The Strange Career of British Democracy: John Milton to Gordon Brown

Political debate in modern Britain has been structured by four narratives or traditions, called here ‘Whig imperialist’, ‘Tory nationalist’, ‘democratic collectivist’ and ‘democratic republican’. The Whig imperialist tradition goes back to Edmund Burke; it is a tradition of responsive evolution, flexible statecraft, genial optimism and abhorrence of dogmatic absolutes. It prevailed for most of the nineteenth century, for most of the interwar period and for most of the 1950s and early‐1960s. Its Tory nationalist counterpart is tense, rebarbative and often shrill. At its core lies a primal fear of the dissolution of authority and a collapse of the social order. Its most notable exponents include Lord Salisbury, Enoch Powell and Margaret Thatcher. The democratic collectivist tradition stresses ineluctable progress towards a just and rational society, to be achieved by a strong, essentially technocratic central state, with the power and will to replace the wasteful, unjust chaos of the market place by planned co‐ordination. Formative influences on it were the great Fabian socialists, George Bernard Shaw and Sidney and Beatrice Webb; it achieved its apotheosis under the Attlee Government of 1945‐51. The democratic republican tradition is much more inchoate: its exponents have been the awkward squad of British democracy. The most glittering stars in the democratic republican firmament were probably John Milton, John Stuart Mill and R.H. Tawney. It stresses active self‐government and republican self respect, embodied in a vigorous civil society and strong local authorities. During the ninety‐odd years since Britain belatedly acquired a more‐or‐less democratic suffrage, the first three traditions have all been tested, almost to destruction. But though the fourth has had great influence on social movements of all kinds, governments at the centre have done little more than toy with it, usually for brief periods. The great question now is whether Britain is about to experience a democratic republican moment.     

Trustworthiness: the Commentators

Mark Thompson deplores the decline in the public trust of government and of public service institutions such as the BBC. But there has also been a decline in another form of trust: government's trust in the ability of professionals such as doctors and teachers to deliver high quality public services. And, unlike Thompson's type of trust, this decline was inevitable, because it was based on untenable assumptions concerning professional motivation. The author discusses the importance of trust in an unwritten constitution, including trust in the use made of public resources, trust that appointments are being made on merit, trust that the civil service is ‘speaking truth unto power’ behind the scenes and ultimately trust that it retains the ability to serve future governments. In a world where trust in institutions is diminishing, there are still surprising levels of trust in the world of private philanthropy. The public are only too ready to give donations without seeking to question, especially in the wake of major disasters. Yet the nature of aid agencies has changed dramatically in the past thirty years into major global enterprises with sophisticated media and marketing operations. In this case a greater degree of scepticism from those who donate and paradoxically less trust might actually result in better outcomes from aid and better use of funding. Trust is critical to the mission of the FCO. The public needs to trust the competence and sound judgment of the professional diplomats. The diplomats themselves need to be able to rely on the commonsense of their fellow colleagues. Ministers and diplomats need to trust each other. And other governments need to have confidence in the discretion of their British counterparts. This is an increasing challenge in the world of instant news. Trust can be quickly lost by indiscreet or self‐serving revelations. But the key is to be as open and transparent as possible about the processes of diplomacy. A new survey commissioned by the British Journalism Review demonstrates that public confidence in journalism has collapsed over the last five years. This is particularly true for the commercial broadcasters ITV and Channel 4, whose journalism has traditionally commanded as much public esteem as the BBC. Trust in the BBC and print journalists has also declined, and journalism suffered more than any of the other 16 occupational groups being assessed. This is partly due to the cumulative effect of various “fakery” scandals that have afflicted broadcasters over the last 18 months and partly down to a more widespread cynicism directed at those in authority.     

The Language of Race

The 1991 Census form for households in Great Britain included, for the first time, a question about ethnic group. The question had nine boxes, eight for named ethnic groups and one for 'any other'. One box had to be ticked for each member of the household. Brian Klug discusses his own reaction to the (so-called) ethnic question, and explains why, as a Jew of European extraction, he did not tick the box marked White. He examines several issues raised by the ethnic question, including the following: why this question is different from other questions on the form; the definition and use of the words 'racial' and 'ethnic'; the vocabulary of colour ('black', 'white' etc.) in the language of race; the idea that 'white' is an ethnic category; the claim that the ethnic question is an instrument for combatting racism; one proposal for improving the question by removing the 'racial' components in the categories.     

