Update

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

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

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

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

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

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

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
one of the six/audio/2197230/view">powered by ODEO

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Resentiment and Power

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)

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