Global Society, Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights [1 ed.] 9781443854269, 9781443851619

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Global Society, Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights

Global Society, Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights

Edited by

Vittorio Cotesta, Vincenzo Cicchelli and Mariella Nocenzi

Global Society, Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights, Edited by Vittorio Cotesta, Vincenzo Cicchelli and Mariella Nocenzi This book first published 2013 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2013 by Vittorio Cotesta, Vincenzo Cicchelli, Mariella Nocenzi and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-5161-2, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-5161-9

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Illustrations .................................................................................... vii List of Tables .............................................................................................. ix Acknowledgements .................................................................................... xi Introduction .............................................................................................. xiii Part One: Theoretical Perspectives on Global Society, Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights Chapter One ................................................................................................. 3 On Multiple Modernities and Global Society Vittorio Cotesta Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 29 Cosmopolitanism in the Social Sciences and the Return to Kant Áron Telegdi-Csetri Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 39 Beyond Methodological Nationalism: Suggestions from the Field of Complexity Fabio Introini Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 55 Globalisation, Cosmopolitanism, Democracy and Human Rights: What Kind of Relationship? Francesco Villa Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 79 Has Africa invented Human Rights? Jean-Loup Amselle Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 91 Bodies that Democracy Expels: The Other and the Stranger to “Bridge and Door”; Theory of Sovereignty, Bio-politics and Weak Areas of Global Bȓos, Human or Subjective Rights? Massimo Conte

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Table of Contents

Part Two: Empirical Studies on Global Society, Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights Chapter One ............................................................................................. 109 Between the Right to the Place and the Right in the Place: The Uncertain Status of the «Residence» Between Global Urges and Local Resistances Enrico Gargiulo Chapter Two ............................................................................................ 127 Italian Arms Exports in Latin America Over The Past Forty Years: What Role in the Repression of Human Rights? Silvia Sorana Chapter Three .......................................................................................... 145 Communication, Globalisation and Violation of Human Rights Angela Maria Zocchi Chapter Four ............................................................................................ 155 Human Rights Discourses in Europe: Theoretical Insights and Empirical Applications Eugenia De Rosa Chapter Five ............................................................................................ 185 The HIV/AIDS Pandemic: Social Risks and Moral Panic in a Global Context Bruno Meini Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 197 How Do People Engage with Globalisation? A Cosmopolitan Socialisation Approach Vincenzo Cicchelli Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 211 “When Do the People Talk in Europe?”: Social Movements and Democratic Theory in European Multilevel Governance Paolo De Nardi and Luca Alteri Contributors ............................................................................................. 225

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Part Two 2-1 The Political Terror Scale (PTS) of Latin American countries ...... page 134 2-2 Countries that recorded the highest level of violation in different year ........................................................................................................ 135 2-3 Freedom in Latin America ................................................................ 136 2-4 Italian arms Export ............................................................................ 137 4-1 The “substantive freedom matrix” .................................................... 161 4-2 HRMF Panels, Indicator Dashboards and Evidence Base ................. 163

LIST OF TABLES

Part One 6-1 Theory of sovereignty .............................................................. page 98 6-2 Theory of sovereignty and bio-political theory ................................... 99 6-3 Vocabulary of society and global migration ...................................... 102 Part Two 4-1 Theoretical issues and methodological issues ................................... 158 4-2 Deliberative exercises ....................................................................... 162 4-3 The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights’ discourse .... 168 4-4 NGOs and Human Rights .................................................................. 174 4-5 Comparison of the three Human Rights discourses ........................... 177 7-1 Agreement Level on the following statements in the two different Social Forums mentioned above(%) .................................................. 215 7-2 What does it mean for you live in the EU? .................................... 216 7-3 Europeanism Index ........................................................................... 218

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to Marco Bontempi, Mariano Longo, Donatella Pacelli, Massimo Pendenza and Ambrogio Santambrogio for their contribution to this book, from the organization of the conference on Global Society, Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights (Rome, University of Rome Tre, June 7th and 8th 2011) to the reviewing of its scientific materials for this publication.

INTRODUCTION

1. The book Global Society, Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights is the outcome of a decade-long scholarly project.1 The point of convergence emerging from the analyses contained in this volume is that “global society”, “cosmopolitanism” and “human rights” are likely to constitute the basis of present and future ways of life. The “project for humanity” of the future, while it rests on local social associations, will have “globality” as its reference. The most important characteristic proper to “globality” is the growing interdependence existing between its various economic, social and cultural systems. Recent events—the economic and political crises of the western world, the abrupt eruption onto the international scene of the “emerging countries” and the growth of countries once defined as “developing”— make it superfluous to insist on demonstrating the existence of a strong interdependence between nation-states and within different areas of the world. It would appear more useful and a little more original, to try, rather, to understand the different “human projects” competing within the single field comprising global society. As already stated by Peter L. Berger and Samuel P. Huntington (Berger and Huntington 2003), and, as erroneously posited in the 1990s by Francis Fukuyama (Fukuyama 1992), no sole idea of global society actually exists. Each civilisation forwards its own idea of “global society”, its own “project for humanity”. The very interdependence existing between areas of the world develops along different and contrasting lines, where economic conflict is entangled with political and cultural strife. A veritable struggle for hegemony, for economic, political and cultural predominance is taking place all over the world. Only the selfcomplacency of some greeted the fall of the Soviet Union as entry into an Eden of capitalism and American dominion.

1

In 2011 the Group for the study of Global Society, Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights organised two one-day seminars: the first in Paris (on the 17th of March), the second in Rome (on the 7th of June). Scholars from all over the following countries took part: Italy, France, Spain, Romania, Ukraine, Canada, Brazil, India and Hong Kong. This volume contains some of the papers presented on that occasion.

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To avoid similar blunders, a deeper notion of “global society” is required. To counter the idea of globalisation that has emerged during the last few decades in particular, and conveyed by the Internet and other forms of global media, it is necessary to refer to historical studies in order to see how forms of global life evolved long before this era. In particular, to grasp these aspects of global society it may be useful to consult Global History (Ponting 2001, Davis 2001, Beaujart et al. 2009) (or World History or even Transnational History);2 further suggestions may be provided by the historiographical methodologies of Fernand Braudel and Arnold Toynbee, not to mention the classics of the Age of Reason (Voltaire, Montesquieu) or Antiquity (Herodotus, Polybius, Ammianus Marcellinus). In short, the idea is that if the nation-state cannot be the unit of analysis any longer, the historical-social processes we now call “globalisation”, are to be found in periods of human history that precede modernity. Certainly, there is no comparison between the past and today either as regards scale or intensity, principally because of differences in the speed of communications systems: only roads, rivers and the sea in the past; now, also telephones, aeroplanes and the Internet. Every empire (Roman, Persian, Chinese, for example) set up postal services which were highly efficient in their day, especially if we consider the technologies of the past. In short, what we wish to suggest here is that globalisation experiences a number of different phases (Robertson 1992), characterised not so much by their different processes, as by their breadth, speed and depth. As Immanuel Wallerstein’s research points out, the discriminating factor between the ancient and modern forms of globalisation is what propels the processes: in ancient times, globalisation was driven by the strength of armies; in modern times it depends on the penetration power of goods, backed by military power. A large-scale market focused on the exchange of goods (silk and spices) already existed in antiquity and involved specific areas of the world (China, India, Central Asia, the Mediterranean). In modern times, the “world” market has been gradually enlarged to also include the American continent. Furthermore, if the “ancient” world commerce was conducted principally over land, the “modern” world market availed mostly of the sea. During the twentieth century and at present, the world market avails of an integrated land, sea and air transport system. Globalisation processes, both in the ancient and modern worlds, do not affect all aspects of life. Some areas are more heavily involved; others 2

On Global History see Conrad, Eckert and Freitag 2007.

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less; some not at all. The same happens to certain geographical and cultural areas: some are interior to the processes and even propel them; others are outside of them or, even if inside, slow them down or even hamper them.3 Therefore, analyses of the processes must avail of a multidimensional grid, including both “material” (military power, economy, technologies), and “spiritual” (the arts, culture, religions, civilisations, science) aspects. If one builds a theoretical model with at least three dimensions (power, economy, religion), one obtains an overall view of the global scenario as well as of the forms of competition already existing during the second half of the first millennium B.C. In this period, in fact, three “global” realities interacted with each other: the Chinese, the Indian and the Greco-Roman. During the following millennium to these propulsion forces of globalisation the Arabo-Islamic civilisation both erupted into the Roman and Mediterranean area and extended its dominion as far as India and China. At the beginning of the second millennium A.D. the mightiest global project was the Mongolian one when Genghis Khan built an empire stretching from China to the Mediterranean. In the centuries that followed, however, the centre of globalisation shifted first to Europe, then to North America. This phaseʊthe capitalist phase of the globalisation process– witnessed the decline or crisis of the other “global projects” and the affirmation of the “western” one. Now, at the beginning of the third millennium, the “western project” appears to have entered a critical phase while the “Chinese”, “Indian” and, to a certain extent, the 3

Two cases are emblematic of the way public organisations can slow down or hamper globalisation processes. The first is the retreat to the north of China of the Ming Dynasty in the fifteenth century A.D. The geopolitical preoccupations generated by the threatening presence of the militarily strong “barbarians” led the Ming Dynasty to abandon the maritime expansionist policy it had pursued in the fourteenth-fifteenth centuries (the sea expeditions carried out by general Zheng He at the beginning of the fifteenth century are famous; during these excursions the Chinese fleet carried out scientific explorations of the Pacific during which they seem to have reached the west coast of America, before the Europeans, therefore) and withdraw inland, from then on submitting to the initiatives of the western powers who created the first “world” market; the other case is that where the Ottoman Empire prohibited the adoption of movable typesetting because – as the religious leaders had said–the word of God could not be printed. This strategic domestic option weakened the Ottoman Empire and within a few centuries excluded it from the worldwide political arena. Up to the end of the sixteenth century, the Empire was actually superior in some technological-economic sectors to the European countries and until the end of the eighteenth century there was still the problem of how to bridge the scientific and technological gap between the Ottomans and the west.

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“Islamic”, projects seem to be returning to the fore. These forms of globalisation create relationships involving interdependence, cooperation and conflict, all at once. The “global society” it generates is, therefore, characterised by some life styles of a similar and by others of a totally different kind. What appears interestingʊand which goes beyond Samuel Huntington’s theory of the “clash between civilisations”ʊis the fact that the different “global society projects” meet and clash inside each single civilisation. This conflict is often believed to stand somewhere between modernity and tradition. In reality it is a question of two projects for humanity hinged differently on ideas of freedom, equality and solidarity. In actual fact, if one takes each of these principles into account and verifies how they are applied internally to the single projects for a global society, one is able to explain some of the features of these different and divergent global-society projects: a. Freedom. It is clear that this principle underscores the North American model. It is present also in other models (e.g. the European one), but in the USA it prevails over the values of equality and solidarity; b. Equality. This principle appears to be the mainstay of European societies, although it may assume different formsʊthere is a marked and well-known difference to this regard between the Scandinavian and the southern and eastern European countries. There is no doubt that this principle exists alongside those of solidarity and freedom. The mix, however, is not fixed either within the single European societies or within the European scenario as a whole; c. Solidarity. Here the issue becomes definitely more difficult. Some societies, in actual fact, address the issue of the redistribution of wealth directly, while others believe that individual freedom and the level of wealth achieved by each person in a lifetime is a more efficacious form of solidarity than any produced by so-called direct redistribution models. The “indirect” effects on individual egotism are such that by making opportunities available to all, they outstrip those effects of any kind of direct redistribution of wealth. If we consider how these principles are entwined in every form of civilisation with or in each of the “projects for a global society” on the world stage, we may distinguish between the following: i. the “Western idea” of global society. The three principlesʊthe liberty, equality, and solidarity of individuals–are profoundly interwoven

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but also experience equally profound oscillations, to such an extent that it is possible to speak of a “European” and an “American” side to this project for a global society. The former includes in its social system larger quotas destined to cover solidarity and equality than the other; the other is clearly more oriented towards individual freedom. One should note, however, that, over the last few decades, inequality between people is increasing significantly in both areas of the western model; ii. the “Islamic” idea of global society. This formula, which has nothing in common with the Al Qaeda projectʊwhich aims at the worldwide re-establishment of umma - but is based on a concept of society drawn up in the Islamic countries and introduced into “western” countries thanks to the proselytising work of various Islamic institutions and migrants. Generally speaking it has a strongly asymmetric vision of society, especially as far as the social roles of men and women are concerned. It is true that in many countries there is a thrust towards change (see, for example, the “Arab Spring”), but it is equally true, all told, that the conceptions considering women as subordinate to men are still predominant. Solidarity is undoubtedly stronger in the west, but within a framework characterised by social inequality. This idea of a global society rests on faith in Allah. The actors in this model of global society are the many immigrants of Islamic origin and, above all, from a religious, cultural and political point of view, Saudi Arabia and the Arab states of the Gulf, who have become rich thanks to their oil fields. These represent the political motor of the “Islamic” idea of a global society; iii. the “Indian” idea of a global society. It is more difficult to pinpoint an “Indian” or “Hindu” idea of a global society. The reason is that India is riddled with intense conflict caused by opposing notions of society and civilisation. On the one hand, there are various “religious” ideas of society in India: Hindu, Islamic, Sikh and other minorities, like Christians or Buddhists; on the other, all of these are veined by a mixed model which brings together values acquired from the west and the Hindu tradition, conjugating capitalism, western capitalistic culture and the Indian tradition in different terms. The outcome is a strong inequality within the country and scarce attention, for religious reasons, to solidarity among individuals. Inequality between the sexes is still strongly rooted. This idea is conveyed both through the Indian migrants worldwide, and by the cultural hegemony of India in many areas of the Pacific Ocean;

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iv. the “Confucian” idea of a global society. The society of China is undoubtedly highly complex and it is practically impossible to sum up its chief characteristics in a few lines. However, all we need do is return to the data produced by important historical, sociological and political research endeavours. For thousands of years, the Chinese spoke of their country as “all that exists under the sun” (tian-xia). Chinese society has always been characterised by a more or less strong central power, a territory which varied geographically according to external threats (in this, not very unlike the Roman Empire), a military sphere subordinate to the civil power, a centrally-run state-managed economy. After the end of the Qinq dynasty (1911) several ways of modernising the country were attempted: colonial, nationalist, socialist, the present mixed formula which unites the political control of society and that of the productive system which guarantees ample freedom of initiative to private enterprise (capitalism). China’s life-style models are inspired by a mix of the Confucian tradition and western modernity. Furthermore, these are also the main cultural and political trends on the politico-cultural scene striving for hegemony. The prevalent life styles, especially those among the young, are marked by a traditional-modern, Confucian-western mix. Social inequality is still widespread; solidarity is still very much of a traditional kind and regards above all the family circle. This idea of society has spread to the rest of the world thanks to Chinese migrants but it is also important to recall the fact that in the various countries where they live, they remain rather aloof and do not try to “convert” the autochthonous populations to their way of life. The action of Chinese institutions at world level is far more efficacious. With the decline of the hegemony of the west, the Chinese way to global society may become the model for other countries like those of Latin America and non-Islamic Africa. 2. A world dominated by globalisation processes obliges the social actors, on the one hand, and the institutions, on the other, to consider matters regarding issues of belonging, social ties and areas of action that go well beyond the classical nation-state picture. One must therefore consider the fact that the transnational phenomena at present taking place (ranging from economic to migratory flows, from organised crime to terrorism, to cultural consumerism and the circulation of ideas and information) are building a world which, though plural in many ways, as we have had occasion to see, is becoming more and more common. Once the great geographical discoveries, today major planetary sporting events, nuclear and environmental catastrophes, protest movements, even revolt

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and revolution, make it increasingly evident that we are living on a fragile, joint, finite terrestrial globe. It is, therefore, opportune to try to understand how human communities, individuals, institutions, relate to globality and its outcomes, in particular, the désenclavement (unlocking) of the contemporary world. “Cosmopolitanism” conjures up both a way of life and a mind set typical of those who live in a global society. As a way of life cosmopolitanism is characterised by forms of consumerism, aesthetic practices, and behavioural styles leading to the transnational circulation of cultural products, exchanges of ideas and information. Whether we like it or not, all human beings have to come to grips with this reality. Only some of them, however, establish open social ties with others, with more or less known or unknown people, and do not remain closed within relationships belonging to family, professional or local circles. This kind of openness regards, potentially, the whole of humanity, past, present and future. From the point of view of mind set, cosmopolitanism is, therefore, inclined to view world events in terms of connections. These two aspects of the questionʊcosmopolitanism as a way of life and as a mind-setʊdo not necessarily coincide. Not all those who lead global life styles share the cosmopolitan way of being and mind set. Global inequality is symptomatic of the fact that, in this kind of society, some have all the chances in life; others, although involved in it, do not and are subjected to more or less brutal forms of exploitation. There exists, besides–very strong at presentʊan irresistible inclination, at times underestimated by scholars of Global Studies, to live within the “fences” of the older and newer “nations”, even “regions”ʊit is sufficient to think of Europe and the United Statesʊdue to the growing thrust of globalisation processes. The “cosmopolitan” citizen of the world overlaps the “national” citizen. In short, it is possible to live in a global society without sharing the “cosmopolitan spirit” pervading it. In other words, the two aspects of the global societyʊstructural and culturalʊdo not necessarily move in the same direction. In order to understand the formation processes of a global society better we need to consider the different concepts of cosmopolitan and of human community that exist in the world. Every civilisation has its own idea of a universal community, of what we called above a “project for humanity”. If, in fact, global society implies multi-dimensional realities, some of them may feature cooperation, others conflict. Or they may even feature cooperation and conflict at the same time. These traits, here mentioned in theoretical terms only, need to be verified case by case through empirical investigation whose topic is the global society.

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However, the unlocking existing between the economic and cultural spheres of the global society is already evident. In actual fact, while economic processes always create greater interdependence between the various areas of the world, cultural processes produce and express various concepts of a just or ideal society. At this level the diverse ways of conceiving and practising cosmopolitanismʊthe different cosmopolitan spiritsʊinteract the ones with one another to formulate a variety of projects for humanity. Every civilisation, in fact, constructs its own conception of humanity and filters processes of integration with other societies, cultures and civilisation through its particular conception of humanity. Each civilisation's selective powers are capable of generating conflict between the structural and cultural forms of the global society. In actual fact, at structural level, forms of cooperation generate interdependence which may not proceed in the same direction as the cultural conception of humanity envisaged by each civilisation. Therefore, every civilisation requires an accommodation process in order to draw up a concept of humanity to propose or submit to the others. This leads us, therefore, to another aspect of the cosmopolitan issue being examined, that regarding global governance, transnational regulation. In order to examine these aspects of our contemporary global society, it suffices to look at the juridical area. The question, in actual fact, regards the possibility of a world government for the whole of humanity. What law, or rather, which juridical model would be capable of producing universal normsʊthat is: agreed on and shared by allʊto regulate relations between people at global level? The answer to this question is not univocal. Not only does one not speakʊand it would be unreal to do so todayʊof a political world government; different, if not opposite, proposals for the regulation of “international” relations are advanced by different global subjects.4 In actual fact, on the one hand, we find the more or less hegemonic intentions of today’s world powers, on the other, the different conceptions of civilisation of which they are an expression. From this stem the diverging proposals for a regulation of the global society.

