debitage: part of the core tool and scraper tradition

debitage

18.3.06

Liberalism's Hidden Bias

Maia at Capitalism Bad, Tree Pretty has a post that I think hits at one of the key dilemmas facing the broadly-defined liberal tradition. She describes how ostensibly "free" and unbiased spaces like Wikipedia and Indymedia have ended up perpetuating sexism.

Pre-liberal social spaces were explicitly biased. They deliberately and openly favored certain ideas and people over others. The classic examples are Mideval laws against being a Catholic or a Protestant (depending on what country you were in) and the denial of suffrage to women, nonwhites, and the poor. Liberalism rejected such bias, arguing that the rules of society ought to be neutral between people and ideas. If we could thereby establish procedural fairness, substantive justice would follow.

Old explicit biases persist in some areas of our society, such as discriminatory marriage law. But liberalism has reshaped the social landscape, such that even those conservatives who prefer the substantive biases of the old order will justify their views -- often with complete sincerity -- in the liberal idiom of neutrality between people and ideas. The open posting rules at a place like Wikipedia or Indymedia are good examples of the liberal ideal.

But leftists like Maia have been quick to point out that liberalism hasn't lived up to its promise. Explicitly unbiased institutions are not enough when there is a great deal of unexplicit bias remaining in society. The sexism of our society -- the set of ideas that individuals have, the ways they've been taught to express/act on those ideas, and the unequal distribution of various types of informal power -- spill over into formally neutral spaces and exploit them for the reproduction of bias. Indeed, I suspect that one of the explanations for liberalism's historical success is that the powerful strata recognized -- even if unconsciously -- that placing formally fair institutions in an environment of entrenched bias would allow that bias to reproduce itself. We don't, for example, need to explicitly ban Judaism or feminism in order to keep society Christian and sexist.

There are at least four possible responses to the leftist critique from the perspective of someone who finds the biases explicitly enshrined by the old order, and continuing under the formal fairness of liberalism, to be substantively unjust. (From her brief reference to a need for "structures" to fix the problem, it's unclear whether Maia favors 2, 3, or 4 on my list -- or something else I haven't thought of.)

1. Settle. Probably the most common response is to say that for all its problems, the procedural fairness of liberalism is better than the explicit bias of the alternative. This is usually coupled with an expectation that in the long run, those unexplicit biases that undercut the liberal promise of substantive justice will be worked out. After all, liberalism has created enough space for a variety of social movements, which have had some success already in changing the biased environment.

2. Retreat to better biases. We might simply give up on liberalism, and decide to return to the explicit enshrining of bias -- albeit this time a bias in favor of the correct conclusions and justice rather than error and injustice. Though some leftists (like the Bolsheviks) have taken this route, I think it's far less common than critics of the left make it out to be.

3. Compensatory bias. Compensatory bias consists in establishing temporary countervailing explicit biases to balance out the unexplicit biases in society. Eventually, it is hoped that the unexplicit biases will fade, and with them the need for the countervailing bias. And once the social environment is no longer biased, the formally fair institutions of classical liberalism will be sufficient to ensure justice.

4. Refexive liberalism. This is the most appealing, but hardest to pin down, option. The goal of reflexive liberalism is to make the committment to procedural fairness go deeper, so that existing unexplicit biases are unable to spill over and unfairly reproduce themselves. Various thinkers (eg Anthony Giddens, Chantal Mouffe, and Jurgen Habermas) have expounded on the parameters for such a project, but as of yet I haven't seen any good solutions at the level of overarching philosophy. Amanda Marcotte's response to the great feminist comments debate provides, I think, an example of an attempt at a reflexive liberal solution to one liberal problem, specifically the way sexism infests the ostensibly fair space of comment threads. Marcotte advocates banning thread drift. This rule, while ostensibly neutral, cuts away one of the key mechanisms by which the bias in the social environment is able to exploit liberal institutions to perpetuate itself. We could debate the merits of Marcotte's particular proposal -- note, for example, her own calls for progressives to reframe, i.e. shift the topic of, the larger media discourse -- but the direction that she's looking for answers illustrates the idea of reflexive liberalism.

