Public Participation and Information Technologies 1999
Published by CITIDEP & DCEA-FCT-UNL, edited by Pedro Ferraz de Abreu & João Joanaz de Melo
© CITIDEP 2000

Chapter 7
PP-IT role in teaching, education and arts


The two societies: dialogic contacts and tensions between democracies and fundamentalisms


Pedro de ANDRADE
Faculty of Economics, University of Coimbra, and CITIDEP Portugal. R. Tristão da Cunha 34, 1400-349 Lisbon, Portugal. E-mail: pedro.andrade@individual.eunet.pt


ABSTRACT

In the contemporary global world, occurs a cohabitation processus involving four central modes of interpretation of reality: Science, Information Technologies, Art and Religion. Each one relates to a specif form of power and may constitute the arena of new forms of dialog or conflict between two paradigmatic forms of society: democracies and fundamentalisms. The main strategies used in this global contact or contract develop through struggles for hegemony. The corresponding tactics are: (a) the social clonation, or reproduction of societies in terms of dependent social systems, which imitate, the most perfectly they can, the original one; (b) the social translation, meaning the social and symbolic modes of passage or transformation from a type of institutions to another, inside the same society or among different social formations; (c) the over-dichotomization, which denotes the proliferation of social dichotomies or other conflictual social relations, as a 'tree' net form, among other possible configurations.

 


1. INTRODUCTION.


In contemporary democracies, we observe the cohabitation of two hegemonic modes of interpretation of reality, closely associated with modernity: science and technique. These hermeneutics emigrated, gradually, towards the totality of the social fabric, in particular through the generalized diffusion of new technologies. Moreover, late modernity - - or, according to some authors, post-modernity -, has been reintroducing two other discourses which (as the precedent ones) maintain some ambiguities. First of all, art. Jean-François Lyotard argues that art can propose a credible alternative to the 'grandes narratives' underlying modern rationality. The second renewed discourse, religion, shows a notable progress, insuspected until recently, concerning its influence upon our contemporaneity. The dichotomy 'sacred /profane' became more visible in the last decades, for common citizens, above all through the enunciations of fundamentalisms.
The relationship of these four discourses with the political sphere, mainly in terms of exercise of democratic citizenship and public opinion, doesn't become transparent as well. In a global dimension, one of the most problematic interfaces, related to this subject, refers to recent reformulation of the role of religion in political life, operated, partly, by integrisms. The more radical versions of these political extremisms inspired by religion, consider a scenario of confrontation between two paradigmatic forms of society: democracies and fundamentalist theocratic societies. Such change within international relations derive, among other factores, from the emergence of a new global protagonism, the opposition North / South, in detriment of the previous main international tension between East and West, that characterized the Cold War period.
Nevertheless, the analysis of the new world order cannot reduce to this 'North/South' vision of conflictuality, somehow simplistic. In particular, it becomes risky to just foresee an unique 'liberalization', 'democratization', or 'transition for democracy' constructed by non-western societies in direction to a 'global democratization', or towards other paradigmatic flags of western societies. Inversely, at least three other main scenarios can happen: (a) a counter-transition, that is, a process that refuses the route for democracy, inside those 'pre-democratic' societies; (b) a lesser / deeper fundamentalization of the West; (c) or even a global fundamentalization. We may note that fundamentalisms have already been detected in the very interior of democratic societies, in several social spheres. We called such process social fundamentalisms. 1 In the worst scenario, the development of fundamentalisms can produce, in the next decades, a sort of 'political volcano', that is, a process characterized by a sucession of 'social lava effects'. These social lava effects mean the incontrolated spread of fundamentalization phenomena of different types, in multiple localities of the world system and, in particular, within several social spheres, not just in political or ideological spheres. In the contemporary arena, the relative invisibility of these effects result, in part, from the omission of reflexivity by some sociologists or other political analysts.


How can we situate these discourses, ideologies and socio-historical processes within the economic sphere, that determines them, in a great extent? We know that comtemporary democratic societies, in a bigger or smaller scale, are based on capitalist systems historically located in the period of disorganized capitalism, in the words of Scott Lash and John Urry, or post-fordism, accordig to David Harvey. As for fundamentalist societies, they correspond to production systems: (a) in transition towards industrial societies; or (b) in direct passage from pre-industrial societies to postindustrial societies; (c) existing also the possibility of a counter-industrialization, that is, a retreat of economies predominantly commercial or relatively industrialized towards less industrialized economies, but based, for example, in financial dynamics, like the speculation on the price of oil. Counter-industrialization occurs, often, in alliance with re-tradicionalization, this last concept meaning a certain reactualization of economic, political and cultural traditional values, as Arab tribalism and nomadism. Under the perspective of world economy, studied by Immanuel Wallerstein, 2 democracies can be included, tipically, within central societies or in semi-peripherical ones, and fundamentalisms coincide, usually, with peripherical societies.
In this globalized world, both paradigms of social formation suffer, in the contemporary arena, multiple effects from information technologies, which are some of the most crucial elements within the new economic and societal regulation operated by disorganized capitalism and post-fordism.
The 'net society' (using a Manuel Castells's concept) produced by this historical context, organize social spheres in a reticular way, that is, their multidirectional interaction is meaningful in original ways. One of these alliances between social spheres is the growing protagonization of Science in everyday life, vehiculated by information technologies, which, in some way, reify sience. In the last decades, an opposition to this sience-IT dyad ocurred, personified by Art and Religion. An illustration of this new articulation of societal spheres is genetic information. Such a scientific-technical knowledge, included in the discursive sphere, after having been promoted by influent economic interests, conditionate the organization of work and employment, for example in recruitment terms. So being, genetics abstains from behaving as a 'gene ethics'.
"Recent studies suggest that employers are becoming interested in using genetic information about employees when the capability arises. () Perhaps the most pressing of all the daunting moral questions presented by genetic screen is whether society should make all of the potential technologies available ". (Boyle, 1996: 206) 3
In the meantime, recent transformations modify even the nature and notion of space and time. From Einstein's theory of relativity - opposed both to 'angelic' essencialism and to pure relativism - physical and social spaces cannot be understood without their respective temporalities. This irreversible change was clarified in information societies by the concept of 'compression of space and time' (David Harvey, Anthony Giddens). And besides cyberspace, it is necessary to reflect on the dimension we designated cibertime, that is to say, the different temporalities underlying human activities undertaken in information networks. 4
In this complex context, how to detect, then, the double porosity between democracies and fundamentalisms, maybe the two most important society paradigms in our contemporaneity?
(a ) In other words, on one side, in what way is drawn the contact between these two social formation models and considering their whole, in situations of dialog and/or discordance?
(b) on the other hand, how is processed the permeability among social spheres, both inside democratic societies and inside fundamentalist societies, and how these new connections among spheres translate the widest articulation among social formations where these spheres work?


