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.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
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.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
An interesting perspective on free trade
Alan S. Blinder has an interesting essay on global free trade in this past Sunday's Washington Post. It's worth taking a look at.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/04/AR2007050402555_pf.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/04/AR2007050402555_pf.html
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Is Alexander Cockburn Serious About Global Warming?
Alexander Cockburn, a regular columnist for The Nation, begins his essay, “Is Global Warming a Sin?,” in the May 14, 2007 issue with an interesting analogy, likening the current developing (and mostly online) market in “carbon offsets” (where people assuage their guilt over their own contributions to global warming by paying others to do things that will offset the effects of their own CO2 emissions) to the medieval church’s sales of indulgences to offset sins. (I’ve encountered this basic analogy with other recent writers as well, and here, Cockburn gets the details of the analogy a bit off – he likens the current situation to the supposed role of indulgences alongside 10th century millennial fears, whereas indulgences had little or nothing to do with such 10th century fears, being mainly a much later phenomenon – though I also see the point of the [faulty] analogy – we live in a millenarian society that seems to thrive on fearing the end of the world [Y2K, terror, anthrax, dirty bombs, smallpox, avian flu, global warming], though that’s not to say that some of the feared threats, like global warming, aren’t real.)
I expected from his first paragraph that Cockburn was going to talk about problems with carbon offset schemes (there’s absolutely no accountability, there’s no clear indication that the “offset” activities actually offset buyer’s own emissions, they assuage people’s guilt without really addressing the larger problems) or perhaps the ways in which hype, fantasy, and millennial fears do play a role, alongside strong, empirically grounded science, in shaping public discourse about global warming.
Instead he proceeded to challenge the notion that there is any anthropogenic role in global warming. Certainly there is valid scientific debate about the extent of the role that human action (vs. natural causes that might be operating simultaneously) plays in overall global warming, and about the exact contribution of specific human actions compared to others. At this point, though, claiming, as Cockburn does, that “there is still zero empirical evidence that anthropogenic production of carbon dioxide is making any measurable contribution to the world’s present warming trend,” makes him decidedly the odd man out. Even George W. Bush has by now (in his last state of the union address) acknowledged the human role in global warming and the need to do something about it, though I’m not holding my breath to wait for him or his administration to take positive action on the issue.
What I was most taken aback by, though, was not his overall claim. Instead, it was the simplistic nature of his “proof.” For his proof that there is no human caused role in atmospheric CO2 accumulation and global warming, he draws solely on two graphs drawn by former meteorologist Martin Hertzberg. One graph shows global CO2 emissions beginning in 1928, with a general upward trend but some large dips (corresponding to things like major drops in economic production at the start of the Great Depression). The other shows concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere with a steadily upward trajectory. Cockburn concludes from this, “The two lines on that graph proclaim that a whopping 30 percent cut in man-made CO2 emissions didn’t even cause a 1 ppm drop in the atmosphere’s CO2. It is thus impossible to assert that the increase in atmospheric CO2 stems from people burning fossil fuels.”
There are at least two important problems with such thinking. First, for the comparison to make any sense, Cockburn and Hertzberg must be assuming that CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are from that year’s emissions alone, which they are not. A dip in emissions for a few years, thus, would not be paired with a directly corresponding dip in CO2 concentrations. At most, you’d see a slowing in the increase of such atmospheric concentrations, which frankly is what the few numbers included in Cockburn’s column seem to indicate. Second, this simple comparison of two variables, while perhaps intuitively elegant, is an incredibly simplistic model on which to base any conclusions about global climate in general. It doesn’t even provide a sufficient basis for understanding the two variables and their relationships (to each other or to other variables), e.g. are atmospheric concentrations of CO2 simply related to total quantities emitted, or does the context of emission matter; is total warming related simply to total concentration of CO2 or more to concentrations in specific regions of the globe; are emissions concentrated in the atmosphere in their region of emission or not, and what’s the effect on climate, etc. It also doesn’t take into account any other factors that might affect global warming. In short, there’s no way you can logically and empirically conclude from Cockburn and Hertzberg’s simplistic comparison that it’s “impossible to assert that the increase in atmospheric CO2 stems from people burning fossil fuels,” much less that you’ve proved there’s no anthropogenic role in global warming.
