981, slavery continues to be practiced in all Mauritanian communities, mostly in rural areas, by upper-class lighter-skinned Moors (Berber Arabs) as well as black Africans. One estimate by the Open Society Justice Initiative places the number of slaves and former slaves at 20 percent of the population - or about 500,000 people - but the numbers are difficult to confirm.”
The following is from the article:
“Four months after the passing of a law criminalising slavery in Mauritania, anti-slavery activists hope newly-announced funding for the reintegration of former slaves will address the many problems they continue to face in Mauritanian society.
"Quite obviously, we're very pleased with the announcement," said Biram Ould Dah Ould Abeid, member of the anti-slavery organisation SOS Esclaves, which has been leading the fight against slavery in Mauritania for years. "The government is sending slaves a strong signal and it is also proof that the authorities have heard our calls."
When slavery was criminalised in August, human rights and anti-slavery organisations urged the government - as they had been doing for years - to adopt accompanying measures for the law to be effective.
Officially abolished in 1981, slavery continues to be practiced in all Mauritanian communities, mostly in rural areas, by upper-class lighter-skinned Moors (Berber Arabs) as well as black Africans. One estimate by the Open Society Justice Initiative places the number of slaves and former slaves at 20 percent of the population - or about 500,000 people - but the numbers are difficult to confirm.”
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Enlightenment Values
The most important contribution to world culture of the Enlightenment was the promulgation of a set of important ideas and values, most notably those of freedom/liberty/autonomy and equality. These are ideals that have continued to have value well beyond the specific 18th/early 19th century period usually referred to as “The Enlightenment,” so that we can speak of an ongoing “Enlightenment Project” of implementing these basic ideals. (There were/are varieties of Enlightenments and Enlightenment Projects. Associated with the French Revolution was the famous triad of liberty, equality, fraternity. Coming much later, but still very much associated with the continuing project of expanding freedom, the Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata emphasized land and liberty, the emphasis on both the ideal and the material condition necessary to implement it. In the U.S., liberty/freedom has been especially foregrounded as an ideal. Equality of opportunity and equality before the law have been generally held ideals, while equality of social condition has not been as widely held as an ideal, and the French “fraternity” is largely absent from consideration.)
In practice, Enlightenment values have always been coupled with contradictory practices, e.g. practices of slavery and Jim Crow laws alongside values of equality and freedom.
As a matter of historical or social analysis, these contradictions between ideals or values and practices must remain coupled. Both are part of historical or current social realities.
Further, refusing to decouple Enlightenment values from contradictory practices enables us to better understand things like racist thinking associated with slavery and/or colonialism and their aftermaths. These are syntheses of the contradiction between values and practices. Much scholarship on race in early colonial North America indicates that masters felt no particular need to distinguish greatly between white and black forced laborers, nor a particular need to defend such practices. Racism grew up alongside developing notions of freedom and equality. As the radical inequality associated with forced labor began to seem wrong, but the profits generated were hard to pass up, the development of notions of inherent racial inequality served as useful rationalization – one could treat some unequally because regarded as naturally unequal.
A similar type of thinking developed concerning gender and the growing contradiction between the value of equality and realities of gender inequality. In an engaging essay, “Orgasm, Generation, and the Politics of Reproductive Biology” (the essay can be found in The Gender/Sexuality Reader, edited by Roger Lancaster and Micaela di Leonardo), Thomas Lacqueur discusses changes in scientific thinking about female and male reproductive anatomy and physiology in the late 18th/early 19th century. Earlier, it had been typical to think of males and females as manifesting degrees of difference along a continuum, with this related to a lingering humoral conception of the body. Male and female genitalia were thought of as the same structures, for example, with “hotter” male bodies extruding the genitalia and cooler female bodies having the same reproductive structures introverted, i.e. females were males inside-out, or perhaps outside-in. Beginning in the late 18th century, males and females began to be seen more and more as different species in terms of their biology, with females’ rationality in particular being affected by menstrual cycles.
As a matter of values for ongoing scholarship and engagement with the world, though, historical and current contradictions between ideals and practices should be decoupled. I don’t mean that practices, now or in the past, that contradict the values of freedom and equality should be ignored, forgotten, justified, or anything of the sort. Far from it. I mean that contradictory practices in themselves don’t undermine or invalidate the values.
The fact that Thomas Jefferson was a slaveholder doesn’t undermine his words regarding liberty and equality. It makes him a hypocrite, something he himself was aware of, but it doesn’t and shouldn’t make his words in the Declaration of Independence any less stirring (nor do you have to be a communist to be stirred by the evocation of those very words by Ho Chi Minh against French colonialism in the mid-20th century). Nor was his slaveholding a part of an Enlightenment Project. Instead, this was a practice resisting such a project and contradicting his own stated values.
In practice, Enlightenment values have always been coupled with contradictory practices, e.g. practices of slavery and Jim Crow laws alongside values of equality and freedom.
As a matter of historical or social analysis, these contradictions between ideals or values and practices must remain coupled. Both are part of historical or current social realities.
Further, refusing to decouple Enlightenment values from contradictory practices enables us to better understand things like racist thinking associated with slavery and/or colonialism and their aftermaths. These are syntheses of the contradiction between values and practices. Much scholarship on race in early colonial North America indicates that masters felt no particular need to distinguish greatly between white and black forced laborers, nor a particular need to defend such practices. Racism grew up alongside developing notions of freedom and equality. As the radical inequality associated with forced labor began to seem wrong, but the profits generated were hard to pass up, the development of notions of inherent racial inequality served as useful rationalization – one could treat some unequally because regarded as naturally unequal.
A similar type of thinking developed concerning gender and the growing contradiction between the value of equality and realities of gender inequality. In an engaging essay, “Orgasm, Generation, and the Politics of Reproductive Biology” (the essay can be found in The Gender/Sexuality Reader, edited by Roger Lancaster and Micaela di Leonardo), Thomas Lacqueur discusses changes in scientific thinking about female and male reproductive anatomy and physiology in the late 18th/early 19th century. Earlier, it had been typical to think of males and females as manifesting degrees of difference along a continuum, with this related to a lingering humoral conception of the body. Male and female genitalia were thought of as the same structures, for example, with “hotter” male bodies extruding the genitalia and cooler female bodies having the same reproductive structures introverted, i.e. females were males inside-out, or perhaps outside-in. Beginning in the late 18th century, males and females began to be seen more and more as different species in terms of their biology, with females’ rationality in particular being affected by menstrual cycles.
As a matter of values for ongoing scholarship and engagement with the world, though, historical and current contradictions between ideals and practices should be decoupled. I don’t mean that practices, now or in the past, that contradict the values of freedom and equality should be ignored, forgotten, justified, or anything of the sort. Far from it. I mean that contradictory practices in themselves don’t undermine or invalidate the values.
The fact that Thomas Jefferson was a slaveholder doesn’t undermine his words regarding liberty and equality. It makes him a hypocrite, something he himself was aware of, but it doesn’t and shouldn’t make his words in the Declaration of Independence any less stirring (nor do you have to be a communist to be stirred by the evocation of those very words by Ho Chi Minh against French colonialism in the mid-20th century). Nor was his slaveholding a part of an Enlightenment Project. Instead, this was a practice resisting such a project and contradicting his own stated values.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Democracy and Capitalism
Patricia Cohen has an interesting essay on democracy and capitalism published by the International Herald Tribune.
