ANTHROPOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY.
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Social Citizenship and Plural Values of Land: Land Acquisition cases from India
Fellow: Sattwick Dey Biswas Abstract: In the globalised economy, the value chains of production have crossed national boundaries. As a result, the demand has intensified for land acquisition in order to set up production facilities and infrastructure. This industrialisation proceeded rapidly, and, therefore, a vast area of land had to be acquired, both in the Global South and in the North. This development has led to many conflicts. These conflicts are the result of the inability to understand the plural values of land in the realisation of property rights in social citizenship. This article has considered two land expropriation case study areas in India, Salbani and Singur in West Bengal, as a source of empirical data. The empirical evidence suggests that the straitjacket of monorational property rights discourse, which heavily relies on the absolute ownership and control (via exclusion of others) ignores the different ways in which plural land values shape ideas of social citizenship. There is a need to rediscover the ‘social’ in citizenship to ensure the subordination of market price to the ideals of social justice. Keywords: social citizenship, social justice, plural values, market price and land acquisition. |
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Reducing Norms to Superegoic Emotions
Fellow: Edoardo Fittipaldi Abstract: It is notoriously difficult to reduce norms to empirical phenomena. If they are defined in terms of normative language or emotions, the problem is how to distinguish normative from non-normative language or emotions, and this requires an independent concept of normativity. But normativity is as difficult to reduce to empirical phenomena as norms are. A solution may be to make the psychoanalytical assumption that human animals develop normativity through their interactions with their caregivers, whom they conceive to have features that monotheisms ascribe to God. Normative or superegoic emotions can be understood as the unconscious reexperience of early infantile interactions with one’s own “godlike” caregiver. Based on this approach, three types of normative emotions can be distinguished: first, sadistic superegoic emotions, where individuals unconsciously reexperience their caregiver as authorizing their reactive aggression (anger), proactive aggression (indignation), and her displays of disgust (superegoic disgust); second, masochistic superegoic emotions, where one unconsciously reexperiences one’s own infantile experience of having hurt one’s own caregiver (guilt), or being disgusting to them (shame); and third, narcissistic emotions, including one’s unconscious reexperience of the infantile experience of believing to be able to measure up to the model represented by one’s caregiver. This approach raises the question of whether non-human animals can experience superegoic emotions. The answer depends on whether they underwent some form of primary socialization; if not, at most, forms of proto-normativity may be found in them such as unsocialized reactive aggression (protoanger) and unsocialized proactive aggression (proto-indignation). The possibility for domesticated non-human animals to have superegoic emotions other than those found in human animals (para-guilt) is also discussed. Keywords: Norm, Child–Caregiver Interactions, Normative Emotions, Psychoanalysis, Superego |
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On Revenge and Punishment. Arguments for a Crucial Distinction
Fellow: Edoardo Fittipaldi Abstract: In this chapter, the author proposes a psychoanalytic distinction between revenge and punishment. Punishment is conceptualized as a form of violence exerted by an authority-holder against a subordinate due to the latter’s not having complied with a command or wish of the former. Instead, revenge is conceptualized as a form of violence exerted by an individual against another outside any authority relationship. After conceptualizing punishment and revenge the author shows that: (1) the same act may be caused by both an urge for punishment and one for revenge; (2) composition is possible only in the case of an urge for revenge; (3) a form of composition can be the establishment of a new authority relationship (composition-by-submission); (4) expiation, or atonement, cannot be regarded as a form of composition; (5) guilt always involves—at least at an unconscious level—the establishment of a new authority relationship; (6) the term “authorized revenge” may be referred to quite heterogenous phenomena Keywords: Revenge, Punishment, Composition |
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Prototypizing and archeotypizing ownership: A pilot study
Fellow: Edoardo Fittipaldi Abstract: The author’s point of departure is Alf Ross’s analysis of ownership as a tool of presentation for a set of disjunctive conditioning facts and conjunctive legal consequences. The author first analyses Ross’s conjunctive component, and shows that, if one adopts the perspective of Polish-Russian legal realism, it can be provided with a full-blown meaning. Then, the disjunctive component is discussed. By drawing inspiration from prototype theory, the author argues that a specific set of disjunctive conditioning facts and of conjunctive legal consequences can be regarded as making up the core - albeit in a gradual way - of ownership phenomena, provided that one restricts them to movables. Finally, the author presents two Freudian hypotheses that can explain the emergence of the prototype of ownership. This explanation is based on the way babies conceive of their bodily parts and feces. Based on that, an archeotype (i.e., archaic conception) of ownership is proposed. Keywords: Ownership - Tû-tû, Prototype theory, Polish-Russian legal realism, Psychoanalysis |
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Counterproductive regulation