Stentor Danielson, 11:25, ,

15.3.06

Does Childhood Play Make Environmentalists, Or The Other Way Around?

Here's a study whose finding seems so obvious that the authors jump right past a plausible alternative hypothesis.

If you want your children to grow up to actively care about the environment, give them plenty of time to play in the "wild" before they're 11 years old, suggests a new Cornell University study.

"Although domesticated nature activities -- caring for plants and gardens -- also have a positive relationship to adult environment attitudes, their effects aren't as strong as participating in such wild nature activities as camping, playing in the woods, hiking, walking, fishing and hunting," said environmental psychologist Nancy Wells, assistant professor of design and environmental analysis in the College of Human Ecology at Cornell.

I don't doubt that the obvious mechanism -- that playing in nature at a formative age causes you to learn to love nature, and hence become an environmentalist -- is at work. But in addition to that causal link, I think that there's an existential one as well.

The idea of learning to love nature as a child is a powerful one -- just look at the biography of any notable environmentalist. So I think there's a strong tendency for people who end up environmentalists to emphasize the role of nature in their upbringing. It's a constant feature of the human condition that we weave our memories, combined with various cultural assumptions, into a story about our own past. Nature play will end up featuring prominently in an environmentalist's internal autobiography. And so such a person will respond more strongly to survey questions asking them to recall aspects of their childhood. The value placed on "wildness" by modern mainstream environmentalism may also explain some of the lessened influence of "domesticated" and "structured" types of engagement with nature, like gardening and Scouting.

Stentor Danielson, 15:47, ,

14.3.06

Two Types of Egalitarianism

I've been horribly remiss, going days without posting about Cultural Theory. But never fear, for I've come across a great example of Egalitarianism in action. A recurring theme in the feminist blogging community is the boundary question -- who's a real feminist, who should be allowed into feminist discussion spaces, etc. (if you start here you can find your way into the latest round). It strikes me as a very nice illustration of people trying to deal with the characteristic pathologies of the Egalitarian way of life.

In this discussion there seem to be two sub-types of Egalitarianism operating, arising from a tension between the conflicting goals of universalizing the way of life, and maintaining the agreement among members that allows Egalitarianism to function:

1. Exclusivists. These are the folks (mostly from the more politically radical end of the conventional spectrum of feminisms) who want very strong boundaries around feminism. They attack people whose credentials are suspect, and are alert for traitors and infiltrators. They have a very long list of beliefs/practices that one must adhere to before productive discussion is possible, and hence they discount the possibility of useful engagement with outsiders or the need to show respect for those who are clearly enemies of the cause. Exclusivist Egalitarianism seems very close to the classic examples of Egalitarianism used in the literature -- Douglas and Wildavsky's Amish, Rayner's Marxist-Leninist collective, etc.

2. Inclusivists. These are the folks who want a "big tent," allowing anyone who wants to join -- even, in some cases, the hated "Men's Rights Activists" -- into the group. They have a great faith in the possibility of dialogue between people of very different perspectives on the basis of a very small (Habermasian?) set of ground rules. It's tempting to label Inclusivist Egalitarianism a hybrid of Egalitarianism and Individualism, but I think the commitment to collective action and identity, and the desire for dialogue leading to agreement, and the desire to exclude competition, seem to place it firmly in the Egalitarian camp. Looking beyond the feminist bloggers, Inclusivist Egalitarianism seems to be a very popular ideal in the modern West. Its presence seems to me to explain why we have such strong agreement with Egalitarian items in surveys, but so few real cults -- note too that the items used in all the CT surveys I've seen focus on the question of internal equality and largely ignore the issue of strong boundedness.

The Exclusivist/Inclusivist distinction may also explain why it's usually a very different set of people who take an Egalitarian perspective on risks coming from "the system" or nature (e.g. climate change or nuclear power) versus risks coming from Outsider individuals (e.g. terrorism or illegal immigration).

My own viewpoint is conflicted. I find the Inclusivist position very appealing, but my cynicism about human nature makes me suspect that Exclusivism is the more viable way of organizing an Egalitarian community.