2. STRATEGIES OF GLOBAL DIALOG /CONFRONTATION.


As mentioned above, after the collapse of State communism and the end of Cold War, in terms of international relations, the world system passed from a bipolar structure (dominated by the opposition between West and East) to a multipolar structure, where multiple dichotomies of interests coexists, less or more pacifically (South versus North, the 'clash of civilizations' that Huntington circumscribed,and so on.).
"In the post cold war world the most important differences among peoples are not ideological, political or economic. They are cultural. Peoples and nations are trying to answer to the most basic question human beings face: who are we? And they answer to this question in the most traditional way, having as reference what is more important for them. People define themselves in terms of origin, religion, language, history, values, habits and institutions. They identify themselves with cultural groups: tribes, ethnic groups, religious communities, nations and, at a wider level, civilizations. People use politics not only for promoting their interests, but also for define their identity. We only know who we are when we know who we are not and, frequently, against who we are ". (Huntington, 1999: 28) 5
However, contrary to Samuel Huntington's thesis, other authors, like Shireen Hunter, underline that this incompatibility doesn't possess essentially a cultural nature, but need a more political interpretation. Some of the facts that support such an hypothesis are the following ones: a few decades ago, the Sha of Iran, (occidentalized country but still presenting strong influences from other civilizations), maintained good relationships with the West and the same happens today in certain Muslim societies where islamism constitutes the center of social and political life, as Saudi Arabia.
"... the underlying but largely unspoken and unacknowledged cause of the dichotomy between Islam and the West is the question of power and the consequences of its exercise - that is, influence at the regional and global levels. This balance of power, which is heavily weighted in West's favor, gives the West a tremendous influence on the fate of the Muslim states and peoples (...) through a variety of financial and military means (...) including support for regimes and governments that are less than reasonably supported by the majority of their own people ". (Hunter, 1998: 19-20) 6
In this conjuncture, a single superpower, the USA, emerges as the hegemonic and basic regulating force regarding the myriad of world conflicts which acquired a new protagonism in the last decade. A reaction to such a situation is the recent mutual atraction among Russia, China and India. Although not formalized in terms of a global political or economic counter-hegemonic block, this potencial alliance intends to compensate, in a still hesitating way, the American hegemony demonstrated in the Gulf, in Bosnia or in Kosovo.
However, 'hegemony' is a concept that appears to be problematic, for two reasons. Firstly, due to the non uniform use of this concept by different authors, namely Marxists. Secondly, because hegemony, in contemporaneity, is changing deeply in its nature, in my opinion.
Regarding the first aspect, the term 'hegemony' receives four basic significances in Marxist texts: first of all, it gets the connotation of 'dominance', in the usage made by Mao Tse Tung for the term 'hegemonism', apllyed by him to signify the dominance of a national State on other, domination different from imperialism.

Besides that interpretation, hegemony means 'leadership', articulated to the idea of a certain 'consent', that coincides with the most usual sense in Marxist tradition. Lenin himself, but also its enemies, the menchevics, applied this concept as a synonym of political leadership in a democratic revolution, in terms of an alliance with peasants' fractions. Although Bukharin and Estaline equally used this term, it is with Gramsci that it acquires a decisive sociological depth.
The third meaning of hegemony, rarely visible in the writings of Gramsci previous to Quaderni di Carcere, refers to 'alliance strategies' of the working class with the 'peasant class' or others. A similar meaning was present in the debates inside the Communist International.
Finally, the fourth idea of hegemony, and undoubtedly the more fruitful, is the one revealed in Quaderni di Carcere (1948-51).7 Here, hegemony is defined as the way through which bourgeoisie constructs and reproduces its dominance. For Gramsci, the bourgeois State obtains hegemony by force articulated to consent. The 'historical block' is a system of alliances among social forces led by bourgeoisie, by means of some concessions, to other socio-political partners. The hegemony built in this way by the dominant class (in such a context also called the 'hegemonic class'), leads to a certain consensus and social balance. The 'texture of hegemony' is processed and promoted inside specific institutions by 'organic intellectuals'. The institutions of hegemony are located in civil society, and the State is the arena of political society, although both instances form an articulate and sometimes coincident social unit, in Gramsci 's point of view. Such an interrelation appears reinforced in Ben Eliezer's essay on the hegemonic nature of Israeli civil society (1998). 8
As for the second problematic dimension of hegemony, when refering to the contemporary international arena, we observe the following points: states, superstate organizations or other global partners, don't just intend to reply to a given hegemony and, tendencially or eventually, substitute it for another. This is a simplistic and somehow naif vision of international relations. On the contrary, we observe today not only the appearance of multiple hegemonies of different nature in relation to previous ones, but we assist to hegemony struggles based partially in unseen terms, at world level. To justify and develop this main proposition, we will purpose the following ten arguments.
Thesis 1 : disorganized post-fordist capitalism creates the conditions for the emerging of original forms of domination, leadership and alliance. In particular, post-fordist capitalism contributes for the appearance of plural hegemonic forms, which will be nominated flexible hegemonies.
In the first phase of capitalism, the local forms of hegemonies follow a single and main paradigm of regulatory legitimacy, analized by Gramsci, like French Revolution or Risorgimento. These are examples of rigid hegemonies. We know that non-hegemonic forms of domination, like democracy, don´t present themselves as the sole model of political action, or as the the single paradigm of society, but only as a more efficient political system, among the possible ones.
More recently, flexible hegemonies can be defined as hegemonies not completely regulatory, but constantly evolving inside a process of auto-legitimation and re-legitimation, according to a particular global conjuncture and adapting to each locality inside the world-system. The more dynamic forms of flexible hegemony (as well as the non-hegemonic forms of dominance) exhibit different degrees of partition of power, force or consent. However, flexible hegemonies don't possess an opening to alterities of interests, as versatile as non-hegemonic forms of domination, although flexible hegemonies appear as being more receptive than rigid hegemony forms. Today, 'neo-liberal' hegemony is understood by Bieling and Deppe (1996) 9 in terms of global capitalism. According to this author, neo-liberalism manages to produce a consent based on a new historical block, the European Union beeing an example of this process. He argues that hegemonic planetary structures are filtered by European national institutions, which legitimate them indirectly. In particular, American managerial hegemony has already been analized by Gramsci, who pointed to one of the most notorious characteristics of Fordist capitalism, which is the new relationship between man and machine transmitted by taylorism, which reduced the worker to the status of a 'trained gorilla'. Yanarella and Reid (1996) 10 say that this relationship, in post-fordism, can be sumarized by the concept 'humanware', to translate the work atmosphere that articulates 'hardware' and 'software'.

