On Alternative(s) to Neoliberal Globalization
On Alternative(s) to Neoliberal Globalization
From 17 to 19 June 2015, I attended the 14th Annual Conference of the International Social Theory Consortium (ISTC) “Reconstructing Social Theory, History and Practice” at the University of Cambridge, with presentation “On Alternative(s) to Neoliberal Globalization” on the 17th of June 2015.
First, the ISTC conference was about reconstruction, deconstruction, deriving from the past thirty years having been named Age of Deconstruction; and possibilities of a return of history. Discussions were related to the questions, whether there are limits to the deconstruction project? Have these limits been reached? What are the possibilities for the “reconstruction” of narratives of long-term historical change? Is it possible to include and integrate the insights and contributions of various critiques of knowledge, while at the same time developing new forms of knowledge? Can we submit the project of deconstruction itself to deconstruction? Etc.
Some starting points were that return to history acknowledges history’s “continuing importance as a social-theoretical category and frame, considering [history’s] persistent utility after […] realizations, and accepting the fact that, by most accounts, history has not reached its end. ● How would social science disciplines benefit from new perspectives on understanding long-term change? ● What might, could and should a new philosophy of history – subsequent to so many “turns” – look like? ● What are the possibilities for practice in addressing social justice and democracy, with the benefit or in the absence of long-term historical consciousness?”
Second – The text of my presentation:
The Structure:
Two main premises:
1) The philosophy of history could have had different development as it has today;
2) Could there be an alternative or alternatives to neoliberal globalization.
Subquestions:
● Socialism (revolutionary socialism, reformist constitutional socialism) vs. industrial capitalism – as a starting point
● „Traces of moral thought“ and „religious injunctions“ influencing law (Klabbers, Piiparinen)
● Defining normative order (Klabbers, Piiparinen), political ideology (Heywood) and morality (Kant)
● Justifiability of law on moral grounds or on normative grounds (religion, social norm, cultural practice, etc.)
● Examples of different levels (Christianity-Judaism; Judaism-Islam; Marxism-capitalism; Soviet socialist law-capitalist civil law; structuralists-poststructuralists; poststructuralists-Islam; Western cultural practice-Islam; etc.) /The initial idea was to compare modernism-postmodernism, socialism-postsocialism, liberalism-neoliberalism, critical theory-positivism, naturalism-positivism, and then postsocialism-postpostsocialism, postmodernism-postsocialism, poststructuralism-postmodernism, neoliberalism-psotstructuralism, materialism-neomaterialism, neomaterialism-poststructuralism, etc./
● Kant’s idea of international and cosmopolitan justice – perpetual peace – in the light of the previous
● The politics of framing in global (and EU) governance / agenda setting
● The role of a lawyer – drawing extralegal concerns into law?
● Who could decide?
Problems:
● Could legal history have developed differently if human thought had in history developed differently?
● Why could there be alternative(s) to neoliberal globalization?
For the structure and to make my argument, I got some inspiration from the texts of Kant, and Klabbers and Piiparinen that I read last. My initial idea was to make a distinction between and to some extent compare political ideologies and theories, because earlier I derived from the premise that only equal categories could be compared, i.e. not, say, a normative system with theory.
The body:
[I] most recently have worked with EU accountability, incl. political accountability
According to Aristotle, things have both: form and substance / content.
For better understanding political accountability, I first attempted at mapping politics, by mapping political parties at European level and in Estonia, which method – combined with history research – allowed me to estimate transformation of politics in Estonia. – Such research was oriented toward form / structure, and did not say much about political (party) ideologies, except making some conclusions according to the parties’ own assertions about their position on the political right-left scale, although my research also established that more important than what a political party says about its ideology, should be its actual behaviour.
My research also established – agreeing with Chantal Mouffe – that political party ideologies are not easily distinguishable in the contemporary World, because – and Mouffe names two reasons: 1) the right-wing addresses for populist aims left-wing arguments, whereas the left-wing uses right-wing arguments, and 2) there are certain concerns that all political parties would address, such as environment, women’s rights, etc.
Mouffe concludes that although such is a dangerous phenomenon, because it limits choice – and, consequently, antagonism always remains and should remain into politics – today’s political parties mostly seem to have reached consensus at the centre btw. centre-right and centre-left.
Mouffe explains such as impossibility to find an alternative to neoliberal globalization.
Now, this was the turning-point for me, because it made me think about the history of political thought from a different angle.
One example of antagonism is socialism that – as a utopian idea and reaction – appeared against industrial capitalism, resumed by Heywood as having had an aim to end capitalist economy and replace it with common ownership. Such development can be divided into: revolutionary socialism (that developed into Communism), and reformist constitutional socialism that turned into social-democrat ideologies.