Here's the link: http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/13/news/letter.php?page=1
Here's the link: http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/13/news/letter.php?page=1
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Energy, Development, and Independence
Energy has been an important topic of anthropological discussion and debate at least since the publication of Leslie White’s The Science of Culture (1949). I don’t want (at least in this specific context) to re-open old debates about teleology, cultural evolution, or White’s pseudo-algebraic formulation of the relationship between cultural development, energy and technology (C = E x T).
I do think, though, that White pointed out something essential about energy and culture. Obviously the meeting of basic needs is directly related to harnessing energy. Eating is the most fundamental way in which we harness energy that can then be used for other purposes. Individuals and societies that can’t harness the energy they need to provision all their essential needs must perish. What White was pointing out was that economic and other cultural development (that is, beyond provisioning basic needs) is an outcome of successfully harnessing larger amounts of energy. The more energy you can harness, the higher the level of technological and economic development possible, and the greater the range of possible action available to you. That is, sustained economic development, development of other areas of culture, and greater individual and collective free action are mutually related and dependent on harnessing larger amounts of energy.
The converse of this is that threats or barriers to the collection of energy resources are also direct threats to livelihood, development, and/or freedom of action. For many poor families in much of the developing world, a key energy resource is firewood, and lack of access to it for any number of reasons can be a distinct threat to the economic viability of a household. Within the current global economy, there is much concern over “energy independence.” This is especially the case in the U.S., with energy independence looking to be a major campaign issue for the 2008 presidential election.
Doug Wilson has written an interesting column on the issue recently in The Wall Street Journal, one of the few times, in my opinion, that something insightful and reasonable has appeared in the opinion section of that newspaper. (The column can be found at this link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117772448976985558.html?mod=rss_opinion_main
Unfortunately, the full text is only available to subscribers to WSJ. A hard copy summary of the column can be found in the May 11, 2007 issue of The Week [p. 42]. Wilson also addresses the issue briefly in his account of his recent meeting with Rudy Guiliani at Townhall.com: http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/DougWilson/2006/09/18/breakfast_with_rudy?page=full)
Wilson writes that while energy independence might sound good, it is an illusion. In a context of global economic interdependency, no one and no nation-state can be energy independent. He argues that instead, we should focus on energy diversity. Greater diversity of energy resources and supply would enhance energy security, minimizing the risk of economic crisis as the result of a serious threat to oil (and with the current situations in Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Nigeria, even Venezuela, oil as an energy resource is threatened – reflected in the high price for gasoline paid by consumers in the U.S. and most other countries of the world).
I agree with Wilson that a focus on energy diversity makes more sense as a primary goal than a focus on energy independence. At the same time, I think he has a too absolutist notion of “independence.” If by “independence” or “freedom” is meant total freedom of action, then energy independence is not possible. Independence and freedom are always relative – all of us have some ability to shape and determine our own actions, but always within limits (See my earlier posts Freedom and Restraint, Parts I, II, and III). Wilson’s right, though, that a focus on energy independence is distracting. I’d add that energy diversity would bring about relative energy independence.
The language of “Energy Diversity” also has the advantage of creating an expectation of many sources of energy, some of which are environmentally destructive (alternative sources of oil, coal, maize-based ethanol), and some of which are environmentally friendly or at least less destructive (efforts to increase fuel economy of vehicles, sugar-based ethanol if it were allowed to compete head to head with the maize-based stuff, solar and wind power, hydro-power [with fish gates], nuclear, tidal, and geothermal power). Of course, environmentalists and others have been fighting this battle for over thirty years (originally over pollution concerns, now more and more over global warming concerns), but it’s encouraging that even opinion columns in The Wall Street Journal and Republican presidential candidates are showing interest in the issue. Their concern may be mainly about energy as a political and economic security issue (which is not inaccurate so much as it is limited), but so be it.
I do think, though, that White pointed out something essential about energy and culture. Obviously the meeting of basic needs is directly related to harnessing energy. Eating is the most fundamental way in which we harness energy that can then be used for other purposes. Individuals and societies that can’t harness the energy they need to provision all their essential needs must perish. What White was pointing out was that economic and other cultural development (that is, beyond provisioning basic needs) is an outcome of successfully harnessing larger amounts of energy. The more energy you can harness, the higher the level of technological and economic development possible, and the greater the range of possible action available to you. That is, sustained economic development, development of other areas of culture, and greater individual and collective free action are mutually related and dependent on harnessing larger amounts of energy.
The converse of this is that threats or barriers to the collection of energy resources are also direct threats to livelihood, development, and/or freedom of action. For many poor families in much of the developing world, a key energy resource is firewood, and lack of access to it for any number of reasons can be a distinct threat to the economic viability of a household. Within the current global economy, there is much concern over “energy independence.” This is especially the case in the U.S., with energy independence looking to be a major campaign issue for the 2008 presidential election.
Doug Wilson has written an interesting column on the issue recently in The Wall Street Journal, one of the few times, in my opinion, that something insightful and reasonable has appeared in the opinion section of that newspaper. (The column can be found at this link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117772448976985558.html?mod=rss_opinion_main
Unfortunately, the full text is only available to subscribers to WSJ. A hard copy summary of the column can be found in the May 11, 2007 issue of The Week [p. 42]. Wilson also addresses the issue briefly in his account of his recent meeting with Rudy Guiliani at Townhall.com: http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/DougWilson/2006/09/18/breakfast_with_rudy?page=full)
Wilson writes that while energy independence might sound good, it is an illusion. In a context of global economic interdependency, no one and no nation-state can be energy independent. He argues that instead, we should focus on energy diversity. Greater diversity of energy resources and supply would enhance energy security, minimizing the risk of economic crisis as the result of a serious threat to oil (and with the current situations in Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Nigeria, even Venezuela, oil as an energy resource is threatened – reflected in the high price for gasoline paid by consumers in the U.S. and most other countries of the world).
I agree with Wilson that a focus on energy diversity makes more sense as a primary goal than a focus on energy independence. At the same time, I think he has a too absolutist notion of “independence.” If by “independence” or “freedom” is meant total freedom of action, then energy independence is not possible. Independence and freedom are always relative – all of us have some ability to shape and determine our own actions, but always within limits (See my earlier posts Freedom and Restraint, Parts I, II, and III). Wilson’s right, though, that a focus on energy independence is distracting. I’d add that energy diversity would bring about relative energy independence.
The language of “Energy Diversity” also has the advantage of creating an expectation of many sources of energy, some of which are environmentally destructive (alternative sources of oil, coal, maize-based ethanol), and some of which are environmentally friendly or at least less destructive (efforts to increase fuel economy of vehicles, sugar-based ethanol if it were allowed to compete head to head with the maize-based stuff, solar and wind power, hydro-power [with fish gates], nuclear, tidal, and geothermal power). Of course, environmentalists and others have been fighting this battle for over thirty years (originally over pollution concerns, now more and more over global warming concerns), but it’s encouraging that even opinion columns in The Wall Street Journal and Republican presidential candidates are showing interest in the issue. Their concern may be mainly about energy as a political and economic security issue (which is not inaccurate so much as it is limited), but so be it.