I expected from his first paragraph that Cockburn was going to talk about problems with carbon offset schemes (there’s absolutely no accountability, there’s no clear indication that the “offset” activities actually offset buyer’s own emissions, they assuage people’s guilt without really addressing the larger problems) or perhaps the ways in which hype, fantasy, and millennial fears do play a role, alongside strong, empirically grounded science, in shaping public discourse about global warming.
Instead he proceeded to challenge the notion that there is any anthropogenic role in global warming. Certainly there is valid scientific debate about the extent of the role that human action (vs. natural causes that might be operating simultaneously) plays in overall global warming, and about the exact contribution of specific human actions compared to others. At this point, though, claiming, as Cockburn does, that “there is still zero empirical evidence that anthropogenic production of carbon dioxide is making any measurable contribution to the world’s present warming trend,” makes him decidedly the odd man out. Even George W. Bush has by now (in his last state of the union address) acknowledged the human role in global warming and the need to do something about it, though I’m not holding my breath to wait for him or his administration to take positive action on the issue.
What I was most taken aback by, though, was not his overall claim. Instead, it was the simplistic nature of his “proof.” For his proof that there is no human caused role in atmospheric CO2 accumulation and global warming, he draws solely on two graphs drawn by former meteorologist Martin Hertzberg. One graph shows global CO2 emissions beginning in 1928, with a general upward trend but some large dips (corresponding to things like major drops in economic production at the start of the Great Depression). The other shows concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere with a steadily upward trajectory. Cockburn concludes from this, “The two lines on that graph proclaim that a whopping 30 percent cut in man-made CO2 emissions didn’t even cause a 1 ppm drop in the atmosphere’s CO2. It is thus impossible to assert that the increase in atmospheric CO2 stems from people burning fossil fuels.”
There are at least two important problems with such thinking. First, for the comparison to make any sense, Cockburn and Hertzberg must be assuming that CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are from that year’s emissions alone, which they are not. A dip in emissions for a few years, thus, would not be paired with a directly corresponding dip in CO2 concentrations. At most, you’d see a slowing in the increase of such atmospheric concentrations, which frankly is what the few numbers included in Cockburn’s column seem to indicate. Second, this simple comparison of two variables, while perhaps intuitively elegant, is an incredibly simplistic model on which to base any conclusions about global climate in general. It doesn’t even provide a sufficient basis for understanding the two variables and their relationships (to each other or to other variables), e.g. are atmospheric concentrations of CO2 simply related to total quantities emitted, or does the context of emission matter; is total warming related simply to total concentration of CO2 or more to concentrations in specific regions of the globe; are emissions concentrated in the atmosphere in their region of emission or not, and what’s the effect on climate, etc. It also doesn’t take into account any other factors that might affect global warming. In short, there’s no way you can logically and empirically conclude from Cockburn and Hertzberg’s simplistic comparison that it’s “impossible to assert that the increase in atmospheric CO2 stems from people burning fossil fuels,” much less that you’ve proved there’s no anthropogenic role in global warming.
Monday, May 7, 2007
A Different Globalization for Labor
It is commonly acknowledged among scholars and activists who identify as “progressive,” “liberal,” or otherwise left-leaning that globalization is bad in many ways for workers in developed countries such as the United States. While there is always tension between the interests of capital and labor, there have been moments when the economic interests of the two somewhat converged in specific contexts. In the case of “globalization” as currently practiced, with its “just in time” production, the outsourcing of manufacturing, and increasingly service, jobs, and free trade agreements conceptualized primarily in terms of free movement of goods and services (but not of workers), this is very much not the case. Rather, the interests of labor and capital (or corporations or “the economy”) are in some ways becoming highly divergent in developed nation contexts. (See also my recent posts on these topics: How Unique or Radically New is Our Current Situation Today?; Three Things Karl Marx Didn't See Coming; The "Sameness" of Republicans and Democrats)
Another common assumption is that such globalization processes are also bad for labor in the developing nation contexts that manufacturing and service jobs are being outsourced to, e.g. promoting sweat shop labor conditions. Robert J. Flanagan has recently published an important book on this topic, Globalization and Labor Conditions (Oxford University Press, 2006). Flanagan closely examines the available data on labor conditions around the world. He is clearly sympathetic to critiques of globalization, but comes to the conclusion that overall, globalization has led to improved conditions for labor in much of the world. He in no way implies that globalization processes make things wonderful for workers in developing countries. As he documents, there are things like sweatshop labor associated with globalization, but there are more overall jobs and fewer jobs with the worst labor conditions in more open developing economies – hardly what I’d consider a ringing endorsement, but still having more lousy jobs available might be better than having fewer or no lousy jobs available, even while still not good.