Fellow: Peter Grabosky Introduction: The old adage that the road to hell is paved with good intentions applies to many aspects of life, among them regulatory policy. That regulatory compliance can be an elusive goal is hardly a revelation; the analysis of regulatory failure has become a popular pastime. The ways in which efforts to produce regulatory compliance may become derailed are numerous and diverse, as are the generic pathologies which give rise to them. The present paper pursues this theme by attempting an overview of the ways by which regulatory initiatives may defeat themselves or may otherwise inflict collateral damage. The focus goes beyond those initiatives which simply fail to have their intended effect. Rather, we shall be concerned with programmes which either backfire entirely, in effect making things worse, or those resulting in significant harm which offsets many or most of the benefits which the original initiatives might produce. The term 'regulation' is construed broadly, to embrace not only the traditional functions of inspection and enforcement, but to include a wider range of regulatory policy instruments. This paper will have three main parts. Firstly, a typology of iatrogenic outcomes of regulatory policies will be presented. The foll0xdng part of this paper will seek to explain the dynamics of these negative outcomes. Finally, this paper will suggest principles and safeguards, which if heeded by those in a position to formulate and implement regulatory policy, might serve to reduce the risk of undesirable unintended consequences. Although some readers may be tempted to conclude that the author is instinctively opposed to regulation, such is not the case. The approach taken here is self-consciously utilitarian. The objective is not to cast a pall of pessimism over the idea of regulation, but rather to foster more analytical rigor in the planning and the implementation of regulatory policy. Nor does the risk that some regulatory interventions may produce significant harm necessarily imply that they should be abandoned entirely. Rather, by identifying these risks at the outset, authorities may be able to design them out, or at least to introduce measures to mitigate their adverse impact. |
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Using non‐governmental resources to foster regulatory compliance
Fellow: Peter Grabosky Abstract: This article explores means by which non‐governmental institutions and resources, both commercial and voluntary, may be enlisted in the interest of regulatory compliance. Following a discussion of non‐governmental social control, it reviews the basic institutional forms of indirect governance through which third‐party “co‐production” of compliance might occur. It then discusses the basic issues which arise when certain public functions are delegated to or devolve upon private interests, and suggests safeguards which might be put in place to enhance the advantages and to minimize the adverse consequences of such devolution. The conclusion seeks to articulate basic principles for the mobilization of third parties in furtherance of compliance, and to encourage the idea of a more participative regulatory process. |
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Citizen co‐production of cyber security: Self‐help, vigilantes, and cybercrime
Fellow: Peter Grabosky Abstract: Given the limited resources and capabilities of states to maintain cyber security, a variety of co‐production efforts have been made by individuals or by collectives, of varying degrees of organization and coordination. This article identifies different forms of citizen co‐production of cyber security and notes the risk of unintended consequences. Safeguards and principles are proposed in order to facilitate constructive citizen/netizen co‐production of cyber security. Although co‐production of security can contribute to social control, only those activities within the bounds of the law should be encouraged. Activities of private citizens/netizens that test the limits of legality should be closely circumscribed. Keywords: co-production of security, cybersecurity, cybercrime, internet vigilantism, self-help. |
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Virtual criminality: Old wine in new bottles?
Fellow: Peter Grabosky Introduction: It has become trite to suggest that the convergence of computing and communications has begun to change the way we live, and the way we commit crime. Whether this will necessitate a revision of our philosophical, historical and sociological assumptions, however, is another matter. One must beware of overgeneralization and hyperbole, which characterize a great deal of discourse on the digital age. In the pages that follow, I suggest that ‘virtual criminality’ is basically the same as the terrestrial crime with which we are familiar. To be sure, some of the manifestations are new. But a great deal of crime committed with or against computers differs only in terms of the medium. While the technology of implementation, and particularly its efficiency, may be without precedent, the crime is fundamentally familiar. It is less a question of something completely different than a recognizable crime committed in a completely different way. Perhaps the most remarkable developments relating to crime in the digital age are its transnational implications, and the threats to personal privacy posed by new technologies. The speed of electronic transactions allows an offender to inflict loss or damage on the other side of the world, bringing new meaning to the term ‘remote control’. In addition, digital technology facilitates surveillance, by public agencies and the private sector, to a degree that is quite revolutionary. |
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Rethinking Tswana Kingships and Their Incorporation in Modern Botswana State Formation