That beeing said, here is our second argument regarding this problem of global hegemonies:
In the actual conjuncture of international relations, strategies of global protagonization are beeing developed by certain society paradigms, each one of them seeking to acquire, a priori, a situation of single centralism, in detriment of the remaining society models. Or, if this situation is not possible, due to the relative balance of power in the world forces correlation, the global actors who intervene in the struggle of hegemonies intend to arrive to a situation of negotiation of centrality. We are facing, in the first case, an exclusive hegemony and, in the second case, a shared hegemony. Both can be understood as particular forms of flexible hegemony. The back stage of this struggle and negotiation of hegemonies is transnational capitalism. Leslie Sklair (1997) 10 applies the concept of hegemony to detect hegemonic practises led by the transnational capitalist class, which is supported by multinational companies and by a culture of global consumerism. The agents of this global consumerism are managers, bureaucrats and transnational politicians, as well as consumist elites. We can also remark that:
Thesis 3: flexible hegemonies are not reduced to the spheres of political and cultural domination, but they are unfolded, in post-fordist capitalism, in a plurality of specialized hegemonies, that is to say, hegemonies corresponding to each sphere of social interests. Gramsci underlined cultural components of domination that, articulated to given political condicions, define hegemony as produced by a class on another. What disorganized post-fordist capitalism adds to this picture is a dissociation among social spheres, in a somehow artificial way, intending to grant a certain independence to each one of them. For example, specific forms of cultural hegemony are testified by different getekeepers of culture, regulating several niches of cultural industries, as art critics, curators, auctioneers, research journalists, documentalists, librarians and archivists. Another example of this process of social spheres fragmentation is 'moral regulation'. Gramsci identified it as one of the elements contributing to Fordism hegemony, through the analysis of the agents providing moral regulation in terms of sexuality control and alcohol consumption by workers. Alan Hunt (1997) 11 shows the importance of that mode of hegemonic regulation in the government decisions and projects in contemporary society. On the other hand, hegemony is also exercised, particularly, in political and cultural consents around gender, like the domination due to the myth of masculine superiority. Under this perspective, Kornelia Hauser (1996) 12 characterizes the ideology of heterossexuality as hegemonic and sexist.
In a general way, those flexible hegemonic strategies - exclusive or shared, general or specialized - can be subscribed by any of the more influential political systems, but they acquire a more radical posture namely in the relationships between democracy and fundamentalisms, especially, for the last ones, in the case of fundamentalisms of Islamic obedience.
Inversely, the possibility of counter-hegemony exists inside these societies, in their several levels (Schaffer, 1995), 14 or mobilized by citizens in the context of American urban movements (McGovern, 1997). 15 At planetary level, global social resistance is equally possible, meaning the mobilization of dominated transnational classes towards emancipation, or the alternatives to state political structuration advocated by non-state transnational organizations or associations of people interests, environmentalist mouvements, Internet citizens, and so on. (Andrade, 1996) 16
Another concept that can attest reciprocal influence between democracies and fundamentalisms is 'sincretism', defined as the fusion of cultural traditions inherent to different societies and, in particular, social norms and religious habits. However, a critical posture is necessary to this concept, because the social processes from where sincretism derives appear, often, as problematic and ambiguous.
"In many such contexts, the penetration of Western forms of capitalism and cultural hegemony has been - paradoxically ­ both subverted and promoted through sincretism. (Stewart, 1994: 21) 17
On the contrary, multiculturalism, interculturalism and transculturalism are more stimulant, especially when the periferic societies (where some of their agents come from) contribute to the reconstruction of identities inside central countries. Such a process is reinforced by the new emancipatory conscience underlying post-colonial movements and theory. In fact, in the cases of dialogic or conflituous contacts between democracies and fundamentalisms, we are coping (partly, although not completely) with 'multiculturalist' processes, like Charles Taylor underlines, or with interculturalist processes, in Scott Lash sense (1994). 18
"At the present time, several different political groups focus on the necessity - sometimes exigency ­ of legitimacy. The necessity (it is possible to say it) constitutes one of the forces underlying nationalist movements. As for the exigency, it stands out in different ways, inside the present politics of minority or subordinate groups, in certain forms of feminism and in what is called today the politics of 'multiculturalism' ". (Taylor, 1994: 41) 19
es not only in the cultural sphere, but as well inside all the societal spheres of interests. In other words, such fusion becomes visible not only in a abstract and uniform way, but acquires specific contours in each society or in each social sphere where it acts. For example, Bahaba (1990) 20 and Haraway (1990) 21 have demonstrated that the hybrid identities are characteristic of the post-colonial societies. Though, from those periferic localities of the world-system, multiple hibridization flows circulate to the central countries, or, on the contrary, they have origin in these countries. Furthermore, hibridity allows the critic of power relationships in new ways. Crompton (1993) 22 defends that in the confluence of the socio-economic sphere with the discursive sphere, pure class identities don't exist. The deep transformations of capitalism, mass unemployment and generalization of education contributed to different forms of class hibridity. On the other hand:
Argument 4: not only hibridity articulates different societal natures within themselves, but each fusion form joins other forms of social creolization, according to societies and spheres of interests where it interferes. In other words, hibridism understood as a unidimensional form or as a multiculturalism concentrated in the cultural sphere, should be overcomed by the process that we nominate meta-hibridism. Meta-hibridism means, then, the hybridization of several hibridities. Some examples of this phenomenon (ocurring, more visibly, in one or in another society / social sphere) are: the fusion among identity hibridities; the synthesis of economic systems previously articulated; the contamination among fusions of differential types of power. However, we would like to underline this: the backstage of such processes of complex and multi-phase hybridization have its roots - both in their conservative forms and in their progressive ones - in the economic sphere. That is, at present time, they occur within the structures and characteristic processes of disorganized capitalism and post-fordism, as mentioned above.
Post-fordism engenders, in particular, risk phenomena. Deregulation in national level (and re-regulation in global level, which frequently follow deregulation), driven to all societal spheres, constitute a necessary condition for post-fordist flexible accumulation at this planetary level, producing a contingency social atmosphere. The effects of this process may give rise to uncontrollable environmental disasters or, in the scope of our study, they may be revealed in the conflict among two society paradigms a priori incompatible: democracies and fundamentalist regimes. Against these global menaces, that can both drive to the annihilation of populacional masses in minor or larger scale, or even to the destruction of the entire planet, Ulrick Beck (1992) 23 defends the need to develop a process of reflexive modernization, that is to say, the mobilization of colective reflexivity to surmount the inadequacies derived both from modernity and post-modernity.


