Dugs Papers

Update

2008-02-02T22:03:00.000+02:00

Katy is now in her second year at Meyerspark Primary, (7 years old). They used to be an Afrikaans only school but have an English stream now. She's the only white girl in class. A bit like Benjamin's situation at la Montagne. She is doing guitar and is very "girly" On Saturday she's off to the Circus with her best friend Jaida. Jaida is very big and fat but has the sweetest personality. Cleverer than Hazel Fruin...Katy is a very organized and orderly person. Everything has to be "just right"...she will procrastinate until everything is in order...you know how that is?Benjamin is now 13 and at Boys High. He is beginning his puberty...smelly feet etc...Benjamin goes to scouts, plays a bit of cricket and has just joined the chess club. Benjamin plays the trumpet and is learning piano. He is helping me with computers and maintains my websites and blogs. He also builds computers from old parts and we give them to various community projects in the townships. His big thing this year has been to negotiate our notoriously fickel bus system...its good for his briccolaging skillsAndy now has a very good small business, Enchanted Woods. She teaches at a church on Saturdays and Fidays, does some private teaching at home and teaches at Pretoria Girls High too. She also plays oboe at Queenswood church now and for a local amateur orchetsra in town as well as some gigs with the all-girl band and the por-musica orchestra.
We are struggling financially...but that has always been the case. I have been working on three projects [1] with Veronica Khosa setting-up a college in Waltloo called AFRENAUS teaching nursing, social work and business skills; [2] with a Paula Martini setting up a school nutrition project called Eat Smart B Smart. and [3} with Viv Zwennis-Schultz setting-up an entrepreneurial theme park.Last year I worked on becoming an Assessor under the new outcomes based education system and as you probably know I finished my Masters degree in applied ethics at St. Augustine College, the Catholic University here. I have been going for job interviews and been told that I'm "overqualified"...what does that mean exactly?

Corporate Social Responsibility and Danley

2007-01-01T13:34:00.000+02:00

Danley contends that approaches to the issue of corporate social responsibility based on the stakeholder approach are vague and unclear, fail to “specify the content, scope, or force the responsibilities” (1994: 117), and that “the claims concerning social responsibility and professionalism are largely vacuous” (1994: 171). Is there a counter argument?

Among their panoply of divinities, the ancient Greeks identified “two personified emotions esteemed highest of all feelings in Homer and Hesiod: Nemesis, usually translated as righteous anger, and Aidos, a difficult Word to translate, but in common use to the Greeks. It means reverence and the shame that holds men back from wrongdoing, but it also means the feeling a prosperous man should have in the presence of the unfortunate – not compassion, but a sense that the difference between him and those poor wretches is deserved…

…Hesiod says that only when men become completely wicked will Nemesis and Adios, their beautiful faces veiled in raiment, leave the wide- wayed and depart to the company of the immortals. (Hamilton, 1969; pp37-8)

My experiences of the contemporary corporate business world suggest that Lady Adios has veiled herself and has departed without her companion. All that is left is the faint memory etched in the paintings of the Dutch masters who depicted the embarrassment of riches of their patrons . The counter argument I shall frame asks; now what? How do we recall Lady Adios to walk again in our midst?

This assignment will set out arguments that counter Danley’s Contention that the issue is corporate social responsibility based on the stakeholder approach are vague and unclear, fail to “specify the content, scope, content, scope or force of the responsibilities” (1994: 177), and that “the claims concerning social responsibility and professionalism are largely vacuous” (1994:171).

In his book Danley just two basic approaches to the question of the purpose of the corporation; Classic liberals, who use a variety of approaches such as social contracts, natural rights and utilitarianism on the one hand, and Managerialsts, whom he divides into micro-managerialsts who focus on the corporation and corporate social investment, and Macro- managerialsts, who focus on the broader economy using a variety of approaches such as Keynesianism, externalisation of costs and market failure as core concepts on the other hand.

It must be stated clearly here that Danley is not critical of corporate social responsibility and the stakeholder approach because he supports what he describes as the Classical liberal framework. Indeed Danley observes, “the results of the investigation are disturbing, if not alarming. In spite of the recent revival of interest, there are compelling reasons to conclude that the Classical framework is inadequate.” (1994; p 5)

Danley is critical of both the Classical liberal framework and the managerialsts. However the assignment asks that I find a counter argument to Danley’s Critical comments about corporate social responsibility and stakeholder approaches.

To this end I have traced the outline of what a counter argument may be, based upon a critique of Danley. Such a counter argument would stand on four legs:

1. Stakeholder approaches must be understood in context as strategic gambits to counter the hegemony of shareholder dominant approaches.

2. That Danley’s arguments about the professionalism of management and what he refers to as the “managerialst” thesis are dated and conceptually rigid without granting the use-value of eclectic and “fuzzy” approaches to content, clarity, scope and force of responsibilities.

3. That Danley’s methodology is flawed in three vital respects;
a. Theoretically in so far it confuses normative/non-normative ethics with the demands of inductive logic.
b. Technically, in that Danley’s “second moment” is problematic as it forecloses too soon in the research process, which leads to an oversimplification.

4. That Danley methodological flaws have consequences, leading him to for example, to deny the validity of the corporate social citizenship argument by questioning the moral agency of business entities while assuming that corporations can, ought to, and do act morally. That is, Danley uses the concept of moral agency both as a topic and a resource in his argumentation, which generates an essentially sterile, ironic and failed narrative.

This paper will set out on these critiques in sequence and then conclude by showing how these points may be deployed as lessons to trace the outline of any counter argument to Danley’s contentions with respect to the stakeholder approach and corporate responsibility. I will introduce, as an example, contributions from the tradition of Catholic Social Thought, which point a way beyond a stakeholder/stockholder debate

Arguments from context
In Danley’s critique of “managerialism”, he identifies the stakeholder approach and the rationales for corporate responsibility. (1994; p 188 and p 193) These “new” ideas, he in turn, links to Keynesianism and Pluralist Liberalism among other roots. (ibid; p235) Danley goes on at length with detailed critiques of the stakeholder “argument” which he repeatedly concludes as being “empty”. (ibid; p 171, 177, 192 and p 193)

Solomon on the other hand suggests that the “ideas captured in the punlike notion of the stakeholder” represent a “broadening conception of the corporate constituency that includes a variety of affected (and effective) groups and all sorts of obligations and responsibilities. The term stakeholder has become something of a cover-all term, and so what considerable advantages it has provided in terms of breadth are to some extent now compromised by the uncritical use of the word.” (1999; p 46).

Danley’s less generous description is that, “of the contemporary arguments, the most familiar and the most important is the “multiple constituency argument” or the “stakeholder argument”. The argument notes that the large, modern corporation involves complicated relationships with a number of different constituencies (stakeholders) – stockholders, potential investors, employees (Present, past), potential employees, consumers, suppliers and the general public, including relevant governmental agencies as well as communities. Beyond this rather innocuous claim, it is difficult to discern an argument …(perhaps). because what is required is obvious and uncontroversial. (1994; p 189)

Danley however argues that “the nature of the hidden moral purpose of the stakeholder argument is not obvious and stands in need of development and defence. The key to this argument seems to lie not in the idea that stakeholder interests must be considered, but in the idea that the various stakeholder interests are to be weighed and balanced…” (1994; p 190)

It seems that Danley’s approach blinds him to the core of the any stakeholder analysis. Yet he comes to the very cusp of an understanding when he states; “… the stakeholder argument is, in reality, no argument at all.” (Ibid; p 193)

Danley is correct in seeing that the Stakeholder approach is not an argument. It is better described as a strategic gambit. He is correct in suggesting that the stakeholder approach is something akin to the Trojan horse in business ethics. (1984; p 4) That is why it is core stance that “the corporation involves complicated relationships with a number of different constituencies (stakeholders)…is obvious and uncontroversial. (1994; p 189) It is a stance that anyone can agree upon, but its implications must then be attended-to by those who lead these organizations.

These stakeholder approaches are diverse and “fuzzy” as Solomon points out (ibid), but such fuzziness serves a distinct purpose in the development of contemporary business ethics.
Danley has consistently misconstrued the nature of these approaches as comprising “an argument” when they are better described as the “moves” in the strategic pull and push of real-world business strategy. The persistent of what Danley terms “Classical Liberalism” which champions shareholder dominance is being contested by the presence of approaches loosely grouped as stakeholder approaches.

The sheer variety and scope of these approaches reminds one of Protestant church politics. This, I would propose is a deliberate strategic gambit designed to open up debate and thinking beyond the comparatively sterile and airless confines of deductive thinking.

Thus I would contend that Danley misconstrues the nature of the approaches classified as the stakeholder approaches because they are more like strategic gambits in the ceaseless process of making sense of business and not formal arguments for a particular position.

Arguments from currency
This assignment quotes Danley on a publication that today is over 12 years old. Much has happened since Danley wrote those words. In South Africa we have had the King 2 report published in 2002 that despite its eclectic use of various materials, could be said to promote a practical and reasoned stakeholder approach. The Global Compact was founded in 1999 and promotes the 10 principals for ethical business among transnational corporations. “Transparency international, a global non-governmental organization, has since 1995 issued a annual corruptions perceptions index (CPI); it also publishes an annual Global Corruption Report, a Global Corruption Barometer and a Bribe payers index.”

These and many other initiatives have gradually clarified and specified the content, scope and force of the responsibilities. Such initiatives offer a range of detailed, practical resources, tools and measures that support stakeholder approaches to large corporations.

Danley clearly misjudged the energy, determination and resourcefulness of those proponents of the various approaches to corporate governance, which he has lumped together as “managerialst”. This point may be a small one problem endemic to his general approach to the topic.

I noted earlier that Danley makes repeated comments that managerialism lacks any serious argument. He seems to be making a general complaint that the positions adopted by Managerialsts writers are vague and without substance.

There is however sound philosophical precedent for such “fuzzy” logic. Austin (1962) has proposed that philosophical notions need to be “forgiving” by which he meant they need to allow for imprecision because this creates an inferential frame for thinking about a topic. Business ethics, would propose, needs to allow for an inductive logic where correlations and trends can be observed rather than the more rigid, positivist deductive logic that Danley seems to insist upon.

Danley assumes that deductive logic is the primary “Modus vivendi” in these arguments. Most of the literature that I have read in this field indicates that inductive logic is the norm rather than the more exacting demands of deductive reasoning.

Thus I would argue that Danley’s critique is somewhat dated but that this is not simply a matter of the progress of history. Indeed Danley’s approach dates him. He seems to be hankering after time when things were simpler and when logical positivist assumptions about truth seemed to apply.

Levinson characterizes what is suspect is Danley’s bias; ‘…in the 1930’s there flourished what can now be safely treated as a philosophical excess, namely the doctrine of logical positivism, a central tenet of which was that unless a sentence, can, at least in principle, be verified (i.e. tested for its truth or falsity), it was strictly speaking meaningless. Of course it followed that most ethical, aesthetic and literary discourses, not to mention most everyday utterances, were simply meaningless. But rather than being seen as reductio ad absurdum, such a conclusion was reviewed by proponents of logical positivism as a positively delightful result… the doctrine was pervasive in philosophical circles at the time.” (Levinson, 1983;p 227)

Given our post-modern times, such an approach to business ethics and an understanding the purpose of business will inevitably be outmoded, dated and increasingly irrelevant

Arguments from methodology
Normative confusion
Danley introduces into his discussion on his methodology, a critique of what he calls “business and society literature”. (1994; p 21) He suggests that there are “serious limitations in the literature concerning the question of the corporate role” (ibid: p 5) and lists “three important features of the question (that) have not been consistently appreciated.” (ibid; p 6)

I would like to examine more closely Danley’s second “feature”, where he asserts that the question of the corporate role is “normative”. Danley suggests, first that “Nonnormative Language” is descriptive, functioning to describe the world. This is the language of the “is” as in “snow is white” and “The GDP is down 2 percent from last year.”

Danley then proceeds to explain That “Normative Language” functions on the other hand, evaluatively or prescriptively. “Evaluative language” – assigning a value to things, as in “That is a good car” or “He is a good person” – is the language of value, invoking what is good, bad or evil. :Prescriptive Language” prescribes behaviour, as in “One ought not to hold a golf club that way,” or “One ought not to kill the innocent.” This is the language of ought, of obligation, of duty of what should or should not be done.

Danley completes his exposition by warning that “one should take care not to confuse the world of “is” with the world of “good” or “ought”. He then goes on to assert that “the fundamental question, then, seeks a normative response about the role that the modern corporation should play in a free society, about the corporation’s obligations, duties, and responsibilities, if any….any proposed answer to the question of corporate role must invoke not merely descriptive premises…but also normative premises. Prescriptions move beyond mere issues of the “way the world is,” to issues of the way the world should be, or toward issues of what is good or evil.” (Ibid; pp 7-9)

It is a well-worn (and tired?) philosophical chestnut first developed by Hume if memory serves me correctly , that it is illogical to infer an “ought” from an “is”. Danley by insisting on his point, reveals his bias for deductive reasoning and the English rationalists. Indeed Danley elsewhere details Hume’s exposition of the naturalistic fallacy and refers to goodpaster’s critique of this problem in much of the business ethics literature. (ibid; pp 21-24)

I would suggest that deductive reasoning and English rationalist tradition of philosophical thought that goes with it, may not be the most appropriate approach to business ethics. Indeed such “rigorous” thinking has been largely rejected in philosophical thought since the late Wittgenstein and seems out of place in the “applied” field of business ethics.

Danley elsewhere identifies the Harvard business review as “a major form for the new managerial philosophy” (1994; p 188), which he criticises for, among many other things, failing “to come to grips the nature and importance of the fundamental question” (ibid; p 6); what is the appropriate role of the modern corporation in a free society?” (ibid; p 2)

A reading of some articles from the Harvard Business Review on Corporate responsibility (2003) may help us to reflect upon Danley’s complaint that the managerialsts do not deploy deductive reasoning.

The articles I have surveyed all focus their discourse on marrying social responsibility with profitability;

Prahalad and Hammond argue that “by stimulating commerce and development at the bottom of the economic pyramid, multinationals could radically improve the lives of billions of people and help create a more stable less dangerous world. Achieving this goal does not require MNC’s to spearhead global social-development initiatives for charitable purposes. They need only act in their self-interest.” (Harvard Business Review, 2003; p1)

Porter and Kramer suggest that “corporations can use their charitable efforts to improve their competitive context-the quality of the business environment in the locations where they operate” (ibid; p 82)

Handy argues that “doing good does not necessarily rule out making a reasonable profit. You can, for example, make money by serving the poor and the rich.” (ibid; p 82)

“.. Roger Martin introduces the virtue matrix-a tool to help executives analyse
corporate responsibility by viewing it as a product or service” (ibid; p 83)

Ryuzaburo Kaku, honorary chairman of canon… suggests that companies consider kyosei, a bussiness credo thet he defines as a “spirit of cooperation” in which individuals and organizations work together for the common good.’ (Ibid; p 105)

Goodpaster and Mathews point out that “when making a profit conflicts with respecting the welfare of the community, corporations do not always choose profit as their only goal… That is why the authors say that conscience can reside in the organization.” (ibid; p 131)

Smith identifies “an approach that ties corporate giving directly to strategy… philanthropic and business units have joined forces to develop philanthropic strategies that give companies a powerful competitive edge.”(ibid; p 157)

Kanter finds that increasingly “companies are viewing community need as opportunities to develop ideas and demonstrate business technologies, find and serve new markets; and solve long –standing business problems.” (ibid; p 190)

Each article I have read contains no appreciable deductive reasoning. They all seem overwhelmingly inductive in their approach to their topics. That is they provide good evidence based upon experience for their conclusions. These
Articles, as Danley complains are clearly all “pushing an agenda; that social responsibility and profits can work together. We may agree or disagree with the thrust of these articles but none of them reach conclusions that reach outside the bounds of simple inductive reasoning.

Thus I would argue that Danley’s complaints about the vacuity of the stakeholder and corporate social responsibility approaches are based, in part, upon his overly narrow consistence that they conform to the standard of strict deductive reasoning based on the separation of normative and descriptive narratives.