Fellow: Ørnulf Gulbrandsen Introduction: Fortes and Evans-Pritchard introduced African Political Systems (APS) by stating, as a chief aim, to contribute ‘to the discipline of comparative politics,’ assuming that the collection of essays would bring out ‘all the major principles of African political organization’ (1940a: 1). They asserted that a ‘comparative study of political systems has to be on the abstract plane where social processes are stripped of their cultural idiom and are reduced to functional terms’ (ibid.: 3, emphasis added). As is well known to many generations of undergraduate students of anthropology, this approach led Fortes and Evans-Pritchard to identify two major categories of political systems in Africa – centralized and segmentary – with a particular concern with their order, which was mainly seen as a matter of ‘balance of forces’. However, these authors made no effort in the introductory chapter to APS to pursue their comparative ambition further by reflecting upon ‘all the major principles’ identified in a comparative perspective transcending Africa. As I want to show in this chapter, such a broader comparative perspective is useful for rethinking important sociocultural dimensions of African kingships, which are of considerable significance to their incorporation in postcolonial state formations. More specifically, while the relationship between indigenous polities and modern state formation in Africa has, as shown by Bayart (1993) and many others, often been riddled with serious conflicts, causing unstable and weak state governments, the symbolism and sociopolitical institutions of Tswana kingships have, apparently paradoxically, proved mostly conducive – if not indispensable – to the formation of a strong and stable republican democracy in Botswana. [...] |
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The King Is King by the Grace of the People: The Exercise and Control of Power in Suject-Ruler Relations
Fellow: Ørnulf Gulbrandsen Introduction: In the face of the dominating tradition of British structural functionalism anthropological studies of political leadership represented an important move towards accounting for the dynamics of centralized, as well as acephalous polities (for example, Barth 1959 and Baily 1970; cf. Schapera 1956). Moreover, in focusing upon political actors and, by extension, political relations these studies necessarily took account of the role of the subjects. Yet, despite Gluckman's innovative notion of "rituals of rebellion" (1954 cf. Beidelman 1966), the issue of political leadership has rarely focused upon the political dynamics of the ruler-subject relationship, examining the concerns responses of those who more or less voluntarily subject themselves to an authority figure. Even such an important contribution as Succession to high Office (Goody 1966) completely ignores this issue. Theoretically pertinent to the study of power in subject-ruler relation is Bourdieu's suggestion that "if it is true that to delegate is to entrust or a mission to someone, by transmitting one's power to him, arises as to how the delegate can have power over the person power." In a true Durkheimian spirit, Bourdieu himself offers answer: "When a single person is entrusted with the powers of a whole crowd of people, that person can be invested with a power which transcends the individuals who delegate him" (1991:203, emphasis added). here that the basic dilemma of power in subject-ruler relations asymmetric relation of power, essential to ensure forceful hand in hand with the problem of controlling the figure to whom the subjects give power. Such controls might be established through the construction of offices, that is, the institutionalization of the limits of a ruler's authority. Yet such institutionalizations neither necessarily guarantee against the incumbent's abuse of power nor ensure the recruitment of an incumbent with the personal qualities and force required to activate the authority vested in the office to the common good. The North-Western Tswana (of the present-day Botswana), upon whom this article focuses, illustrate this problem perfectly, on the one hand by their strongly felt need for an effective ruler and on the other hand by awareness of the need to place a check upon the powers entrusted as expressed by the proverb which has given this article article its title. This article argues that the Tswana have held the hereditary principle of succession in high regard precisely because they were concerned with the personal character of their ruler, not in spite. |
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Measuring design diversity: A new application of Ostrom's rule types Fellow: Jonathan C. Kamkhaji Abstract: We draw on the Institutional Grammar Tool's rule types to empirically analyze the design of four major procedural regulatory instruments in the 27 member states of the European Union and the UK. They are: consultation, regulatory impact assessment, freedom of information, and the Ombudsman. By adopting the Institutional Grammar Tool as conceptual lens we end up with a single measurement template applicable to a variety of action situations. We derive measures that are conceptually robust and suitable for comparative analysis. With original data gathered on the official legal base in the 28 cases, we carry out principal components analysis. We identify design patterns across countries and instruments; the specialization of each instrument in terms of rule type; and the components that best explain cross-country variation. In the conclusions we argue that to reframe the design features of the four instruments in conceptual, theoretical categories is not simply a taxonomical exercise but it extends to the territory of comparative policy analysis, practice and reform. Keywords: institutional grammar tool, policy design, policy instruments, regulation |
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e Institutional Grammar Tool meets the Narrative Policy Framework: Narrating institutional statements in consultation
Fellow: Jonathan C. Kamkhaji Abstract: We compare the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) and the Institutional Grammar Tool (IGT). Given the focus of this special issue on the NPF, we first theorize how the IGT can contribute to the development of NPF categories, but also how the former gains conceptual leverage from the latter. We argue that it is useful to consider jointly NPF and IGT as this expands the benefit of NPF usage for policy researchers—uncovering not only the stories policy actors tell but also what these stories mean in terms of institutional statements. We provide a demonstration of how the conversation between these two policy lenses may develop by analyzing original data on the design of consultation procedures in the European Union, Finland, Ireland, and Malta. Keywords: consultation, discourse, European Union, Institutional Grammar Tool, Narrative Policy Framework, narratives |