The argument Flanagan makes that I find most interesting is that workers in poorer countries would be well served by an even more open trade regime, one more open to the movement of labor. He writes (p. 181):
“Few people actively support poor labor conditions; many advance proposals for improving them. How should one sort through the flow of proposals to decide which ideas deserve serious attention? A very useful first principle of policy choice is to favor policies that expand, rather than contract, opportunities for target groups. The mechanisms of globalization fare very well by this criterion. The evidence developed and presented in this book and reviewed in the early part of this chapter shows how international trade, international migration, and multinational companies contribute to improved working conditions and labor rights. Contrary to the indictment of globalization outlined in the first chapter, the world’s workers would gain from fewer restrictions on these mechanisms of globalization. This conclusion applies most strongly to the world’s poorest workers. Relaxing barriers to international migration offers the most promising opportunity for expanding the positive impact of globalization on labor conditions, but prospects for international action to promote the international movement of labor seem dim at the beginning of the twenty-first century.”
Freer movement of labor (which wouldn’t have to mean unregulated or unmonitored) would benefit labor by allowing tools such as modern transportation technology to benefit labor as well as capital. As Flanagan suggests, this would most benefit the poorest workers, but by helping the cheapest labor not be stuck in place, easier movement would indirectly aid other workers as well by making the strategy of chasing the cheapest labor via outsourcing a little less effective.
As Flanagan also points out, international action to promote freer (and regulated) movement of labor is unlikely soon. For starters, it’s not in the interests of capital (though having some available undocumented immigrant labor to mercilessly exploit in developed nation contexts is in capital’s interests). Second, freer movement of labor is understandably resisted by labor in developed countries – more immigrants are more competition for jobs that are already being reduced through outsourcing.
A recent commentary in The Nation (May 7, 2007, p. 8) by Deepak Bhargava and Angelica Salas makes a case for immigration reform, including regulated but freer movement, being in the interests of all labor and a worthy progressive cause. Freer, but documented and regulated immigration could contribute to eliminating the abuses of undocumented laborers and the problems for resident laborers in terms of wage competition. Also, as argued above, a move towards a free trade regime that emphasizes not just free movement of goods and services but of labor as well would most benefit the poorest, but would indirectly benefit labor in general by reducing capital’s ability to locate and fix in place the cheapest labor (because those laborers could simply move elsewhere for higher wages, contributing to upward pressure on wages in general).
Like it or not, we’re stuck with capitalism and globalization. That’s simply not going to change anytime soon. We’re not so clearly stuck with the precise details of capitalist globalization as it now functions. For those of us seeing ourselves as progressives, it makes sense to contribute to efforts at modifying globalization so that it serves the interests of labor as much as capital.
Another common assumption is that such globalization processes are also bad for labor in the developing nation contexts that manufacturing and service jobs are being outsourced to, e.g. promoting sweat shop labor conditions. Robert J. Flanagan has recently published an important book on this topic, Globalization and Labor Conditions (Oxford University Press, 2006). Flanagan closely examines the available data on labor conditions around the world. He is clearly sympathetic to critiques of globalization, but comes to the conclusion that overall, globalization has led to improved conditions for labor in much of the world. He in no way implies that globalization processes make things wonderful for workers in developing countries. As he documents, there are things like sweatshop labor associated with globalization, but there are more overall jobs and fewer jobs with the worst labor conditions in more open developing economies – hardly what I’d consider a ringing endorsement, but still having more lousy jobs available might be better than having fewer or no lousy jobs available, even while still not good.