Faulty method
If Danley’s unexamined philosophical rationalism was the only problem with his methodology, it would be a minor problem of bias in his analysis. However, there lies a more serious flaw in his method which combines with his dated philosophical bias to undermine much of his work.

His method he terms “philosophical analysis”, which he assures is “nothing esoteric, mysterious, or exclusively analytic. In the broadest sense… philosophical analysis involves four moments. The first stage consists in the clarification of the issue and the relevant concepts… The second moment consists in the identification and clarification of the positions taken in respect to the issue… The third moment consists of the identification of the arguments which are or can be deployed in defence of the positions… the fourth and final stage of philosophical analysis consists of the evaluation of the reconstructed arguments. (Danley, 1994; pp 2-4)

In less than two pages Danley sets out his method. This alone should warn us that what follows in not methodologically strong but rather more intuitive. And driven by a plethora of unexamined assumptions.

Let us set aside for now more radical critiques of the structure of his four “moments” accepting that these four moments do indeed represent a valid approach to philosophical analysis, and reflect in more detail about Danley’s method of philosophical analysis. It becomes clear that there is a problem with the treatment of the second “moment” in his method. It would seem to me that he arrives to hastily at defining the two contrasting positions; “the classical and the managerial business ideologies. (ibid; p 3)

Given that Danley’s entire book is based on this fundamental bifurcation, I would suggest that he has not done enough to live up to his own standard of deductive reasoning to warrant these two contrasting positions as the only managerial business ideologies, or even that they are the most relevant of many.

Danley rather weakly contends that “philosophers in the field of business ethics, business school faculty involved in the field of business and society or social issues in Management, as well as practising managers, social critics, commentators, and reformers all seem to function within one framework or the other.” (ibid)

The weakness in these contentions lies in that Danley is proposing two and only two managerial ideologies because “everyone agrees” or at least everyone that matters agrees. This is poor reasoning from Danley’s own standards of deductive logic and a very weak base from witch to develop any analysis, let alone one that is deeply critical if the positions taken by other thinkers in the field.

Arguments from responsibility
The above arguments about flaws in Danley’s methodology have implications that weaken his analysis. If we take as an example, Danley’s approach to corporate citizenship I, like Danley, remain undecided with regards to the various arguments for and against what he describes as “Moral Personhood Arguments”. “Peter French, for example, has argued that corporations are entities which satisfy the conditions under which it is possible to ascribe moral agency. Quite simply, French beliefs, corporations can meaningfully be said to act intentionally… If corporations are moral agents, then French beliefs that all rights, privileges, duties and responsibilities of full fledged moral persons should be ascribed to them.” (ibid; p 196)

The concern is that Danley’s untested assumptions lead him to doubt the veracity of moral personhood arguments, while assuming that corporations do indeed, and, here’s the rub, ought to, act morally; “unless transnational corporations within the international marketplace agree to attain the strictest standards, competition will make ‘being responsible” self destructive.” (ibid; p 286)

This is a narrative irony in which Danley uses the topic of corporate moral agency as the resource to attack those who support corporate moral agency. It is compounded by his insistence that either way, the arguments, while important, make little difference to his analysis. The problem with such ironization is that it fails to account fully for the contexts in which corporations exist.

The idea that corporations ought to act as good corporate citizens is generally treated in the corporate literature as propaganda10, not philosophical truth. In reality corporations and the various thinkers in the field tend to hold hybridised views on corporate citizenship.

The King 2 report, for example uses a hybrid version that straddles the shareholder dominant and the stakeholder approaches. This is done by making a distinction between accountability and responsibility: “one is liable to render account when one is accountable and one is liable to be called to account when one is accountable and one is liable to be called to account when one is responsible…The stakeholder concept of being accountable to all legitimate stakeholders must be rejected for the simple reason that to ask boards to be accountable to every one would result in their being accountable to no one. The modern approach is for a board to identify the company’s stakeholders, including its shareowners and to agree policies as to how the relationships with those stakeholders should be advanced and managed in the interests of the company (King 2, 2002;p 7, paragraph 5.1 p 5)

In Danley’s analysis, King 2 opts for a strong micro-managerialst approach. This however, would not be the full picture because the King 2 report, as in those articles I read in the Harvard Business Review, all seek a hybrid approach which attempts to encourage corporations to maximize profits while acting as good citizens. Danley’s over-hasty bifurcation of managerial business ideologies have lead him to oversimplification, irony and poor argumentation using his own standards of rationalist deduction.

Developing a counter argument
From Danley we have extracted a number of lessons which may trace a counter argument to his “contention that approaches to the issue of corporate social responsibility based on the stakeholder approach are vague and unclear, fail to “specify the content, scope or force of the responsibilities” (1994; 177), and that “the claims concerning social responsibility and professionalism are largely vacuous”(1994:171).

These lessons would include the point that the stakeholder approaches and corporate social responsibility do not resemble a set of arguments with propositions and proofs as much as a gambit in the push and pull of corporate strategic thinking. The idea that a corporation ought to act as a good corporate citizen, that it ought to consider stakeholders and not merely shareholders, can be seen as a way-station in a process of redefining and reinventing the nature of business as these entities adapt to the variety of contexts in which they operate.

The lesson about how Danley’s analysis is dated suggests that things never are fixed and reflections about the nature of such complex things as corporations must be in continual flux with contending versions of reality or lose the ability to innovate. A rationalist deductive logic inevitably seeks to narrow things down to “the truth” about any particular corporation or economic process and is out of place in environments where a plethora of contending versions, values and voices are needed to retain the vitality and creativity of entities such as a corporation.

There is a lesson to be learned from our critique of Danley’s insistence on business ethics being an essentially normative as opposed to descriptive activity. Danley, 1994; p 12). Clark describes this as “a totally false dichotomy, and has been recognised as such by methodologists for some time… Theories and models help us to categorize reality, but these categories are humanly created and always based on value judgements. This is not a radical point, and most, if not all philosophers and historians of science would readily accept it. Only economists seem, as a group, to reject this fact.” (Clark, 2006; p 3)

The dichotomy must be regarded as unworkable but unlike Clark, this does not mean simply replacing one ideology theory with another. If the idea of a normative/descriptive dichotomy is false, simply replacing a favoured normative ideology actually serves to bolster the dichotomy. What is required is an approach that transcends this dichotomy, a recognition that all theories, values and facts use common sense stocks of knowledge to make their various positions, theories, values and assertions “pass” recognizably competent positions, theories, values and assertions.

The lesson learned from Danley’s faulty method is essentially one of patience.
Hastily setting the terms of a debate as between two contending ideologies with little or no exploration leads to an oversimplification which Jan Jans explained is not proper ethics.

Danley’s hasty bifurcation of the debate into merely two approaches to the purpose of the corporation ignores other approaches such as that found in catholic social thought. Alford and Naughton develop an approach to the purpose of business which is critical of both the shareholder and the stakeholder approaches. Alford and Naughton identify four types of good; Excellent and Fundamental, Common and particular. They go on to argue that these goods need to be placed in a proper order, an order defined by the distinction between “’as’ opposed to ‘apparent’ goods” (Alford and Naughton, 2006;p 3)

Alford and Naughton offer a powerful alternative approach to the purpose of business that goes beyond both the shareholder and the stakeholder approaches. The implementing managers I have worked with, treat the stakeholders in much the same fashion as shareholder.

This Alford and Naughton identify in their treatment of particular goods “the stakeholder model can only conceive of ‘particular goods’ because it is founded on an individualistic view of the human person. According to the stakeholder model, the individual wealth maximizer described above in the shareholder model can become more ‘human’ if the person understands his interests in more enlightened ways (‘enlightened self-interest’). If individuals peruse their own particular goods (self interest), while avoiding the violation of the particular goods of other individuals (enlightened), then everyone’s particular goods will be met without having to be concerned with common goods. (Alford and Naughton, 2006; p 12)

The perspective of those applying the stakeholder model is as limited as those proponents of the shareholder approach “because the stakeholder model views the organization as a group of autonomous individuals who affect or are affected by the organization, it starts off with what the person has, that is some stake in the company; whereas the common good model begins with who the person is… Because the stakeholder model begins with having not being, its view of the corporation tends to be utilitarian, attempting to protect
The material interests of the various stakeholders… it is insufficient for building a community where people grow in virtue…” (ibid)

It could be said that those proponents of the stakeholder approach to business treat all stakeholders, including shareholders as if they are simply signifiers or signs, agglomerations of duties prepared and parcelled for attention. Thus we witness the emphasis on compliance in corporations and the relentless insistence that small, medium and micro enterprises “formalize” by which is meant become come complaint with many laws, regulations and policies that various legislative and regulatory bodies publish. As Gilligan’s complaint suggests; the value of justice without the value of care is unjust and unworkable.

The need to balance a variety of values, to place them in their proper order is a distinctive feature of Catholic Social Thought. Catholic Social Thought is not some peculiar little backwater of little significance. Oliver Williams suggests that “with the demise of the Marxist alternative to capitalism, catholic social teaching could emerge as a major international voice, challenging free enterprise to be more humane” (Williams, 1998; p2)

Williams introduces the notion of a “moral compass” where the good society is encircled by the values of Liberty Efficiency, Equality and Community. There seems to be a curious resonance between these four values and Baudrillard’s post-modern, post-marxist exposition of the object value system;
Conclusion
In brief, there is in my view, a number of counter arguments to Danley’s contentions regarding corporate social investment and the stakeholder approach. These counter arguments all seem to bring the good Lady Aidos back into our midst by creating the space for her in our corporate and economic environments. The stakeholder approach is merely one stage in the process of “making space” for her presence in our lives. We have lost the signifier that can allow us to feel ashamed when we make obscene profits amidst structural poverty and degradation. The system of signification in corporate life needs to find space for Aidos.

The preceding section has extracted a number of lessons from Danley which serve to outline the basis for any counter argument to his contention that the stakeholder approach and corporate social investment is vacuous, vague and unclear, lacking scope, force of responsibilities or content. I also introduced the neglected approach to the purpose of business from a Catholic Social Thought tradition as exemplified by Alford and Naughton as well as Oliver Williams. This approach points beyond the stakeholder model to a concept of business that’s resonates with other, post-modern thinkers in the project to develop organizational ideologies that are able to deal with the changing and diverse contexts in which co

Dug's First published article

2006-11-27T09:02:00.000+02:00

Over 21 years ago I got this small piece published in a student rag. What is astounding is that the basic message hasn't changed. Can you pick up what the them is?

Story: Writing on the wall
(Published in Imprint, University of Cape Town; March 1985)

The hyper-busy editorial office of ASCENT gets a tip-off that there is a “Big Story” in town. A story about Cape Town’s underworld.

The overworked, but intelligent Editors, know what to do. They send their star reporter to the scene, the Intrepid Joe Student.

Joe Student hits Cape Town bus terminus around eight on Friday night. She walks resolutely through the concourse of closed shops and tired guards.

Joe walks up the still escalators and past the nodding fat guard out into the half moon night.

The windmill lunch box lies ahead. The sign over the entrance is painted red and blue. The windmill lunch box is a sleazy tavern that opens after 8.00 and is renowned for its dark seats where prostitutes and merchants can sit and relax while dealing with clients.

A large gold emblazoned scrawl on the wall at the entrance to the windmill proclaims CTS.

Aha thinks Joe Student, the Cape Town Scorpions control this place Joe prides herself in her research work. She knows that the CTS are the main dope dealers in Cape Town, Big importers.

Out of the windmill struts a woman of unknown age. She wears a tight pair of black leather pants, and 6 inches of high heels.

Big XR6, mag wheels deluxe tyre stops and the woman leans into the passenger side window. After some talk, the woman gets into the
car and it drives of fast. Prostitute? Why not?

Yes, Joe sees things happen in inner-city Cape Town. Whores, merchants, pimps, roanees, taxi drivers, sailors, “Nite” clubs, bergies, drunks, alternative types and all the rest.

This is part of the real world thinks our Joe Student. How come our university life reflects so little of this hard world?

Joe Student returns to the hectic offices of ASCENT without a story. Sad though, cause Joe saw so much. But some how it all got loft in the translation.

I mean, how do you tell your average student that life is more than countless fish-braais at Hout Bay and Champagne Breakfasts at Hangklip. How does one translate the graffiti on the walls of the inner city – into newsprint for rich cotton wool wrapped babies who spend every vac at Plett?

The split’s too big. The writing’s on the wall.

Poetry

2006-11-25T08:02:00.000+02:00

My FriendMy friend the tree
May fling his arms
In any twisted
Way
But the leaves
Still chase the sun
(Previously unpublished; 1979)

HandsThe steady beat of blood and life
Course through strong square hands
These instruments of man can
Hold each other
In silent prayer or
Kill with plunging knife
They can mold the supple clay of the mind
And in turn the mind’s clay, now hardened
In times course
Transmits its experience back to the hands that
Holds the brush and mixes the paints
Of life’s experience
(First Printed in the Christian Bothers College Pretoria Annual,1978)

Seven
A part of me is still seven
Holding hands in a queue at the
Odeon on Saturday morning

A part of me is still seven
Sharing a Nougat bar with you when
the lights go down for the matinee

A part of me is still seven
Watching the usher shining
her torch and trying to quiet
the rowdy boys during the trailers

A part of me is still seven
Playing cowboys and crooks in
your garden corner house on the hill

A part of me is still seven
Getting beaten-up by Steven
because he liked you too

A part of me is still seven
Planting a tree with the
headmaster at the entrance to school

A part of me is still seven
Stealing a chaste kiss before
going home

Apart of me
Is
still
(unpublished; 2006)

Doing the math on DNA

2006-11-15T16:12:00.000+02:00

Common ancestors of all humans (using mathematical models)
Main Sources:
Mathematical models:
Chang, Joseph T. (1999), Recent common ancestors of all present-day individuals, Advances in Applied Probability 31(4), 1002-26. Followed by discussion and author's reply, 1027-38. The discussion includes comments by:
Carsten Wiuf and Jotun Hein.
Montgomery Slatkin.
W.J. Ewens.
J.F.C. Kingman.

Neil O'Connell (formerly here)
Branching and Inference in Population Genetics (1994)
N. O'Connell. The genealogy of branching processes and the age of our most recent common ancestor. Advances in Applied Probability, 27:418-42, 1995.

Computer simulations:
Douglas L.T. Rohde
His paper:
Somewhat Less-Recent Common Ancestors of all present-day individuals (title is reference to Chang's paper), draft, 2002.
On the common ancestors of all living humans, updated version, 2003, submitted to American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

Modelling the recent common ancestry of all living humans, Douglas L. T. Rohde, Steve Olson and Joseph T. Chang, Nature 431 (7008), 562-6, (September 30, 2004), "Letters to Nature".
News and views
Supplementary Information
Nature news release
Yale news release

Sources yet to be consulted:
Mathematical models:
A.M. Zubkov. Limiting distributions for the distance to the closest mutual ancestor. Theory Probab. Appl., 20(3):602-12, 1975.
P. Jagers, O. Nerman, and Z. Taib. When did Joe's great ...grandfather live? Or on the timescale of evolution. In I.V. Basawa and R.L. Taylor, editors, Selected Proceedings of the Sheffield Symposioum on Applied Probability, volume 18 of IMS Lecture Notes-Monograph Series, 1991.

Branching Processes
V.A. Vatutin. Distance to the nearest common ancestor in Bellman-Harris branching processes. Math. Notes, 25:378-87, 1979.
Coalescent Theory
Martin Moehle

Summary
Mathematical models of populations are limited by the difficulty they have with modelling in a clean way the complex, non-random mating patterns caused by geography, population movement, religion and social status. It is easier to make an assumption like random mating.
To actually model the quirks of the history and geography of the world you really need a computer simulation.

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With random mating, the MRCA would be c.1200 AD
Many mathematical models are of 1-parent genealogies - which is basically like modelling the female-female or male-male CAs.
[Chang, 1999] builds a 2-parent rather than 1-parent model - in pursuit of the real MRCA, rather than just the female-female or male-male one. In his model, if we assume a constant population size, 2 parents per individual, and random mating, then we expect the MRCA to be (log2 of the population size) generations in the past. This is incredibly recent. e.g. Take population size as (a generous) 500 million to estimate the world population over recent history. Then the MRCA is 29 generations ago - say around 1200 AD!