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A sleeping giant awakes? The rise of the Institutional Grammar Tool (IGT) in policy research
Fellow: Jonathan C. Kamkhaji Abstract: The Institutional Grammar Tool (IGT) is an important and relatively recent innovation in policy theory and analysis. It is conceptualized to empirically operationalize the insights of the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework. In the last decade, political scientists have offered a number of applications of the IGT, mainly focused on disclosing and scrutinizing in-depth the textual configurations of policy documents. These efforts, involving micro-level analyses of syntax as well as more general classifications of institutional statements according to rule types, have underpinned empirical projects mainly in the area of environmental and common-pool resources. Applications of IGT are still in their infancy, yet the growing momentum is sufficient for us to review what has been learned so far. We take stock of this recent, fast-growing literature, analyzing a corpus of 26 empirical articles employing IGTs published between 2008 and 2017. We examine them in terms of their empirical domain, hypotheses, and methods of selection and analysis of institutional statements. We find that the existing empirical applications do not add much to explanation, unless they are supported by research questions and hypotheses grounded in theory. We offer three conclusions. First, to exploit the IGT researchers need to go beyond the descriptive, computational approach that has dominated the field until now. Second, IGT studies grounded in explicit hypotheses have more explanatory leverage, and therefore, should be encouraged when adopting the tool outside the Western world. Third, by focusing on rules, researchers can capture findings that are more explanatory and less microscopic. Keywords: Policy design, governance, Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD), Institutional Grammar Tool (IGT), theories of the policy process |
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Violence and warfare in prehistoric Japan
Fellow: Naoko Matsumoto Abstract: The origins and consequences of warfare or large-scale intergroup violence have been subject of long debate. Based on exhaustive surveys of skeletal remains for prehistoric hunter-gatherers and agriculturists in Japan, the present study examines levels of inferred violence and their implications for two evolutionary models, which ground warfare in parochial altruism versus subsistence. The former assumes that frequent warfare played an important role in the evolution of altruism, while the latter sees warfare as promoted by social changes induced by agriculture. Our results are inconsistent with the parochial altruism model but consistent with the subsistence model, although the mortality values attributable to violence between hunter-gatherers and agriculturists were comparable. Keywords: archaeology, warfare, parochial altruism, human skeletal remains, Japan |
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Changing relationship between the dead and the living in Japanese prehistory
Fellow: Naoko Matsumoto Abstract: The aim of this paper is to propose a new insight on the changing burial practice by regarding it as a part of the cognitive system for maintaining complex social relationships. Development of concentrated burials and their transformation in Japanese prehistory are examined to present a specific case of the changing relationship between the dead and the living to highlight the significance of the dead in sociocultural evolution. The essential feature of the burial practices observed at Jomon sites is the centrality of the dead and their continuous presence in the kinship system. The mortuary practices discussed in this paper represent a close relationship between the dead and the living in the non-hierarchical complex society, in which the dead were not detached from the society, but kept at its core, as a materialized reference of kin networks. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Evolutionary thanatology: impacts of the dead on the living in humans and other animals’. Keywords: Jomon period, mortuary practice, kinship, ancestor worship, social cognition |
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Sociology Rediscovering Ethics
Fellow: Stephen Turner Abstract: Gorski tells us that the fact-value distinction is dead, that we know what human flourishing is and therefore relativism is wrong, and concludes that sociologists ought to throw off their self-imposed shackles and get into the business of telling other people how to live their lives, but only after sociologists listen to other people who are already in this business, especially from ethics and religion. In one sense this advice is misdirected, because, as I shall explain briefly below, sociologists have long been concerned with exactly the thing he suggests they should be concerned with, flourishing, eudaemonia or happiness, and continue to produce research on the topic in several subfields of the discipline. Morever, there have been many attempts to do exactly what he is recommending. The results, however, including my own attempt with Mark Wardell in the 1980s, have not been especially successful. In this comment I will try to point out some of the philosophical obstacles to this kind of work. The sociological obstacles are also serious: the intellectual cultures of ethics and sociology are so radically divergent that dialog is virtually impossible. Nevertheless, there is no reason to give up. In this respect I agree with Gorksi. My dissenting point will be a simple one: there is are multiple relations of fit between sociological ideas and ethical theories, not just the one he describes, and some ethical theory is in outright conflict with normal social science. |