3. TACTICS OF GLOBAL CONSENT / DISSENT.


In my point of view, for the accomplishment of the mentioned strategies inside this global scene, three main tactics have been mobilized by the most prominent historical models of social formation, and, at the present time, mainly by democracies and fundamentalisms.
The first two are structural tactics, that is to say, they can provoke important structural changes, corresponding often to precise historical moments in the life of the involved societies. One of those structural tactics is social clonation, which has two main forms: inter-societies cloning and intra-societal cloning.
Statement 5: Inter-societies cloning can be understood as the reproduction of a society paradigm inside other societies, more or less different from the first. By means of this movement, the first one acquire the status of cloned societiy, and the second ones are inscribed in the situation of cloning societies. In other words, these last societies become, frequently, social systems dependent from the first ones. This process is more visible in the economic and cultural spheres, but it overflows to other less detecteble spheres, like the political sphere.
In this first type of cloning, the exportation of a society model to other locality of the world, in substitution of a previous and different paradigm, presents the following three main variants, for more recent periods: (a) the difusion of the American democracy model, since the 18th century; (b) the exportation of communist societies, in the 20th century; (c) and, in the present conjuncture, the spread of Islamic fundamentalism based on Shi'ah ortodoxy. This last phenomenon does not always coincide with the propagation of islamism in general. In fact, islamism was widespread since the 8th century, and when that happened, was usually based on the Sunni variant, being the Shi'ah Islamic fundamentalism one minority version of islamism, among other characteristics. Applying some concepts used by Farshad Aragui (1998), 24 the 'discourse of development', which can be connected to the 'hegemony of modernism', is changing today into the 'discourse of globalization', and corresponds to the afore-mentioned models (a) and (b) of transnational clonation. However the (c) type of social formation can be included in a original clonation strategy, this meaning the internationalization of a periferic social paradigm (fundamentalism), and no longer just a exportation of a central model.

Argument 6: intra-societal cloning consists in the reproduction of a social sphere based on the model of another sphere, inside a given society (please note the direction of the arrows in Table 1). In the case of the Islamic fundamentalism with Shi'ah orientation, what is exported (internally) are the characteristics of the religious sphere. In other words, the attributes of Allah are partially imitated by the maximum representative of this supreme entity in Earth, the Iman, as the infallibility. One of the results of this clonation inside Islamic fundamentalist society can be situated at the political sphere. This is the case of the political leader with unquestionable authority, that in fact coincides, first of all, with the own Iman, but, besides, can be reproduced, at a smaller scale, in an inferior level, that is, by other elements of the religious-political pyramid. Another sphere that suffers influence from religion is the socio-economic sphere itself. In fact, the regulation of society and economy obeys to a rigid and traditionalistic model. However, this regulation derives from certain infra-structural characteristics, this time more associated with modern western societies, for example the industrial oil exploration.
This second type of social clonation depends on the contemporary society we take in consideration. In democratic societies, intra-societal cloning occurs in several directions from a sphere to another, in opposition to what happens in Islamic fundamentalism paradigm, as we just saw. For example, in our post-colonial planet, the 'sub-altern' concept, proposed by Gramsci, is applied by Colin Graham (1996) 25 to verify the sub-alternization that gender suffers in relation to the proclaimed protagonism of nationalism, in the Irish society and culture. In other words, the political sphere overlaps, in this situation, the sphere of sexuality.
The second structural tactic is social translation, that is to say, the social and symbolic modes of passage, substitution, interpretation, negotiation, version or transformation, from a type of institutions to another, inside the same society or in different social formations. 26 This tactic does not coincide with social clonation: in the case of this last one, an institutional or social model overlaps other; differently, in social translation both models negotiate with each other. In this situation it is also possible to think about the intra-societal translation, that is, a negotiation that takes place inside a given social formation. In such a case, notice that religious conflicts can't be reduced to that, as they often dialogue or collide with other types of social conflituality.
"Few concerns of social life can lead as readily to conflicts as the combination of religious differences with other forms of struggle. In the tweentieth century, the twin crises of modernism and multiculturalism have added a religious dimension to many ethnic, economic and political battles, providing cosmic justifications for the most violent struggles. Multiculturalism produces complex patterns of conflict both between and within religious traditions that feed off one another and often intensify over time. Given the destructive capabilities of modern weaponery and the consequent necessity for peaceful coexistence, the potential for religious traditions to promote either chaos or community becomes a crucial factor in the global village." (Kurtz, 1995: 211) 27
Thesis 7: the direction of intra-societal translation - represented in Table 1 by the orientation of each arrow - in each one of the questionned societies, drifts from the influences associated to relative, historical and social development of these spheres. Thus, the economic sphere, although being decisive in all societies, acquires a notable protagonism in democratic societies. That is to say, organized capitalism, in its concurrencial or monopolist period, and disorganized capitalism, informs the political sphere in a great extent, structuring sometimes the parlamentary democratic system, other times the democracy of parties, or the opinion democracy, to retake the tripartite typology of representative democracy phases, proposed by Bernard Manin and reused by Alain Minc. Diacronically, representative democracy succeeded to direct democracy, and preceded participative democracy.