[Ewens, 1999] notes this is basically the reverse analogue of the fact that you only need to go back log2(n) generations to need n separate ancestors.

Non-random mating would push the MRCA further back
Chang says this medieval MRCA is implausible (though as my Royal Descents page illustrates, it is not that implausible at all) and notes that one problem with applying the model to humans is random mating. In reality, mating is of course local. The model does allow for "unlucky" random mating which could push the MRCA back, but notes that it is very unlikely in a large population that you get unlucky enough mating to push it even twice as far back. Perhaps local mating is just unlucky random mating and makes little difference in the long run. But this needs to be proved (by constructing a local-mating mathematical model). It may be that the pattern of local mating is extremely distorted by earth's specific geography, so perhaps only a computer simulation (rather than a general mathematical model) can solve this issue.
An extreme example of earth's geography would be total isolation. Many human populations, especially in Australia, the Pacific, the Americas and the Arctic, seem to have been isolated from each other until modern times. If populations were truly isolated, then the probability of 2 individuals mating either side of the barrier may truly have been zero for thousands of years. In which case the MRCA for the world would be pushed back to thousands of years ago. Apparently [Nei and Roychoudhury, 1982] and [Goldstein et al, 1995] use DNA to estimate ages for the MRCA of 116,000 and 156,000 years ago. One wonders if they are aware that DNA cannot be used to estimate the MRCA.

In theory, cases of extreme religious isolation (or ethnic or linguistic or social isolation) could also push back the MRCA. But we know that extreme religious (or other ethnic or cultural) reproductive isolation simply does not last for hundreds of years. If people share the same territory, some of them will interbreed no matter what. A tiny minority perhaps, but that's all we need to rapidly get everyone descended from an MRCA. The only thing that will stop people interbreeding is total geographical isolation.

Whatever about the world as a whole, Chang's model does suggest that the MRCA for Europe, where populations constantly mixed, may be well within historical times. Quite likely (as is suggested by other independent evidence on my Royal Descents page) the entire population of the West descends from Charlemagne.

One wonders what Chang's model would predict for the most recent strict female-female or strict male-male ancestor. Comparing this with the DNA figures might give us a handle on how unrealistic random mating is as a model.

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In the past, ancestor of some means ancestor of all
Chang's second result is that when you go far enough back, every individual is either an ancestor of the whole world today, or else is an ancestor of no one alive today. In nature, it is obvious that this state must be reached as you go back, see [Dawkins, 1992] - just consider ancestral fish. If I am descended from a particular one, then so are all humans.
In Chang's mathematical model this state is reached very quickly, within about 1.77 times the number of generations of the MRCA, i.e. using our numbers above, perhaps c.700 AD. So it would look like this:

Before 700 AD, every single human is either ancestor of no one alive today, or ancestor of everyone alive today. [Rohde, 2002] refers to this as the "All Common Ancestors", or ACA, point. Obviously if someone in this period is a proven ancestor of someone alive today then they must be ancestor of everyone alive today. So, for example, Charlemagne, because he is a proven ancestor of some people alive today, is probably the ancestor of everyone alive today in the West.

Between 700 AD and 1200 AD, every single human is either ancestor of no one alive today, ancestor of everyone alive today, or ancestor of some people alive today.

After 1200 AD, every single human is either ancestor of no one alive today, or ancestor of some people alive today.
Accepting that it is wrong to draw the above conclusions with locally-mating humans - despite that, these figures are in fact quite plausible (if restricted to the Western world at least).

In the past, you are descended from most of the population
In fact, Chang's model predicts that around 80 percent of the population before the ACA point is an ancestor of everyone alive today (and 20 percent are ancestors of no one alive today). But there is no realistic model of mate choice. [Rohde, 2002] has a better model of mate choice, and comes up with a more convincing figure of around 60 percent of those who survive to adulthood and have children. This is discussed below.

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Computer simulations
[Rohde, 2002] has run the first ever serious computer simulation of the history of the world's genealogy.
He makes a serious attempt to model non-random mating. He sets up an abstract model of "continents", "countries" and "towns", which can be viewed not merely as geographic position but more abstractly as the pool from which one is more or less likely to choose a mate - whether that pool be geographic, religious or whatever.

He even simulates the historical growth of the world population - adjusting the birth and survival rate so that population growth matches the real numbers over the centuries from 1000 BC to 2000 AD. Interestingly, he found this made little difference to the MRCA date.

Given a reasonable choice of parameters, he estimates the MRCA for the world at c. 300 AD, with bounds of c. 150 BC to c. 800 AD.

The lowest rate of migration (and hence lowest rate of cross-breeding) he tried was: probability of leaving the "country" 0.05 percent and probability of leaving the "continent" 0.001 percent. Even with this extreme local-breeding model he still gets an MRCA for the whole world in historical times at c. 150 BC.

Growing Artificial Societies: Social Science from the Bottom Up by Joshua M. Epstein and Robert L. Axtell.

Before the ACA point, ancestor of some means ancestor of all
Very interestingly, Rohde empirically confirms Chang's model that not long (only a few centuries) before the MRCA, we reach the ACA point, where everyone is either a CA (ancestor of everyone) or else their line is extinct.

Before the ACA point, you are descended from most of the population that has children
Rohde does, however, correct Chang's figure of 80 percent of people being CAs before the ACA point. He uses non-random mating, a realistic birth rate, and a model of male-female mate choice, to get a more convincing figure of around 60 percent for the percentage of people whose lines do not go extinct. This is restricted to those who have lines in the first place, i.e. 60 percent of those who survive to adulthood and have children.
In other words, if you go back before the ACA point, which may be as recent as classical times, you are descended from around 60 percent of any ancient population that has children.

My DNA results

2006-11-15T16:10:00.000+02:00

GENETIC ANCESTRY TESTING REPORT
Division of Human Genetics, National Health Laboratory Service, P O Box 1038, Johannesburg, 2000
Room 303 James Gear Building, Corner of Hospital and DeKorte Streets, Braamfontein
Tel: (011) 489-9237 (Laboratory) Prof Himla Soodyall: (011) 489-9208 FAX: (011) 489-9226
MRC/NHLS/WITS HUMAN GENOMIC
DIVERSITY AND DISEASE RESEARCH UNIT
(HGDDRU)

NAME: Douglas Racionzer
SEX: Male
MtDNA analysis
MtDNA HVRI variation: 16183A-C, 16189T-C, 16223C-T,16278C-T,
16294C-T, 16390G-A
MtDNA HVRII variation: 73A-G, 143G-A, 146T-C, 195T-C, 263A-G
MtDNA haplogroup: L2a
MtDNA matches: When we searched our sub-Saharan African
database we found no identical match; closest
match differed by two base positions to 2
Bantu-speakers from South Africa.
Haplogroup information

It is possible for us to reconstruct the evolutionary history of all mtDNA lineages
found in living peoples to a common ancestor, sometimes referred to in the
popular press as “Mitochondrial Eve”. This ancestor lived in Africa, about
150,000 years ago. She lies at the root of all the maternal ancestries of every
one of the six billion people in the world. We are all her direct maternal
descendants. The various “patterns” of mtDNA sequence variation found in living
people are referred to as “haplogroups” that are defined by the presence of
certain changes (mutations) when compared to a published sequence referred to
as the reference sequence. These mutations are random and not associated with
any disease. The global pattern of distribution of mtDNA haplogroups is shown in
Figure 2 in the information sheet given to you at the time of sampling.

Of the thirty-three haplogroups recognized worldwide, thirteen can be traced to
geographic origins in Africa. MtDNA types found in African populations share
certain common features and have been assigned to haplogroup L. Haplogroup L
can be further resolved into L1, L2 and L3 (Sykes 2001). Haplogroup L2 is
divided into 4 subclades L2a through to L2d.

L2a is the most frequent and widespread mtDNA cluster in Africa. It does appear
to have an origin in West Africa and to have undergone dramatic expansion
either in southeastern Africa or in a population ancestral to present day
southeastern Africans, its distribution does suggest a signature for the Bantu
expansion (see distribution in map below). Sequences associated with this
haplogroup have been evolving for about 33,000 years (Salas et al. 2002).

The following is an extract from and article published in the American Journal of Human Genetics:
The Making of the African mtDNA Landscape
Antonio Salas,1,2,3 Martin Richards,2 Tomás De la Fe,1 María-Victoria Lareu,1 Beatriz Sobrino,1 Paula Sánchez-Diz,1 Vincent Macaulay,3 and Ángel Carracedo1
Haplogroup L2
Haplogroup L2 (figs. 6 and 7) is commonly subdivided into four main subclades, L2a through L2d (Chen et al. 2000; Pereira et al. 2001; Torroni et al. 2001). L2c cannot be distinguished from L2* without HVS-II information (325 in HVS-II) or coding-region mutations, although some of its subclades have distinctive HVS-I motifs. Among the southeastern Africans typed for this study (table 1), we found no L2* mtDNAs (in agreement with Torroni et al. 2001). The great majority belong to L2a (fig. 6), the most frequent and widespread mtDNA cluster in Africa (nearly a quarter of all indigenous types), as well as in African Americans.
We have attempted partly to disentangle the structure of L2a, retaining as irreducible on present evidence three major squares close to the root of the cluster. These reticulations link eight main clusters by single-step mutations. We assume that the main reticulations of the network are due to the existence of rapid transitions at positions 16189 and 16192 (Howell et al. 2000), which approach saturation due to the high time depth of African lineages. We also assume that position 16309 is more stable than the two known fast sites and therefore is not responsible for the main reticulations. On these grounds, clusters α1-α2-α3, as well as β1-β2-β3, might be collapsed into two main clusters, one of them with the basal motif of L2a and the other harboring the transition at 16309 (L2a1). Several instances in which 16309 must nevertheless evolve in parallel can then be read off the network.
There are two L2a clusters well represented in southeastern Africans, L2a1a and L2a1b, both defined by transitions at quite stable HVS-I positions. Both of these appear to have an origin in West Africa (as indicated by the distribution of matching or neighboring types), and to have undergone dramatic expansion either in southeastern Africa or in a population ancestral to present-day southeastern Africans. L2a1b almost certainly includes the 16192T-derived subcluster, which is exclusively present in the southeast. The very recent starbursts in subclades L2a1a and L2a2 suggest a signature for the Bantu expansions, as also suggested by Pereira et al. (2001). The L2a1a founder candidate dates to 2,700 (SE 1,200) years ago. For L2a1b there is a rather older age estimate of 8,850 years, but this has an enormous standard error (SE 4,600 years) as a result of the early 16192 branch (Pereira et al. 2001). If we assume a starlike tree by suppressing the 16192 variant (effectively assuming that this is a third founder type), the age is 5,250 (SE 1,600) years. An average age estimate, under the assumption of two founders in L2a, is 6,600 (SE 3,000) years or, under the assumption of three founders, 3,750 (SE 900) years. Thus, it appears that the founder ages for L2a are significantly older than for L1a, consistent with the phylogeographical picture, with an earlier West African origin for the L2a lineages of southeastern Africa and a more recent East African origin for the L1a lineages. Indeed, the age of the L2a founders in southeastern Africa is consistent with an origin in the earliest Bantu dispersal from the Cameroon plateau, 3,500 years ago (Phillipson 1993).
It is difficult to trace the origin of L2a with any confidence. The deepest part of L2a, represented by clusters α1-α3, is most common in East Africa. However, the diversity and TMRCA are similar in East (61,250 [SE 13,500] years) and West (54,100 [SE 17,087] years) Africa. The diversity accumulated separately in East and West Africa, estimated from the main shared founder types (and disregarding the possibility of subsequent gene flow), is again similar in the two regions, at ∼14,000 years (14,100 years [SE 5,100], and 13,800 years [SE 4,700], respectively), suggesting a separation shortly after the Last Glacial Maximum. An easterly origin for L2a also faces the following difficulties: that the other subclades of L2 (L2b, L2c, and L2d) have a clear western distribution, and that L2d diverges earlier in the mtDNA phylogeny than L2a (Torroni et al. 2001). A possible solution would be an origin for L2a somewhere between east and west, followed by dispersals in both directions along the Sahel corridor.
Haplogroups L2b, L2c, and L2d appear to be largely confined to West and western Central Africa (and African Americans), with only minor occurrences of a few derived types in the southeast. L2b also shows isolated occurrences in the east and as far north as Iberia. Therefore, an origin for all three in West and western Central Africa seems likely. Complete sequence data indicate that L2d is the oldest of the four subclades of L2, diverging before L2a, and that L2b and L2c are sister clades that diverged more recently (Torroni et al. 2001). The estimated divergence times, ranging from ∼120,000 years, for L2d, through 55,000 years, for L2a, and ∼30,000 years, for L2b and L2c, with an estimated overall age for L2 of ∼70,000 years, are consistent with this pattern. In the light of this, it is scarcely surprising that tracing its place of origin is problematic. At such an age, it seems perhaps unlikely that L2d should have diverged in West Africa, but, given the period of potential drift and extinction, the data are certainly consistent with a Central African origin. A single type in the subclade L2d1, not seen in the southeastern Africans but present at high frequency in the Bubi of Bioko, may represent a trace of this.
L2 contributes 36% (95% CR .316–.408) to the southeastern Bantu population. If we sum this with the other major southeastern haplogroups of clear West African origin, L3b and L3d, the combined contribution of a putative West African source is ∼44% (95% CR .398–.493).
(Am J Hum Genet. November 2002; 71(5): 1082–1111)

Y chromosome analysis
Two kinds of Y chromosome data were used to resolve your Y chromosome
lineage. The first involved screening for certain mutations to elucidate the Y
chromosome haplogroup (groups of lineages that are identical by descent since
they share a common defining mutation). The second involved the use of faster
evolving DNA called short tandem repeats (STRs) that we use to further resolve
the haplogroup. By screening for several of these STR markers it is possible to
derive a haplotype, a combination of the patterns observed for each region on
the Y chromosome tested.

Y chromosome haplogroup: E-M35
Haplogroup information:
Haplogroup E-M35 was one of the Y haplogroups that was common among the
Neolithic farmers from the Middle East who first brought agriculture into Europe
about 9 000 years ago. It has been estimated that the date of the most recent
common ancestor of all E-M35's is 24 000 to 27 000 years ago and that the
probable place of origin was east Africa (Cruciani et al. 2004). It is seen most
frequently along the Mediterranean coast at frequencies of 20-24% in Greece,
10-27% in Italy, and 2-11% in Spain (Semino et al. 2004). It is present at low
frequencies in Britain at 6%, in Germany at 3%, and less than 0.5% in Norway
(Capelli et al. 2003). Haplogroup E-M35 is seen at a frequency of ~ 10% in the
South African White and Jewish population.

STR profile:
Marker DYS19 DYS389I DYS389II DYS390 DYS391 DYS392 DYS393
Profile 14 14 32 24 10 11 13
Range 10-19 9-17 24-35 12-29 6-15 6-18 7-17
Marker DYS385 DYS438 DYS439
Profile 16, 17 10 12
Range 7-25 8-12 8-15

STR Matches:
We compared your Y chromosome STR profile with about 41,000 Y chromosome
haplotypes from a STR database (www.ystr.org). When using all ten markers
(both tables above) we found no identical match. However, when using 7
markers (first table) we found 10 identical matches worldwide, i.e. 4 European, 3
Latin American, 1 North American and 2 matches found in an African population.
When we searched our local database, using the first seven markers we found
no identical match; closest matches differed by one STR repeat to 2 South
Africans, i.e. 1 Jewish and 1 Coloured

References
Capelli et al. 2003. Curr Biol. 13(11):979-84.
Cruciani et al. 2004. Am J Hum Genet. 74(5):1014-22.
Semino et al. 2004. Am J Hum Genet. 74(5):1023-34.
Salas et al. 2002. Am J Hum Genet 71: 1082-1111.