I understand Mouffe’s conclusion about impossibility of finding an alternative to neoliberal globalization as a-kind-of stop in socialist thought, although neoliberalism refers to greater community / State influence in markets (and, thus, to social /socialist influence).
One has to take into account that reality exists independently of human cognition, even though humans may not identify it and despite our understandings of reality, which is an old description of the relation btw. objectivity and subjectivity (the latter being constrained in time and space too much to adequately understand and communicate objectivity.)
The relevance for law of the previous:
Jan Klabbers and Touko Piiparinen in book “Normative Pluralism and International Law” (Cambridge University Press, ASIL Studies in International Legal Theory, 2013), explain law as a social phenomenon, containing: “traces of moral thought” or “religious injunctions” detaining meaning and changing over time. They establish that also religions contain normativity, and define “normative order” as “normative control system” – signifying a set of related commands: “Do’s” and “Don’ts” that stem from the same or related source(s).
That way, normative orders are understood as wholes of norms of social control. Based on understanding “norms” as “rules of behaviour” … whiches breach is accompanied by liability. For that reason, Klabbers and Piiparinen see law as a distinct normative order.
Similarly, religion can be regarded as distinct normative order.
What concerns morals, I would understand morals as quite a distinct from normativity phenomemon, because all human thought does not contain coercive capacity like law or norms. I would derive from Kant who explains morals also as sth. developing through experience, incl. knowledge about different thinkers.
At the same time, law is related to political morals, ideologies and philosophical thought. We all live in politics – a human being is already by the very nature ζῷον πολιτικόν (Zôion politikòn).
Schaffer has a concern related to that – if decisions in a society are not grounded in empirics and experience (for example, perhaps here lies an advantage of American sociology indexing), they can be dangerous, unpredictable, and even have disastrous consequences.
Unger is of opinion that law is an expression of political ideology – thus, the same applies toward legal decisions, and applies toward international law that regulates international relations – thus also toward social and political processes.
There coexist several normative orders, for example, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, in addition to law. Then, there exist different political ideologies, such as social-democracy, … And there coexist different moral theories, most recently, such as poststructuralism, postmodernism, neoliberalism, critical theory, etc., the latter do not entail enforcement mechanisms.
Although these all are not equal categories, one can bring the following examples: 1) while Christianity is centred around liberation, Islam and Judaism are centred around commandments, thus, prescribing for the “free will” how to behave for the benefit of the community and the governors – thus, Islam and Judaism can actually be considered political ideologies, too, although normative; 2) while Marxism favours nationalization, capitalism favours unequal distribution of capital; 3) while speculation under Soviet Socialist laws was punishable under criminal laws, regulation of resale forms a common part of capitalist civil laws; 4) while structures / forms are important for structuralists, poststructuralists consider ideas / content more important than form; 5) while poststructuralists justify human pleasure, some forms of it are forbidden in Islam; 6) while headscarves are not common in Western cultural tradition, they are prescribed for women in Islam. 7) One could continue here, and actually, before reading Klabbers, Piiparinen, my initial idea was to that way compare modernism-postmodernism, socialism-postsocialism, liberalism-neoliberalism, critical theory-positivism, naturalism-positivism, and then postsocialism-postpostsocialism, postmodernism-postsocialism, poststructuralism-postmodernism, neoliberalism-psotstructuralism, dialectical materialism-structuralism, dialectical materialism-poststructuralism, etc.
Thus – society (and law) have to deal with collision of norms, but not solely of norms, but also of concerns of real politics or justice.
Immanuel Kant – who has defined morals – advanced the idea [of e.g. Rousseau of paix perpétuelle] of international and cosmopolitan justice – perpetual peace – being possible, when mature societies reach consensus in peaceful coexistence. All moral questions, according to Kant, are thought in a particular situation – thus “applied moral questions.” Kant also talks about inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another, because various selves interrelate in a community. This all applies toward ideological consensus or, at least, understanding.
Francis Fukuyama’s idea was that liberal democracies do not go to war with each other – and here, to my mind, the word “democracy” refers to consensus and “common moral character.”
Thus, it is relevant to relate law with morals, and in such context analyse historical development of moral thought.
Piiparinen claims that not only one but more spheres of authority are in control of the World – and they may all derive their authority from legal or other norms and theories, for legitimacy.
Still, my presentation derives from the premises that: 1) law should be morally respectable; 2) law should be in harmony with the society it aims to regulate; 3) law can have effects on the society if regulates.