Friday, May 18, 2007
Maintaining and Enhancing Free Action
Over the past several posts, I have been exploring the factors that shape human freedom. Of all of these, the factors that have the most important effect on human action are those that pertain to meeting basic essential needs. Without meeting basic needs, individual die, and so factors which shape or constrain the possible ways of meeting these needs are going to have tremendous influence patterning human action. For small societies (e.g. foraging bands or horticultural villages) with a direct relation to nature in providing for their basic needs, the physical qualities of their environment are going to be an important influence shaping and constraining possible strategies for living. For larger societies, where most have a more indirect relation to nature and make a living through their place in complex networks of economic exchange, the social possibilities within those economic networks will profoundly influence individuals’ range of possible free action.
For individuals living in small scale societies, being incorporated into larger societies and economies – which almost all small scale societies are – tends to entail a massive increase of social restraint on freedom, especially economic restraint (See also here my earlier post, “Freedom and Restraint: Part III”). The result is the social and economic malaise so common among Native American communities throughout the Western Hemisphere after being partially assimilated into Euro-American societies, as well as similar experiences among members of small scale societies in Eurasia, Africa, and Oceania over the past couple centuries. As these smaller societies continue to be further incorporated into the world economic system (frankly, to me that seems inevitable), a concern for these societies, but also anthropologists and any progressive thinking people is and should be to manage such transitions so that they have the least negative economic and political effect possible, the least negative effect on autonomy and freedom possible.
For the 6 billion or so people thoroughly incorporated into state structures and the global economy, greater autonomy in action can only come through greater wealth. Simply put, in the global economy as formulated, greater wealth equals greater ability to act freely. (Money, perhaps, can’t buy happiness, and greater wealth doesn’t free one completely from restraint, but it does free one from the unhappiness that derives simply from deprivation, allows one to go most anywhere one wants [including outer space nowadays if you’ve got enough], gets one a better shake before the law, buys a better education, etc.) Greater autonomy and freedom in general depends on continued expansion of economic production globally, though this is only a necessary but not sufficient condition, for it’s not just a question of per capita income or total income but the actual distribution of wealth.
For individuals living in small scale societies, being incorporated into larger societies and economies – which almost all small scale societies are – tends to entail a massive increase of social restraint on freedom, especially economic restraint (See also here my earlier post, “Freedom and Restraint: Part III”). The result is the social and economic malaise so common among Native American communities throughout the Western Hemisphere after being partially assimilated into Euro-American societies, as well as similar experiences among members of small scale societies in Eurasia, Africa, and Oceania over the past couple centuries. As these smaller societies continue to be further incorporated into the world economic system (frankly, to me that seems inevitable), a concern for these societies, but also anthropologists and any progressive thinking people is and should be to manage such transitions so that they have the least negative economic and political effect possible, the least negative effect on autonomy and freedom possible.
For the 6 billion or so people thoroughly incorporated into state structures and the global economy, greater autonomy in action can only come through greater wealth. Simply put, in the global economy as formulated, greater wealth equals greater ability to act freely. (Money, perhaps, can’t buy happiness, and greater wealth doesn’t free one completely from restraint, but it does free one from the unhappiness that derives simply from deprivation, allows one to go most anywhere one wants [including outer space nowadays if you’ve got enough], gets one a better shake before the law, buys a better education, etc.) Greater autonomy and freedom in general depends on continued expansion of economic production globally, though this is only a necessary but not sufficient condition, for it’s not just a question of per capita income or total income but the actual distribution of wealth.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Technology and Freedom
A tool is anything (external to the body) used by a human being (or other animal) as an aid in performing some task or action. Intuitively, then, technology is related to freedom as something that extends the possibilities of free action, and so it does, though not equally for all.
Technology and Biology
In “Freedom and Restraint: Part II,” I wrote of human biological constants as one constraining factor on human free action. In some ways, technology has acted to extend what it is physically possible for humans to do. This has been true throughout the course of human and hominid evolution, e.g. the advent of stone tools allowed for things liked skinning and butchering meat and an expansion of one particular food resource. More importantly, in more recent human history tools have enabled us to do things we could never perform with our bodies (e.g. lifting tremendous weight, rerouting rivers, etc.) by using tools instead to perform the tasks.
Technology has even affected our biology in some ways. Over the course of hominid evolution, there was a diminution in tooth and jaw size correlated with more extensive use of stone tools, that is, as more food processing was done outside the mouth. In the near future, biotechnology might radically reshape what it is possible to do with our bodies and the very nature of our bodies, though we are not there yet.
Technology and our relation to the Environment
Human and hominid relations to the environment have always been mediated by technology, i.e. we use tools to provide for our basic needs from the physical environment, whether in the form of using a digging stick to uproot a wild tuber or plowing fields with massive tractors. Innovations in technology have also always had a transformative effect on what it is possible to do within a particular environment. The use of fire by Homo erectus was one of several technologies allowing that hominid species to expand into cooler areas previously unoccupied by hominids. Presuming Homo erectus groups used fire to cook plant and animal foods, this same technology would have made for a safer food supply (especially for groups that might have subsisted partly by scavenging carcasses) and enabled their bodies to extract more nutritional value from some plant foods.
The physical conditions of the environment have always shaped and constrained patterns of behavior among human groups adapting to a particular context. Likewise, though, the level of technology readily available has always shaped what is possible within a given environment as well. As I wrote earlier (again in “Freedom and Restraint: Part II”), the North American Great Plains are a great place to farm – if you have steel plow technology capable of sod-busting. Native Americans were only able to farm to any extent right along the major river valleys that cut across the plains where conditions were a bit different. They didn’t have the technology that would have made farming possible out on the plains, and living in that context, they had no means for developing such technology.
Modern technologies have created a context where humans can manipulate nature to an unprecedented degree. As such, technology has greatly expanded the range of actions possible while still meeting basic essential needs. At the same time, this can create an illusion of omnipotence over nature, though recent events, e.g. Hurricane Katrina and concerns about Global Warming, have made somewhat clearer that even with current technology, there is still a relation to nature and environmental constraint on action.
Technology and Social Relations
Technology expands the possible range of actions within social contexts as well. The net result for human freedom in general is ambiguous, though, as the enhanced ability to act includes the enhanced ability to act on the actions of others. Technology heightens the importance of power relations and as often as not enhances the possibilities for some at a cost to others.
It’s probably no coincidence that the historical development of permanent social inequality was correlated not just with the development of craft or job specialization but with armed military specialists, using military technologies to reinforce social power. Widely distributed contemporary media technologies do offer greater ability (unprecedented ability even) for individuals to spread ideas, communicate, and influence others. (Such democratizing effect is not always good [I’d argue that democratization is good, the effects of it not always straightforwardly good] – think for example of webcasts of beheadings by Al Qaedi in Iraq, the inspiration this has apparently given to terrorist cells in other parts of North Africa and the Middle East, even the inspiration this may have given to drug gangs in Mexico and El Salvador, with a recent spate of beheadings in those places as a new form of gang execution and terror message.) At the same time, the same and similar technologies give states new power to survey and control populations, with the potential result of greater restriction on human free action in aggregate.