Dug's DNA report

2006-10-19T12:08:00.000+02:00

I went to have my DNA tested in August and the results are posted below:

GENETIC ANCESTRY TESTING REPORT
Division of Human Genetics, National Health Laboratory Service, P O Box 1038, Johannesburg, 2000
Room 303 James Gear Building, Corner of Hospital and DeKorte Streets, Braamfontein
Tel: (011) 489-9237 (Laboratory) Prof Himla Soodyall: (011) 489-9208 FAX: (011) 489-9226
MRC/NHLS/WITS HUMAN GENOMIC
DIVERSITY AND DISEASE RESEARCH UNIT
(HGDDRU)

NAME: Douglas Racionzer
SEX: Male
MtDNA analysis
MtDNA HVRI variation: 16183A-C, 16189T-C, 16223C-T,16278C-T,
16294C-T, 16390G-A
MtDNA HVRII variation: 73A-G, 143G-A, 146T-C, 195T-C, 263A-G
MtDNA haplogroup: L2a
MtDNA matches: When we searched our sub-Saharan African
database we found no identical match; closest
match differed by two base positions to 2
Bantu-speakers from South Africa.
Haplogroup information

It is possible for us to reconstruct the evolutionary history of all mtDNA lineages
found in living peoples to a common ancestor, sometimes referred to in the
popular press as “Mitochondrial Eve”. This ancestor lived in Africa, about
150,000 years ago. She lies at the root of all the maternal ancestries of every
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Resentiment and Power

2006-09-10T16:26:00.000+02:00

Considering a role for ressentiment in a socio-political theory of power
IntroductionThe opportunity to develop a socio-political theory of power seemed at first too large a task and yet too good to miss. Whilst reading the various articles and working my way through the reading list, I experienced something of an intellectual panic. The cause of the panic came from the very different perceptions, ideas and arguments propounded about power in social relations. It wasn’t that the various authors were contesting with each other about the nature of social power. This is to be expected in social theory. It had more to do with the manner in which the various theories of power were advanced. I came to the view that the various thinkers and authors had very different ideas about what constitutes a theory. This indicates that a prior work needs to be done before any socio-political theory can be developed. This prior work is to define what a social theory is. I think it useful to do this ‘prior work’ here, as it will clear up a number of assumptions about social theories in general.

I have consequently structured the assignment as a set of arguments about what social theorizing entails. The production of competent social theories will be described. These arguments will serve to explore the way in which theorizing may in itself be a strategy of power and requires social power in order to be competently achieved, mediated and shared.

These arguments for the reflexivity of power and theorizing and its indexical properties, it is hoped, will allow us to use the social action of theorizing as a template for any social theory.

Social theories are however, deeply contested fields of academic endeavour; the, now traditional, fissure between micro and macro social theories demands specific attention because few social theories are able to offer insights at both levels of analysis and, more crucially for our purposes, a socio-political theory of power requires the theory to have a pneumatic dynamic where social action located in localized contexts may be drawn into broader and more “macro” discourses. The questions which I want to ask in this assignment would be; how may we translate a micro-social theory such as we will develop, which is focussed on meaning, into macro sociological terms that stresses structure and normative order?

I have elsewhere introduced the work of Mary Douglas to assist in the task of such micro-macro translation. Particularly useful is her ethnography of the Lele in which she noted the role of the pangolin, a scaly anteater in Lele society. “In her attempt to describe the cosmology of a central African group, the Lele. Douglas (1975) found that the Lele’s totem was the pangolin and that much of their worldview related to this scaly anteater. The pangolin does not fit securely into the animal category: it only gives birth to one offspring at a time; it does not run away when hunted; although it is a land animal it has the body and tail of fish. “The Lele’s celebration of the anomalous pangolin enabled Douglas to specify her analytic problem. She notes that Levi-Strauss has suggested a natural propensity of mythical thought to postulate entities that mediate between polarities established in cognitive categories. The anomalous pangolin seemed like just such a mediating entity.” (Silverman, 1985; pp13-14)” (Racionzer, 2005; p24) I would suggest the cognitive categories requiring pangolins include micro and macro social theory.

This paper will review the faculties of a particular concept; ressentiment , to see if it may do the work of the pangolin and offer explanatory insights into both Macro and Micro social phenomena. Frings points out that “ressentiment is a loan-word from the French language and it was Nietsche who introduced the word as a philosophical term” (Frings, 1965; pp 81-2)

I will argue that ressentiment can operate effectively on a micro as well as a macro level of theorizing and thus exploring its translative properties and its meaning may help us to fill the gap in the development of our socio-political theory of power. It cannot be a handicap that ressentiment may also offer some insight into corruption.

TheorizingTheorizing in the Social Sciences demands of its practitioners a certain battle-readiness, as it is a deeply contested field of knowledge. Alan Blum argues that “Generally, adequate theorizing is identified with deductive explanation…Adequate theorizing is then used as a synonym for adequate scientific theorizing… I merely want to point out that in its historic senses, theorizing as an idea does not necessarily entail any conception of scientific procedure as we currently understand it.”(Blum, 1972;p303)

Blum goes on to argue that not only does theoria predate our modern conceptions of science but also there is an honourable tradition that argues the scientific approach explicitly denies the possibility of theorizing. Blum recalls Plato’s ’thoughts’ about knowledge versus ‘opinion’ Husserl’s ‘fact’ versus ‘essence’ and Wittgenstein’s ‘usage’ versus ‘form of life’. These all suggest in various ways that the common-sense natural attitude necessarily entails the failure to theorize. (ibid)

When developing a socio-political theory of power, I shall take my cue from Blum’s diagnosis of theory ‘s condition that “most discussions of (social scientific) theory proceed as if the term could be isolated from the analytic tradition (language) in which it normally functions. When Homans, Levy, and Merton inform us as to what a theory is, they are generally talking from within a linguistic framework whose deep structure they have already assimilated into their definition and which they assume without question as the necessary condition(s) of an adequate response.” (ibid, p302).

Giddens, usually a deeply nuanced thinker, nonetheless may be placed with Homans, Merton and other theorists who fail to take seriously the reflexive and indexical nature of their own theorizing when, for example he talks of structure; “Structure thus refers, in social analysis, to the structuring properties allowing the ‘binding’ of time-space in social systems…”(Haugaard, 2002; p 153) or elsewhere about resources; “…the notion of resources can be applied to connect the structural study of domination with the analysis of the power relations involved in social systems”(Knorr-Cetina etal, 1981; p170)

It is at this point that I would normally advance the various arguments about authors such as Giddens failing to deal the essentially reflexive and indexical nature of their own theorizing. I would usually point to the manner in which theorists such as Giddens et al gloss their topic by using the topic as a resource in an ironicizing manner. But my intellectual panic indicates that there are more profound issues at stake here.

As Blum goes on to observe; “Much of the uneasiness experienced by sociologists with hypothetico-deductive (and many post-modern) models of theorizing has been dumbly attributed to facts like these: that they gloss what we desire to explicate, that they fail to comprehend the “normative” character of action, that they are unable to grasp the “indexical” character of our subject matter, etc…as if we (the reputable ones) never gloss, as if our descriptions of indexical performance are not indexically tied to the conditions of their occurrence….I take it that the trouble we have with the deductive model stems from none of these concrete sorts of considerations but from the existential fact that we cannot live with it as sociologists, we cannot see with it, it chokes us rather than liberates us; we just do not find it compelling.” (Blum, 1972;p 302)

The readings for this assignment had very much this effect upon me. While I found some of the arguments interesting and others even useful (particularly Scott, 1990), I was left with a deep feeling of ennui with respect to the varying theories of power presented in the readings. It is not that there is anything “wrong” or false about them. It is that the languages, the terms in which these theories of power are couched only have a tangential alignment with my experience, my own language of power as I experience it played-out in social life.

The languages of power, the signifiers in which theories of social power are couched require some explanation here. I shall go into some detail as these arguments resonate as a template for theorizing in this paper. The later work of Wittgenstein with respect to language-usage and language games strongly support and were concurrent with Austin’s Oxford lectures published as “How to do things with words”. In these lectures, Austin demolished the logical-positivist notion that truth conditions were central to understanding language (and consequently theories in general).

Austin introduces the class of what he calls “performatives” as opposed to sentences that are “constatives”. These performatives cannot be true or false like constatives but may be “infelicitous”. One may declare war with Zanzibar but have no army and thus no power to declare war. One may name a ship the SAS Smuts when it is already named the SAS Nongoma. That is, some performatives, while remaining neither true nor false, may fail to actually achieve the thing they declare

On the basis of these observations Austin declares that (a) some sentences, performatives, are special: uttering them does things, and does not merely say things…and (b) these performative sentences achieve their corresponding actions because there are specific conventions linking the words to institutional procedures. And unlike constatives, which are assessed in terms of truth and falsity, performatives can only be assessed as felicitous of infelicitous, according to whether their felicity conditions are met or not.”
(Levinson, 1983; pp229-231)

Austin’s lectures then proceed, using examples and progressive argumentation, to collapse the distinction between performatives and constatives. The end result is that “all utterances not only serve to express propositions, but also perform actions.” (ibid; p243)

I have spent time and space here to describe Austin’s seminal work on speech acts because it advances what I consider to be a fundamental insight into theorizing. That language and consequently theories, which are invariably described using language, cannot only denote meaning. Theories are used to do things, to account for things done, to plan.

I would like very much to think that theorizing is something akin to speech acts. If we could treat theorizing as not only the gathering of groups of statements that are true or not, but also the process of doing things, then we begin to walk down the path of theorizing which may reflect the nature of power in social life. This assignment allows me to consider various socio-political theories of power and the ideas within them while simultaneously affording the opportunity to examine how any social theory may be inductively generated using language and its structure.

An acute analysis of the power of language may be found in Scott’s work which refers to official and hidden transcripts where he ventures “a crude and global generalization I will later want to qualify severely: the greater the disparity in power between dominant and subordinate and the more arbitrarily it is exercised, the more the public transcript of subordinates will take on a stereotyped, ritualistic cast.” (Scott, 1990; p3)

Scotts’ work begins to “speak” the language of power that resonates closely with my experience. Scott however clearly privileges the hidden transcripts as being more “real” than its public alternate and on this point we must differ.

Micro and Macro social theory
It is no coincidence that these arguments about theorizing are neatly paralleled in some of the debates about power. As Bourdieu argues, in social scientific theories there are micro-sociologies and macro-sociologies. These have been characterized as the Macro-Micro debate. These debates are not merely abstruse delineations but are routinely used within academic institutions to populate departments and social science faculties. A researcher’s, often nuanced position with respect to the Macro-Micro debate, will largely determine their career and the colleges or universities where they can find work. The Macro-Micro debate is used as arbiter of power in these institutions.

Knorr-Cetina (1981) takes Dahrendorf’s exposition of the division in modern social thought between integration theories and coercion theories and argues that both are rooted in a normative paradigm of social reality. “The normative conception of order is at the same time a macro-level conception of order. Society is integrated (or rent apart) by shared values and obligations (which) determine individual conduct. Compared with the normative conception of order, the cognitive turn, which I have attributed to micro-sociological approaches, is marked by a shift of interest towards language use and cognitive process that represent and interpret the relevance of values and obligations… Not only has order become a cognitive (including linguistic) rather than a normative phenomenon, it has also become a man-made rather than man-coercing matter: it is produced, contested, repaired organized and displayed in concrete situations whose definition become the subject of continual accomplishment and interruption.”(Knorr-Cetina, 1981;pp2-6)

Social theories that put human actors as creators and wielders of power have always attracted me, not least because it increased my sense of personal mastery. The placing of the individual person and the intersubjective creation of social life has always seemed to me to be more ethically just. “Instead of being seen in a monolithic system which regulates individual action, order comes to be seen as an upshot of concrete communicative action. In a sense, the problem of social order (as Hobbes saw it) is redefined by turning the traditional approach to social order on its head. Social order is not that which holds society together by somehow controlling individual wills, but that which comes about in the mundane but relentless transactions of these wills.” (ibid;p7)

There are those who argue that social order is the effect (or effluent) of power in social interactions. That is, in Sausurian terms, that the signifier; ‘social order’ is causally linked to the signified; ‘power’. Giddens for example, talks of “structures of signification”

Bourdieu describes his work as overcoming the opposition in social theory that posits “a twofold social genesis, on the one hand of the schemes of perception, thought, and action which are constitutive of what I call habitus, and on the other hand of social structures, and particularly of what I call fields and of groups, notably those we ordinarily call social classes.” (Bourdieu, 2002; p 230)

These arguments about social order and the theories developed to explain or understand society are fundamentally about power. In most instances we could simply replace the words ‘social order’ with the word ‘power’ and the various arguments and stances can still be sustained. I’m not suggesting here that I conceive power as the same as social order. I am rather arguing that the signifier; ‘social order’ is linked to another signifier ‘power’ as can be found in intersubjective scenes where strategies of power and “power-plays” are enacted. There is, to my mind, a definite linking of social order to power but the linking is between two signifiers not between a signifier and a signified. The meanings remain unresolved because they depend utterly upon context and the specifics of daily life. Describing context and developing theory through induction and analysis is the particular strength of case studies and vignettes.

Case Study of Power, Weakness and Ressentiment in a township

A method for studying social phenomena such as power involves the use of case studies. Schafer (1994) argues that case studies, including ethnography are criticized by many on the basis that case study findings cannot be generalized to other settings. Many would argue against this, saying that case study findings can be validly applied in other settings. Qualitative researchers prefer to use concepts such as “transferability” or “fittingness” to describe external validity. Some feel that “rich and dense” grounded theory will suggest in itself its own sphere of relevance and application. Perhaps the pivotal insight into the case study method is that case studies may be generalizable to concepts (such as power) and cannot be generalizable to populations.

I have elsewhere argued for case studies and in particular I argued for case studies using Yin who suggests that “in general, case studies are the preferred strategy when ‘how’ or why’ questions are being posed, when the investigator has little control over events and when the focus is on a contemporary phenomenon within some real-life context (Yin, 1984; p17).

Nietsche offers us a warrant to use trade as a legitimate context for the study of power relations; “for barter and trade to be possible at all, he argues, the debtor must be able to remember his promise of remuneration…In case where the debtor is unable to repay his debt, however, a creditor is entitled to inflict all manner of mutilation and dishonour upon the debtor’s body; for example, ‘cutting as much flesh off as seems appropriate for the debt’, and this ‘economic’ bargain constituted the basis for various primitive and classical codes of law. It is this economic notion of justice that the Venetian merchant Shylock appeals to in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, when he claims a pound of Antonio’s flesh as forfeit for his failure to repay a loan. The underlying logic of such economic compensation, Nietsche argues, was to replace payment for goods with an increase in the creditor’s feeling of power…” (Spinks, 2003; pp68-9)

The case study worked-up in this paper is divided into three vignettes and some background information may be useful to orient the reader; When black people were forcibly removed to designated townships and Bantustans in the 1960’s, the Apartheid planners generally failed to establish commercial zones or properties designated for retail shopping in these townships. The whole reasoning was that black people must be utterly dependent upon white business. Section 10(1) of the Urban Areas Act and subsequent regulations severely restricted all forms of trade in townships;

“Trading and professional activities may be carried on only on premises allocated for the purpose (this and other regulations do not apply to the sale of milk by residents). Business hours for traders are determined by the authorities. The trader must keep proper books, open for inspection by the authorities, and must observe regulations for health and sanitation. No one may without permission canvas orders for any trade that is not conducted within the township… No companies, partnerships, financial institutions, wholesalers’ businesses, or industrial concerns may be established in urban townships, nor may one man carry on more than one business. No business may be conducted for any purpose other than that of providing for the daily essential domestic requirements of the African residents.” (Horrell, 1969; p 98)

It is no accident that Metro Cash-n-Carry started business in 1969 with a business model that sited their discounting wholesale operations in industrial estates known as “border industrial areas” (Horrell, 1969; p 68) situated just outside the urban townships.

Nattrass notes “prior to the late 1970’s, the attitude of planners and administrators in South Africa to small urban black business was generally hostile” (Nattrass, 1990; p218)

Residents of townships responded to gaps in the provision of their needs by establishing their own system of commerce and services. Khosa argues “apartheid policies as applied to black cab owners in central city areas severely stunted the growth of black entrepreneurship in the paratransit sector. However, the residential segregation of South Africa’s urban landscape and the removal of black townships to the urban fringes, paradoxically re-created the conditions for the development of a dynamic black taxi industry.” (Khosa, 1990; p 214) The taxi industry is widely recognized as an example of an endogenously organized industry displaying the genius of African entrepreneurship.