4

Regarding the question of a “political world government” an interesting debate is going on. On the one hand, some uphold the Kantian positionʊwhich inspires us tooʊwhich cannot envisage a world government; on the other, an increasingly larger group of intellectuals not only sustain the possibility but the need for a similar world government. For a collection of the various positions see Scheuerman 2012.

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To make this geopolitical situation comprehensible one might, on the one hand, refer to debates concerning human rights conducted over the past ten years, on the other, to the minimum threshold identified at global level to guarantee such rights. As is known, as far back as the United Nations Charter of 1948, criticism was advanced claiming that the formulation of human rights was “western”. There is no doubt that the results of the work carried out express the cultural hegemony of the West, even if it is not the European states (Great Britain, France, Germany) who speak in the name of the West, but the United States of America. During the final decades of the twentieth century, however, the Islamic world, the East (China, India, Japan) and Africa have suggested that human rights be intended in a more universal manner. On the one hand, we have the “western” character of the formulation of human rights contained in the United Nations Charter; on the other, the claim that a truly universal conception of human rights should include “Asian”, “Islamic” or “African” conceptions. In all this one cannot fail to see a plea by the representatives of countries and civilisations dominated during the 1800-2000 period by western powers (colonialism and neo-colonialism) for recognition of their identities. But recognition of the identity of every culture, nation and civilisation leads to relativity of values. The question, at this point, is: if every civilisation expresses values authentically human and appropriate to humanity, how is it that concrete forms of life seem to go in a totally opposite direction? The following is a concrete example: if men and women are believed to have parity of dignity, why, in some societies, cultures, religions and civilisations is this equal dignity expressed, even today, as subordination of women to men? Does “parity of dignity” not mean, therefore, “equal dignity”, but the possibility of living a life worthy of a man or a woman enjoying different rights and life chances? This seems to be, in actual fact, the nodal issue: the western conception (where the emphasis is on “conception” and not yet on reality) has constructed a conception of society where “parity of dignity” means “equal dignity”. How can such diverging positions, on an issue of no minor importance, but one concerned with a fundamental way of interpreting humanity, be reconciled? When all comes to all, the bottom line is: are men and women equal? And if they are different, as many of their characteristics make it clear they are and ought to be, in which of these aspects must they be equal and in which, on the other hand, must they remain different? This is still a central point in the debate and dialogue among civilisations. In the formulation of this problem one reads the glimmer of a solution. For the moment this glimmer is a matter of theory and not of praxis even if

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in various parts of the world there are struggles going on for the recognition of equality between men and as citizens. Among the various formulations regarding human rights, amid the conspicuous divergences, a common point does emerge: the idea that men and women alike are entitled to live a life worthy of humanity to which they belong. This convergence is, however, rather evanescent. In actual fact, when explaining what is meant by “human dignity”, theory and practice travel down very different paths. Undoubtedly this state of affairs might engender pessimism. However, there are elements that one may already use to continue the human rights debate and pursue mutual understanding. It is the discussion and the debate surrounding the meaning of “human dignity” that brings to light important convergences between countries, states, cultures and civilisations. One of the most significant outcomes of this process is recognition, in the United Nations Millennium Programme, that a minimum level of economic and cultural (educational) resources is required before one can speak of living a life worthy of the human condition. The various poverty thresholds, even if they appear scandalous to most, seek to provide a picture of the minimum level possible beneath which no life is worthy of humanity. If on this point a common grammar of human rights is being drawn up, what remains to be done is to intensify the work required to raise the threshold capable of guaranteeing and protecting them. Then, it is on these minimum bases that differences may be dealt with. In actual fact, compared to the centuries-old debate on human rights, today’s scenario offers one important novelty. Up to a few decades ago, by human rights was meantʊespecially as far as the “western” conception was concernedʊthe right to equality. Now, instead, equality needs to be interwoven with difference, without which particular identities would be denied. But an equal and diversified kind of right is hard to theorise. Above all, it is hard to render it applicable within institutionalised social practice. However, this seems to be the way by which to recognise the human specificity of all men and women. 3. This volume provides detailed analyses of some of the dominant traits of the global society: the principal dynamics of world unification, cosmopolitan lifestyles and mind sets and human rights as a form of regulation of human relations within this kind of society. The different articles are grouped according to their methodological features: the first part of the book is devoted to essays of a theoretical kind; the second to prevalently empirical studies.

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The first section, Theoretical Perspectives on Global Society, Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights, opens with an essay by Vittorio Cotesta on “Multiple Modernities and Global Society”. In this essay the author examines the debates of the past few years surrounding the theory of modernity in the era of global society. The assumptions underscoring his theoretical approach view modernity as a complex and plural reality. This frees the debate from the presumed superiority of western over other human cultures and allows us to read the present world as the product of the contribution of various cultures and civilisations and invites us to examine the thorny issue of the achievement of convergence of views on a universalist concept like human rights. In the first part of his work, Cotesta reviews Max Weber’s modernist theory and discusses the positions of a number of Weberian critics like J. Goody and K. Pomeranz. J. Goody’s critique addresses the basic assumptions of Weber’s theory and advocates scientific objectivity in opposition to the method pursued by Weber, who, according to Goody, exalted the singularity, exceptionality and uniqueness of Europe and the West a-critically. Goody then states that a methodology not blinded by ideological claims of western superiority over other civilisations, would have sought the common points of contact existing between the different civilisations from the Bronze Age on. Goody also states that, contrary to what Weber posits, the “grand divergence” between East and West occurred only at the end of the eighteenth century with the industrial revolution, which started in England and then spread to the rest of the world, and not thanks to the Protestant revolution and its impact on modern capitalism. According to Cotesta, Goody does not grasp the Weberian position, and fails to understand either his theory of modernity or his methodology. The Weberian discourse, in actual fact, while illustrating the uniqueness of the West also describes the uniqueness of other civilisations. His comparative analysis brings to light the specific characteristics of each one of the cases he compares. East and West are both unique and the uniqueness of each emerges only through comparison with the other. As to Weber’s modernity, the author holds, it contains a multidimensional and structural conception that Goody fails to grasp. This aspect is understood, however, by Eisenstadt who holds that not all the traits of modernity identified by Weber need appear in all of the cases presented; some, like the science-technology-production trait, are not necessarily conjugated with democracy. An eloquent example is the development of capitalism in China which, on the one hand, demonstrated the limitations of the conceptual structure of Weberian modernity, and on the other, the hermeneutic usefulness of the concepts modernity and

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modernisation. According to Eisenstadt, rather than a sole modernity one ought to speak of a “family of modern societies” and of multiple modernities in the age of globalisation. K. Pomeranz’s criticism of Max Weber echoes some of Goody’s objections. Although hinged on a comparative study of England and some areas of China between the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, the limitation of Pomeranz’s critique lies in the fact that it is uni-dimensionalʊor, at most, bi-dimensionalʊall focused on the economic dimension. As if economic development did not depend on other factors like culture, religion, the law, art, etc. Only through a social theory that claims that development is the product of the economy and technology, such as Goody’s and Pomeranz’s, is it possible to collocate the “grand divergence” within the period of the English Industrial revolution. In brief, they overlook the long period of “preparation” for the industrial revolution in Europe, because, otherwise, they would not be able “exalt” the role of Britain. And this referred to authors who condemned Max Weber’s Euro-centrism. The author then goes on to examine the “reform” of the Weberian theory proposed by Eisenstadt with his concept of Multiple Modernities in an Era of Globalisation. If Weber’s theory reflects a historical period when the project for modernity was still based on the idea of a single notion, the concept of Multiple Modernities expresses the plurality of images of the world and of “projects for humanity” typical of the twenty-first century. Summing up, the author shows how the construction of a concept of modernity cannot disregard Weber’s teaching and, at the same time, that a theory of a global society needs to be developed seeking a structure common to all civilisations and their specific differences. Áron Telegdi-Csetri’s paper claims autonomous disciplinary status for cosmopolitan studies, on the grounds of their present level of development; he starts from the definition, novel at the time, provided by the philosopher Kant when he dealt with concepts of national sovereignty and citizenship. In his 1795 essay Zum ewigen Frieden (“For perpetual peace”), Kant posited a League of regulated peoples availing of a worldwide juridical order (Weltbürgerrecht), based on recognition of human beings as rational and free social actors, linked to the specific cultural context they lived in. Notwithstanding differences in historical and social conditions, each culture tends to try to assure the happiness of its people and, thus, solve the heterogeneousness of history, the clash between orders, the autonomy of the individual in a cosmopolitan and universal formula.

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The reference to Kant’s theoretical path introduces the alternative methodologies advanced by Fabio Introini regarding the possibility of designing a new sociological paradigm to analyse contemporary society, with a view to freeing it from the centrality of globalisation. The author imagines theoretical models of complexity capable of releasing sociological theory from the modern bonds that continue to transpire, in an evident manner, in discourses concerning the global. In particular Introini refers to those theories of complexity developed recently on epistemological bases, especially by Bruno Latour, according to whom the global and the local exist only within the reality of networks and links where collectives assemble, seeing that no container is an a priori datum. This is a novel paradigm also because it invites sociologists to respond to basic issues such as the identification of guiding criteria capable of orienting research in a common direction, seeing that the old criteria of exclusion/inclusion are no longer applicable. In this sense, theories of complexity sanction the liberation of the differences characterising contemporary society, without making the process intrinsic to that of globalisation. Francesco Villa’s paper focusses on the dialogical coexistence of cultural differences and homogeneity gauged in terms of human rights in a global society. The author provides a series of answers assuming the existence of circular relations between the basic concepts presented here: cosmopolitanism, globalisation, democracy and human rights. His aim is that of finding a point of encounter between these concepts, passing through their many dimensionsʊpolitical, economic, cultural, communicativeʊand, therefore, accepting Beck’s suggestion that a privileged observation point for similar relations is the human rights issue, in particular with regard to the environment and the European context. The very creation of a planetary order based on human rights is the ultimate priority of the cosmopolitan kind of globalisation, which, the author fears, can never be achieved unless Europe makes its dream of union come true and the United States abandon their claim to superiority in terms of values and interest compared to the rest of the world. Jean-Loup Amselle enhances the “western confrontation” between Europe and the United States by examining the hypothesis that the African continent produced the first documents sanctioning human rights prior even to agreements like the Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights were stipulated. The French author provides, in the first part of his work, an indepth analysis of the distinctive elements of African and Western– European and USAʊcultures, related to definitions of human rights. In particular, Amselle dwells on the issue of the “invention of tradition” and

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the “model” which western literature used to create clearly unilateral views of the African cultural heritage. In the second part, he goes on to trace the elements shared by African and western cultures, following theoretical paths like those of Michel Foucault. The philosopher, in actual fact, draws a parallel, “rewarding” African culture, between the theory of natural law and the social contract, legitimising the sovereignty of the European matrix, and the theory of “the war between the two races” by which to read events, treaties and the value orientations regarding human rights in Africa. These allow us to interpret last year’s “Rebirth” of the “Arab Spring” not as a reflection of western values, but as an expression of the natural need to obtain human rights that all humans feel. Finally, a challenge to the affirmation of human rights in a global society, is provided by the paradox presented by Massimo Conte, according to which we often witness an extension of human, civil and social rights, but at the same time a denial of collective and individual employment rights, the right to a dignified life, health care and a home. This state of affairs is one of the results of the transition of sovereign states from the classical bio-political model envisaged by Foucault where human rights are a priority, to a model of contacted rights (women, the young, the unemployed, temporarily employed, foreigners, cultural minorities, etc.) which reduces personal guarantees. This, in reality, is the “other side of the coin” showing that, in a cosmopolitan society which still gives priority to personal security, exchanging it for liberty, one too easily renounces the right to participate in the social and the political, the collective dimension, in citizenship and issues regarding territorial membership. The second part of the volume Empirical Studies on Global Society, Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights, opens with a paper by Enrico Gargiulo. The author examines the challengeʊnot always successful ʊinvolved in implementing human rights in a global social context. He examines the issue of citizens’ rights both at supra-state and local levels and discovers, above all in the case of the latter, many factors that exclude those not granted residential status, therefore limiting their rights. It is a matter, according to the analysis carried out by the author, of the level of citizenship to which all the principles of de facto universal rights apply but which only national and local bodies are entitled to concede, despite the fact that universal rights should be enjoyed regardless of nationality. Equally problematic is the issue addressed by Silvia Sorana who illustrates the consequences of arms traffic between Italy and South American countries. The international community “tolerates” everything in the name of its own economic interests, including the massacre of men and women; one emblematic case being that of the Desaparecidos in

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Argentina. This permissive policy is an expression of how commercial relations (in this case the sale of weapons) are maintained and shows how economic interests often override interventions in favour of human rights by those very countries where human rights were born. For this reason the upholders of human rights have proposed the adoption of more stringent international norms forbidding the sale of arms to countries under dictatorship, a position which confirms the need to draw up guiding principles shared at international level capable of governing the transfer of arms. Now, finallyʊand it is necessary to point out that the law is frequently bypassedʊthe international community has assumed the violation of human rights as a restrictive parameter regulating the concession of permission to export. Angela Maria Zocchi’s paper examines the contribution of the global media towards the affirmation of human rights, especially when they draw public attention to significant events, but contain the debate within precise limits. In contrast to events regarding more or less recent history, the author counterbalances the action undertaken by independent media and the Internet to avoid information control in cases of violation of human rights. This allows spectators to measure the efficacy of the will to censure, but also attitudes towards cultural stereotypes that persist and inhibit sensitivity towards issues of human rights. Other dangers encountered by spectators are the information overload and “compassion fatigue” which can make them indifferent and passive. Eugenia De Rosa, in turn, pushes the issue to the extent of appraising the translation into practice of the basic principles underscoring the pronouncement of human rights. To this end, the author avails of Benhabib’s assumption according to which human rights are a sociological category, a social practice used to identify the cognitive potential of a similar approach and for considering how the rhetoric associated with human rights may interact with normative processes. The schematic representation of some of the rhetorical cases examinedʊincluding that for the construction of a European area of no discrimination and promotion of human rights promoted by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights – allows to underline similarities and differences, to compare the methodologies used and, as a result, to hypothesis the main critical areas and challenges for sociological theory and research. Finally, the papers presented by Bruno Meini study the effects of the social exclusion of persons suffering from HIV. Following the alarmist campaign regarding the syndrome which began in the 1980s, today pervasive stigmatisation of those affected by the virus as well as of those who practice potentially risky habits still remains: it consists in norms and

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awareness campaigns organised by many states which provoke “moral panic” in society and the criminalisation of the sick, even to the extent of limiting some of their fundamental rights such as sexual freedom. This way, in the world of globality and risk, the false impression is created that criminalising norms are able to solve the “AIDS issue”, and that states can seize the right to promote discrete principles and values. The case study submitted by Vincenzo Cicchelli is more detailed, dwelling as it does on the ways cosmopolitan practices and identities take shape in a global society. The latter is intended as a phenomenon characterised by a dimension where states no longer constitute the exclusive unit for analysis and where it is increasingly possible to detect the presence of a cosmopolitan awareness, which the author found, among others, among students taking part in the Erasmus Project. In particular, Cicchelli denotes within the testimonies of the students interviewed a sense of cultural pluralism and diffused nationality which may be called Cosmopolitan Bildung, which might be assumed as a new paradigm for the analysis of both inter-individual and inter-cultural relations. The new social phenomena occurring in the global world require adequate conceptual categories by which to interpret them, beginning with the topic of social inequality, particularly in the light of comparison with other practices one can note within the global society and which the Erasmus students, like every other global citizen can experience first hand. Finally, Paolo de Nardis and Luca Alteri, propose a critical analysis of the global society, from the point of view of the Italian cultural left, in terms of how both its parliamentary and non-parliamentary organisations consider the Europeanisation process. Following a pathway of theoretical comparison and empirical investigation, the authors describe the transition from an attitude of indifference to one of profound scepticism regarding Europe that the Italian left matured before reaching its more recent “no” and “new global” stance. Not surprisingly, also finds traces of these movements’ tendency towards multilevel governance in the position the European Union has promoted and applied to present social dynamics, in which global movements take part in a sociologically significant manner. The route proposed by Global Society, Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights tends, therefore, to touch on some of the most critical aspects of the global society and the affirmation of human rights; critical because inherited from crises produced by preceding societies and their stillpresent dynamics, with a view to providing sociological research with tools capable of reading and interpreting cosmopolitan issues which may no longer be addressed on the basis of classical Euro-centric categories, beginning with the unavoidable question of human rights.

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References Ammiano Marcellino. 2008. Storie. vol. 3. Milan: Mondadori. Beaujard, P., Berger L., and P. Norel, eds. 2009. Histoire globale, mondialisations et capitalisme. Paris: La Decouverte. Braudel, F. 1969. Ecrits sur l’histoire. Paris: Flammarion. —. 2002. Storia misura del mondo. Bologna: Il Mulino. Conrad S., Eckert A., and Freitag U. (hg.). Globalgeschichte. Theorien, Ansätze, Themen. Frankfurt/New York: Campus Verlag, 2007. Davis, N. 2006. Europe East and West, London: J. Cape, 2006. Erodoto. 2010. Storie, Milano: Newton Compton. Montesquieu, Ch. L. de Secondat. 1995. De l’Esprit des lois. Paris: Gallimard. Polibio. 2006. Storie. Milano: Rizzoli. Ponting, C. 2001. World History. A New Perspective. London: Pimlico. Robertson, R. 1992. Globalisation. Social Theory and Global Culture. London: Sage. Scheuerman, W. E. 2012. “Global Democracy and the Antistatist Fallacy”, paper presented at the “Philosophy & Society” Colloquium, Rome on 11th. October. Toynbee, A. 1948. Civilisation on Trial. Oxford: OUP. Voltaire, F-M. A. 1764. Dictionnaire philosophique, Paris: Gabriel Grasset. Wallerstein, I. 1974. The Modern World System, New York: Academic Press. —. 2003. The Decline of American Power, New York: The New Press.