Important is what are the individual moralities who should shape law (that shapes individual moralities) similarly to different normative orders.
Klabbers and Piiparinen explain such as the politics of framing. And to illustrate that, they ask, whether the intervention over Kosovo should be judged by moral standards or legal standards?
For lawyers, such position of question is connected with legitimacy, meaning – if illegal, would one be allowed to derive justification from morals (which could be a slippery slope, because morals is fragmented – a comprehensive understanding of universal morals is absent, and understanding and interpretation of morals is subjective, depending on the interpreting person’s education, life experience, intellectual and cognitive abilities, etc.).
Klabbers and Piiparinen still conclude that if morally acceptable, an illegal practice may be accepted and even become new law. The same authors see the problem in drawing the line btw. morally justifiable and morally unjustifiable – which is determined by subjective people.
The problem is that if to question people, many would feel that there was a conflict btw. law and morals at Kosovo, but if to ask people to specify what kind of morals was breached in Kosovo, even the lawyers would have problems with finding the relevant arguments. (The Devil is in detail but – to my mind – also in finding right / really relevant / adequate / comprehensive / legitimate / consensual (it is difficult to define) knowledge-based arguments.)
On the other hand, maybe such is not the task of lawyers at all – because a good practising lawyer is supposed to rather apply law as precisely as possible than to make a new law through interpretation (be it critical or not).
Then – where from and how to draw extralegal concerns into law? With the aim to justify illegal acts?
Because if every judge or other person applying law would independently justify by moral concerns – such could easily lead to situations, where, say, judge A would justify a behaviour by poststructural “praise” of pleasure, whereas judge B would justify the same behaviour by Islamic understanding.
Could there exist a common understanding of which religion (if religion to be brought into play at all) or which morals or politics to follow in case law is silent or just does not seem right. (Could such be allowed at all, as by such law looses some of its authority.)
If still needed, could a “common frame of reference” be here possible for global (and European) governance? Because – according to Aristotle, democracy is only democracy if everyone feels s/he belongs, and no one feels oppressed, excluded or disempowered.
Politics of framing in global Agenda-setting?
Legitimacy is one of the magic words, justifying moral grounds. (/My post-conference addition:/ Haneke who has interpreted Hegel, talks about psychological need for Recognition, and I would connect that somehow with legitimacy.)
Then – can legitimacy take place of normative orders and morals, and if so – who would shape in media and educational processes the common understanding of situations? Who would guide communitarism?
Klabbers and Piiparinen pose such: Who would decide (for common people) what qualifies as legitimate?
The most reasonable way seems to find a reason from history of philosophical thought – and therefore, I would (as many) suggest History of Philosophy for the modern society to replace the position, Marxism as a common theory had before its aims collapsed (have they?). Such common set of theories could serve as a common frame of reference, and could demonstrate how politics and law are always contextual and historically situated. There is no such thing as a purely original idea, but development based on previous developments, changing in line with changing contexts.
Not a small problem is that the so-called “Western” philosophical thought could not be understandable (and thus, acceptable) by the rest of the World, which means that if we base international decisions on Western morality solely, we might only be legitimate in the eyes of the Western part of the world. At the same time, Europeans should remain aware of European cultural development / development of European thought, too.
I ended here, I did not explain, although in the beginning I intended to, why did I head my presentation as “On Alternative(s) to Neoliberal Globalization” instead of “On Alternative(s) to Neoliberal Democracy,” that could have demanded analysis of democracy and offering alternatives to democracy. For the reason, I could not think out much other than meritocracy, it was easier for me to talk about globalization instead.
Theory or ideology – as cultural artefact – may well be replaced by some other cultural artefact. This also applies toward neoliberalism. It is difficult to agree upon political action that could be regarded as “best utopian practice.” The question is how to reach an agreement btw. different multicultural actors on some basis of equality that applies toward democratic law-making procedures as sth. similar to Kantian theory of law describing all legal philosophies, while critical interests are only subjective and everyone’s critical interests cannot be the same over all history. I would not dare to say that sth. ontologically new should emerge, but development has entailed certain rules – a new development always builds on previous development. Probably this all introduces also changes to the constitutional developments in the EU.
Questions my presentation received (as far as I am able to de-/reconstruct):
-Is Mouffe arguing for de-antagonistic politics?
-Why did socialist movements emerge? And don’t they emerge anymore as capitalism is still criticized by socialist ideas?
-What is legitimacy?
-Doesn’t legitimacy mean institutional legitimacy? (I explained that legitimacy has different dimensions and levels; in addition, today I started to think that legitimacy, probably, may be connected with Hegelian “Recognition,” too.)