On Public Action

Abstract

This essay explores Hannah Arendt’s contribution to our understanding of the rhetorical as opposed to the aesthetic quality of public speech, with an emphasis upon her conception of opinion and glory. Arendt’s focus on the revelatory quality of public action in speech is widely understood to preclude or seriously limit its communicative aspect. I argue that this is a misunderstanding, and that accepting it would reduce speech not merely to the discussion of a sharply limited set of topics, but to no topics at all. Public action is speech that reveals the speaker as “answering, talking back and measuring up to whatever happened or was done.” Such revelatory speech is most appropriately judged by the standard of the glorious and the inglorious. Because such speech must inform as well as reveals, so does glorious or great speech rise to the level of greatness in part because of what is said, to whom, where, and how. Arendt’s understanding of this is shown to have significant parallels to the ordinary language philosophy of Stanley Cavell.     

道德规范表现形式的历史演进

道德规范的产生和形成,有着深刻的社会经济根源,是由一定的社会物质生活条件和社会关系决定的。道德规范随着社会的发展而不断发展,具有历史性和继承性。在人类漫长的道德生活中,道德规范曾有过形态各异的表现形式,大体可以概括为图腾、禁忌、礼仪、风俗、箴言、准则、义务、责任等几种主要的表现形武。道德规范表现形式的历史演进,是一个由蒙昧到理性、由自发到自觉、由低级到高级的发展过程。     

Beyond the ‘Auschwitz syndrome’: Holocaust historiography after the Cold War

ABSTRACT

The end of the Cold war has seen an explosion in Holocaust history, and some significant changes in the main historiographical explanations. The ‘return of ideology’ that began displacing the ‘functionalist’ or ‘structuralist’ dominance of the 1980s remains strong. But it is being supplemented by very detailed regional and local studies, by analyses of different experiences of ghettoization in different places, and by a focus on the widespread plunder and corruption that accompanied the killing process. This enormous attention to detail reveals that the Holocaust unfolded differently in different places; but it also demonstrates the existence of an overall framework in which all the operations took place, what we might call an ‘antisemitic consensus’. Simultaneously, historians have broadened the discussion of the Holocaust, situating it into a transnational or world-historical context of imperialism and colonialism. Stone outlines in broad brush some of these themes, and asks what effects they have had and will continue to have on Europeans' self-understanding in an age in which the post-war anti-fascist consensus has been dismantled while Holocaust-consciousness is officially enshrined into European identity.     

'Shovelling out your paupers': The British State and Irish Famine Migration 1846-50

Gray considers the determinants of British policy towards emigration (and particularly towards state-assisted 'colonization') from Ireland during the Great Famine of 184-50. He surveys the idea of 'colonization' as advocated by Charles Buller in 1843, and its varying appeal (changing over time) in Ireland, Britain and the settlement colonies of the British empire. He also considers the issue in the light of pro- and anti-Malthusian interpretations of Irish population pressure, and the emergence of the alternative idea of 'internal colonization'. Gray argues that the failure of the state to adopt an emigration policy in 1846-50 as part of its response to the Famine was the consequence of a combination of anti-Irish prejudice in Britain and the colonies (which was sharpened by the arrival of large numbers of economic refugees in 1847 and the political conspiracies of 1848), and the prevalence of an economic doctrine that prioritized the need for Irish self-help and moral transformation over state assistance. He traces the debate over colonization within the Whig government headed by Lord John Russell, and concludes that some form of assisted emigration was a feasible policy measure, and that its rejection had adverse consequences in terms of additional famine mortality.     

Canguilhem amid the cyborgs

George Canguilhem's 1947 lecture,‘Machine and organism’,is a rich source of ideas for thinking about the relationships between living organisms and machines. He takes all tools and machines to be extensions of the bodymand part of life itself (which does not make machines any more good or bad than every living organism is good or bad). These insights are updated with a discussion of cyborgs. An account is given of the original idea of the cyborg (Clynes and Kline 1960), and of its transformations in science fiction and at the hands of Donna Haraway and Andrew Pickering. Canguilhem is profoundly anti-Cartesian, but on account oshis vision of life which breaks down the old barriers between natural and artificial, mind and body, manufactured and created.     

The Accursed Share: Bataille as Historical Thinker

Abstract

This essay addresses Georges Bataille as a historical thinker by concentrating on The Accursed Share (three volumes, 1949-54), the text Bataille took as his master-work. An amalgam of cultural criticism, anthropological and sociological research, The Accursed Share reveals Bataille's temporalised vision of his four central ideas, excess, expenditure, sovereignty and transgression. Grappling with this vision is key for understanding Bataille's oeuvre as a whole because it brings the entirety of his assessments of Western and world culture under its heading. The aim of the paper is to offer a sense, on one hand, of Bataille's dystopic heterology and, on the other hand, the unique formulation of the junctures between economics, power and morality that define him as important for the irruption of post-structural thought specifically, and indeed, the postmodern era as a whole.     