Therefore, democratic legitimacy does not present itself unalterable, but acquires several historical forms. In other words, each one of its participative and citizenship activities, e.g. the vote, should not be considered in a abstract way. This means that these practices aren't necessarily valid for all members of the civil society and for the generality of the world-system, specially if they derive from a single model and if they don't suffer any local adaptations.
"The limits of a theory of politics that derives its terms of reference exclusively from the nation-state become apparent from a consideration of the scope and efficacy of the principle of majority rule; that is, the principle that decisions that accrue the largest number of votes should prevail (...) Problems arise, however (...) because many of the decisions of 'a majority' or, more accurately, its representatives, affect (or potentially affect) not only their communities but citizens in other communities as well." (Held, 1998: 337) 28
In our perspective, inside the articulation of the economic sphere with the political sphere, this form of assessement of democratic representatity, the vote, can be related, typically but not exclusively, to the following historical-economic regimes: the logic of market reveals itself, in a certain way, in relative majorities, and monopolist dynamics hides, somehow, in the political form of absolute majorities. Disorganized capitalism would correspond to the political fragmentation raised by the interests of the minorities of differences, that is, when each and all different social groups achieve a non-expressive number of votes. In an utopian society, perhaps the form of opinion represented by the majorities of differences can appear, articulating each citizen interests and connecting all identitary differences among people. The legitimacy of this last political democratic citizenship system is based in the fact that the differences of interests, in their whole, constitute a political majority, which associates, in this way, a qualitative citizenship to a quantitative established citizenship. Thus, the majority of differences is neither similar to each isolated difference (like identitary and cultural differences), nor is coincident with absolute or relative majorities. In fact, these last ones are supported by predominant quantitative presuppositions and on a legitimacy forged, mainly, by the accumulation of votes. But the whole is not always equal to the sum of the parts.
Generally, in democracy, each citizen practices an opinion citizenship, that is to say, any sovereign citizen has the right to exteriorize a judgement about a pertinent problem in public discussion, instead of being only informed by the infallibility and the unicity of belief. Gradually, democracy and opinion citizenship are prolonged by what can be called the democracies / citizenships of knowledge and culture. These concepts mean that, in a democratic system, even in the axes of knowledge, culture or religion, it is possible (and desirable) the exercise of freedom, that is, the expression of action and thought options without coercion, together with other social agents. Actually, Eisenstadt (2000: 70) 29 propose that the construction of democratic societies, among other contributions, should be fed by the incorporation of protest movements in several social interest spheres.
"This incorporation of the exigencies, themes and symbols promulgated by protest movements, this reconstruction of the volonté générale, can develop in several directions, which frequently overlap each other: first, in direction to the redefinition of symbols or centers of colective identity; second, through the redifinition of, at least, some premises and patterns of regimes legitimation; third, through the defense and execution of politics that seek the redistribuition of resources and public rights; fourth, through the construction of social spaces where different groups can develop different patterns regarding social, cultural and economic activities, and to promulgate their colective identities".
In a posture partially coincident with the previous, David Held advocates the coming of 'democracy cosmopolitan model', in the context of globalization, world-economy and the present interstate political system.
"The global order consists of multiple and overlapping networks of power involving the body, welfare, culture, civic associations, the economy, coercive relations and organized violence, and regulatory and legal relations. The case for cosmopolitan democracy arises from these diverse networks - the different power systems which constitute the interconnections of different peoples and nations". (1995: 271) 30
In state and bureaucratic modulations of communist societies, the political and administrative sphere is the one that intends to prevail and to influence the remaining ones, contradicting, in practice, the primacy of the economic base, defended by Marx.
In the case of fundamentalisms, which constitute the more recent versions of theocratic societies, it is the discursive, ideological and cultural sphere that is imposed, essentially through religion. So being, in those societies, the sub-type of religious fundamentalism becomes dominant. Actually, this religious fundamentalism exhibits variants, according to the religion (Christianism, Judaism or Islamism): these movements that their close evolution can be read. In fact, reislamization, rejudaization and recristianization don't have the same impact, the same strength, in their respective societies ­ putting apart the parallelism of their evolution from the middle of the seventies. The successes and failures concerning the 'by the top' or 'by the base' movements in relation to one another, the modes of privileged action, the acceptance or not of a autonomous democratic space, allow to compare their respective intensity and to imagine their future ". (Kepel, 1992: 275) 31
However, in order to reproduce themselves, religious fundamentalisms, situated in the cultural sphere, will necessarily have to be supported by other internal forms of fundamentalisms, e.g. by wider processes that contextualize them, knowledge and culture fundamentalisms. The most evident example of this alliance between spheres and zones of social interests, is perhaps integrism, a typical political version of religious intolerance. On the other hand, an example of symbolic fundamentalism is the Islamic veil. Passing from this intra-society levels towards inter-social levels, it is also possible to speak about 'religious democracy' in democratic societies, as well as, in certain conditions, forms of fundamentalist opinion can be found inside Islamic societies. This form of opinion, however, appear somehow insufficient considering the possibility of free option (both in instruments and in goals) that any opinion presupposes. For example, the 'democratic' voting in Algeria that gave the electoral victory to FIS, expresses this possibility of use of democractic and pluralistic instruments in a first moment, but, in a second step, serving the last purpose of integrisms, that is to say, the unicity of religious faith and beliefs. In fact, about this subject, Eisenstadt is clear, where noticing that fundamentalisms, although in their aims acquire an anti-modern orientation, uses some methods of modernity (not only public opinion, but also information technologies, for instance mass media) to diffuse propaganda of their ideals. Furthermore:
"Besides these aspects, undoubtly important, concerning the relationship of fundamentalist movements with modernity, stands the fact that these movements are characterized by a highly elaborated political and ideological construction that is an integral part of modern political agenda- although their orientations and basic symbols are anti-modern. " (Einsenstadt, 1997: 1) 32