PART ONE: THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ON GLOBAL SOCIETY, COSMOPOLITANISM AND HUMAN RIGHTS

CHAPTER ONE ON MULTIPLE MODERNITIES AND GLOBAL SOCIETY VITTORIO COTESTA

1. Introduction During the twentieth century many sociologists believed that there was only one modernity, the Western one. In the classification of societies as “modern” or “traditional” it was assumed, furthermore, that for traditional societies to become ‘modern’ they should realise the “Western” economic, social and political model. In other words, modernisation should / could realisze the model produced by the West. Some have even attributed to Max Weber the faults caused by this conception of modernity. It is an unfair criticism in my opinion because though Weber has produced a theory of a single modernity, he did not develop those other positions which are the result of a modernisation theory developed in America during the decades following the Second World War. In fact one thing is the elaboration of a theory of a single modernity, another is to believe that, if societies want to become ‘modern’, they have to follow that model. A discussion on the issue, so to say from the (theoretical) outset of the question can help us lay on correct foundations the problem before us in these years of great and rapid changes. The concept and the theory of ”multiple modernities”, set forth in the early nineties by Eisenstadt and recently developed and refined, argues against the view that the only modern form of society is the European and Western one, and would represent, according to Weber’s hypothesis, an exceptional case in the history of mankind. The theory of multiple modernities rejects the idea of a convergence of all societies towards the Western and European model of society.

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The “Eurocentric” conception of the history of humankind has generally been criticized from a point of view we might call “external” and from another one “internal”. The criticism from the external point of view was held by authors belonging to the Chinese, Indian, Japanese and Islamic civilisations and from a broad African cultural current (the socalled African Renaissance), the criticism from the internal point of view is set forth by Marxists and neo-Marxist thinkers, Latin American economists and sociologistsʊthe advocates of the dependency theoryʊ from supporters of the “economic world-system”, in short, from the huge crowd of those who have seen in the theory of “modernisation” a way to build a capitalist hegemony within Western society and on a global scale in the second half of the twentieth century. Because we cannot enter into the merits of individual criticisms, we are forced to refer to two texts that, in my opinion, are extremely important: the first is the work by A. Hirschman, Rival Views of Market Society (1992), the second is Global Modernization by A. Martinelli (2006). The first is concerned above all with the economic consequences of modernization, while the latter is a broad and interesting overview of various theories of modernization, their development and their partial approach to the theory of multiple modernities. To avoid placing our reasoning on an all too abstract plane and to try to connect to the actual processes of world history, it is useful to keep in mind that the debate on modernity of the early twentieth century takes place when the hegemony of the world is passing from Europe to North America. The debate on multiple modernities is taking place in the historical phase in which American global hegemony is ending and other great actors are appearing on the world stageʊChina in first place. The theory of multiple modernities is in other words a way to rethink the postWestern world and the global society of the twenty-first century. We must take note, as D. Chakrabarty has written, that it is common sense, now ... to recognize that the so-called ”old European epoch” of modern history has begun to give way to other regional and global configurations as early as the mid-twentieth century (Halecki 1962)...[and that] European history is no longer considered the cradle of a “universal human history”. (Chakrabarty 2000, 15)

A plural conception of history is more fitting to a plural world. Thus, the term ”multiple modernities”, coined by Eisenstadt in the nineties, is more apt to grasp the dynamism of ongoing historical processes. However, it would be simplistic to determine only the extrinsic connections between the historical processes under way and new forms of

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social theory. A more interesting goal would be to seek theoretical and cultural legitimacy in the emerging world and, eventually, analyse its distortions, as is often done by many social scientists. In the present essay I try to single out some moments of this debate in order to offer a small contribution to the construction of a sociological paradigm emancipated from “methodological nationalism” and anchored in the structure of the emerging global society.

2. Western modernity according to Max Weber To develop our argument we must take up the question if there is only one, if there is no or if there are many modernities (Wittrock 2000). Our journey will start, as it should be obvious, with Weber1 and will be developed through a complex maze to arrive at a re-evaluation of Weber‘s methodological lesson, to the rejection of his unique interpretation of the

1

In my opinion, in fact, Max Weber is the greatest interpreter of history and of European identity and, at the same time, his analysis is the basis for interpreting the trends of global society. In this paper I will consider his work overall, but I will focus on his Sociology of Religion. This is because in today’s world his approach seems very appropriate. In fact, the work of Max Weber can be interpreted as a massive attempt to explain that the processes of rationalization and modernisation in the West occurred in relation to processes of rationalization occurring in other civilisationcivilisations. And this analysis has its centre in the Sociology of religion. In other words, there we find an analysis of modern Western European societies compared to other societies built on processes of rationalization different from the one taking place in Europe. There is another reason. In the construction of global society the confrontation among different civilisationcivilisations is becoming daily and the interconnections between them are not always visible. Max Weber’s analysis may help us understand the possibilities and limits of dialogue between cultures, religions and societies. If, then, we adopt this point of view, the work of Max Weber as a whole and the question posed at the beginning of his Sociology of Religion become immediately understandable as an expression of European cultural history and, in particular, of German history. It becomes easy, in fact, to connect Weber and his discourse to the questions posed by Hegel in his Philosophy of History and in Kant’s Anthropology as well as in the latter’s Project for perpetual peace. In short, it is a search for specific traits and of the role of Europe and of the West in the universal history of mankind. Of course, while the question from which he starts has originated from research on European identity conducted by other major European intellectuals, Max Weber’s method is original. His research, in fact, is not attributable to a philosophy of history, but opens a new field of investigation: that of historical sociology or, if you will, the historical sociology of culture.

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unique connection between modernity and Western society and to support, albeit without much enthusiasm, the theory of multiple modernities.

2.1. The Weberian question Max Weber’s question, as it is known, is as follows: welche Verkettung von Umständen hat dazu geführt, dass Gerade auf dem Boden des Okzident, und nur hier, Kulturerscheinungen auftraten, welche dochʊwenigstens wir uns gern vorstellenʊin einer Entwicklungsrichtung von universeller Bedeutung und Gültigkeit lagen? (Weber 1988, 1, p. 1)

The first observation is that, according to Weber, Western cultural forms stem from the world history of humankind (so the formula can be interpreted: Entwicklungsrichtung von und Bedeutung universeller Gültigkeit). Those cultural forms were inside of a “direction of a development of meaning of universal validity” and yet they were realised only in the West. In other words, those cultural forms could well have been realised in other cultures and civilisations, for the conditions of possibility were there, but on the contrary they developed only in the West. The question then is why these cultural forms have appeared in the West and only in the West and, conversely, have not developed in China, India and in other cultural contexts?

2.2. The two wastes in Weber’s explanation of modernity There are already, so to speak, on the table two types of responses ʊwith which many have been pleased. The first can be traced back to nationalism, the second to anthropological traits. Weber rejects both of them, and to vaccinate ourselves in a time in which there are still many poisons, it is interesting to see why. In the Zwischenbetrachtung (Weber 1988 542) Max Weber explains why we cannot accept a “nationalistic” explanation of the problem. Such, in fact, contradicts the solution proposed by the world religions in order to rationalize the problem of human suffering. Using the Christian example Weber indicates the reasons that contradict the nationalistic solutions. The “theodicies” or “rationalizations” of the problem of human suffering provide solutions based on the formation of a “universal” human community. Thus, in Christianity, in this respectʊand only in this respect, says Weberʊthe conflict is enhanced (Id.542). In Matthew 19, 34 it is said in fact: “I have not come to bring peace but a sword”. Weber correctly

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interprets that to become Christian implies becoming members of a universal community and adopting a “religious ethics of brotherhood” other than the natural one (family of origin, acquired family, and so on).2 No less interesting is the other rejection. At the end of the Vorbemerkung, after referring to the main traits of modern western rationalization and to the method of analysis required to respond to the problem under investigation, Max Weber claims that Also the anthropological aspect of the problem should be mentioned. When we see over and over again that even in areas of human life (seemingly) independent from one another some forms of rationalization have developed only in the West, naturally arises the hypothesis that the cause for this lies in hereditary factors. (Weber 1988, 1, 15).

However, although inclined to “give great importance to biological inheritance”, Weber says he does not see any “way of determining with any accuracy, nor even in any approximate way, the measure and especially the form of this influence on the development examined here” (ibid.). One day, when research in the context of “racial neurology and psychology” will have progressed beyond its present state, we can perhaps hope for even the probability of a satisfactory answer to that problem. For the moment....the appeal to heredity would therefore involve a premature renunciation of the possibility of knowledge attainable now, and would shift the problem to factors (at present) still unknown. (Weber, 1988, 1, 16)

Despite the caution, however, the approach based on biological traits (one which, of course, would discuss equality, superiority and / or inferiority of different races and the cultures they produce) is rejected by Max Weber.3 This is particularly important when one considers that, throughout the nineteenth and again in the first half of the twentieth century, the study of cultures and civilisations, methodological nationalism and the racial approach were very popular in Europe and in the Western world.

2

To return to an illustrious example, Weber’s tenacity in pursuing his scientific program can be seen in that his conclusion goes in the opposite direction to that indicated by Hegel in the Philosophy of History. Hegel sees the progress of civilisationcivilisation fulfilled in the ‘Christianity of the Germanic nations’ (Hegel, 1830-1831, vol. 1, 46). 3 For the foundation of the theory of races, see Kant (1775; 1789).

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2.3. The features of modern Western societies We can now try to understand what the Kulturerscheinungen are that, for reasons we shall see, were realized in the West and only in the West, according to Max Weber. To do so, we shall use the synthesis outlined by Weber in the Vorbemerkung of the Essays of sociology of religion. In an extreme synthesis, the traits of modern Western society would, for Weber, be: 1) science at its present stage of development, 2) the arts: music, architecture, and 3) the press as a means of spreading news and the periodicals, 4) The private and public administration with professional officers; 5) politics, the state, the constitution, parliament, 6) capitalism as a “rational organization of work (formally) free”, 7) the separation between domestic and business administration in relation to the autonomy of the family; 8) “rational” socialism; 9) the bourgeoisie; 10) the proletariat; 11) the close link between science, technology and productive activities (Weber 1988, 1, 1-4, ). According to Weber we can reasonably assume that these are the hallmarks of the identity of Europe and of the West. But they are, so to say, the phenomenal form, the visible identity of the West and of Europe. We must seek a deeper reason that might be its cause. Why, indeed, only in the West and in Europe these cultural hallmarks arise and not in other contexts?

2.4. The shapes of the rationalization of the problem of human suffering and the path to Calvinist modernity Here emerges the originality of Weber’s answer. The human raceʊand here lies one aspect of Weber’s reasoning always rather vague, perhaps to avoid falling into the anthropological approachʊhas to do with the problem of ”sufferance” and, especially, unjustified sufferance. Human organisations, societies, in order to survive must provide an adequate response to this problem. Religions, especially the great world religions, try to answer the question of why there is sufferance and why it is so unevenly distributed. Following Weber in his analytical path, it is often necessary to pause. This is one such moment: human suffering is universal (Weber 1988, 1., 567); the problem is common to every societies. It is not the problem that found the exceptional, unique character of Europe and the West but, as we shall see, the answer set forth. Theodicies are the way in which religions try to answer to this problem, they are ‘rationalizations’ in the most basic sense of the expression: they

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provide reasons to the question why there is sufferance and why it is distributed in a given way. In short, there are three forms of theodicy analysed by Weber: the one proposed by Confucianism and Taoism, that proposed by Hinduism and Buddhism and the one proposed by Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The Chinese response to the problem of human sufferingʊvery brieflyʊconsists of a view of the world focussed on an ultra-divine, impersonal Being, always equal to itself, eternal in time and at once timeless value of eternal orders, perceived as ultimate and supreme entities...It manifested itself [to men] through all the vicissitudes of earthly government, that is through the stable order of nature and custom, which was a part of the cosmic order. (Weber 1988, 1,307)

For Chinaʊadds Max Weber “this fundamentally optimistic view of cosmic harmony grew gradually out of the primitive belief in spirits”. (ibid.) This cosmic harmony invests nature and society. Everyone in this universe has his role, his place, the just retribution for his merits. Even the “Son of Heaven”ʊthe emperorʊmust fulfill his duty and promote the people’s well-being. If he fails in this essential task, he has shown he lacks the charisma of power and therefore does not deserve to govern. Overall it is a “well-ordered” society, in which everyone ends up occupying the position he deserves. The metaphysical category on which such a form of ‘rationalization’ is based is harmony. The rationalization of the problem of human suffering set forth by Hinduism and Buddhism is different: even for thesereligions the world is immutable and follows a regular and predetermined path. On these metaphysical beliefs are based two ethical concerns: “the belief of samsƗra (metempsychosis) and the related doctrine of karma (retribution)” (Weber 1988, 2, 117). The individual’s stand in the world is his own work; his destiny is in his hands. What is relevant is, however, the position face au monde. If the overall attitude of Confucianism leads to an acceptance of the world, here, in Hinduism and Buddhism, the outcome is completely different. It is necessary to flee the world, escape from the world to escape the cycle of reincarnation. In other words, if the individual’s fate depends on what he does, if the path of his actions changes and if it is no longer decided with a view to the other world, there could be different outcomes. The metaphysical category at the basis of this “rationalisation” is nothingness. Weber’s view is that the Jewish-Christian theodicy is more complex than the others. In fact, according to Weber, within Calvinism a theological

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“development” takes place or, rather, a development of a theological theory capable of putting together two seemingly contradictory aspects: the refusal of the world and the being in the world. I will not repeat, here, what has been written over a hundred years ago, in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. The point I wish to emphasise is that, according to Weber, in Calvinism we find a scheme built on the pair rejection-reception. The believer, of course, does not love the world as it is. However, for him, good behaviour is not to step outside of the world, to flee it, but to work on it and act to change it. The asceticism of the Christianʊsuch a Christianʊis worldly oriented: to live in this world to change it for the glory of its Creator. The metaphysical category of “Western” rationalization is the being. The path of Western rationalization, in its various forms and degrees, is essentially the reduction of the magical powers over the world (disenchantment). The world has no soul; no one can subdue it through magical forces. The world has no meaning and our work is of giving one to it. The rationalization processes are then ways of building a world that makes sense. The Calvinist solution to the problem is that God is the absolute “other” of man. To no avail are the prayers or the works in this world to deserve the salvation in another one. God, ab aeterno, has already decided who will be saved and who will be doomed. If the path of rationalization stopped at this, the conclusion could be similar to that of other forms of rationalization. The only thing that man can do is to act so that the world’s destiny might be fulfilled. The righteous will act in such a way, to give grace to God (Weber, 1988, 1, 262-4). The work of the Christian, however, is not like other work, but a work in two specific ways: the one involves an action to change the world; the other highlights a systematic action. This method, and the assumption that the world has no soul, arrives at a radically constructivist vision of nature (in the sense that it is infinitely manipulable) and society. As underlined well by J. Burckhardt (1860), the state and society are ”a work of art”. The so-called secularization is the process of rationalization in the West. This form or rationalization creates its own specific products (no matter if with its own materials or with materials produced and used by others for similar or different purposes). These are the traits we have enumerated above: a form of economy, a form of state, a form of art, a form of science, everything that is called Western civilisation. Modern society is thus that in which the form of general human rationality has taken a particular path: that of the unique connection,

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according to Weber, between the disenchantment of the world, rationalization and search for the confirmation of one’s won salvation.

2.5. Paradoxes and contradictions in Weber’s theory of modernity A remarkable contradiction in Weber’s viewpoint already seems to emerge at this level. The various forms of rationalization of unjustified human sufferingʊtheodiciesʊappeared, to use the concepts of Jaspers and Eisenstadt, in the “Axial Age”: about 800-200 a. C., with the peak around the middle of this millennium. The material with which Weber works originates from this axial revolution. So, the beginning of the “great divergence” should be placed at this time. In fact, we cannot understand Calvinism outside of Jewish and Christian traditions. So the question arises: if the civilisations considered by Weber have since taken a different path, his explanation based on the role of Calvinism is not valid; if civilisations, for two thousand years, have followed a common path, while building their societies on different cultural backgrounds, his argument is considerably weakened. How should such a long time-span be understood if only in modernity, with Calvinism, it produces the “axial revolution” that structures civilisations in different ways? Is it only a preparatory stage of the axial revolution? Or, is modernity only a “big event” in the western axial revolution? Weber does not offer us an answer. Parsons (1966, 1971)was probably thinking of such issues when he used the concept of “cradle society” to explain how and why the Greek, Roman or Islamic worlds, although each one bearing specific features of modernity, were not modern societies. In Parson’s evolutionary scheme it is clear how those societies could be seen as “unfinished societies”, but in Weber’s interpretation there remains a gap that must be filled. Finally, many historians see the origins of capitalism and modern society in the Middle Ages (Robinson and Wiegant 2008; Mitterauer 2009).

3. Some critics of the European and Western concept of modernity Other and more decisive criticisms have been addressed to the Weberian conception of modernity, of civilisation and of European and Western identity. One such criticism comes from a composite front of philosophers, sociologists and anthropologists that targets the claims of uniqueness and superiority of the West over other civilisations. The debate is complex and

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ranges from “Westernization” to the rejection of Western culture. The highest points of the debate, in recent decades, are to be found in the works of M. Bernal and K. Wiredu. Three theses are set forth: 1) the first rejects the assumption of Westerners as having given birth to civilisation, placing instead its roots in Africa (Bernal); 2) the second tends to free African thought from Western concepts and thought structures; 3) a third “mediating” thesis is proposed by D. Chakrabarty, who tries to graft the cultural traditions of the various civilisations onto “European” theoretical and conceptual models.4 The criticism of J. Goody, who takes position more directly against Weber, is more specific and it is therefore useful to look at his arguments.

3.1. Nothing new in the West. J. Goody and his critique of Weber’s theory of modernity Goody takes issue with the Weberian thesis of the unity and uniqueness of the West by bringing together two assumptions: there is nothing new and original in Europeʊat least until the mid-eighteenth centuryʊand, if there is something “unique” in the history of Europe (and of the West), this is the break in continuity that occurred during the socalled “dark ages”. Conversely, the processes that, according to Weber’s thesis, are typical of Europe and the West take place on a more advanced level in other civilisations. Europe’s contribution to the history of humanity would rather be the “industrial revolution”.5 4

Obviously I cannot linger on this interesting and enlightening debate. Allow me then to refer to one of my recent works (Cotesta 2012). The thesis of the meeting (acceptance and overcoming) of Western modernity is supported in Japan during much of the twentieth century (see the so-called Kyoto School), and in China (e.g. Wang Hui 2006 and 2009 who depicts the history of twentieth-century Chinese thought and of its complicated relationship with Western modernity). 5 On all of these criticisms, see, for example, J. Vernet (1985), J. M. Hobson (2004, 2006), J. Goody (1996, 1999), D. Inglis, R. Robertson (2006). It should be noted, however, that historians of the ancient world (Scheidel 2009) place the beginning of the “great divergence” as early as the sixth-seventh century A.D., during which in the Mediterranean and in Europe prevails the fragmentation, and in China the ‘dynastic cycle’ takes place. However, if this is true, Goody has no reason to see in the history of the Chinese dynastic cycles more continuity than there actually is. Can the Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties be interpreted as specific forms of the political Chinese structure or are there cultural differences among them? Are the Mongol Yuan and the Song one and the same? Or are the Qing the same as the southern Chinese? As much as one wishes to see a continuity, some discontinuities do emerge.