The argument Flanagan makes that I find most interesting is that workers in poorer countries would be well served by an even more open trade regime, one more open to the movement of labor. He writes (p. 181):
“Few people actively support poor labor conditions; many advance proposals for improving them. How should one sort through the flow of proposals to decide which ideas deserve serious attention? A very useful first principle of policy choice is to favor policies that expand, rather than contract, opportunities for target groups. The mechanisms of globalization fare very well by this criterion. The evidence developed and presented in this book and reviewed in the early part of this chapter shows how international trade, international migration, and multinational companies contribute to improved working conditions and labor rights. Contrary to the indictment of globalization outlined in the first chapter, the world’s workers would gain from fewer restrictions on these mechanisms of globalization. This conclusion applies most strongly to the world’s poorest workers. Relaxing barriers to international migration offers the most promising opportunity for expanding the positive impact of globalization on labor conditions, but prospects for international action to promote the international movement of labor seem dim at the beginning of the twenty-first century.”
Freer movement of labor (which wouldn’t have to mean unregulated or unmonitored) would benefit labor by allowing tools such as modern transportation technology to benefit labor as well as capital. As Flanagan suggests, this would most benefit the poorest workers, but by helping the cheapest labor not be stuck in place, easier movement would indirectly aid other workers as well by making the strategy of chasing the cheapest labor via outsourcing a little less effective.
As Flanagan also points out, international action to promote freer (and regulated) movement of labor is unlikely soon. For starters, it’s not in the interests of capital (though having some available undocumented immigrant labor to mercilessly exploit in developed nation contexts is in capital’s interests). Second, freer movement of labor is understandably resisted by labor in developed countries – more immigrants are more competition for jobs that are already being reduced through outsourcing.
A recent commentary in The Nation (May 7, 2007, p. 8) by Deepak Bhargava and Angelica Salas makes a case for immigration reform, including regulated but freer movement, being in the interests of all labor and a worthy progressive cause. Freer, but documented and regulated immigration could contribute to eliminating the abuses of undocumented laborers and the problems for resident laborers in terms of wage competition. Also, as argued above, a move towards a free trade regime that emphasizes not just free movement of goods and services but of labor as well would most benefit the poorest, but would indirectly benefit labor in general by reducing capital’s ability to locate and fix in place the cheapest labor (because those laborers could simply move elsewhere for higher wages, contributing to upward pressure on wages in general).
Like it or not, we’re stuck with capitalism and globalization. That’s simply not going to change anytime soon. We’re not so clearly stuck with the precise details of capitalist globalization as it now functions. For those of us seeing ourselves as progressives, it makes sense to contribute to efforts at modifying globalization so that it serves the interests of labor as much as capital.
Thursday, May 3, 2007
Big Men, Chiefs, and Cultural and Historical Comparison
In two posts over the past week (“Not the War of 1812” and “2006 and 1930”) I addressed two recent examples from news and commentary magazines (Time and The Nation) of comparisons between the present moment and events and earlier historical contexts.
Both articles I commented on share a common flaw, a sort of two-step error in identification. First, both authors do identify interesting parallels between certain aspects of the present and particular historical moments, but go beyond this to imply an identity between the contexts, at least in all essential or important regards. Second, they assume that what happened then will happen now and in the near future, or at the least that what happened then is a reliable guide to what’s likely to happen now.
This is an understandable approach. It would perhaps be useful and satisfying to be able to identify historical or cross-cultural situations which highly parallel our current context sufficiently to offer a sort of skeleton key to discern the short term course of events beforehand.
The problem with this is actually fairly simple. Social and historical contexts are unique (i.e. involving a specific set of individuals doing a specific set of things in specific spaces) and simply too complex to discern the sorts of total parallels necessary to accurately prognosticate the future through historical analysis or ethnological comparison.
This doesn’t mean that historical or cross-cultural comparison is not useful or insightful. At best, though, such comparison yields insights into general tendencies and associations – it may yield a useful awareness of likely possibilities if comparison is carefully defined and delimited. Where the comparative approach works best is in lining up commonalities and differences across two or more contexts in an attempt to discern recurring associations between similar aspects of phenomena. In pursuit of this, comparison works best not through any attempt to identify contexts which parallel one another in a total sense, but actually through comparing situations that are both similar and different in important regards (where difference allows for more clear discernment of enduring associations, even in contexts which otherwise differ).