 

Consequently, if certain societies accomplish better, internally, certain social spheres interests, in detriment of others, we can expect - in the encounters and / or conflicts among paradigms of different societies - results which are neither uniform nor generalized. In fact, one cannot deduce that, in the case of economic and discursive influence from a society on other, or even in the extreme case of military occupation of a country by other, the influent or the occupant society and culture reaches a widespread hegemony in a unidimensional way. In other words, the 'intensity', the 'quality' or the 'kind' of domination or consent can vary, depending on the social zones inside the occupied society, for example, it can be differently successeful in economic, discursive or military arenas. What seems possible to reach is an articulation, less or more problematic, among modulations of diverse flexible and specialized hegemonies. Let us see then how the process of inter-societies translation is developed or, in other words, let's observe the translation that occurs among two different social systems.
Proposition 8: the porosity and hybridization among societies in their encounters or confrontations acquires variations, according to the involved social spheres: that is to say, after the dialogic contact or the clash, hybridizations may happen according to the degree of inter-societal translation fulfilled among involved alterities.
Let's consider the arena of relationships among, on one hand, several forms of democratic citizenship (opinion citizenship, or knowledge, cultural and religious modes of citizenship) and, on the other hand, opinion fundamentalism (please revisit table 1, column 2, noting again the arrows direction). In this situation, it is probable that democratic societies obtain advantages. Indeed, as already mentioned, theocratic societies have a less developed opinion capital, at least the legitimated one, and a weeker participative base of decision by the citizen. This statement, however, must not be, so to speak, 'fundamentalized' by the sociologist, in a etnocentrist or eurocentric way. In fact, it is wrong to suppose that no opinion, tolerance or secularism forms exist in Islamic societies. Some main Muslim political tendencies, like Pragmatism, Modernism, Tradicionalism and Fundamentalism, attest this opinion and political pluralism, although having an intensity or a nature somehow different from the modes of opinion manifested in democratic societies. Relating to this matter, Azib N. Ayubi (1997: 358), 33 refers the political positioning by islamist groups allowed in Medium East secularized governments.
"But rather than of discussing democracy (or the lack of it) in the abstract, it would be more useful here to think in terms of democratization as a process of transition (and possibly of counter-transitions), and rather than talking about fullfledged participation, representation and contestation, one should perhaps think of terms of an inclusion / exclusion scale or continuum ... [regarding islamists in muslim governments]"
Mir Zohair Husain understands in this way the contacts among economy, politics and religion:
"Islam is an 'organic' religion, possessing a comprehensive code of ethics, morals, instructions and recommendations for individual action and social interaction. [However] it is also a legalist religion whose rules and regulations later formed the base of a divine law governing every aspect of the devout Muslim's life ". (...) the modernization process ocurring throughout the Muslim world has not only cause secularization, (...) which most Islamic revivalists seek to revert, but has also led to a concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands, an situation inconsistent with the teachings of Islam ". (1995: 30-32) 34