“By the early 1980’s, the (Apartheid Government) policy was transformed into one of acceptance, encouragement and upgrading of small black enterprise activity.” (Nattrrass, 1990; p 218)

The cumulative effect of the consumer boycotts from the mid-1980’s meant that merely by opening small convenience stores at one’s home, township residents were undermining and resisting the Apartheid system. Any action that lessened the dominance of white business over township residents was a threat to Apartheid. The small retail outlet was however still dependent on supplies from large discounting wholesalers such as Metcash.

This system of supply known as the “supply chain” still operates today as the template for supplying products and services in South African townships.

Given this history, the operation of non-formal retail outlets in townships suggests that special social and organizational skills are required to maintain such operations. The three vignettes that follow have been written based upon real-life experiences during 2003 with a marketing and distribution company called EMS which specialized in supplying products and services to township-based retail operations known as “Spaza’s” or “Tuck-shops”.

The following three vignettes display the complex interplay of intentions and structures in a township business context:

Vignette #1: Sisters Spaza & Take-awaySister runs a spaza shop and sells beer and spirits from her premises. EMS supplies Sister with products and helped her set-up a take-away operation under the African Burger brand. Sister is married and has three children who all live on the premises. Sister’s husband, John works in Germiston and visits most weekends. Sister and John and their family moved to Nelmapius from Mamelodi when the RDP housing estate was built. In Mamelodi, sister used to run a spaza shop and sell alcohol. When they moved to Nelmapius, Sister simply re-opened her operation.

As the African Burger outlet started to produce increased profits, Sister found she was making more money than her husband and started to improve the property. John, her husband would visit on weekends, invite all his friends over and drink all the profits and any money left over, he would take back to Germiston with him. When Sister protested, John beat her.

Sister was unable to continue running the take-away outlet as her cash flow had been taken by John. Sister reflected that at least if she was poorer than her husband, she would not get beaten.

CommentIt is clear that Sister’s runs a popular local shop that is patronized by about 200 homes I her neighbourhood. The African Burger take-away operation was a success from a profit and business point of view. However the family circumstances from which Sister operates is unable to sustain her success. Her husband’s jealousy and alcohol problem literally killed the operation.

Sister’s ressentiment was displayed in her reflection that at least she wasn’t getting beaten if she made less money than her husband.

It is my experience that Sister’s circumstance reflects the context in which many township business operations are run and highlights the kinds of pressures entrepreneurs find themselves subjected to should they become “too successful”. This situation is generally referred to as “jealous down” in township parlance.

Vignette #2: Brothers Tuck-shop and Taxi-stopBrother runs a tuck-shop some 700 meters away from Sister’s Spaza shop. Brother is well known as a BMW enthusiast and has a number of stores and owns some taxis in Mamelodi.

Brother’s Tuck-shop is run by a constantly changing staff of Mozambican migrants who sleep in the store. These men are not legally here and live in constant fear of arrest and deportation. The tuck-shop is popular as it is situated at a local informal taxi-rank organized by the taxi association to which Brother belongs. Alcohol was sold from the premises but of late no alcohol is available at the tuck-shop.

EMS supplies a variety of products to the tuck-shop and to other stores in Brother’s chain of outlets. EMS also has an advertisement hoarding outside the shop and shares the rental revenues from the signage with Brother. Brother did not buy-in to the African Burger take-away brand but offers bread and polony to customers.

Brother is a member of the Nelmapius Community Policing Forum (CPF) at Silverton Police Station. Brother often recruits individuals to join the police reserve at Silverton although he is not a reservist himself. Brother is a successful township entrepreneur with a variety of business interests.

CommentBrother is in many ways an example of a typical “successful” township entrepreneur. His use of illegal migrant labour provides an immediate pecuniary advantage because he can pay low wages to these desperate and willing employees but their lack of local language skills and their essentially temporary circumstances ensures that the patrons of his shops do not develop good relations or rapport with the shop-keeper (as customers are able to do with Sister).

I think that Brother’s involvement with the taxi association reflects a common ressentimental tactic that insists on membership of organized bodies for mutual support and to give individuals a “voice” because Brother feels that alone, he would not have any power.

The CPF involvement seems odd as invariably, spaza-shop owners steer clear of formal relationships with police and the state. Few township shops operate with a trading licence, fewer still have liquor licences. Becoming involved with formal state structures and particularly the repressive state apparatus of the police would potentially threaten the business interests of most township shop owners.

It is doubtful that this may be characterized as a psychological reaction-formation (Freud, 1936) where the values of the powerful are adopted because of anxiety about the threat of punishment from authorities as “this type of counter-tendency among normal people and others who are not psychotic is questionable. Clinical case histories and accounts of diagnostic conferences appear to indicate that the concept of reaction formation is over-used…” (Levitt, 1971;pp70-1)

Vignette #3: Police Raid and Inspector Douglas FourieOne Monday morning, some weeks after the closure of the African Burger take-aways at Sister’s, a director of EMS received a call from Sister to say that the police had raided her shop on Saturday, confiscated her beer stock and arrested her. She had spent the weekend in the police cells and needed R500 for bail.

After securing Sister’s release, EMS directors began to investigate the problem. One of the Directors met with Inspector Douglas Fourie who runs the liquor licence unit at Silverton Police station.

Inspector Fourie explained that there had been pressure applied from a City Councillor who was a prominent member of the ANC Women’s League and an avowed anti-alcohol campaigner. He pointed out that while any home could brew their own beer, a licence was needed to sell alcohol. The single police officer in Mamelodi tasked with policing the sale of alcohol was unable to do his work effectively . The result was the flourishing of illegal shebeens in Mamelodi. Nelmapius as a post-apartheid RDP housing development falling within the Silverton policing area was populated with ex-Mamelodi residents and he was not going to allow the bad habits learned in Mamelodi to spill-out into Nelmapius.

It also transpired that Inspector Fourie had been given a list of spaza shops selling alcohol by Brother, a member of the local CPF.

Inspector Fourie was amused at the irony that allowed him to strictly apply an Apartheid-era bye-law in Nelmapius and thus please the local councillor as well as further the interests of members of the local CPF. This was good community participation to his mind.

Brother merely shrugged off suggestions that he was abusing the CPF to further his business interests by saying that people like Sister “ought” not to be breaking the law. When it was pointed out that Brother was employing illegal aliens in his stores and other business operations and was also breaking the law, he defended this by saying that he was giving people jobs.

CommentBrother’s strategy for dealing with competitors in Nelmapius is now revealed as involving an engagement with official state bodies such as the local police. Brother’s supplies the police with enough information to trigger a raid from the liquor licence police. This also explains the stopping of alcohol sales from his store some weeks prior to the raid. I suspect that Brother recognized his inability to openly and fairly out-sell his competitors. This weakness drew him to join the CPF and inform on his competitors’ illegal activities so as to put them in to some financial and legal difficulties hat would handicap their operations thus affording Brother a trading advantage over them.

The police Inspector, Douglas Fourie, was aware that changes to the liquor legislation had not completely regularized the situation between townships such as Mamelodi and suburban and RDP developments such as Nelmapius. These changes were only passed into law later in 2003.

These circumstances created an opportunity for the Inspector to conduct a raid on Nelmapius traders, all of whom had relocated from Mamelodi and all of whom (except Brother) were thus under the impression that the same laissez-faire approach to alcohol sales applied in Nelmapius as had applied in Mamelodi. It seems that Brother used his knowledge and connections to engineer a situation where Inspector Fourie felt a raid would be beneficial to the interests of his unit. A moratorium on liquor raids has since been established to allow shopkeepers to legalize their operations.

Upon reflection, it seems plausible that Inspector Fourie was frustrated at the new political dispensation in South Africa (in his interview with me he intimated this) and felt a loss of power. The RDP housing development of Nelmapius was perceived as a “threat” to Silverton as the unregulated practices of Mamelodi residents would now flow into his policing area. The ressentiment that Inspector Fourie acted upon was based upon fear of being overwhelmed by the illegal shebeen situation. This fear alone would not have triggered the raid though as he needed local information supplied by Brother and political pressure to authorize a raid.

The political pressure was applied on police by the vehemently anti-alcohol member of the Pretoria City Council was used as the originating impetus for the raids by inspector Fourie. This City Councillor was the survivor of an abusive relationship with an alcoholic. Newspaper reports to this effect are extant. This councillor referred to her marital experiences at the launch of a family crisis and trauma counselling service in the Metro. The Councillor’s ressentiment had, as Nietsche suggests, converted her weakness into a virtue and as a result she became involved in various programmes to support victims of family violence. This councillor’s anti-alcohol stance was manifested in pressure being applied to local police to “clean-up” the shebeens.

In the subsequent interview the Inspector was fully aware of the impending changes to the law, the general confusion and lack of information among Nelmapius traders concerning their right to sell alcohol and that the information was provided by a local trader with his own business interests. Inspector Fourie saw it as a “fortunate” concatenation of circumstances that allowed him to conduct the raids.

These three vignettes comprise a triptych of ressentiment that affords us the opportunity to contribute to a theory of power.

Constructing a theory of power and a theory of weakness using ressentiment

The vignettes presented above include micro-sociological phenomena such as intentions and interactions of people in a setting as well as macro-sociological phenomena including statutes, the repressive state apparatus and social forces.

Ressentiment is described as “an emotional reaction against someone or something…it is lived or felt before a practical reaction could or does take place…it is an emotional response taking place always during a span of time.” (Frings, 1965; p82) This emotion is able to be converted into structural dynamics; “the significance of ressentiment lies in its formative power as the moral valuation and sources of moral judgement…” (ibid; p83)

Scheler defines ressentiment as a personally felt emotion, “a psychic self-poisoning, which originates by a systematical withholding of an inner explosion…reactive in nature…always the result of weakness..” (ibid) The pain of this emotion is mediated as a moral force. What is becomes what ought to be.

Choosing ressentiment as a candidate pangolin for our theory of power and weakness may be fruitful because, as a concept, it has a transformational character. Yet if ressentiment is to have any value in our analysis, it must be able to function as the pangolin does among the Lele; it must be able to be put to work in a variety of what I call category sets.

An example of a category set is offered by Scott (1990) who argues for transcripts. Hidden transcripts of those in power and their subordinates. Public transcripts for both groups.

Powerful Public Transcripts Subordinate Public Transcripts
Powerful Hidden Transcripts Subordinate Hidden Transcripts

Scott suggests a number of things; that the greater the disparity of power between dominator and subordinate groups, the more ritualised and formalized will be the public transcripts( p3); and that “a dialectic relationship between public and hidden transcripts is obvious” ( p27).

Scott’s analytic scheme between powerful & subordinate and public and hidden is a useful, if flawed analysis. Flawed because it privileges the public transcript as more powerful than the hidden transcript and it privileges the hidden transcript as more authentic than the public transcript. Scott’s analysis prejudices social discourse so that the authentic transcript is constitutionally weak and the public transcript, though inauthentic, is powerful. This social analysis is essentially tragic irony and must be rejected because it leaves no space for the authentic social life to be powerful. Surely both public and hidden transcripts are social productions and therefore authentic and powerful social productions? Scott’s most useful idea is of public and hidden transcripts. These correspond to Garfinkel’s use of formal norms and normal forms or Baccus’ analysis of formal logics and situated logics. Here seems to be a genealogy for this analytic distinction going back at least to Scheler and Nietsche.

Ressentiment may be identified as having some analytic use when Scott describes “for most bondsmen through history, whether untouchables, slaves, serfs, captives, minorities held in contempt, the trick to survival, not always mastered by any means, has been to swallow one’s bile, choke back one’s rage, and conquer the impulse to physical violence. It is this systematic frustration of reciprocal action in relations of domination which, I believe, helps us understand much of the content of the hidden transcript.” (p 37)

The role of ressentiment in Scott’s category set is as an “active ingredient” resolving the disparities between intention and reality as “wish fulfilment”. Indeed Scott provides a qualified acknowledgement of his use of ressentiment in this manner. (Scott, 1990; p 38n 38)

How else might ressentiment help us one develop a theory of power and of weakness from the materials found in the case study? We have examined the details of each vignette and have tracked the movement of each participant in this three-part drama. What we are left with is a story and a tangle of relationships, ressentiment and tactics. A theory to my mind turns this “mess of pottage” the stuff that makes up reality into a coherent whole, a language. A theory allows us to put all these things into what Callon and Latour describe as a “black box”.

Theorizing, I would suggest, is a movement to generate power through simplification and editing, the messy details of daily life. Theorizing is about organizing social phenomena into some more easily grasped and usable schema. Theorizing, to my mind, is not the uncovering of truth as much as it is the creation or deployment of a language, of signifiers, of myths that have truth claims. Ressentiment allows us to simplify the messy details of everyday life, in Callon and Latour’s terms, ressentiment may be legitimately deployed without cynicism and without irony, as an analytical concept that allows social actors to account for the actions of socially weaker actors as ressentimental.

The “power” of a social concept such as ressentiment lies in it its ambiguity, that is ambiguous enough to do things such as make truth claims at both the micro and macro levels of social analysis and is able to mediate or give form to our experience of power as well as weakness, recommends it as a candidate social concept that may contribute to a theory of power. Initially fashioned by Nietsche and then significantly remodelled by Scheler and others, ressentiment offers us a pangolinic concept that may explain a variety of social experiences of power and weakness. Such ambiguity can be seen when Frings by suggests “ressentiment builds up very easily as soon as there is a difference between the constitutional rights of people and their factual position in their communities” (1965; p 86). Frings here is using an emotional condition (ressentiment) as predicated upon a social, structural phenomenon and, in turn the social phenomenon becomes predicated upon ressentiment.

Other approaches to resolving the micro/macro debate have been proposed by the post-modern dualists such as Bourdieu, Hagaard and Giddens. These generally fail the pangolin test as concepts such as “habitus” and “fields” (Bourdieu) or “structuration” and “practical social consciousness” (Giddens) prove to be less useful because they fail to offer an intergration of micro and macro sociological theory. By insisting on the differences their analyses maintain them without translation and transformation.

I must agree with Baudrillard’s analysis that “We have lost the advance ideas had on the world, that distance that makes an idea stay and idea. Thought must anticipate, be exceptional, and in the margin – the projected shadow of the future events. Yet, today, we are lagging behind the events. They may sometimes give the impression that they regress, that they are not what they should be. In fact, they have passed over us for a long time. The simulated disorder of things has gone faster than us. The effect of reality has disappeared behind the acceleration of things – an anamorphosis of speed. What happens to the heterogeneity of thought in world that has converted to the craziest hypotheses and to an artificial delirium? I their accelerated occurrence, the events have in a sense swallowed their own interpretation. Things have been cleansed of their own meaning. And consequently, they are like black holes and can no longer reflect. They are what they are, never too late for their occurrence, but always beyond their meaning. What is late rather is the interpretation of things. Interpretation is then merely a retro figure for an unpredictable event.” (Boudrillard, 1994; p 5)

Unlike Baudrillard, I would argue that this was always so and that modernism and the enlightenment crumbled precisely because it could not sustain the (necessary?) illusion that ideas and theories preceded and were somehow distinguish-able from action.