As a side note, useful historical or sociocultural comparison pursues nomothetic generalizations, the identification of associated patterns which tend to co-occur across a variety of settings. As such, it is not opposed to idiographic scholarly approaches which focus on careful description and analysis of particular settings. Instead, careful comparison depends on thorough-going idiographic work having been done on the contexts under comparison. Further, neither idiographic nor comparative nomothetic scholarship are exclusive to any style of scholarly work – either can be conducted using any number of data collection and analysis techniques.
An example of a useful ethnological comparison can start to be discerned in Marshall Sahlins’ classic essay “Poor Man, Rich Man, Big Man, Chief.” In this article, Sahlins presents an important distinction in political organization between the island cultures of Melanesia and of Polynesia (with regard to Melanesia, it seems apparent to me that he’s mainly talking about island Melanesia and coastal New Guinea, but not particularly the interior areas of New Guinea – at least when it comes to identifying key cultural features). While also laying out important social parallels between the two cultural areas, he notes the predominance of “Big Man” political organization (characterized by small polities, and personal influence but not authority of political leaders – the “Big Men”) in Melanesia and of chiefdoms in Polynesia (characterized by larger polities, with chiefs coming into political offices with both power and authority). He doesn’t really make an argument about causation in the article, but he does also note one other suggestive distinction between the two areas, specifically that Melanesian culture tends to be associated with smaller resource bases (smaller islands or interior valleys largely isolated from others by the rugged terrain in the interior of New Guinea). This in turn would mean smaller surpluses that could be extracted and concentrated to form a permanent political elite that can effectively maintain its power and authority through things like full time armed cadres of supporters.
The sort of comparison started by Sahlins in that article can, I think, be usefully extended to make the association between size of resource base and scale of political development clearer if the comparison is fleshed out via more recognition between important cultural differences within Melanesia that still remain associated with the factors identified by Sahlins. In many ways, coastal and island Melanesia is more like Polynesia than like the interior of New Guinea. Linguistically, Austronesian languages are prevalent throughout the coastal and island areas of both Melanesia and Polynesia, in contrast to the prevalence of non-Austronesian languages in interior Melanesia. In terms of subsistence patterns, coastal and island Melanesia and Polynesia emphasize marine resources to provide plentiful protein, alongside cultivation of a variety of tuber and orchard crops and domesticated pigs. Interior Melanesia emphasizes much the same crops and the pigs, but instead of heavy utilization of marine resources, farming is supplemented with gathering and the hunting of terrestrial game animals – arguably providing a somewhat more meager protein base. Interior Melanesian societies are often much more male dominated, with a fratriarchal form of male domination, than is the case with either coastal / island Melanesia or Polynesia. (Whether fratriarchal male domination is related to lower protein resources in tropical forest zones in New Guinea or the Amazon basin was part of what the “Protein Debates” in anthropological scholarship of the 1970s was all about.) Despite major cultural differences between interior and coastal Melanesia, the association between size of resource base and “Big Man” or similar forms of political organizations holds in both portions of Melanesia, and is in fact strengthened by awareness of the important differences.
Cross-cultural or historical comparison is a useful tool in discerning patterns that endure across multiple settings. What we should not realistically expect to encounter are contexts that parallel one another in all essential respects (and even if we did, it would say little or nothing of use about general patterns that operate beyond those two specific settings).
Both articles I commented on share a common flaw, a sort of two-step error in identification. First, both authors do identify interesting parallels between certain aspects of the present and particular historical moments, but go beyond this to imply an identity between the contexts, at least in all essential or important regards. Second, they assume that what happened then will happen now and in the near future, or at the least that what happened then is a reliable guide to what’s likely to happen now.
This is an understandable approach. It would perhaps be useful and satisfying to be able to identify historical or cross-cultural situations which highly parallel our current context sufficiently to offer a sort of skeleton key to discern the short term course of events beforehand.