On the other hand (see column 3 of Table 1), the more decisive knowledge capitals in contemporaneity, that is, scientific and technical capitals, revealed themselves more significant in the West. Although, regarding common sense, we cannot really speak of strong unbalances, but of qualitative differences between fundamentalisms and democracy.
A situation of relative parity in this correlation of forces appears (see the double arrows, inside Table 1, column 4) when several forms of democratic citizenship, visible in each sphere, find cultural fundamentalism, which is supported by the cultures of the communities and nations converted to islamism during the construction process of classic and contemporary Islamic culture. Such a sintetizing and multiculturalist Islamic culture appears, in fact, rich and multiform, facing comfortably, for that reason, the legacies of western cultures. To this situation has contributed a long history of contacts and hybridizations between Arab people and varied submitted or colonial populations and civilizations.
"As a matter of fact, tradition assimilates attitudes that are contrary to itself, like the practices of tattoo, magic, possession performances, traditional medicine and others. The more popular the religion is, the more it seems that religion has trained the aptitude to bricolage between orthodoxy and heterodoxy, between universal and local, between local and imported ". (Silva, 1999: 154) 35
Finally, in what concerns religion (column 5 inTable 1), the deep investment that Islamic people dedicate to it, and in opposition to the dominant laicization or secularization in Western countries, allow us to assume a certain advantage, now in favor of Islamic societies, concerning the dialogic contacts and the confrontations happening in this sphere, between both paradigms of social system. Though, this and other partial supremacies can be used in an ambiguous way, in the process of articulation of social spheres, and, in a wider level, inside the permeability between West and East.
"In macrosociological terms, the postcolonial national identity formation is in part a response to the neocolonial economic globalization. () The uneven accumulation of capital and the distribution of wealth and resources on a global scale exacerbates the unequal distribution of political power and economic resources, within decolonised countries. At the same time, globalization is accompanied by the spread of a political culture that historically emerged in the West: human rights, women's rights, equality, democratization,and so on. This intersection of cultural change and economic decline leads to resentment and resistance on the part of disadvantaged groups who may use 'cultural resources to mobilize and organize opposition... even though a motivation and cause of opposition is economic and social disadvantage (...) Political elites may also draw on ' tradition' or 'intrinsic cultural values' to justify their actions and maintain hegemony, sometimes overemphasizing cultural aspects as religion, morality, cultural imperialism and women's appearance to diverte attention from economic failures and social inequality. " (Cheah, 1998: 310) 36
In this perspective (that reiterates the porosity and the alliances among social spheres of interests) it is important to question the modes of intellectuals' intervention and, in particular, the action of possible 'organic intellectuals' (in a Gramscian sense) inside Islamic countries.
"Integral in our discussion of the various dimensions of the discourse is the proposition that the concept of democracy is developed within the problem of a new Arab nahda (renaissance). (...) In the overrriding objective to transform the Arab reality, the general interest that guides the problematic (that is, the search for a new project of civilization) connects with the particular interest behind the discussion of democracy (defining the beginnings that are to regulate the mode of relations in the political community)." (Ismail, 1995: 93) 37
Another aspect that becomes prominent, in this relationship between the religious arena and other social spheres, consists in the global intrinsic nature of the principal organized monoteist religions. For example, in Linz view, Catholicism worked as a transnational actor, overriding the sovereignty of Nation-States, even before the globalization of economy, politics and culture.
"There have, of course, been numerous periods throughout history of the Roman Catholic Church's collaboration with conservative and corporatist authoritarian regimes, most notably in Spain and to a lesser extent in Portugal. () However, it is our contention that, sociologically and politically, the existence of a strong Roman Catholic Church in a totalitarian country is always a latent source of pluralism, precisly because it is a formal organization with a transnational base. The papacy can be a source of spiritual and material support for groups that want to resist monist absorption or extinction". (Linz, 1996: 260) 38
Finally, the third tactic working in the conflicts or in the dialogue between democratic and fundamentalist societies - presented here succintly - is a conjuntural tactic, since it involves, essentially, diacronic processes of short duration. Inside these conjunctural tactics are combined, in greater or smaller extent, the structural tactics previously referred, that is, clonation and translation, or another tactics. Concretely:
Argument 9: the process of overdicotomization can be understood as the proliferation, usually in the short term (in a arborescent net shape or in another configuration) of social dicotomies or other conflictual social relationship. These contentious articulations that engender overdicotomization are substantially visible in the interactions and hybridizations between democracies and fundamentalisms. Thus, the socio-historical contacts among these societies risk often to be transformed in dissents rather than consents.
Though, the dynamics that were pointed out above need a ratification, in the empiric field of international relations in this beginning of the third millenium. Whatever will be the historical result of this new phase of global History, it seems pertinent to refer this last anxiety:
Thesis 10: the strategy of centralism or, more specifically, the strategy of single or exclusive hegemony (usually the one that is privileged by the society paradigms in cause, the fundamentalisms or democracies) just reveals the disturbing tendence of their present actuation, after all partially common: in the first or in the second case, that global behavior seems to subscribe, in greater or smaller extent, a global fundamentalist identity in gestation, being it of a religious or secular origin, islamist or democratic.
In short, at least a thing seems to be necessary, in this context of discordant societies, cultures or civilizations: the social actors and the sociological authors should act and reflect more collectively on their similarities and differences, their identities and alterities, and submit for discussion the ways to manage new contacts and contracts that may construct themselves in an equalitarian way. On one hand, it is urgent to act as social actor and citizen, inside social and cultural movements of global dimension. On the other hand, it is necessary to reflect, as a social cientist, in terms of 'reflexive modernization' (Ulrick Beck), or subscribing other emancipatory theoretical perspectives. Perhaps so doing - within the dialectics between this reflexive action and this active reflection, applied to contemporaneity - the conflicts underlying the eventual ´polítical volcanos' and their 'lava effects', can be transformed, again, in dialogic contacts . 39


NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

1 We tried to delineate a theory of the social fundamentalisms in: ANDRADE, 1997, "Sociologia da intolerância: ou como transformar a sociedade no terceiro milénio", Atalaia (3), pp. 9-13.
2 WALLERSTEINALLERSTEIN, Immanuel, 1998, O capitalismo histórico seguido de A Civilização Capitalista, Lisboa, Estratégias Criativas.
3 BOYLEOYLE, Philip, 1996, "Genetic services, Social Context, and Public Priorities", In Aranowitz, Stanley, et al (eds.), Technoscience and Cyberculture, London, Routledge.

4 A first formulation of the concept cibertime, developed in 1995, was presented in ANDRADENDRADE, Pedro, [no prelo], 1996, "Sociologia (Interdimensional) da Internet", In III Congresso Português de Sociologia, 1996, Lisboa, APS. The development of this conceptualization can be found in: . ANDRADE Pedro de, 1997, 'Navegações no cibertempo: viagens virtuais e virtualidades da ciberviagem', Atalaia, (3), pp. 111-124.
5 HUNTINGTON, Samuel, 1999, O choque das Civilizações e a mudança na ordem mundial, Lisboa, Gradiva.
6 HUNTER, Shireen, 1998, The Future of Islam and the West: Clash of Civilizations or Peaceful Coexistence? Westport, Praeger.
7 GRAMSCI, Antonio, 1948-51, Quaderni di Carcere, Torino, Eunaudi. Ver ainda: Idem, 1973, Gli intellettuali e l' organizzazione della cultura, Torino, Eunaudi. Idem, 1975, Gramsci dans le texte, Paris, Éditions sociales. Idem, GRAMSCI, Antonio, 1979a, Il risorgimento, Roma, Editori Reuniti. Idem, 1979b, Note sul Machiaveli, sulla politica e sullo Stato moderno, Roma, Editori Reuniti.
8 ELIEZER, Ben, 1998, "State versus Civil Society? A Non Binary Model of Domination Through the Example of Israel", Journal of Historical Sociology, 11 (3) Sept., pp. 370-396.
9 BIELING, Hans; DEPPEEPPE, Frank, 1996, "Gramscianism in International Political Economy: A Sketch of the Problem", Argument, 38, 5-6 (217), Sept-Oct, pp. 29-740.
10 YANARELLA, Ernest; REID, Herbert, 1996, "From 'Trained Gorilla' to 'Humanware: Repoliticizing the Body-Machine Complex between Fordism and Post-Fordism", In Theodore R.; Natter, Wolfgang (eds.), The Social and Political Body, New York, Guildford, pp 181-219.