My conclusions of the conference related to my PhD Dissertation:
Article 263 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, although distinguishing btw. natural and legal persons, stipulates certain rights of natural or legal persons in the same section, consequently I have explained those rights in my PhD Dissertation together, which now, in the light of Unger’s individual and society or the earlier self-community, seems justified solely for (and only certain) liability reasons.
Other important questions raised:
● Importance of image over substance? ● Watching US democracy we’re watching ourselves; ● What negative campaigning is about? ● 2 biggest hinderers of the US democracy as censorship of media and education; ● Cold War as fight against Communism; ● Earlier texts as legal proof; ● The Global as methodological problem; ● Assymetries of power in scientific historical acts; ● Assymetrical power distributions (the most extreme example being colonial); ● Assymetric power is always present; ● Connecting new concepts with existing debates; ● Knowledge transfer moving around the Globe; ● Theory of structuralization as the most controversial debate in sociology; ● Objectivist vs. imagining; ● Political vs. cultural; ● representional vs. non-representional; ● Modernity’s biggest problem – separation of subject from the object; ● Combining not solely Western, but other knowledge-forms; ● Co-production of knowledge as scientific production; ● Universalizing master-narratives – scientific revolution; ● To find legitimate recognized arguments; ● What’s the new education? ● Metanarrative in social processes and qualitative research; ● How human experience, understanding, and meaning change; ● Missing elements in our consciousness; ● Multiple subjectivities from different periods of time; ● The relationship btw. the subjective and objective changes btw. researcher and research object; ● If American sociology is indexical, not building concepts, where does this take us? Decisions basing on practice, not on social science – that way the decisions are more related to actual social needs than to abstract concerns /My comment would be – Aren’t those people more manipulative by media, etc. powers, because someone else has to justify the society for them. – If diversity does not offer a model, people turn to Objects, not to other subjects!/ ● How crucial subjectivity is? ● Traditional sociology vs. lyrical sociology; ● Plato without and as universality; ● Every continuity without and as universality; ● Universal discourses (human nature, culture), particular discourses (subjectivity, relativism, fragmentation, ethnicity, hybrids, unstability, theories one builds him-/herself); ● /My comment: A cage – one can be manipulated without or through theories/ ● Change in legislator’s role into interpreter? ● New social knowledge; ● Development from universal to subjective – does it present crisis for sociology? ● The relationship btw. universality, particularity, diversity; ● The question is not, will sociology survive the change from universal to particular but should we, sociologists, accommodate to that? ● Narrative about all of us? ● How social theory could have conceptualized differently? ● To accept Haiti into social theory would have meant considering conceptual paradigms not in use; ● The promise of the theory for Global Age; ● Exclusion, inclusion, society of equals; ● Future of Critical Theory; ● Role of social transformation; ● Intellectual critique; ● Theories of social transformation in Critical Theory; ● How can radical social theory move beyond? ● Transformation agenda? – Does it remain critical? ● Critical Theory emerged in 1930s to understand Fascism; ● Legitimation crisis; ● Critical Theory contributes to social movement theory; ● Movements may be motivated economically as mobilization for dignity; ● Critical Theory offers also a utopian vision; ● We educate the educators to understand what the World is about to contribute to creation of better individuals; ● How capital determines how to become involved (Gramsky); ● Gramsky never doubted until 60s that we can be whatever we want to be; ● From ordinary to extraordinary; ● The question is – what do we want to be? ● We study inequity in order to understand equity; ● Reading Hegel, Marx, Feuerbach, etc. we study negative to let the positive become more clear; ● Studying oppositions – liberalism-neoliberalism, Marxism-neomarxism, etc.; ● Project of transformation is in our hands; ● Critical Theory has been criticized of being too critical; still some claim that Critical Theory is not critical at all; ● Post WWII politics, culture that would have been different without WWII; ● Reconstructing Histories of the United Nations; ● Core of political theory – post-linguistic political theory, Habermasian thesisee; ● Traditional Critical Theory – how we study society must be scrutinized; ● Not reflecting adequately existing societies; ● Radical social theory, how it moved? ● Radical humanism (Marxist humanism) – what can be done to humans; ● Individual-collective; ● Traditional Marxist critique of political economy; ● We come after crisis to crisis and must understand what to do; ● Re-engaging Critical Theory; ● Enlightenment, Renaissance, Socialism – what have they done to human being; ● Radical humanism – linking the named Eras to constitutional humanism; ● Global class-consciousness; ● Erich