Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy

In recent decades, struggles for recognition have increasingly dominated the political landscape.1 Recognition theorists such as Charles Taylor (1994) and Axel Honneth (1995) seek to interpret and justify these struggles through the idea that our identity is shaped, at least partly, by our relations with other people. Because our identity is shaped in this way, it is alleged that feelings of self-worth, self-respect and self-esteem are possible only if we are positively recognised for who we are. Consequently, for many political theorists, recognition is an integral component of a satisfactory modern theory of justice, as well as the means by which both historical and contemporary political struggles can be understood and justified.

The Politics of Recognition

Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. By Kwame Anthony Appiah. (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006. Pp. xxii + 196, preface, introduction, acknowledgments, notes, index. $24.95 cloth, $15.95 paper) Kwame Anthony Appiah's Cosmopolitanism is meant as a guide for identifying and confronting complex ethical issues in a multi-perspectival world. Its author, an Oxford-educated philosopher of Ghanaian-British parentage, bridges worlds. The term cosmopolitanism - the author prefers it over globalizations narrow association with economics and multiculturalismi observed tendency to prescribe - encompasses two core values: "the idea that we have obligations to others, obligations that stretch beyond those to whom we are related by the ties of kith and kin, or even formal ties of a shared citizenship," and the idea "that we take seriously the value not just of human life but of particular human lives, which means taking an interest in the practices and beliefs that lend them significance" (xv). Terms such as tolerance, kindness, and pluralism are central to cosmopolitan thinking. Appiah presents a wide range of issues that can serve as frames through which to examine how we as individuals and professionals make ethical decisions - essential for the humanities scholar, student, and public-sector folklorist: How real are values? What do we talk about when we talk about differences? Is any form of relativism right? When do morals and manners clash? Can culture be owned? What do we owe strangers by virtue of our shared humanity? And all this is good... and yet, and yet. Too often, the resolutions Appiah proposes for these key issues are so one-sided and misleading, so bolstered by irrelevant, erroneous, and outdated sources, that they are of little help in sorting through the paradoxical interfaces of pluralism and autonomy, diversity and democracy, and globalization and protection of what is valuable in the local. In his central chapter, "Cosmopolitan Contamination," Appiah proposes a change of priorities - away from purity, peoples, authenticity, tribalism, and cultural protection, and toward individuals, mixture, modernity, rights, and what he calls contamination (his term for healthy hybridization) . His philosophical underpinning ("The right approach, I think, starts by taking individuals - not nations, tribes or 'peoples' - as die proper object of moral concern" [Appiah 2006] ) is a hallmark of rightist thought and practice. The left emphasizes social, political, and environmental factors that can constrain the ability of individuals to choose freely. Both perspectives are needed, but only one is developed in this book. Many folklorists are familiar with issues of cultural change and preservation as discussed at UNESCO and WIPO. Appiah reveals no understanding of the complexities of diese dynamics. He wrongly assumes many anthropologists to be cultural relativists who tolerate such practices as female genital mutilation (15) and that UNESCO's Declaration of Cultural Diversity celebrates a pluralism that could embrace the likes of the KKK conveniently ignoring Article IV: "No one may invoke cultural diversity to infringe upon human right. …

Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers

한국에서 다문화주의(multiculturalism) 모색

The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents, and Citizens. By Seyla Benhabib. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 251p. $65.00 cloth, $23.99 paper. Between 1910 and 2000, the world's population more than tripled, from 1.6 to 5.3 billion. The number of persons who live as migrants in countries other than those in which they were born increased nearly sixfold, from 33 million to 175 million, and more than half of this increase has occurred since 1965. Almost 20 million of these are refugees, asylum seekers, and internally displaced persons. In her book, Seyla Benhabib grapples with both the political and moral implications of this rapid increase in transnational migration, arguing that the central principles that shape our thinking about political membership and state sovereignty are in tension, if not outright contradiction, with one another. “From a philosophical point of view,” she writes, “transnational migrations bring to the fore the constitutive dilemma at the heart of liberal democracies: between sovereign self-determination claims on the one hand and adherence to universal human rights principles on the other” (p. 2). She argues for an internal reconstruction of both, underscoring the significance of membership in bounded communities, while at the same time promoting the cultivation of democratic loyalties that exceed the national state, supporting political participation on the part of citizens and noncitizen residents alike.

The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents, and Citizens

This paper is based on a study of four white families living in the town of Newcastle, South Africa, and focuses on the institutional apparatuses of welfare in the town almost two decades after apartheid. Beginning with a reading of the production of the category of the ‘poor white’ during the first half of the twentieth century, we then discuss the particular rise and fall of Newcastle as an industrial town. We focus on contemporary welfare in the town and the interaction between whites receiving welfare and welfare officials. in the midst of moral evaluations of character, it becomes clear to officials that models of individual reformation and transformation are inadequate to realise substantially improved lives. in these conditions, officials join white recipients in invoking ‘reverse racism’ to explain the continued reliance of these white families on welfare and their inability to improve their conditions, regardless of ‘improvements in character’. Such a claim, we argue, portrays whites as threatened and even attempts to re-claim the pathological figure of the poor white in a bid to remain exceptional, and thus to be recognised as being poor in a manner that would distinguish them from Africans.

Diversity and Small Town Spaces: Twenty Years into Post-Apartheid South African Democracy

This paper is based on a study of four white families living in the town of Newcastle, South Africa, and focuses on the institutional apparatuses of welfare in the town almost two decades after apartheid. Beginning with a reading of the production of the category of the ‘poor white’ during the first half of the twentieth century, we then discuss the particular rise and fall of Newcastle as an industrial town. We focus on contemporary welfare in the town and the interaction between whites receiving welfare and welfare officials. In the midst of moral evaluations of character, it becomes clear to officials that models of individual reformation and transformation are inadequate to realise substantially improved lives. In these conditions, officials join white recipients in invoking ‘reverse racism’ to explain the continued reliance of these white families on welfare and their inability to improve their conditions, regardless of ‘improvements in character’. Such a claim, we argue, portrays whites as threatened and even attempts to re-claim the pathological figure of the poor white in a bid to remain exceptional, and thus to be recognised as being poor in a manner that would distinguish them from Africans.

Michelle Peens

Papers

Diversity and Small Town Spaces: Twenty Years into Post-Apartheid South African Democracy

Troubled Transformation: Whites, Welfare, and 'Reverse-Racism' in Contemporary Newcastle*