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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.
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?
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.
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
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2 WALLERSTEINALLERSTEIN, Immanuel, 1998, O capitalismo
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3 BOYLEOYLE, Philip, 1996, "Genetic services, Social Context,
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4 A first formulation of the concept
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5 HUNTINGTON, Samuel, 1999, O choque das Civilizações
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6 HUNTER, Shireen, 1998, The Future of Islam and
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11 SKLAIRK, Leslie, 1997, "
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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.
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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
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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.