Fromm; ● Socialism as barbarism? ● Structures that rose and could rise; ● Fairness; ● Marxist project; ● Collapse of Marxism; ● Social theory changing; ● We talk about concrete political theories / problem-solving that cannot be dealt with in practice; ● What’s the agent of transformation? ● Actual concrete realist project is absent; ● Dirty hands realism; ● What kind of politics/information is needed to achieve social change? ● Critical Theory has to become more critical and to develop sources for better analysis; ● Sth. concretely political is needed; ● Where are the sources for that in Critical Theory? ● Sociological critique is going around; ● Credit cards stop; ● Frame-building; ● More focused social critique – is it possible? ● People try to construct society; ● What can Critical Theory take on of what traditional theory does not take on? ● Social theory – theory of society, wile Critical Theory responses to social processes like Holocaust; ● How do we confront the challenges of this particular age? – Critical Theory must go beyond its content; ● Critical Theory’s relationship with Marx, having grown out of Marx, changing organic condition of Capitalism; ● Theory affirms one point of existing; ● Best possible; ● Understanding the Left; ● Layers of failure today; ● One Critical Theory problem – escape from political economy; ● Alternative economies; ● Social change: capital cannot control anymore; ● Critiques of Capital; ● What structures characterize liberal / neoliberal, and what structures of neo-/liberal should be changed or remain there? ● Today’s structures – new generations have never stuck to old structures; ● Envisioning, therefore, new kind of efficiency and how to get it; ● To build new people to master emancipation, which can be done by education / production of citizenry; ● Programme of education; ● We have done everything available at culture; ● Resistance may come from the largest workers’ group in the World – people working 1-2 months (short-term contractual basis?); ● Change will come from re-loading of capitalism; ● Structure of society and individual self must correspond to each other; ● Individual self-containing concerns of the society, being unable to address most of those; ● In classrooms we put together more-and-more subjective / specific pictures; ● Cognitive dissidence is the beginning; ● Liberal socialization-project (influenced by America); ● Producing new kind of consciousness in the World; ● Critique of American governance that blinds people; ● Sexual suppression as hypocracy; ● Reconstruction – students re-emerge sth. as normative orientation – by discourses we’re still in the XX Century but actually we’re in XXI already; ● Humanism – posthumanism; ● Future of Critical Theory in XXI Century; ● Discussion – promotion of free education or not (My comment: Free allows more concentration on content); ● Taking political ideas and expressing those through axe of language; ● Radical political science; ● Haneke – psychological need for recognition; ● Unity in diversity in struggle for justice; ● One important side allegedly missing – nature (and distribution); ● Nature reproduces itself, incl. also in study-processes; ● Need for such theorizing that economic disadvantage, cultural disrespect and environmental degradation’ldn,t meet each other; ● Conscreative Catholiscism – man as centre of culture (My comment: everything emanates from human brain); ● SIMON SUSEN – Postmodernism connected with Enlightenment; – 5 paradigmatic turns in social sciences: ● – Necessity vs. contingency; grand narratives vs. small narratives; continuity vs. discontinuity (In history continuous or discontinuous processes – continuity=modernity; discontinuity=postmodernity; both’re present in post-postmodern – /My comment: danger with human rights and discontinuity because if to separate human rights from human nature and history, such may change human rights into object of manipulation / political tools); lawfulness vs. lawlessness; predictability vs. uncertainty; linearity vs. non-linearity; technology vs. directlessness; universality vs. particularity; – Postmodern condition=death of metanarratives; – Is history built on metanarratives? – 5 types of metanarratives – political, philosophical, religious, economic, cultural – all have: projective-substantive; conceptual-empitical; for itself-in itself; – Micro metanarratives; – Can history make sense? – Focault answers the question negatively – history’s not going anywhere; – Challenges: 1) objective vs. normative (view on history as narrative. History as normatively shaped subject); 2) found (discovered) vs. invented (construction); 3) factual (facts) vs. fictional (shown); 4) representational vs. perspectival; 5) social (“hard” patterns) vs. cultural (“soft” variations); 6) real (nothing outside reality) vs. textual (Derrida: nothing outside the text. (Critique: False premise because the reality is there)); 7) explanatory (Erklärung; Begründung) vs. interpretive (Deutung; Auslegung); 8) deductive (general-particular) vs. inductive (particular-general); 9) macro vs. micro (subcategories: global vs. local (how to distinguish?), systemic vs. hermeneutic, logical vs. accidental (does history have the same kind of logic or is it all accident?), social vs. individual, central vs. marginal, monocentric vs. polycentric (history has lots of different centres), scientific (scientific knowledge) vs. ordinary (immediate /subjective experiences); 10) necessary vs. contingent (lawfulness vs. lawlwssness, predictability vs. uncertainty, linearity vs. non-linearity, teleology vs. , universality vs. particularity); ● FRANK WELZ. The Matter of Critique: From Deconstruction to Reconstruction. Reconstruction – how are we doing? – Ontologically oriented social theories; – Kantian philosophy of categories; – Marx-what’s the logic of capitalism? Then he logically builds on it; – Fragmented Europe with many differences; education’s always better than uneducation; – Foucault: What’s Enlightenment? If we look at series of facts and construct a thing; It’s us that construct the World with or without education; – Kant got into distance – construction of society being construction of temporal World as dynamic World is always at change; – Luhmann as constructive, Habermas as critical; – There’re many different Worlds; – all depends on the agency of Other(s) – we can construct the World but the end’ll depend on the will of Other(s); – Luhmann represents neoliberal capitalism, constructing capitalism’s logic, in which Foucault has helped a lot; – Postmodern constructivism; ● SARAH FRANKLIN. The Academy as Means of Reproduction – Academy as social reproduction; Social Theory as social reproduction. – What hierarchy is; – Classification is a system, whiches parts’re arranged according to hierarchy. – Social Theory as social contract. – Critique: -Misreading; -I’ve read more than you’ve! –Inappropriate emphasis! –You’re not understanding! -The problem HE emphasizes, rather than stress your own opinion about the matter! –I’m allowed to comment, not you! (Right to make certain assertions or not); –Pretentious and arrogant, not intellectually equipped! -Arguments unduly polemical and unconstructive! -Very little reference to what D. actually wrote! – Social Theory as social practice, realizing in society. – Elements of reproductive model / logic in social theory. – Conversions of attribution. – How to rebalance some of the elements? – Transmission of social theory. – We should avoid: sorting arguments into categories like Habermasian, Foucauldian, etc.; instead, we’ld think of them differently – like Mouffe of politics: center-left / center-right. Q&A: How is power operating? – Power in classroom. – What kind of political consciousness do we want to have? – Question of power-sharing. – Very little room left for creating alternatives. – I had exactly the same thing / experience after having read the same book! – Is the whole academy means of reproduction / production? – What’re exactly the mechanisms for our reproduction? – No. Your paper is a crap! ● Modern Societies btw. Luhmann and Complexity Theory: RALF ROGOWSKI Law in the Social Theory of Niklas Luhmann. – Sociology of knowledge. – Sociological theory of Law. – To locate law into society. – Origins of law in society. – Expectations. – Normative vs. cognitive expectations. – Upholding of expectations requires norms. –Disappointments of expectations, and how to treat them? – New developments in legal theory. – Contingecy. – New idea of positivism, arguing that law is no longer eternal but can be changed. – II Stage: Luhmann picked up concept of autopoiesis of social systems (systems of communication). – Law as means of communication. – Law came to center. – With ability to reproduce itself. – Law as a social system. – The autonomy of law. – III Phase: Law as World Law – society as World Society. For Luhmann, there exists one society. -Law as means of communication. – Law+politics are function systems in society, they differ from other systems because of territorial boundaries, at the same time when economics, culture do not recognize territorial boundaries. – Narrative and cognitive expectations. – Possibility of taking on board necessity of change. – Idea of World Law. – World Politics=structures inside function systems, which can become part of World society. – Luhmann demonstrates such with relation to politics. – Idea of nation-States changing their role. – Luhmann argues against: „We’re nowadays in situation, where World Politics defines Statehood.“ Westphalian order has been placed by new quality. Post-War Iraq or World Bank filled with Statehood. – Categories that are universal now. – Nation-States as Players in World system. – Concept by Luhmann about Law and Politics is structural. – Law and Politics as radically separated function systems. – No direct link btw. Law and Politics. – Legislation is legal process corresponding to legal demands. – If politics influences, law controls, as constitutionally law is able to limit politics. – Constitution as a mechanism of structurality / structural control – mechanism of Constitutional Court. – Political debates turn into constitutional debates. – Constitutional debates irritating legal understanding. – Constitution as mechanism of cultural. – Luhmann has only gone so far in analysing World Law. – Concept of „World Law.