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In addition, according to the thesis of British historian C. Ponting, this process would be more profound. While anthropologists and sociologists deny the superiority of the West until the mid-eighteenth century, C. Ponting sees the process of civilisation born in the East, spreading to the Mediterranean in the second half of the first millennium B.C. and then, thanks to the Romans, to central and northern Europe. Basically, argue these authors, the West has produced nothingʊor almost nothingʊof its own; all its “discoveries” in art, science, politics, and the economy had already been made in the East (China, India, Islam). Weber’s thesis, ignoring this historical background, gives the West merits that it does not deserve. In addition, there is nothing new in the West, not even capitalism, which existed in China, India and the Islamic world well before its “exportation”, on the global plane, by the West. This kind of criticism primarily addresses the issue of an alleged “superiority” of European and Western civilisation. One could say that is part of the strand of criticism aimed “Eurocentrism”ʊof which it is very difficult, here, to give even a partial account. Just as an example one can cite the works of E. Said (2001), of the above mentioned M. Bernal (1991) and, albeit from a less radical viewpoint, of D. Chakrabarty (2000). In the works of J. Goody (Islam in Europe 2004; The Theft of History 2004; The East in the West 1996; Capitalism and Modernity 2004) we find, although with some difficulty, a paradigm alternative to Weber’s.6 Goody’s criticism of Eurocentrism follows two paths: the first is to show how much of the “East” is in the “West”; the second is methodological. I omit the firstʊit is rather obviousʊto concentrate on the latter. The distinctive features of Western civilisation traced by Weber are found by Goody in other civilisations: China, India, Islam.7 The production in large factories, the market economy, family structure and romantic love are all traceable in other civilisations. The reason for this is that all civilisations went through the Bronze Age revolution (about 3000 BC), the formation of the city and vertical stratification. The plow is the symbol of this revolution. The hoe, instead, is the symbol of the African path, different from that of Eurasian cultures. Only with the Industrial Revolution have Europe and the West surmounted the East. However, 6

The works of Goody mentioned here often repeat the same arguments and the reading is somewhat distracting for the cumbersome nature of the argumentation. However, a patient work of excavation permits to reconstruct a ‘paradigm’ alternative to that of M. Weber and of those who focus their analysis on the search for differences, the specificity of Europe and that of the West. 7 Africa, instead, according to Goody, has taken a different path and continues to exist in its diversity.

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Goody does not fail to remember that in Italy, at the dawn of modernity, were laid the foundations of market economy and some European experiences of capitalist industrial production were seen. These two facts should demonstrate that capitalism is compatible with other religions, such as Catholicism, and not only with Protestantism and Calvinism. Goody’s criticism, however, concerns mainly Weber’s way of posing the problemʊand of those who followed him. According to Goody it is a mistake to look for differences between the West and Europe on the one hand and Eurasian civilisations on the other. In no way is the West an “exception”, as Weber understood it. The correct approach is to look for similarities and convergences between the Eurasian civilisations. Making use of Parsons’ theoriesʊthe Parsons of Societies I and IIʊGoody can argue that in all Eurasian civilisations the pre-requisites for the Industrial Revolution existed. The Ottoman Empire, which in the fifteenth and sixteenth-seventeenth century successfully rivalled Europe, lost the competition because, for religious reasons, it refused to adopt the printing system with movable characters, completed in Europe but invented in China. This remark, placed almost randomly by Goody without any particular emphasis, reveals, if I may express myself so, his theoretical weakness. If for religious reasons God’s word could not be printed, this confirms one of the cornerstones of Weber’s theory: the possibility that religious norms are embedded in institutions and in individual lifestyles. In addition, it also demonstrates that that religionʊor, at least, that particular interpretation of Islamʊhas been used as a means to fetter modernity. If it is true that in the sixteenth century the Ottoman Empire was on an equal footing with, or even superior to, Europe, its final defeat also depended on the strategies followed by the religious, cultural and political elites. Finally, this also demonstrates the validity of the link identified by Max Weber between the growth of modern sciences and the growth of the capitalist economy. Furthermore, this position does not express much of Goody’s thesis implied by Weber. As already noted, Weber identifies the period of formation of modernity in 1500 and later, implicitly acknowledges that civilisations, until then, followed no divergent paths. The difference between Goody and Weber, as regards this point, refers only to the date of commencement of the great divergence between East and West. For Weber, this is the Protestant Reformation and its consequences; for Goody, the Industrial Revolution. Finally, Goody turns against Weber’s own argument of an “exceptionality” of the West. If it is necessary to resort to the concept of exceptionalityʊargues Goodyʊthat Europe is the only Eurasian civilisation

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to have experienced “stop” in its path during the so-called “dark ages”, while other civilisations experienced more or less continuous development,8 Europeʊthe European territoriesʊmet a real setback in the general level of its civilisation: economy, politics, culture were no longer at the level reached during the Greek and Roman worlds. Goody, therefore, reverses the meaning of the thesis of “exceptionality”, turning it into a negative fact. If the development of the West may seem “extraordinary”, this is only because its starting point was lower than the levels reached by the other Eurasian civilisations. Actually, this is not a new thesis. Let us consider the idea of the “debt” of the West towards the East. In ancient times, for example, Herodotus (IV, 180, 189; V, 58; II, 54, 109) aptly describes the game of “borrowings” and “rejection” of the Greek world towards other civilisations. If we consider authors closer to us, we find praises of the high level of Chinese civilisation in authors like Leibniz (1697), Smith (1776) and Kant (1802).9 Finally, despite his nationalism, Hegel also recognizes that culture and civilisation were born in the East.10 To better understand Goody’s distance from Weber, we can try to restate the issue in this way: on a background of common civilisation, emerging first in the East, the West engages in a process of rationalization (that of disenchantment / rejection of the worldly / worldly ascetics) that produces a form of civilisation in many respects different to the Chinese and the Indian.11 The common problem is that of human suffering. The Calvinist solution is one of the possible solutions. This form of rationalization is not the only one, according to Weber, but one of the three mentioned at length in his works and, in particular, in the Sociology of religion. From the Calvinist solution arose, according to Weber, a specific form of civilisation: the European and Western civilisation, whose features are those already listed above. Thereforeʊto say it in a very 8

It is difficult to accept such an argument. Chinese history, for example, is made of continuity only for those who want it that way. To see a clear continuity in Chinese history is like saying that there is an uninterrupted thread between the Romans and our civilisation. 9 In the letter on Chinese philosophy, sent to Mr. De Remond, Leibniz (1987) states: “It would be a great imprudence and presumption for the rest of us, newcomers behind them and just out of barbarism, want to condemn a doctrine so old ...”. 10 See G.F.W. Hegel, 1822-1823, 477 as well as the whole chapter “The Eastern world. China”. 11 We leave aside the issue of Islam since Weber has never produced, on it, anything like the study on Confucianism and Hinduism, although in the ‘"Ethics of world religions’ there are many references to Islam.

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concise wayʊaccording to Weber Europe and the West give their own specific response to a problem shared by the whole of humanity. Goody’s criticism claims that not only is the problem common to all Eurasian civilisations, but so too are its solutions. Therefore, capitalism, science, art, etc., are not distinctive traits of the West but also belong to other Eurasian civilisations. For this same reasonʊand until the end of the eighteenth centuryʊEurope and the West did not produce anything original. Only with the Industrial Revolution did they produce a “real” innovation. Goody, however, is not the only one to deny the thesis of the uniqueness and exceptionality of Europe and the West. F. Braudel (1999), for example, sees global capitalism as a global phenomenon in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. This thesis, however, implicitly states that all societies go in the same direction and, unintentionally, both Goody and Braudel eventually say that capitalism, in its different historical experiences, is the universal form of organizing the economy. Although not produced by Calvinist rationalization, the actual shape of the modern world would be unique and the differences would only be superficial. Goody’s thesis, finally, denies the idea of multiple modernities. This should come as no surprise, since Goody’s method, looking for common elements, underestimates the importance of differences. Weber, however, brings out the differences on a common background. The problem is the same; the solutions are different. The question, however, is not closed. It is necessary to better understand the connection between capitalism and civilisation. On this, Weber has argued for the existence of unique links between Calvinist rationalization and European and Western modernity. Many other authors, including Goody, see the possibility (and facts seem to confirm it) of combining capitalism with other forms of rationalization. The wedlock between Confucianism and capitalism is now plain for all (Bell 2006, 2008). The same thing happened with the “Catholic” solution of the problem of human suffering as well as with the Zen solution in Japan, that of Hinduism in India and, of course, with that of Islam. Regarding the exclusive connection between the Calvinist solution to the problem of human suffering, and capitalism, then, one must conclude that Weber’s thesis is no longer sustainable. Two errors are attributable to Weber: the first concerns the analysis of the traits of Calvinist rationalization; the other an analysis of other forms of rationalizationʊand the one, of course, implies the other. Weber, focusing his analysis on the difference of Calvinist rationalization, may

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not have seen that the other forms of rationalization are also compatible with capitalism. But, most of all, Weber said: why has modernity taken place in the West and not in other civilisations? And since the preconditions were present in other civilisations, why did it not emerge in China or India before? To this question Goody answers that in the West the Industrial Revolution took place; capitalism existed everywhere. But, in doing so, he ignores the specific form of capitalism which Weber (and, actually, also Marx) speaks of as well as the relationship between capitalism and the Industrial Revolution. He enumerates, randomly, the many factors that led to the Industrial Revolution, but he does not provide a convincing explanation.

3.2. K. Pomeranz and the ecological interpretation of modernity Weber’s theory of the “exceptionality” of the West receives an unexpected and paradoxical confirmation in the work of K. Pomeranz (2000) on the “great divergence”.12 On the one hand, Pomeranz, like Braudel, Wallerstein, Goody, etc., rejects the idea that certain precapitalist economic processes take place only in the West; on the other hand, his explanation places on a different basis the British Wayʊ afterwards European and Westernʊto modern capitalism, which puts them in order to justify the very “exceptionality” and “uniqueness” of the West, moving later (nineteenth century) and giving a different explanation. Early in his work, Pomeranz challenges theories of Weberian inspiration that try to explain the origin of modernity through the use of endogenous factors. At the same time, however, he also rejects the theories based only on exogenous factors and builds an integrated set of exogenous and endogenous processes on which he then builds his theory of the origin of the “great divergence”. The focal point of Pomeranz’s approach is the consideration of the Malthusian relationship between population growth and land for the uses necessary to meet the basic needs of life (food, clothing, energy for heat, shelter materials). By comparing some areas of Western Europe with some areas of China, Japan and India, he develops a theory of economic “globalisation” different from the one of the “world economic system” by 12

Pomeranz starts with the four requirements of Malthus: 1) food; 2) fibers for clothing; 3) energy to produce heat; 4) materials for shelter require the use of land. Since land is not inexhaustible, are the ways in which societies meet these needs to be considered forms of “rationalization”? If so, Pomeranz’s economic interpretation is close to the Weberian one.

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I. Wallerstein and his followers. Indeed, among the secondary aims of Pomeranz’s work is also the rejection of the Smithian model of balance. Among the factors of globalisation he includes the actions of states and the coercion imposed upon Native American populations, first, and on the slaves imported from Africa to the Americas secondly. From the Americas, and in fact, European countriesʊat first Spain and Portugal and not only the countries of the northʊderived (new) food products and, more importantly, metals. However, without the monetarization on metallic basis of the Chinese economy, precious metals (gold and silver) would have remained confined to their traditional role, in the construction of luxury goods in the global economy until the late eighteenth century. The monetarization of the Chinese economy, however, by turning silver in to the universal means of exchange, led to an increasing demand for silver by all social classes and not just the richest. Thus, while new food products made their way towards Europe, silver took the path towards the East and China. Furthermore, by exchanging silver with their raw agricultural commodities (cotton), their luxury handicrafts (silk, porcelain) and their food (tea, spices) the Chinese (and the Indians as well as the Japanese) allow the Westerners to build a ‘worldwide’ sales network. In short, between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries an integrated world economy is created, with different roles but without a centre. In fact, argues Pomeranz, “we cannot understand global economic trends before 1800 in terms of a world system centered on Europe; we have, on the contrary, a polycentric world without a dominant center” (2000, 4). So far, he follows the same direction as Goody. Here we reach one of the central points of Pomeranz’s work: until 1800, he argues, the economic structure of the advanced European areas was very similar to that of advanced Chinese and Japanese areas. What happened in Europeʊindustrializationʊcould have happened there but not in India, where the prevailing social and cultural constraints led to the formation of agricultural societies. Also, Pomeranz believes, Great Britain, Europe and the West could have taken the path of China’s economic and industrial sectors. What is the reason, then, for the nineteenth-century divergence? We must return to the global economy over the previous centuries. Europe, but especially Britain, in these centuries could have a remarkable increase in population without paying its bill. In fact, given the lack of land for cereals, for pasture and timber, Britain would not have been able to build an industrial economy using the proto-industrial work force. As in China and Japan, this labour force would have to work to procure the food necessary to sustain a growing population. A relevant part of this work,

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however, is done for the British and Europeans by Native American peoples, the slaves deported to Central America and in the British colonies of America (later United States). The energy balance of the Europeans can only be positive because they consume food (and sugar and tea are very important for the per capita energetic balance) produced by others. With more or less equal levels of social organization, if not higher ones in China, the British can take advantage of the technological ‘innovations’ with their proto-industrial work force, which, among other things, had developed a remarkable capacity to use innovations invented by others. Another important factor in the origin of the “great divergence” is proximity to energy resources. While China and Japan, despite an advanced transport system (China) and the possibilities of transport by sea (Japan), have difficulty in using their energetic resources which, inter alia, have become insufficient for the needs of the fast growing population; on the contrary, the British has coal mines at hand. So, in the end, endogenous resources (technologies, coal, proto-industrial work force) and exogenous resources (food and other raw materials), enhances by the actions of the state (internal monopoly of coercion, force and colonies) led to the English and European ‘miracle’. In the end, Pomeranz offers us an ecological explanation of the origins of modern Europe.13

4. S. N. Eisenstadt’s multiple modernities in the era of globalisation As it is known, Eisenstadt has concentrated on the studies on modernization. His sociology abandons the paradigm of modernization and develops a new approach, the theory or the sociology of ‘multiple modernities’. What is this approach? In general, we can say that it is a partially new approach. Eisenstadt describes his view as a revision of Weber’s theory of modernity.14

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It is not the place to discuss in such limited space such a theory. However, if China now has a capitalist and industrial development it should have solved, like Europe if in a different way, the fundamental questions of the relationship between population and land. The environmental failure of Chinese industrialisation (Wang Hui 2006, 161) that the assumptions developed in Pomeranz’s theory are not so strong. If the Chinese have been able to do it now, why didn’t they in the eighteenth century, when the environmental conditions were as unfavourable as they are/those of today?

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According to Eisenstadt, modernity “first evolved in the West and then spread around the world, but…from this expansion has resulted not only one but several types of modern civilisation. (Eisenstadt 1997, 49; see also 64, emphasis added) Modernity was born in the West but has found fertile ground on the global level, giving rise to various forms of modern societies. So, even Eisenstadt believes it is possible to combine modernity, born in the West, with different forms of civilisation. It is, as we can see, a strong revision of Weber’s thesis, but not its denial. To understand the meaning of this position we must make a wider reference to Eisenstadt’s discourse. In the wake of Weber’s methodological lesson, Eisenstadt reconstructs an “ideal type” of modernity and then follows its developments. In a slightly different way than that of Weber, Eisenstadt so outlines his ”program of modernity”:15 - “A vision of historical progress and history as the site for the implementation of the cultural program of modernity” is set forth. This implies a radical change from Christian eschatology. History becomes the sole theatre of human history. There is, in other words, a reversal of the finalities of human action from the other world to this world. It might be said that this is a slightly different formulation of Weber’s concept of worldly asceticism; - In “the context of this historical progress” the concept of “individual autonomy and empowerment” is built; - “In its entirety this progress was defined in terms of universalistic values as reason, science and technology, and developed a strong tendency to fuse science and technology with ultimate values: that is, to melt Wertrationalität and Zweckrationalität”. - In the romantic ambit, furthermore, is emphasized “the autonomy and specificity of the emotions of primordial society”; - “Present and future, in this way, were more closely intertwined”; - With the ‘look towards the future’, ‘a new social order in the present’ tries to be built; - And this “new social order” offers the “possibility of active participation of social groups”; - “Strong universalistic orientations’ emerge as well as the cosmopolitan conception of the world and society, realized by building ‘new sociopolitical with relatively large, yet still well-defined, boundaries”;

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Eisenstadt himself distinguishes his position thus. See the essay ‘The Origins of the West. The Protestant Ethic revisited’, in Eisenstadt 1997. 15 I reconstruct the ‘blueprint of modernity’ by using Eisenstadt’s own scheme, 1994, 25-45.

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- Finally, a new image of humanity’s past, through the creation of a “communitarian past”, is created.

These cultural aspects have a counterpart on the political plane. Here are the features of the project of modernity: - The development of the idea of the “responsibility of rulers”; - The development of a conception of society in which there is a “growing autonomy of the various cultural and social centres and, especially, changes in the relationship between centers and peripheries”. The suburbs are no longer purely passive but invest the political centres with their issues, putting into question, also, the role and functions of the centers; - The “basic orientations toward tradition and authority” change. The sense of political legitimacy derives not from tradition but from innovation; - The ideology of citizenship is institutionalized. In this context emerges the question of political representation and of the people who are entitled to it; - The political form of domination of man over man becomes or is conceived as part of the “project of human emancipation, a project that sought to combine equality and freedom, justice and autonomy, solidarity and identity”; - Finally, there is a “gradual disappearance of ascriptive elites and...a growing emphasis on the criteria of acquisition and realization”.