Bibliography and References(Please note that I have included material that I have read that may not be directly referenced in the paper because I believe that my understanding of the topic has involved a wider reading than the texts quoted)

Callon, M & Latour, B 1981 Unscrewing the big Leviathan: how actors macro-structure reality and how sociologists help them do so in Knorr-Cetina, K & Cicourel, A.V. (Eds) Advances in Social Theory and Methodology: Towrads and Intergration of Micro-and Macro Sociologies: pp277-303; Routledge Kegan Paul London
Antonio, R.J 1995 Nietsche's Antisociology: Subjectified Culture and the End of History in American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 101; pp1-43
Antonio, R.J 2000 After Postmodernism: Reactionary Tribalism in American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 106; pp40-86
Baudrillard, Jean 1992 Reversion of History http://www.uta.edu/english/apt/collab/baudweb.html
Bernstein, M.A. 1991 "These children that come at you with knives": Ressentiment, Mass culture and the Saturnalia in Critical Inquiry, Winter 1991; pp 358-385
Bourdieu, P 2002 Bourdieu' in M. Haugaard (ed), Power: A Reader; pp225-244 Manchester Manchester University Press
Douglas, M 1989 The background of the grid dimension in Sociological Analysis V 50 pp 171-176
Douglas, M (Ed) 1982 Essays in the Sociology of Perception Routledge and Kegan Paul London
Foucault, M 2002 'Foucault' in M. Haugaard (ed), Power: A Reader; pp181- 204 Manchester Manchester University Press
Foucault, M 2003 Society must be Defended' in Truth and Power: The essential Foucault, eds M. Rabinow and N. Rose; pp 294-318 New York The New Press
Fowler, Bridget 1997 Pierre Bourdieu and Cultural Theory: Critical Investigations London Sage
Frings, M.S. 1965 Max Scheler: a concise introduction to the world of a great thinker Pitssburg Dusguesne University Press
Giddens, A 2002 'Giddens' in M. Haugaard (ed), Power: A Reader; pp146-165 Manchester Manchester University Press
Haugaard, M 2002 Power: A Reader Manchester Manchester University Press
Heritage, John 1984 Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology Oxford Blackwell
Horrell, Muriel 1969 The African reserves of South Africa Johannesburg SAIRR
Lukes, S 2002 Lukes' in M. Haugaard (ed), Power: A Reader; pp38-57
Morelli, Elizabeth Murray 1998 Ressentiment and Rationality brandon.multics.org/library/ misc/morelli1998ressentiment.html
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Porter, Jean 2001 Virtue Ethics in Gill, R (ed) The Cambridge Companion to Christian Ethics; pp96-109 Cambridge Cambridge University Press
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Subjectivity and objectivity

2006-08-29T20:33:00.000+01:00

1st July 2005 Douglas Racionzer

Morality seems to float between ‘subjectivity’ and ‘objectivity’.

Subjectivity is a less popular word than objectivity in academic scholarship. Most of the references in books I have read do not mention subjectivity but will usually have a few references to its understood mirror opposite, objectivity. It seems to me that when we think of subjectivity we too often refer to the harshest form of solipsist psychologism suggesting that only the inner thoughts and feelings of a person are being taken as truth. We seem to use the word subjectivity in a taut pairing which places “objectivity” in direct opposition to “subjectivity” especially when this refers to “the truth of the matter” or “the facts”. Objective reality is too often used to refer to truth claims using the most empiricist of standards that all objective reality “is reducible to immediate sense experience and the reports thereof” (Drummond, 1988; p277)

I have a complaint against the use of the terms “subjective and objective” as a paired set of concepts. This is that they do not operate in the same way as other pairings such as “stop and go” or even “father and child”. These are either descriptions or formal names. Someone who has stopped is clearly not going and someone who is going is clearly not stopped. In the latter pairing, a father may also be child and a child may also be a father, but not to the same person (unless we speak of the Godhead). These are formal names, titles if you will and they express a necessary relationship in so far as every father must be a father to a child and every child must have a father (even if it is a renowned English witticism that it is wise man who knows his father).

My complaint with the pairing of subjective and objective as antonyms is that this pairing reduces the conceptual space for the words and may instead better be thought of as opposite ends of a continuum of ideas about reality and truth. It was with some relief that I noticed the words “float between” in the exam question because this allows me to place objectivity in a continuum with subjectivity.

My readings propose two aspects to the manner in which objectivity and subjectivity are deployed [1] that they invariably placed in relation to some truth claim or some fact. Indeed I cannot recall a circumstance where I have read or heard anyone discussing the objective fantasy of something or the subjective facts of the matter. And [2} that people are in some way acting subjectively and objectively. Objectivity and subjectivity are what people do. Newel argues “that objectivity attaches to persons through their actions” (Newel, 1986; p17)

Newel’s treatment of objectivity presents us with two faces of objectivity. The first is the Kantian sense of objectivity that attaches to ‘objects’ existing apart from perceptions more or less continuously in space and time called objective particulars and the beliefs, judgements and products of thought objective judgements. (ibid; p16) “Central to this picture of objectivity is the requirement that beliefs about an objective world must hold good independently of the experiences, or states of mind, on which people may rely for their assertion.” (ibid; p17)

Newel’s second face of objectivity is the one that attaches to persons in that their judgements are “associated with impartiality, detachments, disinterestedness and a willingness to submit to standards of evidence”. (ibid; p 17) In this view “objectivity becomes a quality of character applied or withheld on the evidence of what one does.” (ibid; p18)

Newel goes on to reject the first face of objectivity because it is essentially sterile and is unable to add us anything new or useful to our understanding of what things really are. (ibid; p 19) Instead we are urged to consider the socially embedded face of objectivity as it us used to deal with concerns between people.

“The route to objectivity has been historically marked by a search for some common ground guaranteeing interpersonal discussion and the settlement of differences. That an explanation of objectivity must pick out this common ground is implicit in the thesis that it is to be found in a world of external realities, but the postulation of common ground outside offered an impersonal basis and failed to be explanatory. The alternative of looking favourably towards agreement or consensus…makes access to objectivity dependent upon the things we consensually believe, trapping objectivity in the bias of agreed wisdom.” (Newel, 1986; p101)

This suggests that we regard objectivity as enacted between people in a kind of inter-subjective engagement between people. But how then can we ever know the truth if objectivity is merely some sort of social agreement between members of a social context ?

Raising questions about “the truth” and its know-ability lies beneath the surface of so much discussion around objectivity and subjectivity that it may serve us to examine various arguments concerning truth.

It is a confusing enterprise to read philosophical literature on truth. Descriptive labels abound; correspondence theories jostle with coherence theories and realist approaches mingle with contructivists, relativists seem to take issue with foundationalism. The literature seems to, to the novice, to be in a mess. This may not be a bad thing, except when you are expected to write a pithy essay for an examination question on the foundation of ethics. As an aide-memoir I often find it convenient to grasp the essentials of the various positions in a field of knowledge using boxes into which various positions can be sorted.

When considering truth, there seem to be at least four basic positions with regard to its universal and its external character that may be adopted ;

[A]Foundationalism + Correspondence [B]Foundationalism + Coherence
[C]Relativism + Correspondence [D]Relativism + Coherence

The arguments about truth that we may cram into box [A] represent a variety of theories that have been identified as; Truth is a copy (Langer, 1948) that is, truth is a mental reflection of some external substance; Truth is an image or images (Hume, 1927; Locke, 1894) which imprint themselves in our minds; Truth is a reflex (Austin in Nagel and Brandt, 1965; pp161-176), that subsists in the properties of things and situations in the world; Truth is a test (James, 1949; Pierce; 1960) in so far as truth is something that we can verify as true as opposed to untrue.

These approaches to truth are, in my experience, the most commonly held especially among fellow church-goers and those of my circle who are natural and social scientists or professional engineers and lawyers.

Vardy etal (1999) argues that “realists operate with a correspondence theory of truth” (ibid; p 15) but “Constructivists operate with the Coherence theory of truth” (ibid; p 17). We can then equate Vardy etal’s (ibid) “realism” with correspondence theories of truth and “constructivism” with coherence theories of truth.

Vardy etal (ibid) assure us that there are those who promote Coherence theories of truth within a foundationalist perspective. These coherence theory foundationalists “maintain that although the truth of moral statements is dependent upon the evidence for these statements (i.e. on coherence), this evidence should not be confined within a particular time or a particular society –instead there is or should be a single set of true moral statements…” (ibid; p 18) Adherents of these positions to truth would fall into box [B] above.

Box [D] above corrals those who are coherence theory relativists. “Such people may consider moral statements to be subjective because they depend on the views of a particular group of people” (ibid; p19)

It is the population of box [C] that reflects the position to which I am most drawn. McHugh calls this approach “Analytic Truth or truth as method” and argues… “that a finding is ‘true’ (or false of ambiguous) comes to be so only after applying to it the analytical formulation of a method by which that finding could be understood to have been produced” (McHugh, 1971;p 332)

Husserl may, according to some , have belonged to this box [C] of relativists who maintained some form of foundationalism; “Truth then, does not involve the ideal of adequation between an idea or judgement and a state of affairs; it involves instead recognized identity” (Drummond, 1988; p 294)

Those who argue for relativism from within a foundationalist perspective tend to focus on the personal ontological experience of truth over its external reification, emphasise method or process as an intentional act and seem to claim that despite the contents of moral (and other) truths being different in time and space, the methods of making sense, of grasping truth are nonetheless universal.

This methodological emphasis has a champion outside of the German phenomenological school in Bernard Lonergan (Morelli etal, 1997). Lonergan’s treatment of objectivity offers one of many arguments for the process of what he calls “self-appropriation”. (ibid; p19)
“Principally the notion of objectivity is contained within a patterned context of judgements which serve as implicit definitions of the terms ’object’, ‘subject’. (Morelli etal, 1997; p212)

Lonergan argues that objectivity is made up of three aspects;
Absolute Objectivity on the level of judgement, Normative Objectivity on the level of understanding and Experiential Objectivity on the level of experience. (ibid, 1997;p 211)

Lonerganian subjectivity is a method of self-appropriation and authentic existence and makes use of intersubjective understandings and common-sense stocks of knowledge in order to operate. (ibid, 1997; p131)

The resolution of the objectivity-subjectivity-truth debates must occur on the horizon of personal and interpersonal meaning. “Meaning is the truth about oneself which creates the preconceptual horizon for moral knowledge and experience…Meaning has a narrative structure; our being-in-the-world is a being-with others-in-the-world.” (Kopfensteiner, 1992;48)

Bibliography and References
(Please note that I have included material that I have read that may not be directly referenced in the paper because I believe that my understanding of the topic has involved a wider reading than the texts quoted)

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Bachrach, Peter The Theory of Democratic Elitism 1967 Little, Brown and Company Boston
Beauchamp, Tom.L. Philosphical Ethics: An Introduction to Moral Philosophy 2001 3rd Edition McGraw Hill Boston
Bretzke, James, T A Morally Complex World: Engaging Contemporary Moral Theology 2004 Liturgical Press Collegeville, Minnestota
Buzan, T The Evolving Brain 1976 Plume New York
Casey, M.A. Meaninglessness: The solutions of Nietzsche, Freud and Rorty 2002 Lexington Books Oxford
Cicourel, Aaron Cognitive Sociology 1973 Penguin Educational Harmondsworth, Middlesex
Cohen, Josh Interrupting Auschwitz 2003 Continuum London
Collins, Jeff Heidegger and the Nazis 2000 Icon Books Cambridge
Constitutional Assembly of South Africa The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa 1996 Government Printer Pretoria
Dallman, Hans-Ulrich Niklas Luhmann's Systems Theory as a Challenge for Ethics in Ethical Theory and Moral Practice; pp85-102 Vol.1 1998
Donohoe, Janet Husserl on Ethics and Intersubjectivity: From Static to Genetic Phenomenology 2004 Humanity Books New York
Drummond, John. J Modernism and Postmodernism: Bernstein or Husserl in Review of Metaphysics Vol 42, 1988; pp275-300 1988
Gadamer, Hans-Georg Truth and Method 2003 2nd edition, Translated by Weinsheimer, J and Marshall, D.G. Continuum Publishing New York
Gadamer, Hans-Georg Philosophical Hermeneutics 1977 First paperback edition; 1977. Tanslatede by David E. Linge University of California Press Berkerley and Los Angeles
Garfinkel, H A conception of, and experiments with, 'trust' as a condition of stable concerted actions in O.J. Harvey (ed) Motivation and Social Interaction; pp187-238 1963 Ronald Press New York
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Gribbin, John Almost Everyone's Guide to Science: The Universe, Science and Everything 1998 Weidenfeld & Nicolson London
Hand, Sean (ed) The Levinas Reader 1989 Blackwell Oxford
Heidegger, Martin The Concept of Time 1989 Translated by McNeill, W. Blackwell Oxford
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Husserl, Edmund Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy 1965 Translated by Lauer, Q Harper and Row London
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Jans, Jan Notes of Lectures on Foundation of Ethics 2005 Unpublished Johannesburg
Junker-Kenny, Maureen Christian Morality in Contemporary Culture: Tasks, Choices and Modes of Communication in Bulletin ET; pp 117-32, Vol 12 2001
Kogler, Hans Herbert The Power of Dialogue 1999 Translated by Paul Hendrickson MIT Press Cambridge, Mass.
Kopfensteiner, Thomas, R Historical Epistemology and Moral Progress in Heythrop Journal; pp45-60, Vol 33 1992
Kripke, Saul Naming and Necessity 198 2nd edition Blackwell Oxford
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The South African Truth Commission- Moral Triumph?

2006-08-28T05:49:00.000+01:00

Was the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission a moral triumph – or a failure – for the principle of reconciliation ?
The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (SA-TRC) was a state instituted, quasi-legal process which allowed perpetrators who told the truth about their apartheid crimes to receive an amnesty against prosecution from the state. It may be argued that this process was couched in the rhetoric of reconciliation but the legal procedure seems to have been something similar to a plea-bargain or what in juvenile justice circles is generally referred to as a “diversion” programme.

A first Complaint
The concept of a moral triumph (or failure) refers to the pervasive rhetoric in which the SA-TRC process was framed. Such rhetoric poses a number of difficulties, the first of which is the inability of the state, any state, to act morally or to be reconciled to anybody. The reification of the state in the question posed above, is in this case, more than a mere narrative convenience. I would suggest that state’s may correctly be regarded as legal persons but only natural (or supernatural ?) persons can act morally or be reconciled because only natural persons can love, feel hurt and forgive. A state is a legal mechanism for the marshalling of power and authority over its citizens and for the negotiation of relations with other states (through war and diplomacy). I would argue that a state cannot have feelings or thoughts but it may have interests and power.

Individuals and groups acting for the state and with its authority have identified reconciliation among South Africans as a common good. The notion of reconciliation is a socially constructed idea that requires constant and repeated actions from its adherents to account for its efficacy and relevance. The SA-TRC process at best could only act as an exemplar for the principle of reconciliation. The SA-TRC itself was made up of many situations of reconciliation and other events and then pulled together in an account of the process which sought to summarize and pass judgement upon past events. The meaning of those past events are contested by the various protagonists.

No truth and reconciliation commission can actually bring about a general reconciliation among the citizenry. Nor can it actually reclaim the common good of reconciliation. The SA-TRC can at best acclaim the importance of reconciliation and model the manner in which reconciliations can be constructed. It is up to South Africans to actually become reconciled with each other.

Having made an argument for putting the formal, state managed process of reconciliation and its role into its place, it may now be fruitful to examine what a moral triumph would be like and how such a circumstance may be achieved in social settings.

Succesfful Degradation CeremonyWhen considering the notion of a moral triumph and what might constitute such, I am drawn to the tentative proposal that a moral triumph may be the result of a social action in which the the triumphant have successfully achieved a moral degradation ceremony upon other/s. Moral triumphs would be situations where a conflict about what is morally superior in a given situation has been won by one of the parties over another. A particular version of events has been accepted and the morally triumphant is clearly “more moral” than another. Garfinkel set out conditions for successful degradation ceremonies in a short article in the American Journal of Sociology. (Garfinkel, 1956; pp420-4)

I propose here to examine the conditions of successful degradation ceremonies as described by Garfinkel and to explore how they may provide us with conditions for a moral triumph. These conditions will then be applied to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (SA-TRC).

Garfinkel defines a successful degradation ceremony as "any communicative work..whereby the public identity of an actor is transformed into something looked on as lower in the local scheme of social types" (ibid, p420)

The conditions required for degradation ceremonies to be successful are;
that the identities referred to must be total identities. Those involved must be shown to have ultimate grounds or reasons for their actions and not merely have acted out of caprice or happenstance.