Especially with regard to social relations, the relationship between technology and freedom is ambiguous. Technology itself, though, is neutral. In itself it is not good or bad. Whether technology enhances or diminishes human freedom depends on who uses it and how.
Technology and Biology
In “Freedom and Restraint: Part II,” I wrote of human biological constants as one constraining factor on human free action. In some ways, technology has acted to extend what it is physically possible for humans to do. This has been true throughout the course of human and hominid evolution, e.g. the advent of stone tools allowed for things liked skinning and butchering meat and an expansion of one particular food resource. More importantly, in more recent human history tools have enabled us to do things we could never perform with our bodies (e.g. lifting tremendous weight, rerouting rivers, etc.) by using tools instead to perform the tasks.
Technology has even affected our biology in some ways. Over the course of hominid evolution, there was a diminution in tooth and jaw size correlated with more extensive use of stone tools, that is, as more food processing was done outside the mouth. In the near future, biotechnology might radically reshape what it is possible to do with our bodies and the very nature of our bodies, though we are not there yet.
Technology and our relation to the Environment
Human and hominid relations to the environment have always been mediated by technology, i.e. we use tools to provide for our basic needs from the physical environment, whether in the form of using a digging stick to uproot a wild tuber or plowing fields with massive tractors. Innovations in technology have also always had a transformative effect on what it is possible to do within a particular environment. The use of fire by Homo erectus was one of several technologies allowing that hominid species to expand into cooler areas previously unoccupied by hominids. Presuming Homo erectus groups used fire to cook plant and animal foods, this same technology would have made for a safer food supply (especially for groups that might have subsisted partly by scavenging carcasses) and enabled their bodies to extract more nutritional value from some plant foods.
The physical conditions of the environment have always shaped and constrained patterns of behavior among human groups adapting to a particular context. Likewise, though, the level of technology readily available has always shaped what is possible within a given environment as well. As I wrote earlier (again in “Freedom and Restraint: Part II”), the North American Great Plains are a great place to farm – if you have steel plow technology capable of sod-busting. Native Americans were only able to farm to any extent right along the major river valleys that cut across the plains where conditions were a bit different. They didn’t have the technology that would have made farming possible out on the plains, and living in that context, they had no means for developing such technology.
Modern technologies have created a context where humans can manipulate nature to an unprecedented degree. As such, technology has greatly expanded the range of actions possible while still meeting basic essential needs. At the same time, this can create an illusion of omnipotence over nature, though recent events, e.g. Hurricane Katrina and concerns about Global Warming, have made somewhat clearer that even with current technology, there is still a relation to nature and environmental constraint on action.
Technology and Social Relations
Technology expands the possible range of actions within social contexts as well. The net result for human freedom in general is ambiguous, though, as the enhanced ability to act includes the enhanced ability to act on the actions of others. Technology heightens the importance of power relations and as often as not enhances the possibilities for some at a cost to others.
It’s probably no coincidence that the historical development of permanent social inequality was correlated not just with the development of craft or job specialization but with armed military specialists, using military technologies to reinforce social power. Widely distributed contemporary media technologies do offer greater ability (unprecedented ability even) for individuals to spread ideas, communicate, and influence others. (Such democratizing effect is not always good [I’d argue that democratization is good, the effects of it not always straightforwardly good] – think for example of webcasts of beheadings by Al Qaedi in Iraq, the inspiration this has apparently given to terrorist cells in other parts of North Africa and the Middle East, even the inspiration this may have given to drug gangs in Mexico and El Salvador, with a recent spate of beheadings in those places as a new form of gang execution and terror message.) At the same time, the same and similar technologies give states new power to survey and control populations, with the potential result of greater restriction on human free action in aggregate.
Especially with regard to social relations, the relationship between technology and freedom is ambiguous. Technology itself, though, is neutral. In itself it is not good or bad. Whether technology enhances or diminishes human freedom depends on who uses it and how.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Freedom and Restraint: Part III
Social Restraints
One of the key restraints on totally free action in any human society is that which derives from social relationships, with a number of types of restraint being important, including the restraining influence of direct face to face interaction; economic restraint; and cultural custom and law.
Foucault’s conceptualization of power is important here. (The clearest statement of Foucault’s view of power, to my mind, is “The Subject and Power,” published as an afterward to Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics by Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow.) For Foucault, power is not an entity that some have and others do not but is rather a quality of all social relationships. Power is action and influence on the actions of others. Everyone has some degree of freedom to act, including to act to influence the actions of others, and at the same time, everyone’s actions are acted upon and influenced by those they are in interaction with. Everyone has some freedom (what differs is the degree); no one has complete freedom (and likewise no one is completely dominant or subordinate).
Power and Restraint in Interpersonal Relationships
In face to face interactions, Foucault’s notion of power applies straightforwardly (it applies in the other types of restraints I’ll discuss, too, just not so straightforwardly). In direct face to face interaction our actions have an influence on the actions of others present, and vice versa.
There may be formal restraint involved, such as with overt coercion, threats or acts of violence, but these are not typical. More typically, the ongoing sequence of actions shapes the degrees of freedom for any remotely normal subsequent action. If in a conversation, I ask, “What would you like to have for dinner?,” you could reply, “Screwdrivers.” There’s no formal restraint keeping you from doing so, but unless you’re a serious nutcase or a serious alcoholic, you wouldn’t response so. There’s a wide range of possible replies, but a wider range of impossible replies – if you care at all about seeming sane and reasonable (which some might not – and their actions are perhaps freer than the rest of us in many situations).
Bambi Schieffelin’s ethnography The Give and Take of Everyday Life beautifully describes the Kaluli society of the Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea. It’s a small culture that gets by through gardening and hunting and gathering in the surrounding tropical forest. One of the interesting facets of Kaluli culture is the near absence of formal restraint on actions. There are occasional incidents of violence in the community (and Edward Schieffelin’s also beautiful and quite different ethnography of the same culture, The Sorrow of the Lonely and the Burning of the Dancers, makes clear that there are more regular instances of violence targeting members of other communities), but the general Kaluli view is that no one has the legitimate right to coerce or force anyone to do anything. This includes the parent – child relationship. (Most people in western culture or most other cultures take for granted that it’s perfectly natural for parents to command the actions of their children, but really why should we take that for granted?) But this isn’t to say that there aren’t power relations at play in Kaluli society. People shape and influence one another’s actions constantly, through attempts at persuasion, through cajoling, through shaming and ostracization. In a small society with a high degree of mutual economic dependency, cajoling, shaming, and ostracizing are in fact highly effective tools to shape and restrain the actions of others.
Knowledge and memory of typical patterns of behavior or of a specific history of interactions with an individual are important in shaping individual free action as well, via anticipation of others’ actions. Foucault’s notion of power applies straightforwardly to direct face to face interactions, but because of the role of knowledge, memory, and anticipation, actions in one context can have a carry-over effect on the actions of others in further instances over time.
Economic Restraint
This discussion of economic restraint is related to my discussion of environmental restraint, the need to meet basic needs, and Julian Steward’s “culture core” concept in my previous blog post, “Freedom and Restraint: Part II.”