The project of modernity generates different tensions. To such tensions Eisenstadt devotes a long and careful analysis, not forgetting the lesson of the Weberian Zwischenbetractung in which the tensions of the modern world emerge with their tragic character. If this is roughly the ideal type of modern society, what happens when this set of visions, concepts, institutions comes into contact with cultural backgrounds different to those in which they were created? Eisenstadt’s answer is very simple. First of all, he notes, even in Europe modernization and modernity have had the same characters not everywhere. In fact, times and ways of building “modern” societies were different in Western Europe, Central Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean and Eastern Europe. When the expansion process of the West brings the project of modernity into contact with other cultural and historical contexts, every culture and every civilisation selectively establishes a relationship with this project. Some features of modernity are accepted, others rejected, just as in the model of the “borrowings” and “rejections” among civilisations developed by Braudel (1969). From the selective interaction between the project and particular contexts of modernity emerges a new society, the features of

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which are different and at the same time common to those of other modern societies. In addition, at this stage of the construction of a global society, the various modern societies interact more than they did in the past and cultural exchanges and rejections are more frequent and more visible. To express these new aspects of the history of humanity Eisenstadt has developed the concept of “multiple modernity in the era of globalisation”. Again we must ask ourselves the question: how far away is this interpretation from Weber’s? And what is really distant from Weber’s? Goody’s stand, as we have seen, reverses the Weberian approachʊor, at least, he thinks he does. He looks for the common features and attributes to Weber’s search for unique and exclusive features (differences) of the European and Western societies compared to other Eurasian societies. Weber, in fact, starts from that question, but his use of comparison allows him to understand his different case studies. Eisenstadt, as we have said, follows Weber’s methodology. Starting from the ideal type of modern society, in fact, he follows its spread and its transformation in contact with different cultural and historical contexts. In this way he can rebuild the “family” of modern societies, describing common aspects and specific differences.16 Weber still lives here: in pointing out the need to adopt “one” concept of ‘modernity’ to understand plurality. In other words, I cannot find anything unless I have an idea of what to look for. If I wish to understand societyʊmodern or traditionalʊI cannot have in mind a conception of a “modern” societyʊand its featuresʊor of “traditional” societyʊand its features. At one point Eisenstadt leaves Weber in establishing a causal relationship between the Calvinist rationalization and the birth of modern society,17 when he seems to see in the interaction between different civilisations and the project of modernity a specific selective action oriented by the logic of cultural “borrowings” and “rejections”, at the same time he recognizes the compatibility of moments and aspects of the project of modernity with other civilisations and therefore abandons the Weberian thesis of the uniqueness of the West. Even for him, however, the problem posed by Weber and misinterpreted by Weber remains: why did the changes that led to modernity occur in the West and not in other areas that presented the same preconditions? Why, after thousands of years in which, as proven by historical research, the ‘path’ of civilisation went from East 16 The reference to Wittgenstein’s theory of language games is very instructive (see Eisenstadt 1997, 263). 17 Although there are some who (see e.g. Bell 2006 and 2008), within the Weberian scheme, to explain Chinese capitalism, replace Confucianism with Calvinism to solve the problem.

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to West, did it (the path), from the end of the eighteenth century (Goody’s thesis) or the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Braudel’s thesis) or the nineteenth century (Pomeranz’s thesis) go from West to East? Weber’s answer retains its charm, but it is excessively one-sided. The answers of others are confused assemblies of various topics. Therefore, if the answer given by Weber is wrong, the problem he poses is still on the table. What is then Weber’s lesson? Nothing? As Goody argues? Do we really have to say farewell to his analysis? To his arguments? To his questions? I do not think so. Of Weber’s work we need to keep the methodological lesson, consisting in the comparative analysis of different forms of civilisation. The cynosure of this analysis is the search, at the same time, of common traits and specific differences between different civilisations. One needs to have a concept of modernity in order to understand its multiplicity. There is a field in which Weber seems to take revenge, a posteriori, on many of his critics and it concerns the debate over human rights. From a multifarious cultural field comes a strong criticism about Europe and the West. In this criticism one often finds a more or less proud assertion of cultural differences as the basis of human rights. Each civilisation or culture claims to have within itself a specific conception of universal human values. But these values areʊso it is arguedʊ different from those of Europe and of the West. By such a token, the claim of the uniqueness and singularity of the West is denied and, at the same time, it is recognised that there is a “family” of human rights of which all are a part. Now, if everyone wants recognition of their culture, civilisation and values, this takes place in relation to a grid of values, albeit buried in other civilisations, which was developed in Europe and the West. Specificities and cultural differences are possible only if we admit the existence of a common basis. The theory of “multiple modernities” corresponds to this new phase of human history, in which societies seek mutual recognition of their particular and unique identity. But this recognition can take place ifʊand only ifʊthere is a common code of evaluation. Modernity is the phase in which a cultural code (program) is processed for all of humanity, based on certain values which are now a constitutive part of personal and collective identities. This code does not deny differences; indeed, it asserts them. And this seems to be the end of Max Weber’s lesson. To look for the peculiarities of the West within the context of the common problems of humanity.

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The moment one recognises the existence of a plurality of modern societies, emerges a true “family”, then once again the problem of describing in what ways these societies are similar and in what ways they are different, for example, from traditional societies. The complex process of criticism and revision of the Weberian conception of modern society has proceeded through disconnection. The elements in Weber or even in Eisenstadt’s conception are part of a structure and yet they are separated from each other and the existence of one of them in a society seems to be enough to qualify it as ‘modern’. This is the case of the existence of an industrial manufacturing sector in China, Japan or India. But can a society be labelled as modern on the basis of a single characteristic, industrial production, as relevant as it might be? Should we also take into account the political system? And what about the status of the individual, his greater or lesser autonomy? Moreover, in the contemporary global context, should we not pay attention to the legal system that governs the relationships between states? Does the system of Westphalia still work, or do we need a set of rules capable of governing a world by now multipolar? All this requires a renewed theoretical effort. It is necessary to identify the common features of modern societies and their specific differences. Without using as a “club” a specific feature to denigrate each other, it would be useful to follow the model adopted by Wittgenstein (1964) to interpret the relationships between games. All games are part of the same family but, as between members of a family similarities do not exclude differences, so societies, for a series of specific features could belong to the “family of modern societies” and instead be, in other respects, for example, “traditional”. The research cannot proceed without a clear definition of what is modern and what is not. Once we have solved this theoretical issue, the comparative analysis of past and present societies can proceed in such a way that each becomes the term of comparison for understanding, avoiding that one becomes the model for all. At a closer look, then, the theory of “multiple modernities” is at the level of a “research program” (Weisman 2010, 11) and has not yet reached the level of a “scientific paradigm”. In short, the theory has defined the scope of research, has made its first steps but the fruitful work is still to be done. One of the questions that our generation of scholars should answer is what is and/or what may be Europe’s role in the new pluralistic world? If nobody still believes it isʊif it ever wasʊthe “queen of civilisation”, what role can it play now that it has become a “province state of world”? And we, who live in a region of Europe, with a glorious past and a miserable present, what should we do? How can we help ourselves and the community to which we belong to emerge from its current difficulties?

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References Bell, D. A. (ed.). 2008. Confucian Political Ethics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. —. 2006. Beyond Liberal Democracy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Bernal, M. 1991. Atene nera. Le radici afroasiatiche della civiltà classica. Parma: Pratiche. Braudel, F. 1969. Ecrits sur l’histoire. Paris: Flammarion. —. 1999. Espansione europea e capitalismo. 1450-1650. Bologna: il Mulino. Brubaker, R. 2009. “Nazionalismo, eticità e modernità”, paper presented at the congress “Le modernità multiple all’inizio del XXI secolo”, Rome 23-25 settembre. Burckhardt, J. 1860. Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien. Frankfurt am Main und Leipzig: Insel Verlag. Chakrabarty, D. 2000. Provincializing Europe. Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Cotesta, V. 2012. “Identity and Human Rights: A Glance at Europe from Afar”. In Global Society and Human Rights, edited by V. Cotesta, 125149. Leiden: Brill. Delanty, G. ed. 2006. Europe and Asia Beyond East and West. Routledge: London. Eisenstadt, S. N. 1994. Fondamentalismo e modernità. Rome-Bari: Laterza. —. 1997. Modernità, modernizzazione e oltre. Rome: Armando. —. 2003. Comparative Civilisations and Multiple Modernities. LeidenBoston: Brill. Erodoto. 2000. Storie. Milan: RCS libri. Goody, J. 1996. The East in the West. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. —. 2006. “Europe and Islam”. In Europe and Asia Beyond East and West. edited by G. Delanty, 138-147. London: Routledge. Halecki, O. 1962. Limits and Divisions of European History. Notre Dame: University Press. Hegel, G. F. W. 1963. Filosofia della storia. 1830-1831, Florence: La Nuova Italia. Hirschman, A. 1992. Ascesa e declino dell’economia dello sviluppo. Turin: Rosemberg e Sellier. Hobson, J. M. 2004. The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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—. 2006, “Revealing the Cosmopolitan Side of Oriental Europe: the Eastern Origins of European Civilisation”. In Europe and Asia Beyond East and West edited by G. Delanty, 148-152. London: Routledge. Inglis, D. and R. Robertson. 2006. “Discovering the World: Cosmopolitanism and Globality in the Eurasian Renaissance”. In Europe and Asia Beyond East and West edited by G. Delanty, 92-106. London: Routledge. Jaspers, K. 1949. Vom Ursprung und Ziel des Geschichte. Zürich: Artemis, then München: Piper. Kant, I. 1977. “Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht”. In Schriften zur Anthropologie, Geschichts-philosophie, Politik und Pädagogik, Werkausgabe, edited by I. Kant, BA 151. Frankfurt a.M.: Surhkamp. —. 1923. Physische Geographie, Berlin: Akademische Ausgabe. —. 1977. “Von den Verschiedenen Rassen der Menschen”. In Schriften zur Anthropologie, Geschichts-philosophie, Politik und Pädagogik, Werkausgabe, by I. Kant, 183-192. Frankfurt a.M.: Surhkamp. Leibniz, G. W. 1987. Discours sur la théologie naturelle des Chinois. Paris: L’Herne. Martinelli, A. 2005. Global Modernities. Rethinking the Project of Modernity, London: Sage. —. 2008. L’Occidente allo specchio. Milan: Università Bocconi Editore. Mitterauer, M. 2009. Warum Europa? Mittelalterliche Grundlagen eines Sonderwegs. München: C.H. Beck. Parsons, T. 1966. Societies. Evolutionary and Comparative Perspectives. Englewood Cliffs (N.J.): Prentice-Hall. —. 1971. The System of Modern Societies. Englewood Cliffs (N.J.): Prentice-Hall. Pomeranz, K. 2000. The Great Divergence. China, Europe and the Making of the Modern World Economy. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Robinson, J. A. and K. Wiegandt. 2008. Die Ursprünge der Moderne Welt. Frankfurt a. Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag. Said, E. W. 2001. Orientalismo. Milan: Feltrinelli. Scheidel, W. 2009. “From the ‘Great Convergence’ to the ‘First Great Divergence’. Roman and Qin-Han State Formation and Its Aftermath”. In Rome and China. Comparative Perspectives on Ancient World Empires edited by W. Scheidel, 11-23. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schluchter, W. 1993. “Il paradosso della razionalizzazione. Sul rapporto tra “Etica” e “Mondo” in Max Weber”. In Per leggere Max Weber edited by H. Treiber, 150-186. Padua: Cedam.

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Seligman, A. B. 2009. “Modernità e sincerità: problema e paradosso”. Paper presented at the congress “Le modernità multiple all’inizio del XXI secolo”, Rome 23-25 September. Smith, A. 1776. Inquiring into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. London: Methuen. Tenbruck, F. H. 1993. “L’opera di Max Weber”. In Per leggere Max Weber edited by H. Treiber, 66-141. Padua: Cedam. Vernet, J. 1985. Ce que la culture doit aux arabes d’Espagne. Arles: Sindbad/Actes sud. Wallerstein, I. 1974. The Modern World System. New York: Academic Press. —. 1979. The Capitalist World Economy. Cambridge (Mass.): Academic Press. —. 1989. The Modern World System III. San Diego: Academic Press. —. 2003. The Decline of American Power. New York: The New Press. Wang Hui. 2006. Il nuovo ordine cinese. Rome: Il manifesto libri. —. 2009. The End of the Revolution. China and the Limits of Modernity. London: Verso. Weber, M. 1988. Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie (3 vols.). Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Weisman, C. H. 2010. “Institutional Transfer and Varieties of Capitalism in Transitional Societies”. Paper presented at the XVII World Congress of Sociology, Goteborg, 11-17 June. Wiredu, K. 2006. A Companion to African Philosophy. Malden (Mass.): Blackwell Publishing. Wittgenstein, L. 1964. Philosophische Untersuchungen. Oxford: Basis Blackwell. Wittrock, B. 2000. “Modernity: One, None, or Many?”. Daedalus 129 (1):31-60.

CHAPTER TWO COSMOPOLITANISM IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES AND THE RETURN TO KANT ÁRON TELEGDI-CSETRI

Introduction1 Recent research in the social and political sciences, as well as the humanities has experienced a radical turn, comparable to the gender turn in its scope and epistemological, as well as social and political implications. We have indeed witnessed the emergence of a self-standing scientific fieldʊcosmopolitanism studies—that surpasses the limitations of individual sciences and defines itself from an autonomous perspective, if not theoretically, then at least in a self-evident factual manner. This contribution comes to question some of its background ideas from aʊhermeneutically constitutedʊKantian viewpoint. Given the existence of prolific theoretical and practical stances within the fieldʊI am referring to cosmopolitan theories and research itineraries as multicoloured as those of moral, political, legal, anthropological, architectural etc. cosmopolitanismsʊI propose to locate a common ground of these territorial claims in their methodology. I claim, hence, that there must be a minimal criterion to assess the claim to the adjective “cosmopolitan” as referring to research fields, and therewith, that this criterion can be located in what we should call “methodological cosmopolitanism”. As Ulrich Beck understands it, methodological cosmopolitanismʊin contrast with methodological nationalismʊstands for the principle of analysis, indeed of thought under which the scope of comparison of individualsʊhence the horizon of society of such individualsʊis no 1

This research has been carried out within the research project financed by UEFISCDI, contract number 261 /August 05 2010; project manager Áron TelegdiCsetri.

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longer limited by the nation-state as a territorially defined ultimate entity. Obviously, it is not on simply moral groundsʊbased on the idea that humans are equal by birthʊbut on political ones that this methodological expectation is stipulated: in the context of globalisation, both the subject of sovereigntyʊformerly the nation-stateʊand its objectʊformerly the citizenʊhave changed. In this context, the obvious further methodological question poses itself: how should we interpret the unitsʊthe subject and objectʊof sovereignty in order not to miss the very aim of the cosmopolitan revolution, i.e. the core concept of its methodology? Beck and others hint at a heuristic way of finding the elements usable for reconstructing this unit, however, this heuristics itself is mediated through the same concept formerly used for the critique of nation-state sovereignty: culture. Culture being the ultimate resource from which social science hopes to reconstruct any possible model for a cosmopolitan methodology, it is only self-evident to ask the cosmopolitan question regarding this resource: what is culture in its cosmopolitan function? Also, to conclude this introduction, let us remember that the one most cited historical author in cosmopolitanism is Immanuel Kant. It is unsurprising, as Axel Honneth explains, that after a period of turmoil in political and social philosophy, after the fall of great Hegelian, Marxist and liberal theories, there be a “return” to Kant. Still, the failure of all alternatives does not exactly lead to a returnʊrather, to the radicalisation of a problematicʊthat of modernityʊthat has not properly evolved, only changed. Therefore, it is rather recommended, in my view, to reframe the question concerning cosmopolitan culture in a Kantian context, instead of seeking his legitimisation for our own questions, not yet exhaustively understood within his own philosophy.

1. Kant’s cosmopolitanism in a nutshell In fact, Kant’s cosmopolitanism is not a problematic theoryʊit is not even a theory in the strong sense of the word, as Garret Brown explains. However, this is only the surface, as we shall see. To put it briefly, all that Kant claims in his explicit political theoryʊas exemplified in Towards Perpetual Peace (1795)ʊis that there should be a cosmopolitan law, beyond domestic and international legislation, regulating the relationships of any state towards any individual, and that this cosmopolitan law should be limited to the right of hospitality. Insofar we consider this weak claim together with its strong background argument ʊwhich encompasses the great theoretical constructs of universal morality and historical teleologyʊwe might, still, find it problematic and

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controversial. But, as Brown explains, it is a consciously limited theory with more implications beyond itself than in itself, hence it is rather recommended to view it in a larger context. Considered in a contextualised way, the Kantian cosmopolitan claim leads to two immediate, and at once contradictory, conclusions, a situation that seems to me symptomatic of its very intent. Namely, as a noteworthy situation at this year’s Kant Congress exemplifies, we can deduce both an argument for and one against a global state. At the Congress, auditors who happened to shift rooms could attend two parallel speeches, from Onora O’Neill and Thomas Pogge, respectively arguing against and for the necessity of a global state, on strong Kantian grounds. It must be noted that Kant’s moral and legal universalism indeed seems statist, on the one hand, leading to the logical conclusion of the extension of state authority to a global level: into a world state. On the other hand, his warnings against the possibility of a global despotism seem to be just as seriousʊhowever theoretically weakerʊthus grounding the arguments against a world state. More interestingly, his cosmopolitan argument never touches the issue of international unification, only that of a free league, never claiming a meta-national legislation that could address nations as subordinated subjects, only as free partakersʊthis being an equally strong argument to refute the one for a world state. I take this situation to ask for clarification from a different direction. Within his political theory, the equivocal nature of Kant’s argument is unsolvable, not because it is unclear, but for the reason of its embedded character, i.e. through the fact that his cosmopolitanism is not primarily political, but philosophical. The sense of this stance is to be understood from more than just his political claims.

2. An instance of criticism Before turning to Kant himself, let us reformulate the classical postmodern criticism against modern authors, in this case, Kant. It is from a hegemonic European culture, they say, that Kant and his cosmopolitanism draw their motivation and structure, hence their claims to justice, tolerance, universality and opennessʊi.e. the very core of a cosmopolitan idealʊare essentially flawed. Let us be quite attentive: this type of argument always proceeds from culture to the individual, from identity to difference, from the positive to the transcendental. The short answer would sound like this: philosophical concepts are, or at least claim to be, culture-independent; but let us consider the criticism in more detail before trying to answer it more comprehensively.

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As an example, let us remind ourselves of Jacques Derrida’s reconstruction of Kant’s cosmopolitanism, who complained about this not being able to accommodate foreign nationals’ claim for residence. By this, I understand the need for unconditional openness toward the “other”, towards individuals as such, reaching to their full acceptance as citizens. Obviously, this is not the case in Kant. Still, the need that it be so tells of a more profound post-modern expectation: that otherness as such should be politically embraced by the new dynamics of our global existence. Difference being interpreted, however, as cultural difference, it turns out that cultureʊhegemonic Western cultureʊis to blame for its not being accommodated. In order to assess Kant’s ideas about culture, and a possible formulation of his defense, I recommend reading his Anthropology (1798), a locus of most of the major themes relating to culture, politics and history. Also, the Anthropology is a text rather free of the supposedly flawed aprioristic constructs, since it is not a philosophical, but educational ʊpragmaticʊwork. Our questioning concerning Kant’s cosmopolitanism ʊhence his understanding of differenceʊand its relationship to culture can find an optimal terrain within its limits.