1 The work of denouncing requires that the denouncer demonstrate to witnesses that the denouncer and the witnesses share values, fundamental values.
2 The denouncer then needs to demonstrate that the denounced does not share these values. This lack of value-sharing must be shown to be a matter of choice on the denounced part and not merely as a result of circumstance.
3 The denouncer must further show that s/he is an objective spokesperson for these values and is not merely trying to gain some form of retribution.

If, as suggested in this paper, the moral triumph of the SA-TRC is dependent upon the success in achieving the conditions for successful degradation ceremonies. It would seem that the first condition was clearly met by the SA-TRC in that basic human rights as values are generally shared, establsihed in our constitution and are recognized globally.

It is the second and third conditions for successful degradation ceremonies that highlight flaws in the SA-TRC process. While much work was done to show that the perpertrators did not share the values of human rights. Little was done to demonstrate that this was a matter of deliberate and free choice and indeed much press was given to the complaints from those denounced that they were part of a command structure and were in a war situation etc... The refrain from most perpetrators such Geoff Benzine was that their superiors who gave the orders now deny that any such orders were given. Words such as “neutralize” are now generally regarded as euphemisms for killing.

The third condition, that the denouncers were objective and impartial was not achieved as clearly they and many who were commissioners as well were presented as victims of these human rights abusers. Many are on record as expressing dissatisfaction with the SA-TRC process and are seeking retribution.

Thus if we accept the conditions for succesful degradation ceremonies as laid out by Garfinkel, (and it seems that he has made a strong case for their veracity), it would seem that the SA-TRC represented only a partial moral victory in so far as it achieved fully only one of the three conditions required.

If this were the only question raised in this assignment, then our task would be complete. However, the question asks if the SA-TRC was a moral triumph or failure for the principle of reconciliation. We must therefore return to the first complaint made in this paper and consider the aspects of what it means to be reconciled and to achieve reconciliation within a society.

VignettesTo this end, I have gathered a series of vignettes which serve to explicate the notion of reconciliation. These vignettes are taken from a variety of sources and represent a meander through the concepts rather than a rigid logical march upon the idea of reconciliation.

There is a global movement within juvenile justice that seeks to bring reconciliation between victims of crime and thier perpertrators. These processes are about two decades old now and fall under the general rubric of "restorative justice"; (Zehr, 1997)
The process of reconciliation seems to require community involvement and not simply a managed engagement between victim and perpetrator. (ibid)

Family Group ConferencesThe basic design of the Family Group Conference is disarmingly simple. A young person who has committed an offense against an identifiable victim is brought face to face with that victim. (There may be more than one offender or more than one victim; a single conference deals with the effects of the offense.) Both offender(s) and victim(s) are accompanied by family members, guardians, peers, or other people with a significant relationship to the offender or the victim. These people are collectively referred to as “supporters;” they may contribute to the search for restitution and to negotiations for reparation of the damage caused by the original offense. It is this insistence on collective, community involvement in the search for reparation that sets the Family Group Conference model apart from reparation schemes run in Britain and the United States since the 1970s.The Family Group Conference is convened by an official of the justice system. This will be a police officer, a welfare worker, a representative of the juvenile court, or a representative of the justice department, depending upon the jurisdiction in which the conference is being convened.

Greek myth provides us with powerful paradigm of transformation in the story of Arestes; (Hamilton, 1940: pp240-248)
The forgiveness of Orestes
The ancient Greek myth of Orestes tells a story of the end of intergenarational pain going down five generations within the House of Atreus.
Orestes was the brother of Iphegenia who was sacrificed to the gods at the beginning of the Trojan war by her father, Agamemnon to ensure the safe passage of the Greek ships to Troy.
Agamemnon's wife, Clytemnestra avenges herself upon her hsuband when he returns ten years later, victorious from the siege of Troy. Orestes flees but must avenge his own father's murder by killing his mother. This he does but then is pursued by the Erinyes or furies, the three three avenging spirits called Alecto, Tisiphone and Magaera who seek justice against all evil doers on earth. Eventually Orestes begs forgiveness for his crime from Athena who convinces the Furies to forgive Orestes.
The act of forgiveness transforms the Furies into benificent godesses who make their home in Colonus and provide care and comfort to all who visit them.

It would seem that forgiveness not justice lies at the heart of reconciliation and tells us that the forgiver can be transformedby this process. The strict pursuit of retributive justice will require an endless process of judgement and punishment. This process even tired the mythical furies and consequently they sought to forgive and be transformed. The story of Joan of Ark offers some insight into the process of reconciliation. (Warner, 1981)

Joan of Ark and the DauphinIt is said thatin the 100 years war, the English entered France through a hole in the head of John the bold. The Duke of Burgundy, John the Bold had murdered the Dauphin's uncle and some years later the Dauphin had ensured John the bold was killedin revenge. The result of this action led the Dauphin's father disinheriting the Dauphin from the throne of France in favour of Henry's son who was then to be both king of England and King of France.

The Dauphin took the case to the Law professors at the University of Bologna who ruled that no person may be deprived of their birthright beacuse of an evil deed they have done. This laid the basis for the claim of the Dauphin to be crowned King. Which his champion, Joan ensured some years later. It also laid the basis in law for our theory of human rights being inalienable rights.

The story of Joan of Ark as a 15th Century human rights campaigner can thus be appreciated. Joan's process of reinstatement from heretic to saint took three seperate hearings up to 50 years after her death and took 500 years for the Church to recognize her as a Saint. These processes were all profoundly political and strategic showing that reconciliation may not simply take one truth and reconciliation process.

Perhaps the message to glean from this vignette is that reconciliation may take many seperate hearings and may take many generations. Expecting reconciliation to be cheaply bought perhaps cheapens the value of the crimes and their forgiveness.

The process of reconciliation may also require concerted citizen action and may require local interventions rather than one monothlic process alone; (Kokopka, 1963)

The formation of social groupwork
During the 1920's, the self-help movement spurned a variety of groups and social movements from Boys Scouts to Catholic Workers. These groups attempted to deal with local issues using smallto large groups to organize themselves. The attempt was to instill through the self-help movement a "deep" democracy at local level.

These groups were most active among immigrants in the USA and among youth and minorities. The founders of these movements were painfully aware that the scourge of fascism neede to be countered. The use of groups allowed indiviual voices and concerned to be heard and gave power to small groups of activists sseking various changes to the lives.

It was out of this process that social work came to adopt groupwork as one of its primary methods of engaging the individual and society to achieve change.

Social groupwork as an approach for developing "deep democracy" and a shared set of values and human rights may be required on an ongoing basis before we can point to our people being reconciled. (ibid; pp3-10)

ConclusionGiven the conditions for succesful degradation ceremonies as laid out by Garfinkel (ibid), the SA-TRC does not represent an emphatic moral triumph to the extent that it failed to show convincingly that perpetrators acted out of free choice in their crimes and that the accusers were neutral and objective with nothing to gain from the degradation of the perpetrators.

The vignettes point to a variety of issues that may support this argument;
1. Successful family group conferences (Zehr, 1997)require significant levels of community support for them to succeed. Questions have been asked as to the levels of community support for the SA-TRC by De Gruchy (2002) and Du Toit (2003) and others.
2. As the vignette about the forgiveness of Arestes suggests,(Hamilton,1940; pp240-8) the forgiver can be transformed by the process of reconciliation. To what extent has this transformation occurred among survivors and victims is a question that requires further research.
3. Perhaps it is still too early to draw definitive conclusions about the process of reconciliation in South Africa. The case of the rehabilition of Joan of Ark shows us that it may take many generations to achiev reconciliation. (Warner, 1981)
4. There is still much practical work that needs to be done to instill “deep democracy” (Konopka,1963; pp3-10) into the social fabric of South Africa. The social groupwork process (ibid) requires ongoing action from Government, business and the citizen sectors.

I must now return to the initial argument I made against the reification of the state. In much of the literature I have read on reconciliation and the SA-TRC, there lies a deep confusion about the power of the state or “macro-actors” in society to reflect, influence or define the actual state of affairs at an interactive or “micro-actor” level in society. Callon and Latour (in Knorr-Cetina etal [Eds] Ch 10, 1981) provide an interesting perspective on the relationship between Macro and Micro actors using Hobbe’s Leviathan as their primary metaphor. In short Callon etal argue that “macro-actors are an interconnected set of mico-actors and more durable materials who’s interests and energies coincide in particular ways to wield power and influence over themselves and others. Those parties and lobbies that wield power do so because they have been able to build many alliances through symbolic practices and secure the support of many groupings and machines and durable materials within society. This process requires ideas to bind the various groups of people and to harness the use of machines and materials together.
Callon etal describe macro-actors as having control over numerous “black boxes”, each containing the power, meanings and interests of a group or an organization. The macro-actor can rely on these “black boxes” for support in their efforts and thus they become macro-actors in society. Those supporting a set of values or ideas must be able to ensure the support of as many “black-boxes” as possible.

This process requires simplification; “a macro-actor can only grow if it simplifies itself.... It is no more difficult to send tanks to Kabul than to dial 999. It is no more difficult to describe renault than the secretary who takes telephone calls at the Houston police station. If it were much more difficult the tanks would not move and Renault would not exist. There would be no Macro-actors. By cl;aiming that macro-actors are more complex than mico-actors...[we] ...prevent the secret of macro-actors’ growth from being revealed: making operations childishly simple.” (ibid p299)

The idea of reconciliation, if it is to be a moral and social triumph, still requires that work to be done. The work of making reconciliation simple. That work of building alliances, sourcing materials and machinery and securing the support of many groupings in our society. The SA-TRC represents a start in that work but others are needed to continue from where it left off.

Bilbiography
Callon, M & Latour, B Unscrewing the big Leviathan: how actors macro-structure reality and how sociologists help them do so in Knorr-Cetina, K & Cicourel, A.V. (Eds) Advances in Social Theory and Methodology: Towrads and Intergration of Micro-and Macro Sociologies: pp277-303; Routledge Kegan Paul London 1981
De Gruchy, J.W. Reconciliation: Restoring Justice SCM Press London 2002
Doubt, K Evil and the Ritual of Shame: A crime against humanity in Bosnia-Herzegovinia in James Head; Vol 7(2): pp 319-331 2002
du Toit, F. Ed) Learning To Live Together: Practices of Social Reconciliation Institute for Justice and Reconciliation Cape Town 2003
Edelstein, J Truth and Lies:Stories from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in outh Africa The New Press New York 2002
Garfinkel, H Conditions of Successful Degradation Ceremonies in American Journal of Sociology; Vol 61: pp420-24 1956
Gibson, J.L Overcoming Apartheid: Can truth reconcile a divided nation ? Russel Sage Foundation New York 2004
Hamilton, E Mythology Mentor/Penquin London 1940
Hayner, P.B Unspeakable Truths: Facing the Challenge of Truth Commissions Routledge New York 2001
Holstein, J.A Rethinking Victimization: an interactional approach to victimology in Symbolic Interaction; Vol. 13(1): pp103-122 1990
Konopka, G Social Groupwork: A helping process Prentice Hall Englewood Cliffs, NJ 1963
Moore, D.B Shame, Forgiveness and Juvenile Justice in Criminal Justice Ethics Vol. 12(1) 1993
Parrsih, G (Ed) Leading Social Entrepreneurs:Elections in 2002 and 2003 Ashoka Washington 2004
Schreiter, R.J The Ministry of Reconciliation Orbis Books New York 1998
Volf, M The Social Meaning of Reconciliation in Interpretation; Apr 2000, Vol 54 no.2:pp158-172
Warner, M Joan of Ark: The image of female heroism Penguin London 1981
Zehr, H & Mika, H Foundational Concepts of Restorative Justice Mennonite Central Committee Akron, Penn 1997

Anti-Corruption Strategy

2006-08-25T11:29:00.000+01:00

Social and political ethics: Power and Corruption

Assignment Examination April 2006

Douglas Racionzer

Outline and justify an anti-corruption strategy for your city/community. Defend your strategy philosophically and politically.

Introduction
One of my favourite topics in conversation is the paradigm under which traffic police across the nation operate. The abuse of traffic and vehicle roadworthy regulations as in effect, an income-generating activity for local municipalities stands as an exemplar of poor governance and criminal myopia. This “stop and fine” approach to traffic policing I will argue lends itself to corruption not least because it places poorly trained and poorly paid officials in positions of power over citizens.

In this paper I shall propose an anti-corruption strategy focussed on the traffic police in my local area, Tshwane and more specifically their perennial roadside “stop and fine” activities .

I shall use Transparency International’s simple definition of corruption :
“Corruption is operationally defined as the misuse of entrusted power for private gain. TI further differentiates between "according to rule" corruption and "against the rule" corruption. Facilitation payments, where a bribe is paid to receive preferential treatment for something that the bribe receiver is required to do by law, constitute the former. The latter, on the other hand, is a bribe paid to obtain services the bribe receiver is prohibited from providing.”

This definition and its differentiation between “according to rule” corruption and “against the rule” corruption will be discussed as it presents certain features of interest for social theory .

The philosophical underpinnings for the proposed anti-corruption strategy will be discussed. This, it will be argued, lies in stark contrast to the ideological assumptions motivating the traditional “stop and fine” approach to traffic policing. The proposed new paradigm for traffic policing will revolve around a broad ethics of virtue .

A political defence for this proposed anti-corruption strategy will be outlined along with some thoughts about dealing with the ingrained and systemic elements that may oppose such a shift in traffic policing.

Finally, this paper will explore the limitations of this proposed anti-corruption strategy especially with respect to “against the rule” corruption.

The Problem
The local traffic police operating in the Tshwane Metropolitan area often stop vehicles and search for faulty lights, brakes or other problems. They then point out the problem and say “what can we do”. This is the prompt that they are receptive to a bribe. Should you respond by asking what should be done? The police will usually say they are “thirsty” and they would like R20 for a Coke.

If you do not engage with the police at this level, they will invariably write out a fine for the various faults found on the vehicle. Should you become angry they might simply remove your licence disk or even arrest you.

The problem is fundamentally about the power these officials have over the vehicle driver. The encounter may lead in any number of well-worn directions but will almost always end in some form of punishment, fine or bribe .

Proposed anti-corruption strategy
The basic idea for this anti-corruption strategy is to integrate some of the current anti-corruption approaches as championed by Transparency International with a system that seeks to mould driver behaviour, prompting civic virtue on the roads rather than merely punishing vice, thereby shifting the focus and nature of the traffic officer’s job.

Transparency International’s use and promotion of “integrity pacts” in public tender processes seems to offer a very useful tool for application to the corrupt practices of traffic police. The integrity pacts I have looked at entail tender processes for public works and therefore we will have to interpret these models to suit the specific problem of corruption among traffic officials in the Tshwane Metro area.

The use of oath swearing coupled with the signing of integrity pacts may be usefully applied in this context. Oaths have a venerable tradition going back at least to the ancient Hittites and used variously by the Nazi’s as well as the Catholic Church as a means of controlling behaviour, more specifically ensuring loyalty. The oaths we would be proposing are not oaths of loyalty to a person or an organization but rather an oath of loyalty to the general proposal that taking bribes is always wrong.

The specifics of what constitutes bribery and what corruption means may be dealt with by reference to the new anti corruption legislation passed into law in 2004 . Section 4, 1 (a) of Act 12 of 2004 states that “any public officer, who directly or indirectly accepts or agrees or offers to accept any gratification from any other person whether for the benefit of himself or herself or for the benefit of any other person …” would be guilty of corrupt activities. Traffic officers would merely be asked to sign an integrity pact to the effect that they will not accept any gratification from another person for their own benefit in accord with this section of the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act.

How the details of this strategy, beyond the oath-taking and integrity pact may be put into practice, would involve the more technical details of transforming the current “stop-and fine” paradigm of traffic policing into a system of rewards for maintaining roadworthy vehicles and good driving. The practical outcome would, for example, entail drivers being issued with rewards for defined and specific civic virtues on the roads that may be redeemed against a variety of municipal charges.

It is a generally accepted psychological principle that the solution to a problem may be found at a level above (beneath or behind) the point where the problem is experienced. Problems are seen as “symptoms” or “presenting problems” for which an underlying process is responsible. The relevance of this truism in this case is that simply to try and deal with corruption at the level that it manifests itself would always place anti-corruption strategies in a reactive rather than a proactive stance. To this end, I propose that the ideological underpinnings that inform the corrupt practices of traffic officers need transformation.