Science and Technology for Economic Growth. New Insights from when the Data Contradicts Desktop Models1

Science and technology policy initiatives in the early 1980s have focused in both the United States and Western Europe on improving capacity to apply a good science base in practice, expecting increases in technological advancement, improved market presence and enhanced economic growth. Results varied broadly in the United States and Europe. Even more puzzling, Japan charged ahead in technological advancement without that strong of a science base of its own. Some industrialized economies do not conform to the expected science–technology relationship, whereby strong performance in science shall lead to strong technological performance. The puzzling science–technology relationship in advanced countries has plausible explanations. (1) Science–technology relationship is much interdependent or symbiotic. Its strength and primary direction at a given time varies largely by field of science or technological innovation and across long periods of time. (2) Science–technology link in a country may depend on the overall scientific and technological level of development in that country. The strength and interdependent nature of this link evolves historically and varies across fields of science and technology. The strength of the link is affected by scientific and technological specialization in a country. Different technological fields have different scientific intensities, or degrees of building upon the science base. (3) Specialization of countries across scientific and technological fields varies. Hence, the strength of science–technology link differs between countries. High technological specialization of a country may impact its technological performance more than its immediately current scientific performance does. History, tradition and knowledge transfers may affect more returns on R&D expenditures than the actual value of R&D funds spent in science or technology. Explanations of puzzling behavior of science–technology link may become policy recommendations.     

Becoming Who We Are: Democracy and the Political Problem of Hope

Abstract

In this article I argue that hope is rightly numbered by Hesiod among the evils, as hope cannot be separated from an awareness of the inadequacy of one's current state. Political hope for democrats in particular is tied to the awareness that we have not yet realized ourselves, that, to paraphrase Pindar, we have not yet become who we are. I argue that, although Rorty comes close to articulating this in his book Achieving Our Country, his emphasis on pride ultimately obscures more than it reveals. I conclude that Thoreau's anguished reflection in Walden on the failures of his fellow citizens is a better place to look for instruction on the question of political hope.     

后形而上学与后现代主义

"现代性"以"元叙事"为其特征,后现代性是对元叙事的颠覆."客观化假定"和"决定论假定"是现代性的两个最基本的哲学原理,黑格尔哲学的叙事是现代性的典型叙事.尼采以一种既"野蛮"又"学术"的方式,通过对真理信念和禁欲理想的谱系考察,拨去了长久以来笼罩在现代思想上的神圣光圈.海德格尔通过对西方形而上学的内在摧毁,将尼采审美理想实现的契机成功地从神话学领域转移至哲学领域.这一切表明,尼采、海德格尔及其后继者力图建构的,是一种新形态的形而上学.由这种形而上学支撑的社会思潮,就叫作后现代主义.     

Values,Frames, and Persuasion in Presidential Nomination Campaigns

This paper examines the persuasability of rhetorical value framing within a presidential nominating campaign, in an effort to understand how values and value-laden language may provide useful signals in electoral contexts where partisan cues are absent. Relying on a survey-experiment conducted during the 2000 Republican nomination campaign, I evaluate the relative persuasiveness of arguments framed in either individualistic or egalitarian terms. Drawing upon an “active-receiver” model of framing effects, I posit that Republican primary voters respond more readily to candidates when they use individualistic frames than when they use egalitarian frames, because individualism is a more “chronically accessible” value construct for Republicans. Furthermore, I hypothesize that this dynamic is particularly pronounced among more educated respondents, who have been trained to recognize abstract value cues and automatically apply them to applied political contexts. The experimental findings support these hypotheses.     

The 2012 killing of Chinese citizens in Rome and the ambivalence of Italian journalism