3. The Anthropology The actual work is in fact Kant’s own publication of his textbook at the basis of his Anthropology course. The course, on the other hand, has seen other, later instances of publication, becoming the testimony of the author’s intellectual development. The wording of its title, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, refers to the relevant epistemology of Kant’s vision on the human sciences. It is not a moral approach, educating the student how to form his will, nor is it a theoretical one, since a philosophical anthropology for Kant amounts to an oxymoron. Its pragmatism can be expressed in its leading principleʊin the idea of showing what man can and should make of itselfʊnot as an empirical description, nor as a normative claim, but as an endeavour oriented by universalisticʊand hence cosmopolitan!ʊ views on culture and history, seeking examples, not facts. Lurking in the background of the named leading principle we must mention the ideaʊpresent in Kant’s writings on history as wellʊthat the itinerary of the individual is socially embedded. This idea draws on the presuppositions of the teleological argument, stating that Nature’s hidden plan includes the development unto perfection of each speciesʊin the case of man, this meaning that the goal of the individual is directed towards the

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fulfilment of the species’ differentia specifica: Reason. Given that the existence of the individual is temporally limited, it is only through partaking in a community having a common epistemic horizon, a tradition and an identityʊi.e., through belonging to a cultureʊthat the individual is able to rationally strive towards its goal defined by Nature. Still, I understand this to be a matter of the given, and not of ought, pertaining to the natural side of the teleological argument, not holding therefore any ethical relevance. Pragmatically, it is through culture that the possibilities of the individual for development are to be observed. Still, culture is not just an occurrence, a mere contingent historical form with no rational contents: it is always an image of the rule, according to which freedom is defined in the given society. As such, it is itself a unit of sovereignty, not in the sense that it controls minds or people, but in the more implicit sense that it is itself an expression of freedom, holding a normative claim to autonomy insofar it conveys it in an epistemic manner. We must only observe the exact understanding in which culture is autonomy: as a way, an expression, a form of freedom, given beforehand, lived through existentially as something given. This fact reveals exactly the inner tension of the Anthropology: even if culture is given, temporal, a posteriori, its contents, its claims are normative, transcendental, aprioristic. Here we do not have the space to even explain this tension in detail, let me only note that it is not easily dispensed with. What we must retain from the Anthropology is the factual needʊthe natural-teleological necessityʊfor culture and its problematic relationship to freedom. Nowhere do we observe a normative approach having culture for a subject: it is always the individual that is free. Also, it is the individual that needs culture for attaining its natural goal, and if Nature wills that we have culture, it is only on the basis of our individually, morally and universally oriented approach to history that we can see this purposeʊhence the idea of a universal history with a cosmopolitan purpose.

4. Saving Kant If we try to return to the above-mentioned idea, the one that I would call the fetishism of cultureʊobservable in multi-culturalism and postmodernismʊwe may restate its ideal structure using Kantian terms in the following way. Any culture is free in its own right as a special expression of freedom, hence no cultureʊand no philosophical theory, these being culturally embeddedʊmay have primacy over others. More

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specifically, any culture as an expression of Nature’s intention to lead the species to its perfection is equal to any other, simply because there is no third term the comparison could use as a criterion. However, there is such a third term, namely, autonomy. It is there to start with, as the very reason of conceiving history, and culture therein, in a universalist manner. Viewed from its perspective, culture is not contingent to history, and history to Nature, but all are contingent to the idea of the human being as a free, rational agent living under factual, determinedʊhistoricalʊconditions. Hence, culture acquires a negative sense beside the positive one described before: it not only expresses, but also limits the individual’s possibilities of expressingʊindeed experimenting ʊfreedom. The correctness of such an argument is supported by Kant’s own negative use of culture in the context of universal history, as explained by Marianna Papastephanou (2009). It is not, again, a contingent fact that there exists a plurality of cultures, rather it should be seen as an expression of Nature’s wisdom against a possible forceful formation of a world state! This is the restatement of the unsocial sociability argument with reference to culture: where man wishes concord, Nature begs for discord. Since the idea of a universal historyʊand therewith of a kingdom of endsʊis only a regulative ideaʊsee Kleingeld (2008)ʊit is not, and should not be supposed as if it were, in our power to bring about. Hence, culture could, and should also be seen as the principle of discord, and in epistemic terms, of non-understanding, of non-sense, when viewed from a cosmopolitan perspective. Saving Kant from this point on should prove a clear-cut enterprise. Since his claims for any normative value of culture are, on the one hand, based on a teleological mode of argument, on the other, are as much negative as positive in its treatment, his stance should prove validʊor invalid, for that matterʊirrespective of its cultural embedding. To put it bluntly, he takes culture into account, and in a way both more far-reaching and more profound than his critics do. The interesting way to rephrase the question is rather this: one should ask whether his philosophical culture itself has the character of a monologue or that of a dialogueʊI suggest the latter, but this is a question for another research. The line of argument sketched above has two important consequences. On the one hand, we witness the return of autonomy to the discourse on cultureʊhence we are one step closer to a methodologically cosmopolitan social science that seeks a global scope for its analysis. On the other hand, our focus must shift from cultures as units of sovereignty to individuals, and if we wish to maintain a Kantian cosmopolitan perspective, to their

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involvement in universal history. The motive of this involvement should not be sought around a universal rationalityʊone that we either take for granted or dismiss altogetherʊbut around the idea of happiness, the very link between any rationality and its social context.

5. A new approach to social existence Note that I do not claim the necessity of one universal reason for investigating cosmopolitan contents in global society. Rather, I assume that the universal is there through the global, and it is the choice of each individual how to relate to itʊhow he/she conceives of it in terms of his/her own happiness. A noteworthy detail offers itself at this point. As Susan Meld Shell (2003) explains, Kant shifts his concept of happiness from a StoicRousseauean type that emphasised the rational representation of a harmony of pleasures as the grounds for a conception of happiness, to a mature modern idea of a teleological representation of happiness as mediated by the concept of work as a transcendental principle. Due to this shift, the modern individual does not retain the pragmatic grounds of his/her autonomyʊthese grounds being a given representation of happinessʊto itself, rather projects it outside itself into a social sphere where it gains reality through the reifying process of work as teleological action. Linking this information to the vision of the individual as a performing agent of a culturally embedded universal, we shall arrive at the idea of culture as something to be overcome by individual performance, this performance referring back to a social horizon on which it can be understood as workʊthat is, as a goal that can be represented for others from the point of view of its effect. Without giving up culture as a medium of understanding, but considering it also in its limiting function, we may stipulate the idea of work as a principleʊboth subject and objectʊof sovereignty, carrier of a teleological content that can implicitly refer to universal teleology.

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References Beck, U. 2010. “Remapping social inequalities in an age of climate change: for a cosmopolitan renewal of sociology”. Global Network 10 (2): 165-181. Beck, U. and E. Grande. 2010. “Varieties of second modernity: the cosmopolitan turn in social and political theory and research”. The British Journal of Sociology 61 (3): 409-443. Beck, U. and N. Sznaider. 2006. “Unpacking cosmopolitanism for the social sciences: a research agenda”. The British Journal of Sociology 57 (1): 1-23. Brown Wallace, G. 2005. “State Sovereignty, Federation and Kantian Cosmopolitanism”. European Journal of International Relations, 11 (4): 495-522. —. 2006. “Kantian Cosmopolitan Law and the Idea of a Cosmopolitan Constitution”. History of Political Thought 27 (3): 661-684. —. 2008. “Moving Cosmopolitan Legal Theory to Legal Practice: Models of Cosmopolitan Law”. Legal Studies. 28 (3): 430-451. —. 2008. “Globalisation is What we Make of It: Contemporary Globalisation Theory and the Future Construction of Global Interconnectedness”. Political Studies Review. 6 (1): 42-53. —. 2009. Grounding Cosmopolitanism: From Kant to the Idea of a Cosmopolitan Constitution. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. —. 2010. “The Laws of Hospitality, Asylum Seekers and Cosmopolitan Right: A Kantian Response to Derrida”. European Journal of Political Theory 9 (3): 308-327. Delanty, G. 2006. “The Cosmopolitan Imagination: Critical Cosmopolitanism and Social Theory”. The British Journal of Sociology. 57 (1): 25-47. Feger, H. 2007. “The Chain of Freedom: Moral Autonomy with Cosmopolitan Intent”. The Review of Metaphysics 60: 833-853. Foucault, M. 2009. “Introduction à l‘Anthropologie”. In Anthropologie du point de vue pragmatique edited by E. Kant, 5-23. Paris: Vrin. Honneth, A. 2010. The Pathologies of Individual Freedom: Hegel’s Social Theory (Princeton Monographs in Philosophy). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kahn, S. J. 2003. “Anthropology as cosmopolitan practice?” Anthropological Theory 3 (4): 403-415. Kant, I. 2007. Toward Perpetual Peace. London: FQClassic. —. 2006. Anthropology. From a Pragmatic Point of View. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Kleingeld, P. 2008. “Kant on Historiography and the Use of Regulative Ideas”. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 39: 523-528. Louden, R. B. 2008. “Anthropology from a Kantian Point of View: Toward a Cosmopolitan Conception of Human Nature”. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 39: 515-522. Papastephanou, M. 2002. “Kant’s Cosmopolitanism and Human History”. History of the Human Sciences 15 (1): 17-37. Shell Meld, S. 2003. “Kant’s True Economy of Human Nature”: Rousseau, Count Verri, and the Problem of Happiness”. In Essays on Kant’s Anthropology, edited by B. Jacobs and P. Kain, 194-229. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

CHAPTER THREE BEYOND METHODOLOGICAL NATIONALISM: SUGGESTIONS FROM THE FIELD OF COMPLEXITY FABIO INTROINI

Contemporary sociology is used to inscribing its reflections and empirical research in the frame of “global society”, a concept such as “taken for granted” and clear in itself. In effect, a more than 20 year old debate about globalisation might, per se, legitimise this attitude and persuade us that “the global”, as a theoretical topic, is not worth any further attention. Our idea is that just this thoughtless assumption of the term risks generalising a peculiar way of thinking about the global that, paradoxically, could be misleading for the right comprehension of those social phenomena we got used to putting inside its framework. So the aim of this presentation is to question the global as a concept, offering a “deconstruction” of its mainstream meaning. It is not by chance that even in recent years several contemporary sociology scholars such as Beck (2002),1 Urry (2003) and Sassen (2007) have deeply criticized the concept of “global/global society”. Even if starting from different points of view, they agree with each other in underlining how, by means of this concept, we risk proposing a too reified, hypostatized and territorialized image of the social itself. Put in other words, the mainstream (and commonsense) meaning of the word “global” wouldn’t enable sociology to really go beyond what Beck calls “methodological nationalism”, and the idea of social order contained in it:

1

But see also the whole Italian reader on Beck’s cosmopolitanism (2003) in which the 2002 quoted article is included (La società cosmopolita. Prospettive dell’epoca postnazionale).

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an idea borne by the overlapping of the epistemological and political conceptions of order.2 What this sense of the global produces, even if at a much more macro level (than the national one), is a misreading and a domestication of those processes that we define as globalising, and whose real effect, if correctly understood, is just the deconstruction and invalidation of every attempt to describe the social in terms of containers and scales (as it happens with the traditional opposition between micro and macro levels). In other words, sociology continues to apply an old category to a world whose radical changes constitute a radical challenge to its “traditional” epistemology. And the name of this challenge is trans-nationalization. Besides, according to this old epistemology, social changeʊeven that from national to global societyʊis still thought in linear terms as a transition from old to new without realising that, in the new scenery, it is this same logic of change that has been transformed. So, if sociology, as many scholars are used to saying, needsʊin Kuhnian wordsʊa paradigm shift, this new paradigm must sketch at least a different conception of the global, able to grasp the sense and the dynamics of trans-nationalization and transnationalism, catching their nature of “epistemological picklock”. The reflection we propose in this paper aims to examine those categories produced and defined inside that variegated and articulated field of study and research called “complexity theories” or “complexity sciences”. The question we would like to answer is: does reasoning in terms of complexity/complex society rather than in terms of globality/global society constitute an appropriate epistemological turn in order to reach the objectives before sketched? This wouldn’t mean, anyway, deleting the word “global” from the sociological dictionary. It means, instead, to try to re-activate, in the word “global”, new semantic marks able to make it more viable as a descriptor of contemporary society. To better highlight the pertinence of such topics with the wider discourse on cosmopolitanism and human rights, it is worth stressing in advance the political value of the epistemological questions here presented and discussed. In fact, if complexityʊas we will see better aheadʊhelps sociology to de-essentialise the categories by which we think about the social, this “new” epistemology forces political discourse to reason without those conceptual toolsʊthe essences preciselyʊthat enabled it to solve with relative ease problems and questions about cultural differences and their cohabitation. 2

Latour would say that sociologists are still committed to a “sociology of the social”, thinking of “the social” as if it were peculiar stuff that things are made of.

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1. Complexity before and after globalisation Before delving into the theoretical reasons that legitimise the placing side by side of globalisation and complexity, I would like to start with the historical ones. In this regard, it is useful to remember that the relationship between social sciences and complexity has a two-stage history. The first stage took place in the Forties with the diffusion of the cybernetic program that, as it is well known, represented a meaningful phase of interdisciplinary debate and discussion (Bocchi and Ceruti 2005). Even the most famous version of a “sociology of complexity”ʊthat is Luhmann’s sociologyʊ can be brought back to this early stage. The second stage, instead, has begun just with the rise of the debate, inside the social sciences, on globalisation. The main feature of this second stage is that the concept of complexity is now used in two different ways: the first more “literal” and scientific; the second more metaphorical. In both cases the recovery of complexity is linked with the new facies of the social, deeply transformed by the de-fringing effects of globalisation processes. Globalisation, as it is well known, blurs all kinds of borders, starting from the national ones and creates a web of worldwide connections between individual, collective and institutional actors. For the same reasons, it gives way to the release of differences, cultural in primis, that now can circulate beyond the traditional territorial barriers. All these phenomena converge, ultimately, to the deconstruction of the traditional order pillars, making the social world unintelligible. However, while the first path3 may be considered a new, updated version of the cybernetics/systemic approach to the study of the social,4 the second oneʊthat we suggest calling “anthropological”ʊreconnects with a broader sense of complexity that summarizes, in itself, the relativistic 3

It is this way of studying complexity that gave birth to the (controversial) conviction that it is possible to talk about a “complexity paradigm” or a “complexity science”. This conviction is due to the high formalization capability offered by systemic language. However, at a closer look, even inside this approach we find quite different ways to face complexity so that it is impossible to reduce such a variety to a single science. Besides, as we will argue ahead in these pages, complexity works at the epistemological level, and starting from it, several different scientific approaches become possible. To delve into this question see also Stengers (2007). 4 My reference is here to that kind of study carried out, for example, by the Santa Fè Institute (New Mexico) and, more generally, to every attempt to apply theories and concepts elaborated by the so called Science of Chaos directly to the social. For an overview of Santa Fè scientific production, see Johnson (2002) and Waldrop (1992).

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outcomes of twentieth century philosophy about the limits of human knowledge and science in particular. Even if they both distance themselves from what Von Foerster calls “metaphysical realism” to embrace a common, constructivist epistemology, these two approaches differ from each other for their different attitude toward scientific knowledge. Systemics, in fact, does not consider complexity as the setback of science tout-court, but only of that particular science, that we can call traditional or modern, still following and believing in linearity. Thanks to its capability to produce a high formalization of its concepts and definitions, systemics manages to treat in scientific terms even those problems and questions that fall outside traditional science and tend to be defined as non-scientific. At any rate, that attitude risks proposing a closed version of complexity that, in itself, is at first a hint to openness and a constant, epistemological invite to keep our categories and our models open to the un-determined. In other words, though more flexible than “traditional” science, systemics risks ending paradoxically in a new kind of scientism. On the other side, following the anthropological path, we meet another paradox: in this case, just the complete assumption of complexity in all its openness can lead to extreme localistic closure, forcing (social) sciences to a radical hermeneutics of the particular, forbidding them to produce any kind of generalisation. And this, as it is well known, means to go against the epistemological status of (classic) science itself.5 In light of these observations, there are some consequences in reference to the aims of our reasoning. First, we can’t speak of a “complexity paradigm” as a coherent and pacified corpus of theories “ready-to-use” and available to social sciences. In other words, complexity is not a readymade solution for sociology’s epistemological problems. This is not only because discourse about complexity is split into the two polarities we put into evidence above, but because these same polarities are, in turn, divided and articulated into several different positions and tendencies. Second, if we moved closer to complexity in order to find in it a set of de-reified categories able to better describe fluid society of today, complexity does not even seem to guarantee us from the risk of new, even if more sophisticated, reifications. It is worth recalling, in this regard, the critics that Edgar Morinʊan authority in this fieldʊalready moved to systemics during the Eighties (Morin 1982). According to his point of view, systemicsʊwith strong implications mainly for social sciences 5

On the comparison between these two approaches and the reasons that suggested I call the second one “anthropological” see Introini (2011).

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ʊwould have disregarded just the de-reifying potential lying in the same concept of “system”: it is transformed in a new, perhaps only more updated version of the ancient “structure”. Neither the attempt to refer to the fashionable concept of network, strongly related to complexity,6 and a real protagonist in today’s sociology, may represent a viable alternative. It is useful to notice, in this regard, the way in which John Urry criticizes Castells’ network society sociology. As the mainstream notion of the global, criticized by Beck and Sassen, Castells’ idea of network (see Castells 1996) goes on to reify, losing its capability to catch those same features of the social which it is used to explain. To be more precise with the idea of network, Urry proposes a distinction between Globally Integrated Networks (GIN) and that kind of “webs” that A. Mol and J. Law (1994) call Global Fluids (GF). Here we cannot delve into this distinction. At any rate, it would be enough to say, within the limits of our theoretical aims, that according to Urry GINs are the typical exemplification of how a network can be so different from the idea we have built of it starting from the Internet imagery. In other words, there is not just one kind of network: there are different kinds of networks. And just a few types have the characteristics ʊsuch as flexibility, horizontality and variable geometry ʊwe tend to summarise in our idea of network qua talis. GINs, in fact, are often rigid and hierarchical and they are seen as a means of generating the standardisation of products and services all around the world. As examples of GINs, Urry takes some very famous global players of economy but also of the global civil society such as McDonald’s and Coca Cola, but also Greenpeace. The same players Sassen would define as “patently global” (2007).

2. From society to collectives and beyond. Towards an epistemology for the cosmopolitan society via Bruno Latour To be sure that categories such as complexity and network could really work for social science progress we need to trace their epistemological origin and avoid stopping, at a more superficial level, those discourses about complexity and networks that take us to linger on. In other words we 6

According to an updated version of systemics, the network is just the main feature of the so called Adaptive Complex Systems. In fact, at a closer analysis, all their other characteristics as well as their peculiar behaviour may be brought back to their network-like shape (see Gandolfi 2008).