“ -World Law’ld be understood differently from international law: World Law is plural rising from multiplicity of sources, not from treaties btw. States anymore. – Private International Law arises from many sources: one area is lex mercatoria that operates in separate legal order with arbitration creating separate order – most powerful area of law. In addition lex digitales (Internet), sports law. Private legal order is having significant economic sides. Labour law – global labour law – produced inside multinational companies and international companies, in order the ILO could influence, soft law is produced – reflexive legal labour law as new legal instrument. Quite controlled process. To reflect the need of self-regulation. Regulator knows, what’s needed. ILO also labour-standards through self-regulation. – Luhmann’s and Weber’s view on future of modern society: World’s developing as a CAGE. More bureaucratic. Function systems grow more complex and creating own structures – becoming more problematic to each other. Function-systems as being successive, reproducing themselves and leaving big problems for each-other. Q&A: Greater complexity undermines universality. Luhmann understands what subjectivity is. – Luhmann „Universal World Society.“ – Prominent in Luhmann is Phenomenology. – Different function-systems have different World horizons. – Economic transactions. Markets becoming universal. – Plural view on the World. No hierarchy. – Reflexive law – how to regulate lex mercatoria. – Human Rights. – WTO vs. private arbitration – (My comment: to my mind they cannot be deemed equal phenomena! Constitutional Courts (incl. or more universal courts than State courts) should control private arbitration or any ad hoc arbitration, one reason is that human rights cannot be imposed on private arbitration but they can solely be recommended to be observed there, whereas it cannot be that private arbitrators escape responsibility when infringing the right to life or when they pollute solely because the separate arbitration model does not foresee responsibility for such things, and they do not belong under any other jurisdiction. Another argument could be: a State allows, say, foreign banks to arbitrate on its territory until it does not control its own territory anymore, what if the private corporations finance (international) terrorism? Do we talk about corporate governance or corporate responsibility? Should responsibility be fragmented in the sense that I could not observe human rights when choosing arbitration? – I do not mean that private parties shouldn-t have the right to agree upon everything legal). – Theorizing Complexity of Modernity JOHN RUNDELL Multiple Modernities or Modernities in Tension? Theorizing the Complexity of Modern Societies. – Modernities have different value horizons. Indeterminacy may not have existed. Multiple modernities. – Equally unique contents. – Modernities’ intention. – Social imaginaries: emotional vs. rational – add up or clinck together as a system. – Historically indeterminate processes. – Time and space are pluralized. – Building World differently on the existing ones. – Tensions and conflicts. – Competition btw. social imaginaries. – Global monetarization of social life. –industrialization, -nationmaking, -modernization. – Forms of social relatedness created in own particular means. – Money as social imaginary. – Men and women as replaceable. – Tasks according to specialization. – Functionalized terms only. – New concept of culture. – Modernity’s imagined community. – Paradox of openness and closure in the case of the EU. – Modern barbarous creations. – Social imaginary: reconsideration of public sphere. – No time in capitalism to gather in cafes to discuss politics. – Totalitarian past? – Tension, conflict, dissonance. – Autonomy vs. mutuality. – Max Weber: Notion of freedom, social imaginary, pluralization=pluralization of social movements. – China has capital control. – Capitalism, bureaucracy, democracy. – Q&A: Multiplicity of modernities. – State-formation as characteristics of modernity. – Competition btw. British Hong-Kong and Bejing as btw. different modernities. – Postmodernity is sth. different. ● KOSUKE SAKAI (PhD Student, University of Tokyo) Luhmann. Sociological Semantic Analysis and Historical Study of the Welfare State. – Social phenomena are constructed by certain ideas. Historical change of social structure. – Emergence of modern World in historical conceptualization. – Semantics builds walls btw. States / people, therefore deconstruction, discourse studies, reconstruction, etc. – Basic concepts in Grundrecht / constitutional law: security, justice, freedom, solidarity, subsidiarity. – Institutionalization – relation btw. structure and process. – Institutions can change by themselves? – If self can, then they can? – Application of historical method toward ideas (concepts) and institutions (My comment: Can it be justified to apply the same method toward diferent phenomena? And if, then to what extent? Institutions come from human ideas, being also product of brain but are they still equal to human?) – Semantics of a Welfare State – very general concept. ● TIMOTHY LUKE Reconstructing Social Theory around the Anthropocene? – Governmentality and contra-governmentality; – Putting knowledge to work and letting evolution to play; – Americanization; – The politics of cyberspace; – Move from Deconstruction to Reconstruction; – How do we cope with environmental concern? – Anthropocene is a proposed new name (created in 2013); – Consumerism; – Chemicalization of Agriculture; – Mass use of fossil fuel, etc. – Explosion of US Atom Bomb followed by SU Atom bomb followed by US Hydrogen Bomb followed by SU Hydrogen Bomb. – Talks about contradictions. – Rich historical background of Social Theory. – Oceans, stratosphere, ecosystems, climate, etc. – Social and non-social change. – Paradigm-Shift in natural sciences. – SU-US carbon-dioxide agreement – Book: „Carbondemocracy.