Sredanovic discusses the killing of a father and daughter of Chinese origin in Rome in January 2012, and the portrayal of the case in Italian print journalism. He uses a qualitative analysis of a corpus of 193 articles from seven Italian newspapers with different political, market and geographic profiles. The frequency of generally negative and stereotypical portraits of migrants in crime news is well known; however, this specific case offers a number of less familiar insights. Sredanovic shows the multiple and changing frames and themes, both positive and negative, deployed to portray the event across the two-week period in which it was featured on the front pages of newspapers. He demonstrates in particular the ways in which stereotypes that are often used against migrants in crime news find place even in a case in which the migrants were the victims of the crime. He further illustrate how the representation of the perpetrators shifted from describing them as an exception (when it was thought they were autochthonous) to generalizing about their deviance when it was discovered that they were of Moroccan origin. Sredanovic locates this discussion in an anti-groupist theoretical frame, arguing that the stereotypes used cannot be adequately explained by majority-minority group interactions, and that the delimitation and definition of groups should be understood as ideological from the start. He also argues that aspects of the production routines of crime journalism can be added to the factors that explain the portrayal of the event. He concludes by arguing that Sinophobia is a form of prejudice that varies geographically and in time, and calling for non-reifying, practice-informed analyses that mix discriminating and non-discriminating discourses.     

After Bagehot: Rethinking the Constitution

'Rethinking the constitution' surveys the political and cultural impact of Bagehot's 1867 strategy for the survival of an elitist state in a democracy. Also looks at the recent erosion of the conditions for Bagehot, and asks what the next major reinterpretation of the constitution will be. Assesses Gordon Brown's desire to make the constitution democratic while at the same time bolstering national identity and pursuing free market policies.     

The persecution of German Romanies: the case of Osnabrück, 1933–46

Studies of racial persecution in Germany, particularly during the Nazi period, now appear on almost a daily basis, so that every victimized minority has received attention. Antisemitism remains the main focus of research but the Romanies have now begun to attract scholars. While historians have studied Jews in virtually every location and over short time periods, they have tended to examine the situation of the Romanies at the national level using a longer time frame, recognizing the continuities of racial persecution that link the Nazi years with the rest of the twentieth century. Panayi brings out these longer-term patterns by focusing on the case of Osnabrück. He begins with an account of the historiography of Romanies at both the local and national level, and contrasts this with the general attention that German history of the first half of the twentieth century, especially the Third Reich, has received. The narrative then moves on to use the limited information available on the Osnabrück Romanies to carry out a detailed examination of the realities of their everyday life and the attitudes of the authorities towards them in the town between 1933 and 1946. Panayi’s study falls into the German social history approach of Alltagsgeschichte, which uses the specific to draw out the realities of the general national picture.     

Gender as catalyst for violence against Roma in contemporary Italy

ABSTRACT

Silvio Berlusconi's use of ethnicity and immigration as national security issues in his successful campaign for election to the Italian presidency in 2008 was by no means unique in contemporary Europe. What was surprising was the speed of his right-wing government's legislative restriction of migrants in the form of the so-called ‘security package’, first introduced just five weeks after the election. Woodcock explores the striking fact that this ‘security package’, and the intense wave of racist violence by Italians against Roma that it legitimized and encouraged, was proposed and justified in response to media reports of Italian babies being stolen by ‘Zingari’ from the ‘nomad camps’ and of Italian women being raped and beaten by Romanian men of ‘Zingari’ ethnicity. Gender and ethnicity are the twin constitutive discourses of modern European society, and racialized subjects are necessarily gendered. The stereotype of ‘dangerous black men sexually threatening white women’ has been mobilized in a vast range of European and colonial nationalist projects in order to justify the policing of both racialized masculine subjects and women as objects of the patriarchy. Similarly, the depiction of women as hysterical, sexually vulnerable objects in need of (white) masculine protection is an old story that the Italian media recognize as a fairy tale even as they reproduce the discourse. Woodcock explores what has not been mentioned thus far, namely, that gender stereotypes are vital to the mobilization of violent racism against the Roma in contemporary Italy, and how conservative gender binaries are strengthened and policed in a time of social crisis through the stereotyping of Roma as racial threat.     

Memorial for a Revolutionist: Dwight Macdonald,A Critical American

A quarter century after his death in 1982, Dwight Macdonald is, unjustly, a largely forgotten man. But for 35 years, from 1940 to 1975, he was America’s leading literary-intellectual journalist and the best-known cultural critic to the general public. An undogmatic iconoclast and self-professed “revolutionist,” his finest work makes him a worthy descendent of H.L. Mencken and Edmund Wilson. He is worth remembering. John Rodden is the author, most recently, of Every Intellectual’s big brother: George Orwell’s Literary Siblings (2007).     

Concept and Politics in Derrida and Deleuze

Abstract

This paper points to significant similarities between the political orientations of Deleuze and Derrida. Derrida's appeal to a pure form of existing concepts (absolute hospitality, pure forgiveness, and so on) parallels Deleuze and Guattari's distinction between relative and absolute ‘deterritorialisation’. In each case, the absolute form of the concept is a condition of the possibility of change.