Meeting basic needs is done in relationship to nature. This might be highly direct, as with Kaluli hunting and gathering activities, or even their gardening practices. Or it might be highly indirect, such as in the modern world system, where we routinely buy packaged food products which have dozens of ingredients, all produced in different places, utilizing tools and resources produced or gleaned somewhere else, but which still have, however distant, a relationship to nature. But meeting basic needs is also done in relationship to economic exchange with others.
One’s place within a web of economic exchanges (which might take the form of direct face to face reciprocity or highly complex market systems) shapes one’s possible actions. This is true for the Kaluli, but it really has minimal effect on individual free action. In larger complex societies, this is a crucial consideration. One’s place within the overall political economy profoundly shapes one’s possibilities for action. Money is a sign of this place and shapes interactions. To a significant extent, money as a sign of accrued wealth is also a sign of one’s degree of freedom in action. More wealth equals more freedom. One consequence of this is that any significant increase in individual freedoms within the modern world system is dependent on corresponding significant increases in overall wealth, though the distribution of wealth is another critical consideration, i.e. expansion of wealth is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for any significant expansion of freedom in the modern world system.
Consideration of economic restraints also brings to mind ways in which different sorts of restraints might butt up against one another. In “Freedom and Restraint: Part I,” I discussed different concepts of freedom. With the classical conception of freedom as the lack of formal restraint, wage laborers are free in the sense that they’re not obligated to work or to take a specific job. As Marx made clear, though, if freedom is thought of as the positive capacity to largely shape one’s own actions and destiny, wage laborers are hardly free to not work – they must work unless they’re independently wealthy. Most wage laborers have quite constrained possibilities for shaping their actions and lives – they’re hardly free at all in any realistic sense.
Many states in the United States have “right to work” laws, which prohibit closed union shops. Closed union shops do in fact represent a formal restraint on workers. They prevent workers from laboring there without joining the union. “Right to Work” laws prohibit this sort of formal restraint, and thus add to the freedom of workers in one way (mainly in a way that corresponds to classical notions of freedom and which not coincidently strengthens the bargaining position of capital). At the same time, closed union shops strengthen the position of unions’ collective bargaining activities, which can enhance workers’ economic position and thus, reduce economic restraints, thus increasing their freedom in another sense, i.e. increasing their ability to shape their own actions in general.
Custom and Law
Custom and law are not the same things, but they work similarly in providing explicit expectations for behavior, either through proscription or prescription. No one always meets the expectations of custom or law in all of their behavior, but most everyone is strongly influenced by them, either through proscriptive inhibition or the production of patterns of behavior under the influence of prescriptive law or custom. Further, their presence can serve to legitimate others’ actions constraining the actions of an individual.
Custom and law are not directly social relationships, and so act differently than other social restrictions and influences on action. However, they are the direct products of social relationships, i.e. produced by individuals in interaction. Further, they comprise a sort of abstract entity which acts as a crystallization of power relations. They constitute indirect social relations over time, as they are in effect one set of persons’ actions having continuous effect on others’ actions into the future.
One of the key restraints on totally free action in any human society is that which derives from social relationships, with a number of types of restraint being important, including the restraining influence of direct face to face interaction; economic restraint; and cultural custom and law.
Foucault’s conceptualization of power is important here. (The clearest statement of Foucault’s view of power, to my mind, is “The Subject and Power,” published as an afterward to Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics by Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow.) For Foucault, power is not an entity that some have and others do not but is rather a quality of all social relationships. Power is action and influence on the actions of others. Everyone has some degree of freedom to act, including to act to influence the actions of others, and at the same time, everyone’s actions are acted upon and influenced by those they are in interaction with. Everyone has some freedom (what differs is the degree); no one has complete freedom (and likewise no one is completely dominant or subordinate).
Power and Restraint in Interpersonal Relationships
In face to face interactions, Foucault’s notion of power applies straightforwardly (it applies in the other types of restraints I’ll discuss, too, just not so straightforwardly). In direct face to face interaction our actions have an influence on the actions of others present, and vice versa.
There may be formal restraint involved, such as with overt coercion, threats or acts of violence, but these are not typical. More typically, the ongoing sequence of actions shapes the degrees of freedom for any remotely normal subsequent action. If in a conversation, I ask, “What would you like to have for dinner?,” you could reply, “Screwdrivers.” There’s no formal restraint keeping you from doing so, but unless you’re a serious nutcase or a serious alcoholic, you wouldn’t response so. There’s a wide range of possible replies, but a wider range of impossible replies – if you care at all about seeming sane and reasonable (which some might not – and their actions are perhaps freer than the rest of us in many situations).
Bambi Schieffelin’s ethnography The Give and Take of Everyday Life beautifully describes the Kaluli society of the Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea. It’s a small culture that gets by through gardening and hunting and gathering in the surrounding tropical forest. One of the interesting facets of Kaluli culture is the near absence of formal restraint on actions. There are occasional incidents of violence in the community (and Edward Schieffelin’s also beautiful and quite different ethnography of the same culture, The Sorrow of the Lonely and the Burning of the Dancers, makes clear that there are more regular instances of violence targeting members of other communities), but the general Kaluli view is that no one has the legitimate right to coerce or force anyone to do anything. This includes the parent – child relationship. (Most people in western culture or most other cultures take for granted that it’s perfectly natural for parents to command the actions of their children, but really why should we take that for granted?) But this isn’t to say that there aren’t power relations at play in Kaluli society. People shape and influence one another’s actions constantly, through attempts at persuasion, through cajoling, through shaming and ostracization. In a small society with a high degree of mutual economic dependency, cajoling, shaming, and ostracizing are in fact highly effective tools to shape and restrain the actions of others.
Knowledge and memory of typical patterns of behavior or of a specific history of interactions with an individual are important in shaping individual free action as well, via anticipation of others’ actions. Foucault’s notion of power applies straightforwardly to direct face to face interactions, but because of the role of knowledge, memory, and anticipation, actions in one context can have a carry-over effect on the actions of others in further instances over time.
Economic Restraint
This discussion of economic restraint is related to my discussion of environmental restraint, the need to meet basic needs, and Julian Steward’s “culture core” concept in my previous blog post, “Freedom and Restraint: Part II.”
Meeting basic needs is done in relationship to nature. This might be highly direct, as with Kaluli hunting and gathering activities, or even their gardening practices. Or it might be highly indirect, such as in the modern world system, where we routinely buy packaged food products which have dozens of ingredients, all produced in different places, utilizing tools and resources produced or gleaned somewhere else, but which still have, however distant, a relationship to nature. But meeting basic needs is also done in relationship to economic exchange with others.
One’s place within a web of economic exchanges (which might take the form of direct face to face reciprocity or highly complex market systems) shapes one’s possible actions. This is true for the Kaluli, but it really has minimal effect on individual free action. In larger complex societies, this is a crucial consideration. One’s place within the overall political economy profoundly shapes one’s possibilities for action. Money is a sign of this place and shapes interactions. To a significant extent, money as a sign of accrued wealth is also a sign of one’s degree of freedom in action. More wealth equals more freedom. One consequence of this is that any significant increase in individual freedoms within the modern world system is dependent on corresponding significant increases in overall wealth, though the distribution of wealth is another critical consideration, i.e. expansion of wealth is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for any significant expansion of freedom in the modern world system.