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have to regain the deep epistemological meaning of such categories. Without this deepening examination, they risk remaining nothing more than theoretical or methodological tricks, able only to give the illusion of renewing sociology vocabulary or of enhancing its methodological toolbox. All these novelties reveal themselves to be totally useless if we apply them without changing, at the same time, our epistemology. In other words, complexity and networks must be put in use firstly at the epistemological level, to change our theory of society. Only after can they be used as empirical descriptors or methodological tools. In fact, as Bruno Latour stated (1997), it is really unhelpful to apply the concept of network to our society if before we didn’t use it against the same idea of society and if we didn’t before realise that the idea of network can give us the chance to rethink and re-write the same theory of society. That of network is quite a poor category if we don’t understand, by its means, the historical and epistemological limits of our (modern) idea of society and the need of its rethink. Network and society are at the origin of two different epistemologies. Network, as an empirical descriptor, is useless if our thought remains committed to the idea of society Latour criticises. So it is at the epistemological level that, according to Latour, we have to place the relationship between complexity, network and contemporary world.7 And, taking a closer look, the lesson we can gain from the history of complexity is at first epistemological, because it emerges as a topic with the questioning of and the attempt to overcome the dualistic Cartesian paradigm and the metaphysical realism that grounds it. To say with a slogan, Latour’s thought tries to trace a way to overcome this. To better understand his reasoning, it would be necessary to take as a premise the outcome of his “genealogic” path into modernity (1996; 1997; 2005a). According to him, modernity represents that peculiar life form in which science and politics are so fully separated that they neither influence nor contaminate each other (mainly Latour 1997 and 1999). But according to Latour, this same divide so highly and proudly proclaimed was indeed the premise for the political project of modernity itself. To justify and present as a state of affairs this divide, nothing more than (a certain idea of) science could do. So modernity engaged in the strong defense of science understood as that peculiarʊand the only oneʊkind of human knowledge able to reach a “naked truth”, pre-existing and independent from the same 7

The use of “world” instead of “society” is intentional and is the direct consequence of following Latour’s thought. Society is a peculiar life form, we can’t use it as a mere, generic word to signify “togetherness”. We will come back to this question ahead in the next pages.

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knowledge act. Hence that objectivistic [positivistic] and realistic conception of objectivity defined as correspondence between an autonomous object, provided with intrinsic features (what metaphysics calls “essences”) and a knowledge that limits itself to ratify them. Latour’s version, instead, is that this same aprioristic extraneousness between subject and objectʊas required by realismʊguaranteeing the same existence of such pure knowledge is, in turn, derived (i.e., constructed and then hidden. See Latour 1996). The object in itself, in other words, is such because it is produced as such. On the other hand it is a sui generis product because, in order to play its role in modern life form, it must not be acknowledged as being made. This is the reason why, as already stated, modernity must also hide the production conditions and operations under which the object is built. Things get more complex but even clearer if we look at the constitution of sociology in French Positivism and in Durkheim in particular. To understand his role in this affair, we just need to remember his intention to study social phenomena (social facts) as things. Here the modern political project using science for political ends but denying at the same time any relations between them emerges in all its clarity.8 And it is just this cultural frame, which merges politics and epistemology while believing to keep them apart, that gives birth to that reified idea of society at the basis of methodological nationalism. The same idea that, as we saw before, still conditions the mainstream idea of the global. This is why Latour can speak of an epistemological foundation of the state (2005a; 2005b9). But we can also say, reversing the terms of the question, of a politically oriented epistemology. In other words: the ontology of the nation-state is shaped by an epistemology that imposed itself, in turn, for strategicʊbut we can also say politicalʊreasons. This operation is made possible by the overlapping between the political and epistemological ideas of order. To cross the 8

Here we are trying to put in the same line of reasoning what Latour says in two different works which share the same spirits but at the same time a different focalization, the first one (1999) more interested in nature sciences and the second one more interested in social sciences (in particular what Latour calls “sociology of the social”). The reason legitimizing our operation is the fact that, following the history of ideas and the same Latourian thought in its entirety, sociology (which gives birth to sociology of the social) tried to find its way to science by imitating, with French Positivism, the sciences of nature and their epistemology. On this topic, see Montuschi (2006). 9 The publication date of the French and American edition is the same. For textual quotations, I make reference to the American edition.

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complexity thresholdʊor, in more Latourian terms, to embrace the idea of networksʊthen means to renounce to the modern idea of science and to its realist assumptions to go ultimately into a post-objectual world (that doesn’t mean post-objective anyway) and taking on all the consequences.10 This means to open an epistemology which admits, without any trauma, the built nature of the object and which substitutes its dualistic opposition toward a subject the idea of a thick, infinite web of connections from which the same subject and object emerge defining each other. The point is that social sciences are so drenched, even in their lexicon, with the previous, modern epistemology that to go further they need to drift apart even from their usual language. According to Latour, we have to leave a sociology of the social to marry a sociology of what he calls “collectives” (1999, 2005b). Starting from their definition, it is possible to show all Latourian sociology programs. It is a theoretical proposal that here we can only sum-up in a few, very assertive “slogans”. 1.Society is closed and aprioristically given. Collectives are at the same time open-and-closed. They are structurally open but, for pragmatic reasons, they need some closure (1999). But the main difference from society is that a collective is conscious that, to fulfill closure, decision is necessary. This is unavoidably arbitrary, no objective “out there” which can guarantee its rightness. 2.Modern idea of society throws back to essences, collectives are not grounded by any essences.11 By essences here we must intend “metaphysical” warrantors of objectivity. An essence is, so to speak, the intrinsic reason that makes a thing what it is, as a “law of nature”. Reasoning in terms of essences means to think that the world is mostly stable and unchangeable, made of well-defined and autonomous objects, split up by clear and fixed borders that protect and isolate the 10

Because, as we underlined above, in the Latourian “genealogy”, it is the modern idea of science to shape world, society and politics, once we drop that idea, we have to rethink them. This is the reason why talking about science in a discourse on collectives is not a detour. 11 Essence is a term brought by the philosophical metaphysical language. In metaphysics, essences are the meta-empirical guarantee upon which is founded the intelligibility of the world and of our experience or, in other words, the possibility of our knowledge objectivity. In a certain sense, modern science, even if it deeply criticises metaphysics, shares, mutatis mutandis, the same approach to the question of our knowledge objectivity. So according to this philosophy of scienceʊshared by the same Latourʊmodern (idea of) nature can still be described as a world of essences. For Latour’s conception of “essences”, see Latour (1999). For the relationship between metaphysics and “nature”, see also Balandier (1988).

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domains of our knowledge and our experience. Starting from the line that distinguishes and keeps nature and culture apart and continuing with the ones dividing actor from actor, community from community, (local) culture from (local) culture and, last but not leastʊmainly for our theoretical purposesʊthe global from the local. 3.During modernity, politics and science were deeply distinguished for their different relationship with “truth” (1999, 2009). Science was the realm of objective knowledge and the only domain in which it could reveal itself. Politics, instead, was the realm of subjectivity, characterized by the endless and unsolvable conflict between opinions. So the moderns wished that science would have taken the place of politics. It means that sociology, dealing with human affairs and not with nature, could become objective only by treating its objects as natural science did. It is useful to remember that the modern idea of science was shaped upon natural sciences.12 So science was a powerful means of closing down any kind of controversies. In collectives, science does not has not a privileged position towards truth, because it doesn’t unveil any realistic objectivity. So science, instead of simplifying and solving our controversies, paradoxically makes them even more complex, introducing into the public arena new kinds of actors, in particular those kinds of actors that Latour calls non-human, such as technological objects and artifacts tout-court, but also new life forms like the “ozone hole”, viruses, bacteria and all those kinds of “presences” that sciences first have brought into our world and that in Nous n’avons jamais eté modernes the author calls “hybrids of nature and culture” (1999).13 Let us see how Latour himself portrays some of 12

At least in the French (Positivistic) culture, with which Latour enters into a debate. 13 The question of the relationship between what Latour calls, respectively, nonhumans, hybrids, natures-and-cultures is very complex and may not be explored here. We can say, however, that all these expressions try to convey the idea of the world that emerges once we have decided to reject the modern distinction and opposition between nature and culture. This terminology is also deeply rooted in Latour’s epistemology and his peculiar version of constructivism we have sketched here. Besides, it is worth saying that it is just only thanks to the practice of “real sciences”ʊin opposition to the philosophical idea of Scienceʊhat we are beginning to learn, according to Latour, the impossibility to think the subject and the object as separated, autonomous and independent from each other. So I propose applying the category of hybrid at two different but strictly tied levels: 1) at the epistemological one, in order to mean the co-construction of subject and object in scientific practices and in knowledge in general; 2) at the society theory level, in order to underline how our collectives are made by humans and non-humans.

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these hybrids describing, at the same time, how he and his colleagues14 study them: MacKenzie mobilizes the entire American Navy, and even Congress, to talk about his inertial guidance system; Callon mobilizes the French electric utility (EDF) and Renault as well as great chunks of French energy policy to grapple with changes in ions at the tip of an electrode in the depth of a laboratory; Huges reconstructs all America around the incandescent filament of Edison’s lamp: the whole of French society comes into view if one tugs on Pasteur’s bacteria; and it becomes impossible to understand brain peptides without hooking them up with a scientific community, instruments, practicesʊall impedimenta that bear very little resemblance to rules of method, theories and neurons […] The Navy’s organization is profoundly modified by the way its offices are allied with its bombs; EDF and Renault take on a completely different look depending on whether they invest in fuel cells or the internal combustion engine; America before electricity and America after are two different places… (1993, p. 4)15

4.Global and local do not exist, or, at least, they do not in the usual meaning, by which we were used to thinking of two separated spheres each made of its own structures, actors and processes. In other words, global and local have been hypostatized and dualistically opposed as if they were two separated containers, each of which is characterised by a scale of its own. To understand Latour’s overcoming of this vision it is necessary to start again from his idea of collectives. According to his view, only collectives exist and, in an aprioristic way, regarding their scale or classify them into the global-local (or micro-macro) divide. A collectiveʊas its dimensionsʊis the ending, emerging, temporary stabilised result of an ongoing process of connection making. And, to use Latour’s own expression, we have to follow the networks of these connections in their same making. This way of proceeding is not only an analytical or methodological posture, but the same way in which “the social” assembles itself. So we have to come away thinking that the social is three-dimensional and organised in hierarchies of scales different in widthʊas we do when we think of the global (macro) as super ordinate to the local (micro). We have instead to keep the social flat and imagine the local and the global, the micro and macro levels 14

The names quoted by Latour are of scholars engaged in his same field of study, the so called Science and Technology Studies. 15 Quoted from the English version of Latour (1997) We have never been modern (1993).

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side by side on the same two-dimensional plane and not disposed along a vertical axis. In Latour’s words: Macro no longer describes a wider or a larger site in which the micro would be embedded like some Russian Matryoshka doll, but another equally local, equally micro place, which is connected to many others through some medium transporting specific types of traces. No place can be said to be bigger than any other place, but some can be said to benefit from far safer connections with many more places than others. (2005b, 176, emphasis in the original text)

And, explaining the way of studying such a flat socialʊthe so called Actor Network TheoryʊLatour states: To tell an actor-network story is to be able to capture those many connections without bungling them from the start by some a priori decision over what is the “true size” of an interaction or of some social aggregate. (ibid., 178)

In Nous n’avons jamais eté modernes Latour already invited us to keep the social flat in a way particularly interesting for our discourse on the global. In this very famous work he underlines that a network, even if global, is actually local in each of its points. So if we are willing to follow his perspective and to rewrite society theory in the light of his idea of collectives-as-networks even the distinction between micro and macro, local and national and a fortiori local and global blur and loses its meaning and must be at least re-set.16 At any rate, this would not mean denying the empirical, phenomenological existence of the previous dualisms and hierarchies,17 but rather acknowledging in them the result of a reified way of thinking about them. The one of Latour’s theory is a wider theoretical perspective in which, starting from the idea and dynamics of collectives we can understand even what has been thought following another paradigm, that of the social. In other words, society, be it global, local, macro or micro is a peculiar kind of collective, and not

16

In fact, a “methodological” way of applying his Actor Network Theory consists in analyzing macro dimensions and macro actors and considering them as actually micro. For a telling exposition of the way in which micro and macro blur and merge see Latour (1997). 17 On this topic and, in particular, on the definition of “scales” and their construction, see Latour (1989).

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the only possible version of it. So we can alsoʊand we have toʊtrace back every previous dualism to its production conditions. All the issues here exposed and discussed, per se relevant from a theoretical perspective, have broader meanings and consequences and are more than mere academic controversies about the theory of society. They converge, in fact, in the attempt to make explicit, in all its complexity, the question, “how can we live together?” which can now be reshaped in the following way: which criteria can lead our search of a common, shared world, now that we have understood the impossibility to count on essences to justify and legitimize our need to include and exclude? That is to say: how can we account for our collectives without “metaphysics”? In Latour’s own words: If it’s true that the views of society offered by the sociologists of the social were mainly a way of insuring civil peace when modernism was under way, what sort of collective life and what sort of knowledge is to be gathered by sociologists of associations once modernizing has been thrown into doubt while the task of finding the ways to cohabit remains more important than ever? (2005b, 16-17)

We need to set a different relationship between science and politics. A relationship in which their unavoidable collaboration is no longer hidden but fully accepted, transparently seen and put to use. The strenght of Latour’s proposal resides in its capability to set the conditions for a full taking responsibility of the network/complexity concepts. From Latour’s perspective, thinking in terms of networks and networks-of-networks is a way to obtain, at the same time, two objectives: first, to overcome an ontology of the social built upon essences and, second, to save the role, the importance and the concrete practice of the sciences. Thinking of our collectives in terms of networks does not mean to deny, under a pragmatic point of view, their need for closure and borders. It rather permits our gaze to go beyond every closure putting us in judging, evaluating, and weighing these same closures. Subscribing to the Latourian perspective means also to find a way of joining the two meanings of complexity sketched and discussed above: both the systemic and the anthropological. The all-connecting power of the network, therefore, gives us the right awareness and the indispensable push needed to start building a common world without the support of such concepts as “society” and “nature” which, in Latour’s view, have always been used as devices to comfortably close down political and scientific controversies. The task Latour assigns to us is not so simple anyway because, to use his own words, assembling a

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world is an operation which cannot be done in a low-priced way (2008). In other words, we have to start from the idea that the common world must be built up from a plurality of already existing worlds. And that each of these worlds may aspire to be “the common world”. So its composition must be attended with a careful and respectful aptitude for each of the existing worlds and with patient reflexivity and mediation. Latour finds the best metaphor of this practice in “diplomacy”. It is worth stressing again the choice of the word “world” that Latour prefers to “global society” not by chance. Talking about the world means, in fact, remembering that our collectives are not made only by humans, but even by non-humans. So Latour’s wishful thinking is that in the cultural atmosphere opened up by a thought like his, even non-humans can lay claim to their rights.18 As remembered at the beginning of our reflection, scholars are used to saying that sociology needs an epistemological shift and a new paradigm to decode and understand the contemporary world. In Latour, this need is expressed in even more radical terms. In his perspective, epistemology is not locked in a pure scientific sphere, but gains instead a wider capacity because science itself, once freed from its modern conception, is more and more engaged in political and social questions. Latour does not limit proposing a new paradigm ready to use; this would mean, in fact, to propose just a cosmetic renewal. His attempt is to drive us instead to the source, to the matrix of every possible paradigm. And his epistemology could be better defined as meta-epistemology. To better underline the deep relationship between Latour’s categories and the topic of cosmopolitanism and human rights it could be useful to consider Beck’s cosmopolitan program (2002, italian translation 2003, 191): 1.To include the otherness of nature 2.To include the otherness of the different civilisations and modernities 3.To include the otherness of the future 4.To include the otherness of the object 5.To overcome the (statal) dominion of (scientific, linear) rationalization19

18

On this topic see also Serres (2009). Another scholar who conceives of society in terms of world/earth to underline the need to recover, in human sciences, the attention to Physis and the non-human life is Edgar Morin. 19 Translation by the author.

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In the light of the exposed reflections, it is possible to say that Latour’s thought offers us the chance to think about each of these challenges starting just from the fourth point, that we have described as the overcoming of the Cartesian dualism. Ultimately, Latour’s categories enable us to describe and understand that release of differences that is the same cipher of contemporary society. But in doing that, they avoid falling into the reifying frame of globalisation and at the same time manage to take into account “complexity in all its complexity”.

References Balandier, G. 1988. Le désordre, éloge du mouvement. Paris: Fayard. Beck, U. 2002. “Cosmopolitan Society and its Enemies”. Theory, Culture and Society. 19, 1-2: 17-44 [Italian translation, “La società cosmopolita e i suoi nemici”, in La società cosmopolita. Prospettive dell’epoca postnazionale, edited by U. Beck, 189-229. Bologna: Il Mulino. 2003. Bocchi, G., and M. Ceruti. eds. 2007. La sfida della complessità. Milan: Bruno Mondadori. Castells, M. 1996. The Rising of the Network Society. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Gandolfi, A. 2008. Formicai, imperi, cervelli. Introduzione alla scienza della complessità. Turin: Bollati-Boringhieri. Introini, F. 2011. “Riaprire (al)la complessità. Note per un re-framing socio-antropologico”. Studi di Sociologia, 49, (2): 187-215. Johnson, S. 2002. Emergence. The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Softwares. London: Scribner. Latour, B. 1989. La science en action. Paris: La Découverte. —. 1996. Petit réflexion sur le culte moderne des dieux faitiches. Paris: Synthélabo Group. —. 1997. Nous n’avons jamais été modernes. Essai d’anthropologie symétrique. Paris: La Découverte. —. 1999. Politiques de la nature. Comment faire entrer les sciences en démocratie. Paris: La Découverte. [Italian translation, Politiche della natura. Per una democrazia delle scienze. Milano: Cortina, 2000]. —. 2005a, Un monde pluriel mais commun. Paris: Éditions de l'Aube. —. 2005b. Reassembling the Social. An Introduction to Actor Network Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mol, A., and J. Law. 1994. “Regions, Networks and Fluids: Anaemia and Social Topology”. Social Studies of Science 24: 641-671. Montuschi, E. 2006. Oggettività e scienze umane. Rome: Carocci. Morin, E. 1982. Science avec conscience. Paris: Fayard.

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Sassen, S. 2007. A Sociology of Complexity. New York: Norton & Company. Serres, M. 2009. Temps de crises. Paris: Le Pommier. Stengers, I. 2007. Perché non può esserci un paradigma della complessità, in. La sfida della complessità, edited by G. Bocchi and M. Ceruti, 3759. Milan: Bruno Mondadori. Urry, J. 2003. Global Complexity. Cambridge-Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Waldrop, M. M. 1992. Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos. New York: Simon & Schuster.

CHAPTER FOUR GLOBALISATION, COSMOPOLITANISM, DEMOCRACY AND HUMAN RIGHTS: WHAT KIND OF RELATIONSHIP? FRANCESCO VILLA

The societies we live in nowadays are involved in remarkable processes of change, the outcome of which is still largely uncertain. The sheer speed of current structural changes and their impact on lifestyles, knowledge and culture, as well as on the social and political set-up is such that new types of society are likely to emerge. Their configuration and aspirations may be value-laden or discard values altogether but their main theoretical premises, communication systems and social and political components are difficult to imagine at present. To identify some elements of these processes of change we must focus on the more general underlying phenomena, such as globalisation, with its economic, technological, socio-cultural implications, and its links with communication and politics. In this context, before deepening the existing connections with the basic questions of democracy and human rights, I would like to compare the phenomenon of globalisation with a further constant feature of the world we live in, that is cosmopolitanism. In fact, these two phenomena are quite different in many respects, first and foremost for their evolution and duration. Cosmopolitanism is a phenomenon that goes way back to Antiquity,1 whereas globalisation is relatively recent, although some scholars trace its origins back to the European expansion begun in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (see Cotesta above).