Stentor Danielson, 12:01, ,

Basic Immigration Facts

You'd think a famous law scholar writing about immigration would have a basic knowledge of the American immigration system, but yet Gary Becker manages to write this naive response to the idea of giving illegal immigrants jail sentences:

2) Most Americans do not wish to give significant jail sentences to illegal aliens whose only crime is that they want to come to this country, usually seeking higher wages and better working conditions than they have had. Yet in the absence of such punishment, immigrants will continue to flow across the border, pulled by earnings that are 5-10 times higher than what they could earn in Mexico and most other Latin American nations. So the only effective way to deter illegal immigration is not politically feasible, and is not attractive on moral grounds.

The fact is that illegal immigrants are given jail sentences when they're caught by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Technically they're in non-punitive civil detention -- but they're in the same jails, recieving the same treatment, as the thieves and murderers. And because ICE's deportation proceedings move at a glacial pace, the effective sentence can last years. What's more, HR4437 -- which sailed through the House and looks poised to pass the Senate with nary a peep from the Other Republicans* -- would add actual criminal sentences for some forms of illegal immigration. So Becker's notion that Americans wouldn't be able to stomach harsh penalties for illegal immigrants is in total opposition to this country's xenophobic tradition and practice.

I must also disagree with Becker about the likelihood that harsh penalties would be an effective deterrent:
1) The factors that motivate immigration are so strong that adding a few more years of jail time for anyone who gets caught is unlikely to change many minds.
2) Most people in other countries know next to nothing about American immigration law. Just ask yourself if you know what the consequences would be if, say, you were caught illegally in Ireland, or New Zealand, or South Africa. You have no idea, right? There's just a general understanding that if you get caught without proper documentation you'll be punished and/or sent home. So unless the US plans a massive public education outreach throughout the third world, putting more jailtime in the lawbooks won't affect anyone's decision to overstay their visa or swim the Rio Grande.
3) At present, enforcement is not nearly sure enough, particularly those who entered legally but stayed illegally. This may come as a shock to the "law and economics" folks, but the human brain is not a rational Expected Utility calculator. If the chance of punishment is small enough, it doesn't matter how harsh it is. You can't take care of the people you don't catch by cracking down harder on the few that you do catch.
4) About half of illegal immigrants are not swimming the Rio Grande. They enter the US legally, but then fail to leave when their visas expire**. Increasing the penalties for illegal immigration would if anything encourage these people to stay -- it becomes too much of a risk to draw ICE's attention by trying to rectify your status or leave the country.

(Huge thanks to crankyliberal -- this post is almost entirely distilled from things she's told me.)

*The party formerly known as Democrats
**We need to tattoo those sentences to the foreheads of everyone pontifficating about immigration -- there's no way we can address this issue if we don't even understand the population we're dealing with.

Stentor Danielson, 10:45, ,

13.3.06

A Pandagonian Moment

Townhall.com seems determined to take every offensive liberal stereotype about conservatives and prove it right. Via Pandagon, I encountered this bit of overwrought machismo, straight from the bizarro world where feminists have siezed control of all of our country's institutions and are bent on turning all men gay. Doug Giles wants parents to teach their boys to be Real Men, one key component of which is that Real Men -- unlike women and girly men -- are conquerors. But let's take a look the Bible verse Giles offers as proof that you should raise your son to be a Junior Saddam:

Gen.1.26-28.

Then God said, �Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.� So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and said to them, �Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

Note the parts I italicized. Apparently being a mighty conqueror is so uniquely manly, so important to unfeminized testosterone-charged holders of the Y chromosome, that God had to order both Adam and Eve to dominate nature.

Apparently Giles is so intent on promoting a Mideval notion of gender roles that he's also decided to abide by the Mideval prohibition on the laity reading the Bible. Those of us who live in the 20th century may note that the quoted passage, in addition to being gender-neutral, talks only about dominating nature -- so even the least earth-friendly reading of it gives no justification for competing against and conquering other humans.

Stentor Danielson, 17:37, ,