“ – Wake-up call for the masses! – Postmodernism, when modernism went wrong. – Pope’s yesterday’s message. – Neopragmatism in liberal capitalism – human / inhuman action in new environment. – Neoconfucionalism-there’re too many people. – OECD+BRICS+The Rest – Ecologically controlled degradation. – Planetary urbanization. – sustainability and environment for political party campaigns. – New developmentalism coming out of it. – Anthropocentric quality – what Pope is concerned of. – Regional zoning – we try to build zones of relative stability to mitigate the changes, but not accepted by all nation-States. – Everything’s related to everything else. – No such thing as a free lunch and you cannot render places into useless places. – Is there possibility for ecological transions? – Re-inventioning of materiality of everyday life. – Planetary globalization. – Prosperous States – GB, US. – We have energy slaves (not humans’ slaves). – What politics can do to control people? – Since 1969/1070 neoliberalism=massive expropriation of people. – Al Gore – now Green capitalist. ● STEPHEN TURNER Method of Antinomies: Weber, Mouffe, and Others – Agonistic Liberalism doesn’t guarantee progress. – Conflicts btw. Principals like State, enterprises. – Politics-faith, politics-scepticism. – Mutual theory of law and policy. – Politics of conviction, responsibility. – Schmid. – Morgenthau: Love and Power. – Chantal Mouffe. The Democratic Paradox (2000) – 2 conflicting logics – individual rights and liberties, and claims for equality and popular participation, or fundamental human rights. – Antinomy vs. Hegemony. – Consensus in Liberal Democracy is and will always be expression of Hegemony and Power relations. – Legitimacy dictated by rationality or morality. – Naturalization of contingent and temporary articulation of „the people“ through a particular regime of inclusion / exclusion. – Diversity ideals: A lot of arguments have to do with contingency. – In reality – pluralism, not relativism. – Antimonic vision of politics differs from relativism. – It’s distinct from and opposed to the idea that there can be a „solution“ to the antinomies in question. – Denial that there can be correct doctrines. – Thinking is error for them. – Other binary oppositions: Reductionist / hegemonist example: question of citizen responsibility for policy decisions: as primary lens through which to view the problem of self-government. – Each citizen bears for policies through participation in elections. – Principlism vs. democracy: -itself it is antidemocratic in Liberal sense, -democratic decisions about democratic nature not sufficient for being democratic, the mode of democratic approval was itself not democratic. – Antinomy of „citizen responsibility“: -responsible Leadership – Leader cannot fail; -Leader takes responsibility, -impractical for every citizen to know everything about policies. The ideal is an unrealizable ideal-type. – So, against Principles but: -relation btw. Principles, -„ideal“ and cannot be realized fully without conflict with the Other, – Equality’s understood as ideal. – Binding 2 things together: factual conditions become apparent / relevant only through the lens of the conflict of ideals. – Political Theory deals with real World. – History of European politics. – Not Alternatives: -we cannot use both but are attracted to both of them. – Situation of argumentation has 2 sides, both have own truth. Like French Revolution. – Ethics of intention or responsibility. – Weber’s point: they’re not always / everywhere in conflict; -in politics antinomies reveal themselves. They grow out of ordinary morals. – Benjamin Schmid: Ideas come to life only when in extremes? – In democracy the different meanings conflict + stand in relation. –The general claim is revealed by exception. – Why’s anyone signing up to rule of law? – Politics of Faith. – If we change, sth. predictable happens. – We don’t know what the conditions are. – You cannot enforce law without power (which can best way come from legitimacy); – Politician who does not understand politics. – Agonistic politics as model of change. – Practical politics – Each goal as achievable and brings out another goal–Christian conception of soul acting. – History of European politics is always a compromise.
Methinks critically: Although neoliberalism constructs hierarcies in societies, such as race and gender, I would not approach race and feminism as separate issues because to my mind they could contribute together to general science – Otherwise we ourselves create Black and White sociology. “The concept of Black” – by such conceptualizing we ourselves create bigger-and-bigger distinctions – reconstructing by such separation even bigger distinction than was there before. Despite racism being part of the structures around us, we shouldn’t that way legitimize racism in science. For me, such separate conceptualizations remind of the concept “Two-speed,” known from geopolitics or strategy studies, such as 2speed Europe, 2speed education system, etc., (2speed philosophy has been geographically and politically true, should we continue with universal understanding of philosophy dividing it still into feminist and male side (btw., would you read feminist then?) or Black and White side (btw., who would read Black then?).