Consideration of economic restraints also brings to mind ways in which different sorts of restraints might butt up against one another. In “Freedom and Restraint: Part I,” I discussed different concepts of freedom. With the classical conception of freedom as the lack of formal restraint, wage laborers are free in the sense that they’re not obligated to work or to take a specific job. As Marx made clear, though, if freedom is thought of as the positive capacity to largely shape one’s own actions and destiny, wage laborers are hardly free to not work – they must work unless they’re independently wealthy. Most wage laborers have quite constrained possibilities for shaping their actions and lives – they’re hardly free at all in any realistic sense.
Many states in the United States have “right to work” laws, which prohibit closed union shops. Closed union shops do in fact represent a formal restraint on workers. They prevent workers from laboring there without joining the union. “Right to Work” laws prohibit this sort of formal restraint, and thus add to the freedom of workers in one way (mainly in a way that corresponds to classical notions of freedom and which not coincidently strengthens the bargaining position of capital). At the same time, closed union shops strengthen the position of unions’ collective bargaining activities, which can enhance workers’ economic position and thus, reduce economic restraints, thus increasing their freedom in another sense, i.e. increasing their ability to shape their own actions in general.
Custom and Law
Custom and law are not the same things, but they work similarly in providing explicit expectations for behavior, either through proscription or prescription. No one always meets the expectations of custom or law in all of their behavior, but most everyone is strongly influenced by them, either through proscriptive inhibition or the production of patterns of behavior under the influence of prescriptive law or custom. Further, their presence can serve to legitimate others’ actions constraining the actions of an individual.
Custom and law are not directly social relationships, and so act differently than other social restrictions and influences on action. However, they are the direct products of social relationships, i.e. produced by individuals in interaction. Further, they comprise a sort of abstract entity which acts as a crystallization of power relations. They constitute indirect social relations over time, as they are in effect one set of persons’ actions having continuous effect on others’ actions into the future.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Freedom and Restraint: Part II
I have written before about the importance of individual autonomy and the priority I place on it for ethical decision making. (See the post, "Tradition and Individual Autonomy.") In a post from a few days ago, “A Different Globalization for Labor,” I discussed Robert J. Flanagan’s book Globalization and Labor Conditions. In that post, I quoted and agreed with his argument that good policy decisions are those that enhance the opportunities of target populations. Likewise, in another post, “Are Some Cultures Better Than Others?,” I argued that any culture could be improved, by changes that enhance individuals’ autonomy and freedom. I very much agree with the words of the recently departed Mstislav Rostropovich (whose words I am quoting from a quotation in an editorial in the newsmagazine The Week from May 11, 2007), “Every man must have the right fearlessly to think independently and not merely to express with slightly different variation the opinions which have been inculcated in him.”
There are a number of restraints on freedom of individual human action, and that is the main topic of this post. In general, restraints on individual human autonomy can be divided into two types: natural restraints and social restraints, with social restraints to be discussed in my next blog entry. (I don’t mean to imply that these are clearly and absolutely distinct categories. Given the nature of human culture, various natural restraints are themselves shaped in part by human cultural practices, and social restraints are themselves shaped in part by environmental conditions and human biology. Still, the distinction is a useful one in making matters conceptually manageable.) Both natural and social restraints on freedom are present in all cultural contexts, but in very general terms, as social scale increases, natural restraints proportionally decrease in significance and social restraint generally increases in significance, though beginning in the modern era, various technologies became widely distributed with the effect of the possibility (but no guarantee) of increasing social scale and productivity alongside greater individual autonomy.
Natural Restraints
By natural restraints, I mean factors shaping and constraining free action that are not themselves social relations involving in some way the individuals whose autonomous action is being restrained. I have in mind here two sorts of restraints: human biological constants, and conditions of the physical environment which shape human action.
Human Biological Constants
Simply put, our biological composition and bodies shape the range of possibilities for human action. Biology in no way determines human action. Nor does it alone even determine the range of what is physically possible, for available technology shapes that as well, but the nature of our bodies clearly plays an important role in influencing what is possible (and what is not).
Most of what we do and experience is overwhelmingly shaped (alongside the variety of other factors I’ll address) by how our minds work, the nature of our sensory apparatus, the capabilities and limitations of physical ability, our libido and emotions (not biologically determined to be sure, but having biological components).
At the same time, once acknowledged, I’m less concerned here with such biological constants. While the role of biological constants cannot be ignored, as constants such factors are not instrumental in shaping any understanding of degrees of individual autonomy or differences in degrees of freedom across multiple contexts.
To refer to biological “constants” is not to imply that all humans are biologically identical. That would just be silly. Nor do I mean to imply that human biology is not shaped by a variety of other factors. It is, for example by long-term environmental conditions to which human populations biologically adapt (yielding patterns such as those described by Allen’s Rule, Bergmann’s Rule, or Thomsen’s Nose Rule), or by patterns of social behavior (e.g. the physical effects of exercise or different work patterns).
To speak of biological constants is intended instead to indicate that humans are relatively constant biologically, the physical variation existing within a narrow range for most traits. More importantly here, when it comes to human biology acting as a constraint on human free action, the effect is relatively constant. Arnold Swarzenneger can lift heavier objects than I can, and I can probably comfortably drive a smaller car than he, but while the details of our possible physical actions vary, there’s nothing about the types of activities either of us can engage in that’s different in any significant way. There are types of activities he can engage in that I can’t (because of the fact that he’s wealthy, a movie star, or the governor of California), but not on the basis of biological difference. There are biological differences that are significant for specific purposes (e.g. skin color in relation to a society’s long term history of exposure to ultraviolet radiation), but not generally for purposes of considering human autonomy (e.g. to the extent that skin color might be related to restraint on free action, it is for distinctly non-biological reasons).
Finally, technology might change all of this. Already, biotechnology has in some ways extended normal bodily capacity beyond what would have been the case before (e.g. the role of pacemakers in counteracting heart murmurs so that the heart functions normally). There’s no theoretical reason why biotechnology couldn’t more and more extend what is normal, and if we do enter into a thorough-going cyborg future, the idea of biological constants constraining possible action might be what seems fanciful, but we’re not there yet.
Environmental Conditions and Julian Steward’s Culture Core Argument
Environmental conditions do not determine human action in any culture, but they shape, influence, and restrain human action in all cultures.
When examining ways in which physical conditions of the environment shape and constrain human action, I find it useful to revisit Julian Steward’s “culture core” idea. It’s now an “old” idea (first fully laid out in his Theory of Culture Change from 1955), but hardly “out of date.” It has the advantage of being elegant and straightforward. It’s compatible with (in fact was a starting point for) cultural ecological and cultural materialist perspectives on relations between human practice and culture and the environment, but doesn’t require hardcore commitment to such perspectives in order to see its basic merits.
Steward’s reasoning starts with the straightforward fact that human beings have to meet certain basic needs in order to simply continue to exist, such as the need for adequate food, in some contexts the need for adequate shelter and clothing, etc. How humans go about meeting these needs is not straightforward at all, but that they must meet them - or die - is. Steward further argues that there is always a “culture core” that must maintain a certain degree of functionality. The culture core consists of those elements of culture directly related to meeting basic human needs.