11 SKLAIRK, Leslie, 1997, " Social Movements for Global Capitalism: The Transnational Capitalist Class in Action", Review of International Political Economy, 4, (3) autumn, pp. 514-538.
12 HUNT, Alan, 1997, "Moral Regulation and Making Up the New Person: Putting Gramsci to Work", Theoretical Criminology, 1 (3) Aug,pp. 275-301.

13 HAUSE, Kornelia, 1996, "The Category of Gender from a Sociological Perspective: Contribution on the Regaining and Further Development of Socially Variable Dimensions of Critical Theory", Argument, 38, 4(216), July-Aug, pp. 491-504.
14 SCHAFFER, Scott, 1995, "Hegemony and the Habitus: Gramsci, Bourdieu and James Scott on the Problem of Resistance", Research and Society, (8), pp. 29-53.

15 McGOVERN, Stephen, 1997, "Political Culture as a Catalyst for Political Change in American Cities", Critical Sociology, 23 (1), pp. 81-114.
16 We presented this concept at III Congresso Português de Sociologia, 1996, Lisbon, giving the example of the protest made in 1996 by web surfers (who transformed their web pages in black screens) against a law that previewed censure measures on web contents, proposed by President Clinton.
17 STEWART, Charles; ShawHAW, Rosalind (eds.), 1994, Syncretism / Anti-Syncretism : the politics of Religious synthesis, London, Routledge.

18 LASH, Scott, 1994, Reflexive Community, International Sociological Association (ISA).
19 TAYLOR, Charles, 1994, Multiculturalisme : Différence et Démocracie, Paris, Aubier.
20 BHABHAHABHA, H., 1990, "The Third Space", In J. Rutherford (ed.), Identity, London, Lawrence and Wishart.
21 HARAWAY, D., 1990, "A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the 80's", In L. Nicholson (ed.) Feminism / PostModernism, London, Routledge.

22 CROMPTON, R., 1993, Class and Stratification, Cambridge, Polity Press.
23 BECK, Ulrich, 1992, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, London, Sage.
24 ARAGHIR, Farshad, 1998, "The Rise and Demise of the Discourse of Development and the Internationalization of Agriculture: 1945-1998", International Sociological Association (ISA).
25 GRAHAM, Colin, 1996, "Subalternity and Gender: Problems of Post-Colonial Irishness", Journal of Gender Studies, 5, (3) Nov, pp. 363-373.

26 Social translation is a concept that prolongs - in terms of the global society but also regarding its localities - the concept 'translation', with which Georg Gadamer means the modes of passage from a 'linguistic game' played by an individual or a group to another language game. Gadamer intends in this way to overcome the postulate of incommunicability among those procedures of communicative negotiation, that Wittgenstein defended. For this last author, the concept 'linguistic games' (proposed by him), should be understood as characteristic and exclusive of a 'form of life', always isolated from the other ones in communicative terms. On the other hand, Habermas will apply the concept 'translation' to the 'communicative action' that, together with 'communicative rationality', is the very instrument that enables the establishment of consent among interests a priori inarticulated, in a dialectical and emancipatory way.

27 KURTZ, Lester, 1995, Gods in the Global Village: the World's Religions in Sociological Perspective, Thousand Oaks, Pine Forge Press.
28 HELD, David, 1998, Models of Democracy, Cambridge, Polity Press.
29 EISENSTADT, S., 2000, Os Regimes Democráticos: Fragilidade, Continuidade e Transformabilidade, Oeiras, Celta.
30 HELD, David, 1995, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance, Cambridge, Polity Press.
31 KEPEL,Gilles,1992, A vingança de Deus: Cristãos, Judeus e Muçulmanos à reconquista do Mundo, Lx, D.Quixote.
32 EISENSTADT, S., 1997, Fundamentalismo e Modernidade: Heterodoxias, Utopismo e Jacobinismo na constituição dos movimentos fundamentalistas, Oeiras, Celta.
33 AYUBI, Nazib, 1997, "Islam and Democracy", In Potter, David et al (eds.) Democratization, Cambridge, Polity Press, pp.345-266.

34 HUSAIN, Mir, 1995, Global Islamic Politics, New York, Harper Collins College Publishers.

35 SILVA, Maria Cardeira, 1999, Um Islão Prático:o quotidiano feminino em meio popular muçulmano, Oeiras, Celta.

36 CHEAH, Pheng; RobbinsOBBINS, Bruce (eds.), 1998, Cosmopolitics:Thinking and Feeling beyond the nation, Minnea polis, University of Minnesota Press.

37 ISMAIL, Salwa, 1995, "Democracy in Contemporary Arab Intellectual Discourse", In Brynen et al, Political Liberalization & Democratization in the Arab World, Vol 1., London, Lynne Rienner Publishers, pp. 93-11.

38 LINZ, Juan; StepanTEPAN, Alfred, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation, Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.

39 For a global vision of the historical process that contextualize the possible dialog or collision between demo- cracies and fundamentalisms, especially in its articulation with the economical sphere, see: ANDRADE, Pedro, 1999, "A nova sociedade e a Sociologia Histórica Interdimensional", Atalaia (4), pp. 9-26.