In practical terms, I propose we enable the traffic department to mould driver behaviour using a judicious mix of five distinct tools:
1. A system that encourages the annual signing of public integrity pacts by drivers, vehicle owners and traffic police.
2. The careful and planned use of traffic fines to punish a limited and defined set of priority traffic crimes.
3. The issuing of rewards for specific vehicle and traffic virtues which are redeemable against any number of municipal charges such as rates, light and water bills, vehicle licensing, plumbing, business charges and other services.
4. The planned removal of traffic-calming measures such as speed-humps and other restrictions, commensurate with a reduction in accidents, good driving behaviours and general calming of traffic in a defined community.
5. The creation of traffic-flow systems that do not reward traffic vices, for example, taxi and bus lanes in main thoroughfares to extinguish the ‘reward’ public transport vehicle drivers get for overtaking on the left curb and so on.

The civic virtues of the road may include:
· Specific good driving behaviours, such stopping at stop streets
· Specific safe driving behaviours such using seat belts.
· Specific road courtesy behaviours, such as allowing drivers to overtake on the right by keeping to the left lane
· Specific roadworthy vehicle maintenance, such as good brakes and tyres.
· Specific road navigation virtues, such as driving within the speed limit
· Specific careful driving behaviours, such as overtaking safely

The innovation of Transparency International has been to focus on civil society acting as the “conscience” of business and state interests by insisting upon public, specific and measurable outcomes. Such an approach is crucially important in this proposed exercise. Without civil society participation, coupled with a focussed attention to details and outcomes, no change is measurable and so success or failure cannot be judged.

A suitable civil society vehicle would have to be used to drive this proposed anti-corruption strategy. The Automobile Association, Transparency International, the local taxi-owners association or even one of the civil servants’ unions may host the proposed strategy.

If no suitable civil society host for the strategy can be found, then a non-governmental organization will have to be built with this strategy as its primary programme. Single-issue organizations require specific skills and face peculiar challenges and these would have to be faced in planning for such an organization.

In addition to these problems, the main focus of the strategy is to achieve change in a state-run organization, a local authority. It is common cause that the local sphere of government is poorly led and resourced and has the most organizational problems among the three tiers of government in South Africa. There are consequently specific challenges to such an approach and its ability to induce change in the local authority traffic department is by no means assured.

In any event, the anti-corruption strategy would have to go through a number of stages:
1. The local authority needs to adopt the new strategy as part of its policy and procedures. The planning process works on a five-year cycle. Most important here is that the various income generating departments of the council must accept rewards as credit notes redeem-able against charges. A further strategic alliance would have to be forged with the provincial and national departments responsible for road safety.
2. The administration of the new strategy will have to be prepared and initial outcomes set. Outcomes would include reductions in accidents, measured improvements in driving and traffic problems. Part of the strategy would involve identifying the specific traffic vices and virtues to receive attention, the prioritising of these and defining the reward parameters.
3. Each traffic officer needs to undergo a training course where the principles of the new strategy will be taught and its practical implementation practiced. Using a variant of Transparency International’s tool of integrity pacts, each graduate would be asked to sign an integrity pact and take an oath to not engage in corruption, not to take bribes and rather promote good driving and the various defined traffic-related civic virtues.
4. A series of pilot operations will be carried out with reviews and minor changes to the strategy made. Such changes would involve administrative issues as well as adjustments to the daily regime for traffic officers.
5. The strategy is launched with publicity. The publicity must focus on the idea that people will be rewarded for specific driving and vehicle maintenance virtues. The traffic officer’s names and numbers who have signed the integrity pact would also be published in the local newspapers on an annual basis.
6. Regular public reviews in specific communities will be held to discuss the progress of the strategy. This would involve local councillors as well as traffic chiefs. A major outcome of these meetings will be petitions to alter aspects of traffic management such as traffic-calming measures, speed bumps and the creation of taxi and bus lanes.
7. A general review will be held to assess the applicability of this strategy to other areas of traffic policing. Such areas that may apply would include speed trapping and vehicle licensing.

This proposed strategy is not a short-term project. It requires a long breath and deep pockets. It is attempting to overturn more than half a century of ingrained attitudes, policies and practice.

This proposed strategy is also not a solution to the problem of corruption among traffic officials. It is rather an ongoing management system that speaks to the underlying, embedded narratives and transcripts of power relations. It is an attempt to fashion a new language of power among traffic officers. A language that seeks to account for motorists’ behaviour through this new language of virtue, rather than that of trap and fine motoring vices.

Philosophical underpinnings
The proposed anti-corruption strategy described above does not derive from one clear ethical framework or perspective. It is not merely due to an irritating bias for messy eclecticism that none of my thinking on any subject seems able to fit into any single coherent vision. A student of mine defines the strategic value of this dissolute approach in another context when critiquing the use of Kantian ethics in social work; “(Foucault) claims that the prescriptive nature of moral codes ‘is transmitted in a diffuse manner, so that far from constituting a systematic ensemble, they form a complex interplay of elements that counterbalance and correct one another…thus providing for compromises and loopholes” (Foucault, 1986, p25 in McBeath and Webb, 1989; p501)

Indeed McBeath and Webb (ibid) go on to argue “Foucault asks how the unsystematic ensembles of moral discourses have effects upon the individual as the ‘historical determinants of ethical substance’ (ibid)… That is, individuals are required to think about themselves in particular ways and perform certain reflective operations upon themselves. This means that morality is inscribed on to persons, not by the inner discourse of their own reason as Kant would claim, but by the exterior discourses of morality and what Foucault calls technologies of self… Foucault has described this state of affairs in “Discipline and Punish” (1979) as a prison without a warder. Self-formative codes of morality are inextricably linked to the effects of relations of power which are often discreetly concealed by metaphors of truth and freedom.” (ibid; p502) or in the case of traffic control: “safety” and “courtesy”.

Foucault’s insights may be applied to the anti-corruption strategy proposed here. Essentially the strategy involves re-framing the work of traffic officers to become teachers of prescribed and defined civic virtues of the road. The paradigm of traffic officials working as members of the repressive state apparatus who will transform their work into a “calling” to act as members of the ideological state apparatus. Traffic officers must become identified as arbiters and promoters of civic virtue.

Stace (1956) tells us that Socrates introduced “the identification of virtue with knowledge… All wrongdoing arises from ignorance. If a man only knows what is right, he must and will infallibly do what is right… Aristotle, in commenting upon this whole doctrine, observed that Socrates had ignored or forgotten the irrational parts of the soul.” (Stace, 1956; p 147)

It is however to one of Socrates’ other propositions on virtue that we can trace the philosophical roots of this proposed anti-corruption strategy; “ …that virtue can be taught.” (ibid; p 149) As Stace argues for Socrates, if virtue flows from knowledge and knowledge can be taught, then virtue can be taught.

Perhaps if we saw knowledge as a deeper, wider, more psychological process than simply rational and conscious thought, we could apply the principles of learning that psychology has developed. Introducing the “technologies of self”. (Foucault, 1986; p28)

In particular the work of Pavlov (1927), Watson (1913) and Skinner (1969) who promoted what is generally referred to as the behaviourist school of psychology may have some relevance here. Pavlov infamously discovered the learning process called classical conditioning. He accidentally discovered and then tested his theory on dogs that would have a bell rung whenever they were fed. After some time it was observed that the sound of the bell ringing alone would produce a hunger reaction, salivation in the dogs. Behavourists and learning theorists argue that the dogs had learned to identify food with the sound of the ringing bell.

This proposed anti-corruption strategy will generate a further learning among motorists who, through classical conditioning, will come to associate traffic police with both punishment and reward.

It may be argued that presently, the sight of a traffic police roadblock or even a traffic police vehicle produces a series of fear reactions in motorists because they have undergone classical conditioning where motorists have learned to identify the sight of traffic police with punishment and pain. Learning theory suggests that the identification of a particular stimulus such as the traffic police with pain and punishment produces an avoidance reaction. Freud argues that avoidance of pain leads on to other more complex psychological defences including avoidance, denial, projection, sublimation, repression, reaction formation and other anxiety-related processes. Levitt notes, “among the majority of health professionals, defences against anxiety are currently viewed as necessary, adaptive functions common to all of us. It is doubtful that anyone could develop into a productive, socialized adult without them.” (Levitt, 1968; p 57)

All these “normal” reactions lead motorists inexorably away from the mental and emotional processes necessary to the business of driving safely, of maintaining a roadworthy vehicle, and from civic concerns.

If this proposed anti-corruption strategy can initiate a classical conditioning that, among other tactics, offers rewards for civic virtue, then motorists would not be cued to engage in the complex avoidance reactions at the mere sight of a traffic officer and will be placed in an emotional readiness to improve their driving and vehicle maintenance so as to gain such rewards.

B.F. Skinner (1969) introduced a further aspect to this learning process. This is called operant conditioning. Operant condition seeks to shape behaviour over time using four techniques; positive reinforcement, where desired behaviour is rewarded, for example where motorists receive a reward for driving with set belts buckled; negative reinforcement, where desired behaviour is conditioned through stopping punishment when it is achieved, for example where traffic police no longer seek bribes; punishment; where undesired behaviour is punished for example by issuing fines and extinction; where undesired behaviour has no reward or punishment for example when rude and abusive drivers are ignored by other motorists and traffic police.

This anti-corruption strategy proposes that traffic police apply operant conditioning techniques to shape, over time, the behaviour of motorists. The effect of such a strategy will, if applied consistently and to clearly defined practices, be to improve traffic flows, driving and vehicle roadworthiness. Traffic police will no longer be seen as an object of fear to be avoided but will be seen as teachers of civic virtue on the roads.

When the encounters between traffic officers and motorists no longer set-up the members of these scenes to engage in a dialogue that goes “Pay me a bribe or I will fine you”. When the encounters between traffic officers and motorists are set-up to teach, support, guide and exhort motorists to practice the civic virtues of the road, then the focus of these encounters has been transformed.

When traffic police cease to think of themselves as poorly paid “income generators” for the council and begin to see their work as a calling to promote civic virtue, they will begin to take pride in what they are doing. This pride should be coupled with the oath taking which will be renewed annually at a public ceremony.

Political defence
Applying McBeath and Webb (1989) traffic officers engage in what Said (1978) describes as a colonial discourse; “When traffic officers help motorists in a goal-directed way, they want to change lifestyles and ‘personalities’ by methods of rehabilitation and guidance…. The result is political, in that the motorists’ destiny is annexed to traffic control and thus begins to exist as a series of valorised contacts with the agent of his or her subjugation. In Foucauldian terms, the traffic officer must operate at the intersection of the ‘morality of behaviours’…” (p 503-505)

Politically, the proposed anti-corruption strategy I have outlined in this paper entails the transformation of the traffic officer’s work from one of detection, punishment and control, to include exhortation and reward.

To this end, the annual oath taking and integrity pact-signing ceremonies would have powerful political value. These integrity pacts would fall under the African National Congress’ current rubric of a “people’s contract” or the Democratic Alliance’s campaign for citizen’s charters. These annual events could be used to issue medals for bravery, other valorisations and honours and would be an opportunity for elected representatives to promote in specific examples the idea of citizenship and democracy.

Promoting democracy and the liberal values of our constitution is still needed, it could be argued because the Calvinist roots of the apartheid philosophy that sought to protect the “purity” of the few elect from the impurity of the many, are still operative in our society. The practices of power remain embedded in relations between authority and citizen even though the nationalist philosophy that spawned these practices has been overturned. Morphew (1989) details the national socialist roots of this ideology and how these ideas were expressed as official apartheid policy. Indeed Mophew uses Wink’s (1984 and 1986) work on “the powers” to link political ideology to a theological reading. Something that bears some resemblance to what Scott would later describe as a “hidden transcript” (Scott, 1990).

It may be cogently argued that traffic policing is moulded from this theologically Calvinist, puritanical and nationalist apartheid stance. The new system of governance has regrettably assumed this paradigm with its focus on only punishing vice rather than rewarding virtue. The proposed anti-corruption strategy could be punted as an historical corrective to the internal colonial project of Apartheid.

Politically the creation of a system of governance that rewards virtuous behaviour as well as more efficiently punishing the transgressions of its citizens will transform a pattern of thinking in which currently citizens try to avoid punishment into a culture where citizens seek and expect rewards for civic virtue. This will create more pliable citizens, supportive of the power structures and dynamics of our constitutional democracy while championing the broader, liberal approach to governance.

The power of the local authority will be enhanced through this anti-corruption strategy because it elicits oaths against corruption from its traffic officials and it is looked-to as a source of reward from its citizens.

Other anti-corruption strategies such protection for whistle-blowers and confidential help-desks would not be obstructed by this approach.

Limitations
It may be argued that this proposed anti-corruption strategy would be less effective when dealing with “against the rule” corruption. For example, when traffic officers accept bribes to pass vehicles as roadworthy or when traffic officers accept bribes to issue drivers licences.

It seems pertinent at this point to refer to some of the ethnomethodological research about rules and the documentary method of accounting for action. “In essence, the ‘rule-governed’ model of human conduct is a very simple one. It begins from the presumption that human actors are generally equipped with an array of rules which they ‘follow’ (or by which they are guided or governed) in situations of action. The actual basis on which the actors are proposed to acquire the rules varies from theory to theory... Regardless of how the rules are acquired however, the traditional model of ‘rule-governed’ conduct works in the following fashion. The actors are treated as encountering a situation of action to which one or more of the rules they have learned or internalised ‘apply’. Their actions in this context are then analysed as ‘guided’ or ‘caused’ by the rules which they have previously acquired…The stultifying effect of this model on the development of the theory of social action can scarcely be overestimated.” (Heritage, 1984; pp104-105)

In like manner, it would be a gross misreading of this paper if the proposed anti-corruption strategy were to be seen simply as a refined method of control in the exercise of state power. As a new system of rules to be applied to motorists, this anti-corruption strategy will and must fail. It will fail because it is not a new set of rules at all but rather a new language to which the actions of traffic officers may be indexed.

In an earlier section of this paper, I referred to incidents where I have been stopped by traffic police and despite having things wrong with my vehicle; I have not been fined but rather sent on my way and told to fix the problem. The traffic officers are usually black and I have spoken Sotho with them and they seem loath to punish a white man who gives them respect and speaks their own language. From one point of view, this may be seen as corruption because a state official has received a gratification (respect) from an offender and has subsequently not fined that offender . This may however also be seen as “good policing” because the officer used his or discretion in this case .

The proposed anti-corruption strategy offers traffic officials a language through which they may account for their actions as good policing and use the negotiated character of traffic police encounters as resources for such “documentary methods”. Heritage traces Garfinkel’s use of this term thus; “Garfinkel derived the term from Mannheim who proposed that the documentary method involves the search for ‘an identical homologous pattern underlying a vast variety of different realizations of meaning… the basic idea had received very considerable theoretical explication at the hands of phenomenologist from Husserl onwards…” (Heritage, 1984; p84)

These arguments allow us to understand that Transparency International’s distinction between “with the rule corruption” and “against the rule corruption” cannot be applied should this proposed anti-corruption strategy succeed. The proposed new language that will be introduced makes all corruption rule-based and clearly accountable as traffic police work.

Conclusion
Corruption for me is more than the manner in which state employees abuse their authority for personal gain. Corruption refers to the wider state of our lives and our social reality. To be corrupt is part of the essential character of our existence. Corruption is a meaning to which any number of social actions and contexts may be competently indexed. Any action we do may be seen as corrupt if we can see that we use our positions of trust for our own gratification.

Corruption is rather a negotiated social reality in which we come to understand our actions and others as immoral or unethical. Any anti-corruption strategy must take seriously the negotiated character of social life if it is to address corruption in our society.

The proposed anti-corruption strategy outlined in this paper offers a new language and a more plastic paradigm for traffic official and motorists to work with. The language of civic virtue may offer us a means for us to become more comfortable with ourselves as a people.

Bibliography and References
(Please note that I have included material that I have read that may not be directly referenced in the paper because I believe that my understanding of the topic has involved a wider reading than the texts quoted)

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