The culture core is where the physical environment influences and possibly constrains cultural patterns most strongly. The culture core consists of patterns of behavior that must be performed using available resources. The nature and distribution of available resources shapes the possibilities for how people can go about making a living. In areas where resources are both plentiful and widely and evenly distributed, there may be many ways to go about meeting basic needs, and so the environment has a lesser constraining influence. In places where resources are scarce and widely scattered in distribution, there may be a much tighter range of possible ways to meet basic needs, and human action is more constrained as a result.
Technology plays a crucial role here. As societies develop technology that enable them to manipulate the physical environment to a greater degree, the environment is less of a constraining influence, or it at least constrains to a lesser degree, and the range of resources that can be utilized and the extent to which land itself might be used as a resource expands. The North American Great Plains are a great place to farm – if you have domesticated animals and steel plows (or tractors) that you’ve developed somewhere else.
In general then, environmental restraints are proportionally more important for smaller societies with lower levels of technology (though the exact nature and distribution of resources and the exact level of available technology shapes the specific degree and type of restraint that the environment plays), while larger societies are less constrained by the environment.
Even for the contemporary world with its global economy, though, the culture core concept and environmental constraint still apply. Basic needs still have to be met. There’s a quite large, but finite, range of ways in which that can currently be done, and crucially it’s not at all clear that current methods of producing basic needs are sustainable at the global level, which is a good reason for anthropologists and others who think mainly about human social relations to be cognizant of issues such as global warming, as well as human-environmental relations in general.
There are a number of restraints on freedom of individual human action, and that is the main topic of this post. In general, restraints on individual human autonomy can be divided into two types: natural restraints and social restraints, with social restraints to be discussed in my next blog entry. (I don’t mean to imply that these are clearly and absolutely distinct categories. Given the nature of human culture, various natural restraints are themselves shaped in part by human cultural practices, and social restraints are themselves shaped in part by environmental conditions and human biology. Still, the distinction is a useful one in making matters conceptually manageable.) Both natural and social restraints on freedom are present in all cultural contexts, but in very general terms, as social scale increases, natural restraints proportionally decrease in significance and social restraint generally increases in significance, though beginning in the modern era, various technologies became widely distributed with the effect of the possibility (but no guarantee) of increasing social scale and productivity alongside greater individual autonomy.
Natural Restraints
By natural restraints, I mean factors shaping and constraining free action that are not themselves social relations involving in some way the individuals whose autonomous action is being restrained. I have in mind here two sorts of restraints: human biological constants, and conditions of the physical environment which shape human action.
Human Biological Constants
Simply put, our biological composition and bodies shape the range of possibilities for human action. Biology in no way determines human action. Nor does it alone even determine the range of what is physically possible, for available technology shapes that as well, but the nature of our bodies clearly plays an important role in influencing what is possible (and what is not).
Most of what we do and experience is overwhelmingly shaped (alongside the variety of other factors I’ll address) by how our minds work, the nature of our sensory apparatus, the capabilities and limitations of physical ability, our libido and emotions (not biologically determined to be sure, but having biological components).
At the same time, once acknowledged, I’m less concerned here with such biological constants. While the role of biological constants cannot be ignored, as constants such factors are not instrumental in shaping any understanding of degrees of individual autonomy or differences in degrees of freedom across multiple contexts.
To refer to biological “constants” is not to imply that all humans are biologically identical. That would just be silly. Nor do I mean to imply that human biology is not shaped by a variety of other factors. It is, for example by long-term environmental conditions to which human populations biologically adapt (yielding patterns such as those described by Allen’s Rule, Bergmann’s Rule, or Thomsen’s Nose Rule), or by patterns of social behavior (e.g. the physical effects of exercise or different work patterns).
To speak of biological constants is intended instead to indicate that humans are relatively constant biologically, the physical variation existing within a narrow range for most traits. More importantly here, when it comes to human biology acting as a constraint on human free action, the effect is relatively constant. Arnold Swarzenneger can lift heavier objects than I can, and I can probably comfortably drive a smaller car than he, but while the details of our possible physical actions vary, there’s nothing about the types of activities either of us can engage in that’s different in any significant way. There are types of activities he can engage in that I can’t (because of the fact that he’s wealthy, a movie star, or the governor of California), but not on the basis of biological difference. There are biological differences that are significant for specific purposes (e.g. skin color in relation to a society’s long term history of exposure to ultraviolet radiation), but not generally for purposes of considering human autonomy (e.g. to the extent that skin color might be related to restraint on free action, it is for distinctly non-biological reasons).
Finally, technology might change all of this. Already, biotechnology has in some ways extended normal bodily capacity beyond what would have been the case before (e.g. the role of pacemakers in counteracting heart murmurs so that the heart functions normally). There’s no theoretical reason why biotechnology couldn’t more and more extend what is normal, and if we do enter into a thorough-going cyborg future, the idea of biological constants constraining possible action might be what seems fanciful, but we’re not there yet.
Environmental Conditions and Julian Steward’s Culture Core Argument
Environmental conditions do not determine human action in any culture, but they shape, influence, and restrain human action in all cultures.
When examining ways in which physical conditions of the environment shape and constrain human action, I find it useful to revisit Julian Steward’s “culture core” idea. It’s now an “old” idea (first fully laid out in his Theory of Culture Change from 1955), but hardly “out of date.” It has the advantage of being elegant and straightforward. It’s compatible with (in fact was a starting point for) cultural ecological and cultural materialist perspectives on relations between human practice and culture and the environment, but doesn’t require hardcore commitment to such perspectives in order to see its basic merits.
Steward’s reasoning starts with the straightforward fact that human beings have to meet certain basic needs in order to simply continue to exist, such as the need for adequate food, in some contexts the need for adequate shelter and clothing, etc. How humans go about meeting these needs is not straightforward at all, but that they must meet them - or die - is. Steward further argues that there is always a “culture core” that must maintain a certain degree of functionality. The culture core consists of those elements of culture directly related to meeting basic human needs.
The culture core is where the physical environment influences and possibly constrains cultural patterns most strongly. The culture core consists of patterns of behavior that must be performed using available resources. The nature and distribution of available resources shapes the possibilities for how people can go about making a living. In areas where resources are both plentiful and widely and evenly distributed, there may be many ways to go about meeting basic needs, and so the environment has a lesser constraining influence. In places where resources are scarce and widely scattered in distribution, there may be a much tighter range of possible ways to meet basic needs, and human action is more constrained as a result.
Technology plays a crucial role here. As societies develop technology that enable them to manipulate the physical environment to a greater degree, the environment is less of a constraining influence, or it at least constrains to a lesser degree, and the range of resources that can be utilized and the extent to which land itself might be used as a resource expands. The North American Great Plains are a great place to farm – if you have domesticated animals and steel plows (or tractors) that you’ve developed somewhere else.
In general then, environmental restraints are proportionally more important for smaller societies with lower levels of technology (though the exact nature and distribution of resources and the exact level of available technology shapes the specific degree and type of restraint that the environment plays), while larger societies are less constrained by the environment.
Even for the contemporary world with its global economy, though, the culture core concept and environmental constraint still apply. Basic needs still have to be met. There’s a quite large, but finite, range of ways in which that can currently be done, and crucially it’s not at all clear that current methods of producing basic needs are sustainable at the global level, which is a good reason for anthropologists and others who think mainly about human social relations to be cognizant of issues such as global warming, as well as human-environmental relations in general.
