Thoughts from Prof.

By Prof. Martin

 Hi All! I thought last night was great--and Professor Taiwo was highly complimentary of all of you, afterward. Thanks for your hard work preparing and participating. Here are a few things I've been thinking about, since the dinner, that perhaps we could follow up on, today. Please also feel free to post your own questions and ideas, anytime before class today. 


1. Norms as shaped by/shaping formal institutions: I was interested in what he described as his "broad" conception of "material conditions," where he seemed to be aiming to include the norm-guided patterns of behavior (and attention and concern they exhibit). I quickly read the essay he referenced, "Civility as Self-Determination," which is an argument for using li to challenge oppression rather than valorizing "incivility" as a political virtue. A few suggestive passages:

A society’s laws, coupled with the patterns of their enforcement, clearly structure and shape social behavior. However, this is only part of the political story. Many social patterns sustain themselves without much help from formal rules like laws or regulations, yet play an important role in directing social life in rule-like fashion, governing the distribution of important social goods like attention, respect, and status.

Li and civility start from a kind of rule- or convention following, but ren (humanity, human excellence, or benevolence) is where they ought to end up. Ren is about the value that these often quite arbitrary rules supposedly issue from and protect.

a question like “should we endorse civility” should be restated as “should we coordinate together on safeguarding respect, fair patterns of attention?”—a criterion that can be satisfied by a multiplicity of cultures but makes no statement as to whether or not the current informal social structure masquerading as a genuinely moral system of etiquette or civility has earned the title. 

(https://muse.jhu.edu/article/770869/pdf)

 One theme that has arisen multiple times this semester is the idea that our cares and concerns (motivations, desires, preferences) are (at least largely) the product of the social arrangements we live inside, including formal institutions. What Taiwo has to say about the nature and role of norms like li provides a useful sort of connective tissue between formal institutions and individual character and motivation. It was also notable that he talked about the potential for resistance inside spaces governed only by norms. 

I think, too, these ideas could be useful to connect with King's concept of integration.

2. Global Racial Empire and il/legitimate sovereignty: I wish I had thought to ask about his thoughts on state sovereignty and legitimate political authority, especially in connection with the discussions of weak post-colonial states and conflict. Jemma suggested in her blog post yesterday that part of the liability of colonial-empowered states containing colonized people within their borders, like the US, is recognition of full sovereignty for those colonized people. Jemma was specifically talking about sovereignty for American Indian nations, but I was also thinking about the Republic of New Afrika movement that Taiwo talks about in ch. 3 (p. 71).  


3. Self-determination and democracy: First, in connecting self-determination with capabilities, Taiwo brings forward a conception of freedom that may be distinct from other conceptions we've seen (negative, positive, republican, freedom from determination by nature/external forces, freedom from alienation, ...). Are democratic institutions the best bet for securing self-determination? I enjoyed his points about the contingent connection between the practices Westerners typically see as measures of democracy (free and fair elections, in particular). Something like what he called "sortition" has also been advocated by a political philosopher named Alex Guerrero--see, for example, this article, "The lottocracy."

The way Taiwo talked about democracy seemed connected to his preference for the problems associated with grass-roots, community-based deliberative processes over the problems associated with putting decision-making power in the hands of political leaders, boards, etc. He has a fairly recent piece in NY Magazine called "Toward an Energy Democracy," where he emphasizes community control, toward the end.




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