The problem with this is actually fairly simple. Social and historical contexts are unique (i.e. involving a specific set of individuals doing a specific set of things in specific spaces) and simply too complex to discern the sorts of total parallels necessary to accurately prognosticate the future through historical analysis or ethnological comparison.
This doesn’t mean that historical or cross-cultural comparison is not useful or insightful. At best, though, such comparison yields insights into general tendencies and associations – it may yield a useful awareness of likely possibilities if comparison is carefully defined and delimited. Where the comparative approach works best is in lining up commonalities and differences across two or more contexts in an attempt to discern recurring associations between similar aspects of phenomena. In pursuit of this, comparison works best not through any attempt to identify contexts which parallel one another in a total sense, but actually through comparing situations that are both similar and different in important regards (where difference allows for more clear discernment of enduring associations, even in contexts which otherwise differ).
As a side note, useful historical or sociocultural comparison pursues nomothetic generalizations, the identification of associated patterns which tend to co-occur across a variety of settings. As such, it is not opposed to idiographic scholarly approaches which focus on careful description and analysis of particular settings. Instead, careful comparison depends on thorough-going idiographic work having been done on the contexts under comparison. Further, neither idiographic nor comparative nomothetic scholarship are exclusive to any style of scholarly work – either can be conducted using any number of data collection and analysis techniques.
An example of a useful ethnological comparison can start to be discerned in Marshall Sahlins’ classic essay “Poor Man, Rich Man, Big Man, Chief.” In this article, Sahlins presents an important distinction in political organization between the island cultures of Melanesia and of Polynesia (with regard to Melanesia, it seems apparent to me that he’s mainly talking about island Melanesia and coastal New Guinea, but not particularly the interior areas of New Guinea – at least when it comes to identifying key cultural features). While also laying out important social parallels between the two cultural areas, he notes the predominance of “Big Man” political organization (characterized by small polities, and personal influence but not authority of political leaders – the “Big Men”) in Melanesia and of chiefdoms in Polynesia (characterized by larger polities, with chiefs coming into political offices with both power and authority). He doesn’t really make an argument about causation in the article, but he does also note one other suggestive distinction between the two areas, specifically that Melanesian culture tends to be associated with smaller resource bases (smaller islands or interior valleys largely isolated from others by the rugged terrain in the interior of New Guinea). This in turn would mean smaller surpluses that could be extracted and concentrated to form a permanent political elite that can effectively maintain its power and authority through things like full time armed cadres of supporters.
The sort of comparison started by Sahlins in that article can, I think, be usefully extended to make the association between size of resource base and scale of political development clearer if the comparison is fleshed out via more recognition between important cultural differences within Melanesia that still remain associated with the factors identified by Sahlins. In many ways, coastal and island Melanesia is more like Polynesia than like the interior of New Guinea. Linguistically, Austronesian languages are prevalent throughout the coastal and island areas of both Melanesia and Polynesia, in contrast to the prevalence of non-Austronesian languages in interior Melanesia. In terms of subsistence patterns, coastal and island Melanesia and Polynesia emphasize marine resources to provide plentiful protein, alongside cultivation of a variety of tuber and orchard crops and domesticated pigs. Interior Melanesia emphasizes much the same crops and the pigs, but instead of heavy utilization of marine resources, farming is supplemented with gathering and the hunting of terrestrial game animals – arguably providing a somewhat more meager protein base. Interior Melanesian societies are often much more male dominated, with a fratriarchal form of male domination, than is the case with either coastal / island Melanesia or Polynesia. (Whether fratriarchal male domination is related to lower protein resources in tropical forest zones in New Guinea or the Amazon basin was part of what the “Protein Debates” in anthropological scholarship of the 1970s was all about.) Despite major cultural differences between interior and coastal Melanesia, the association between size of resource base and “Big Man” or similar forms of political organizations holds in both portions of Melanesia, and is in fact strengthened by awareness of the important differences.
Cross-cultural or historical comparison is a useful tool in discerning patterns that endure across multiple settings. What we should not realistically expect to encounter are contexts that parallel one another in all essential respects (and even if we did, it would say little or nothing of use about general patterns that operate beyond those two specific settings).
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