Monday, May 14, 2007
Freedom and Restraint: Part I
What does it mean to have freedom and autonomy?
Classical economic and political definitions of freedom (and neoliberal definitions as well) tend to work negatively, defining freedom as absence of formal restraint. Formal restraint would consist of deliberate actions intended to constrain the actions of others. Such freedom from formal restraint is important, e.g. freedom from restriction of speech or assembly.
As Peter Singer argues in Marx: A Very Short Introduction, one of Karl Marx’s most important contributions to thought was a new way of thinking about freedom, with freedom defined in positive terms. Marx recognized that the liberal conception of freedom as the absence of formal restraint was insufficient. Free wage labor means the laborer is freed from a formal obligation to work or to work a specific job. That’s not insignificant – it beats the alternatives of serfdom, slavery, debt peonage, or being sent to the labor house as a vagabond, but in no realistic sense does a worker have freedom to not work.
My conception of freedom and individual autonomy would similarly be framed positively as the ability to determine one’s own actions and personal destiny. I’m reminded of a statement by Peter Fonda’s character, leader of a motorcycle gang in the movie Wild Angels. The motorcycle gang have just ridden their bikes through a rural church and are generally tearing the place up when the preacher asks the Peter Fonda character what it is that they want. He responds, “We want to be free!” To which the preacher asks, “But what is it that you want to be free to do?” (A reasonable enough question.) “We want to be free to do what it is that we want to do.” There’s something absurd about the scene, especially with the over the top delivery of the lines, but completely free action and individual autonomy would entail being free to do what one wants to do, including being free to not know what one wants to do. The scene also indicates, what with the freedom-loving motorcycle riders ripping apart the church for no apparent reason, that there may be desirable limits to individual free action as well.
As I’ve argued elsewhere (see my earlier posts “Tradition and Individual Autonomy,” and “Are Some Cultures Better Than Others?”), I place tremendous importance on freedom and autonomy, though within the limits of one’s actions not seriously threatening or constraining those of others.
Also, in practice, though I prefer not to define freedom in the negative terms of restraint on action (those would be inhibitions to freedom, but not freedom – and the lack of such inhibitions is simply the lack of such inhibitions, rather than freedom itself, which again, I would conceptualize in the positive terms of ability to determine one’s own actions and personal destiny), all of us have our actions shaped and restrained by a variety of factors.
Among the factors that routinely restrain human action are human biology, physical conditions of the environment, power relations in interpersonal relations, economic relations, cultural custom and law. These will be the topics of my following two blog posts.
I should note at the onset of that short project, though, that while I generally feel that free action and autonomy are positive qualities, and that changes or policies that enhance individual autonomy are generally good, that doesn’t mean that I feel that all the restraints on free action that I’ll discuss are uniformly or straightforwardly bad. Some I would consider neutral – the nature of the human body places limits on what we’re physically capable of doing, but I find it hard to consider that either good or bad. Other restraints on free action are clearly not bad. Legal restraints prohibiting ripping apart someone’s church with motorcycles for no good reason other than one felt like it are a good thing. As I write this, I just got home from my parents’ house where I celebrated Mother’s Day. There was no formal restraint forcing me to celebrate Mother’s Day. Like any reasonably good son, I didn’t mind and quite enjoyed honoring my mother on this day. At the same time, I couldn’t not celebrate Mother’s Day. This was a different type of restraint from legal restraint or economic restraint, but my free action, technically speaking, was constrained, albeit in a way I didn’t mind at all and am quite fond of. In other words, over my next few posts, what I’ll be interested in is simply discussing the various factors which shape and constrain individual free action, without assuming that all such factors are undesirable or socially negative.
Classical economic and political definitions of freedom (and neoliberal definitions as well) tend to work negatively, defining freedom as absence of formal restraint. Formal restraint would consist of deliberate actions intended to constrain the actions of others. Such freedom from formal restraint is important, e.g. freedom from restriction of speech or assembly.
As Peter Singer argues in Marx: A Very Short Introduction, one of Karl Marx’s most important contributions to thought was a new way of thinking about freedom, with freedom defined in positive terms. Marx recognized that the liberal conception of freedom as the absence of formal restraint was insufficient. Free wage labor means the laborer is freed from a formal obligation to work or to work a specific job. That’s not insignificant – it beats the alternatives of serfdom, slavery, debt peonage, or being sent to the labor house as a vagabond, but in no realistic sense does a worker have freedom to not work.
My conception of freedom and individual autonomy would similarly be framed positively as the ability to determine one’s own actions and personal destiny. I’m reminded of a statement by Peter Fonda’s character, leader of a motorcycle gang in the movie Wild Angels. The motorcycle gang have just ridden their bikes through a rural church and are generally tearing the place up when the preacher asks the Peter Fonda character what it is that they want. He responds, “We want to be free!” To which the preacher asks, “But what is it that you want to be free to do?” (A reasonable enough question.) “We want to be free to do what it is that we want to do.” There’s something absurd about the scene, especially with the over the top delivery of the lines, but completely free action and individual autonomy would entail being free to do what one wants to do, including being free to not know what one wants to do. The scene also indicates, what with the freedom-loving motorcycle riders ripping apart the church for no apparent reason, that there may be desirable limits to individual free action as well.
As I’ve argued elsewhere (see my earlier posts “Tradition and Individual Autonomy,” and “Are Some Cultures Better Than Others?”), I place tremendous importance on freedom and autonomy, though within the limits of one’s actions not seriously threatening or constraining those of others.
Also, in practice, though I prefer not to define freedom in the negative terms of restraint on action (those would be inhibitions to freedom, but not freedom – and the lack of such inhibitions is simply the lack of such inhibitions, rather than freedom itself, which again, I would conceptualize in the positive terms of ability to determine one’s own actions and personal destiny), all of us have our actions shaped and restrained by a variety of factors.
Among the factors that routinely restrain human action are human biology, physical conditions of the environment, power relations in interpersonal relations, economic relations, cultural custom and law. These will be the topics of my following two blog posts.
I should note at the onset of that short project, though, that while I generally feel that free action and autonomy are positive qualities, and that changes or policies that enhance individual autonomy are generally good, that doesn’t mean that I feel that all the restraints on free action that I’ll discuss are uniformly or straightforwardly bad. Some I would consider neutral – the nature of the human body places limits on what we’re physically capable of doing, but I find it hard to consider that either good or bad. Other restraints on free action are clearly not bad. Legal restraints prohibiting ripping apart someone’s church with motorcycles for no good reason other than one felt like it are a good thing. As I write this, I just got home from my parents’ house where I celebrated Mother’s Day. There was no formal restraint forcing me to celebrate Mother’s Day. Like any reasonably good son, I didn’t mind and quite enjoyed honoring my mother on this day. At the same time, I couldn’t not celebrate Mother’s Day. This was a different type of restraint from legal restraint or economic restraint, but my free action, technically speaking, was constrained, albeit in a way I didn’t mind at all and am quite fond of. In other words, over my next few posts, what I’ll be interested in is simply discussing the various factors which shape and constrain individual free action, without assuming that all such factors are undesirable or socially negative.
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