1

Ulrich Beck wonders how many ‘millennia’ come into the noun cosmopolitanism and points out that this term conveys the most wonderful and at the same time the most fearsome stories (Beck 2003, 7).

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1. Globalisation: main dimensions The term globalisation is used to refer to very different meanings and entities, to such an extent that it runs the risk of becoming a generic, though evocative expression used to refer to any processes that still require a clearer definition. Scholarly contributions have been made by sociologists, economists, political scientists and experts in international relations, who have variously attempted to decipher this phenomenon in its complex articulations. Instead of discussing their definitions, I prefer to focus on four dimensions which clearly emerge from all the analyses conducted to date: the economic, political, cultural and communicative dimensions.

1.1 The economic dimension From an economic point of view, globalisation consists in a growing interdependence between national markets, implemented by various means: a growth in the volume and variety of goods and services exchanged internationally, an increase in international capital flows and a rapid and extensive spread of technology. Such interdependence emerges through three processes: a) the expansion of the goods and services markets enhances competition at a global level, forces enterprises to devise new international strategies and to specialise in specific market sectors (the well-known market niches) also determining numerous companies reshuffles and huge cuts to the workforce; b) the increase in number and size of multinational and transnational companies, with a continuous growth of mergers in all sectors of economic activities causes the growing relocation of production into the countries that offer the best advantages from the point of view of taxation and labour costs; c) the creation of international financial circuits operating outside the jurisdiction of state control authorities determines the emergence of centres of autonomous power where unpredictability and speculation are the norm, producing severe side-effects on national economies, above all the weakest ones. Such processes cause profound modifications in the economic life of entire nations and jeopardise political systems, which apparently are no longer able to enforce their management and control powers or to govern the expansion of illegal markets controlled by international criminals on a more and more global scale. Following agricultural economy, prevailing

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for millennia, and industrial economy, a defining aspect of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the West, we now seem to have entered the era of global financial economy (Ramonet, Chao and Wozniak 2004). In this new context, globalisation processes undermine national markets, which founded the power of national States; their demise modifies national capitalism and reduces the role of public powers. States no longer have the necessary means to oppose globalised markets and their rulers are forced to adapt to the general directives of economic policymaking defined by world institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation. Since national central banks have become independent from governments, to contrast possible hostile movements of capital States only control minimal reserves, trifling indeed if one considers the impact made by international markets. States, then, have no ways of curbing the movements of large flows of capital or of counteracting market moves contrary to their own interests and those of their citizens. As a result, many “global enterprises” forfeit their national barycentre and become a mere network made of different complementary elements, scattered across the planet and only linked according to a purely economic rationale and pursuing two fundamental objectives: the highest possible production and income levels.2 According to Alain Touraine, the economic dimension plays an essential role and has yet to be demystified. The true essence of globalisation, would in fact be ideological, since it involves a set of trends, all relevant but scarcely homogeneous, which would in fact disguise a worldwide capitalist offensive. Even claiming that a world society, essentially liberal, governed by markets and unaffected by national political interventions, would be making an ideological statement to be demystified as suchʊwhich would greatly enhance political chances both at a national and at an international level (Touraine 1999). 2

On the subject Ramonet, Chao and Wozniak wrote: “On the basis of these criteria, a French company may ask for financing in Switzerland, set up its research centres in Germany, buy cars in South Korea, open factories in China, devise a marketing and advertising campaign in Italy, sell in the United States and have shares in companies in Poland, Morocco and Mexico. The employees from the country of origin of the company are integrated within an international labour system to their own disadvantage: since levelling takes place from below, weak salaries and minimal social protection prevail. Warnings from the International Labour Office produce no effects. A global enterprise looks for highest profits through delocalising and an unceasing increase in productivity; such obsession leads it to produce where labour costs are the lowest and to sell where the standard of living is the highest”. (2004, 337-338)

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1.2. The political dimension The prevalence of financial economy over real economy and above all politics may well determine a crisis of national States, which have been the institutional basis for development over the last few centuries. Political communities can no longer be regarded as self-restricted political spaces, as they form complex structures involving overlapping powers, relations and networks in a hierarchical and uneven distribution pattern. Even the most powerful States do not escape the effects of changed conditions and the new structuring procedures of international relations. In such a context, it is no longer possible to maintain that the seat of political power is simply national governments: power is shared and negotiated by a number of authorities and agencies at a national and international level. Some of the phenomena determining the population’s life conditionsʊranging from availability of consumer goods to the warming of the atmosphereʊare too vast in scale for national States to be able to solve them individually. In a world in which the most powerful States make decisions that do not only concern their own citizens but also those of other countries, in which transnational actors and authorities cross the boundaries of national communities, the question of responsibility is no easy one to solve. In any case, the political space needed to develop an efficient and responsible governmental action no longer coincides exclusively with the nation-State. Hence the need to make existing international bodiesʊ including the United Nations, the World Bank, the IMF and the WTOʊmore democratic to be able to manage the global dimension of the economy properly. To this effect we may also interpret the creation of new political bodies endowed with supranational powers, such as the European Union, especially in order to respond to the demand for monetary stability and for suitable markets for the regional dimensions of global economy. On the other hand, we see an attempt to define new political actors on a very local basis, as a response to overwhelming globalism and as an attempt to recuperate and to reinforce local identities while guarding them from the threat posed by economic as well as cultural colonisation. The basic problem is still to preserve the link between political systems and democracy, to prevent democratic institutions from experiencing a dangerous legitimisation crisis, as global economic processes cause a reduction in the power of the State and of citizenship’s rights, particularly those social rights that are the greatest achievement of Western democracies and of the social state built in European countries. Within globalisation dynamics, political action will produce positive effects only if the democracy of choices and options is accepted in all

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fields (Sen 2000) hence also in the procedures through which democracy itself may in the future turn into a global democracy (Holden 2000). In the universal context, on the way to an ever stronger interdependence of peoples and nations, it remains unclear whether democracy as theorised by Kelsen still remains the single reference point, since Western individualism, with its utilitarian ethics and liberalism in the economic sector hasn’t always managed to respond convincingly to the huge social questions emerging on the world scene.

1.3. The cultural dimension The spread of the media and of new information technologies has given the cultural sphere a primary role within globalisation processes. The meeting of cultures, traditions, and different national histories is made easier not only by new technologies, but also by the increasing mobility of people through ever increasing tourist and migration flow. This poses the problem of building a new global culture, which may be interpreted in two opposite ways: as the acceptance and promotion of mutual differences, or as an encouragement to become more homogeneous and similar. In Smith’s view (1993) indicators of further homogeneity have certainly increased (above all youth consumer goods, the use of English as lingua franca, an internationalisation of scientific communities; ecumenical movements in the religious context), but a great many differences and sources of conflict are still to be overcome and this involves social and political changes that are not easily achieved. On the other hand, the resilience of national and ethnic cultures largely depends on the demand for personal and collective identity that global culture is unable to meet. Huntington (1993) prefers to refer to “global cultures”ʊi.e. globalisation trends in different culturesʊand envisages civilisation clashes between different historical and cultural traditions which he regards as hardly compatible, precisely because they derive from complex identity mixes and closed interests. Some scholars, on the other hand, would not accept such apocalyptic scenarios. For instance, Amartya Sen (2000) maintains that the rationality and freedom of social actors may critically come to bear on particular identities which hence should not be regarded as permanently predetermined by nations, ethnic groups or religions. In any case, theoretically speaking, one may envisage different strands of intercultural relations:

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- firstly, assimilation, if the predominant culture prevails on the other particular cultures, absorbing them within itself without respecting their specific traits and differences and adopting intolerant positions against them while forcing them to assimilate to the prevailing models, with the corresponding risk of cultural assimilation; - secondly, homogenisation, providing for a new global culture, encompassing all others, giving rise to a single complex cultural reality, different from previous ones; in this case we also run the risk of cultural assimilation and of losing the wealth of cultural diversity; - thirdly, pluralistic integration, when each culture preserves its own identity in a context of dialogue, of tolerant interaction, of mutual exchanges and shared common norms; in this case the problem is the identification and implementation of such shared common norms, without which no integration is ever possible; - fourthly, self-referential separation, whereby a belief in the superiority of one’s own values and a wish to safeguard one’s own identity determine the refusal of intercultural dialogue and of interethnic communal life, resulting in intolerance, xenophobia and racism. Bearing in mind these possible theoretical interpretations, the multiplicity of cultures and ethnic groups meeting and interacting within globalisation processes leads one to believe that suitable governmental strategies should be designed to achieve balanced pluralistic integration and provide for multiculturalism and multi-ethnicity. This should be done within the framework of universal human rights protection advocating the freedom of individuals vis-à-vis their communities and paving the way for a happy dialogue between different cultures (Cesareo 2000).

1.4. The communicative dimension Problems concerning the economy, politics and culture also concern the communicative dimension of globalisation. The new media, thanks to the development of multimedia technologies, have made the planet ever more interdependent, making possible to know instantly what is happening in the most diverse places and, among other things, cultural and political movements spread across the globe rise. New communication technologies above all and IT networks in particular have made it possible to create a single financial world market, allowing for large scale speculations through on line trading. There is a risk then that existing social differences may be heightened by an uneven access to communicative opportunities. This in turn would be due to a partial spread of resources, as well as to the high costs and complexity of the new technologies themselves.

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Besides, in the IT networks there are vast blank areas, especially in developing countries, so that events concerning them are not allocated suitable communication slots in the present media system, controlled by monopolies and oligopolies, public and private capital, economic and political interests. Considering that 80% of news comes from the so-called developed countries, inhabited by 20% of the whole of the world population, it is possible to know what is “breaking news” for the media and to realise how far away, in spite of appearances, the ‘global village’ predicted by McLuhan still is. The news flow is often detached from context and comes to a saturation point over which any new information is irrelevant, for the volume of media materials reaching customers is far greater than what may be absorbed, hence it generates confusion and disorientation. It is difficult to identify relevant information and to check the truthfulness of news. Thus particular interests can easily be smuggled in as truths. Besides these risks a dispute arises between those who defend the educational and social role of the media and those who, on the other hand, regard them as entertainment and show business: it is the contrast between the public service model and that of private entrepreneurial undertaking. The advocates of the social function of the media highlight that information is an essential tool for enhancing the political participation of citizens, on which grounds access to information and communication must be regarded as an essential public convenience. The main problem then seems to be setting up a communication system that may be both pluralistic and capable of indicating relevant facts and processes, with an adequate ability to contextualise information and to interpret it critically. A globalised society is then faced with delicate and complex problems, namely: extending information both on the giving and the receiving side to all people and in each of them to the highest possible number of people, while protecting it, at the same time, from particular interests and from technically effective potential manipulation as well as looking for a truly manageable volume when faced with superabundant information.

2. About cosmopolitanism: a few introductory hints The word “cosmopolitanism”, in its etymological meaning, refers to the world (cosmos) as a single city (polis). As a result, all world inhabitants should have granted to them the same citizenship rights wherever they should live. The German term Weltburger is a very efficient indicator of this notion of world citizenship, but it remains ideal, an ideal

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type, as it were, of which we have no concrete representations, apart from those who “feel” like world citizens for a particular personal sensitivity of their own or on account of universal moral, philosophical and religious convictions. In actual fact, history presents us with manifestations of cosmopolitanism of a particular, not a universal kind, i.e. with “worlds” which formed a single “city” for political, cultural, religious and economic reasons. We can thus distinguish a “coercive” cosmopolitanism based on a political dimension, an ‘elective’ cosmopolitanism with two subtypes, one based on culture and one on religion and finally a “utilitarian” cosmopolitanism based on economic grounds, in addition to the universal and altruistic cosmopolitanism we mentioned earlier on. I. Coercive cosmopolitanism. To give you some examples, the Roman Empireʊespecially in the period of its greatest expansionʊwas a cosmopolitan world, in which a multiplicity of nations, peoples, cultures and religions lived side by side and integrated more or less by coercion or force.3 The unifying elements were the force of Roman legions, the Emperor’s own authority, Roman law and Latin as a lingua franca. Actually, all Empires have almost invariably been cosmopolitan worlds unified by force. In the European Middle Ages an original form of political cosmopolitanism was lived out in the Holy Roman Empire, defined by some historians as a res publica christiana (Falco 1958). In this context we find some common references to the universal authorities of the Pope and the Emperor, to the use of Latin again, in addition to Christianity as the real unifying factor of Medieval Europe. We could draw a long list of coercive cosmopolitan Empires: Charles V’s Absburg Empire, Napoleon’s Empire, the British and Soviet Empires, with different degrees of coercive unification and of tolerance of diversity. To this day the British Commonwealth is a cosmopolitan world, the heir of the Empire, in which coerciveness has been replaced by elements of mutual economic convenience. II. Elective cosmopolitanism, based on cultural grounds. In addition to the type of cosmopolitanism dominated by political power as unifying force, in history we can trace cosmopolitan experiences based on elective cultural grounds: think of ancient Stoicism, Humanism and the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the cultural movement behind the French 3

The highest degree of integration could be achieved by acquiring Roman citizenship, thus becoming civis romanus, with the accompanying duties and privileges.

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Revolution, Romanticism and Socialism in its various forms, modern scientific culture, with its contemporary developments and its offshoots in different international scientific communities, all these are all cultural worlds encompassing different peoples and several nations through a process of spontaneous spreading. Moreover, we should not forget the type of cultural cosmopolitanism represented by international youth movements, with their own forms of subculture and counterculture, ranging from Hippies to Punks. III. Elective cosmopolitanism, based on religious grounds. This kind of cosmopolitanism may be found within the great religions throughout the world. Among these Catholicism is one of various significant religious experiences: a single faith, freely shared by several peoples, nations and cultures gathers up into a single “world”, or rather a single religious universal community, with various elements of cultural and ethnic diversity. The author of the Letter to Diognetus described the earliest Christian communities as follows: “They live in their own homeland, but are like foreigners, they take part in everything as citizens and they bear everything as aliens, every foreign land is their homeland and every homeland for them is a foreign land”.4 I shouldn’t think one can find a better definition of elective cosmopolitanism rooted in a religious experience. Furthermore, over the last decades new forms of cosmopolitanism have been developing also in the relationships between different religions, with interesting proposals of dialogue and collaboration across denominations and religions. The world religions meetings in Assisi in 1986, 2003 and 2011 are a significant example of such inter-religious cosmopolitanism, as a means to promote world peace efforts.5 IV. Finally, we have to mention utilitarian cosmopolitanism on economic grounds, which has accompanied the gradual development of trade throughout the world. Multinationals (or transnational companies or corporations, whichever you prefer) are its most recent expressions. It is a very peculiar kind of cosmopolitanism, for it differs for its extreme specificity from the political, cultural and religious ones. These more general forms of cosmopolitanism impinging on a number of aspects of human life and activities tend to be all-encompassing. Cosmopolitanism rooted in economic needs only concerns consumption and profit 4

Letter to Diognetus, ch. 5. It should not be forgotten that the 2003 meeting was explicitly summoned by Pope John Paul II to reconfirm how the main world religions upheld peace against the Iraq war. 5

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expectations on which market transactions are based. It is therefore a very instrumental kind of cosmopolitanism, as instrumental as the rationale guiding economic activities, as famously argued by Weber. It is a form of cosmopolitanism that is intertwined with the economic dimension of globalisation and with the interests of market economy. The chief executives of large multinationals experience such cosmopolitanism so much as to feel like global citizens, without at the same time ceasing to defend the economic interests of their own companies and even sometimes taking xenophobic positions in their own homeland,6 orʊalternatively ʊxenophilous positions, with dangerous effects on their countries of origin, like in the case of Sergio Marchionne, chief executive of the FiatChrysler Group. Whereas at the roots of cosmopolitanism we can find political, cultural, religious and economic factors, it is worth remembering that its opposite is nationalism.7 Historically nationalism is self-referential and xenophobic, banning foreigners and aiming at expanding one’s own dominions and territories. Whereas a cosmopolitan person feelslike a world citizen and is at home in any nation, a nationalist feels strictly bound to the fate of a single particular nation, which he would like to rule above all others. In many respects, the opposition between cosmopolitanism and nationalism recalls that between universalism and particularism. A cosmopolitan person is open to difference and to the universal dimensions of human communal life, whereas a nationalist is closed within his or her particular framework, which becomes an absolute value and a yardstick for anything. Before trying to explore potential links between cosmopolitanism, globalisation, democracy and human rights, I suggest dwelling briefly on some paramount features of current connections between cosmopolitanism and globalisation.

3. Cosmopolitanism and globalisation: what links may be possible? Given the vast and multi-faceted notions of cosmopolitanism and globalisation and the big number of interpretations proposed, their mutual

6 This is the case of the Danish entrepreneur referred to by Beck in his work (Beck 2003, 11-13). 7 On the classic opposition between cosmopolitanism and nationalism see Marcello Veneziani (1999). Beck prefers to emphasise the antithesis between cosmopolitanism and patriotism (Beck 2003).

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implications are also numerous. In this section I shall only list those I regard as most interesting.

3.1 Ulrich Beck’s proposed interpretation Beck proposes a profound analysis of the links between cosmopolitanism and globalisation in a number of his works (2000, 2003, 2004). The starting point of his remarks is the distinction between globalism and globalisation. For Beck (1999), globalism amounts to a particular interpretation of globalisation, focussing on the absolute predominance of the market over anything else, in line with the most rigid strands of global new liberalism. Beck lists as many as ten mistakes of globalism (1999) and develops a harsh critique of global new liberalist ideology, of its mono-dimensional economic approach, of its narrowmindedness, of its apolitical authoritarianism, of its arrogance and its oldfashioned nature. Between globalism and cosmopolitanism there can be no significant relations, since the former is mono-dimensional and linear in character whereas the latter is multidimensional and composite. On the other hand, there is a number of links between globalisation and cosmopolitanism that Beck investigates in an attempt to qualify a cosmopolitan view of globalisation. According to Beck there are ultimately two ways of conceptualising globalisation in the social sciences. The first is represented by those, such as David Held (2002), who stress the category of interconnection, which highlights growing interdependence, networks and global flows, while still positing national units and using methodological nationalism as an analytical criterion. Socalled cosmopolitanisation is the starting point in the second conceptual framework, setting globalisation within the sociological analyses current in the societies of national States. The latter clarifies the modalities through which different social structures and institutions have become intrinsically transnational (Beck 2003). In other words, Beck proposes adopting a “cosmopolitan outlook” and a methodological cosmopolitanism, as distinct from traditional forms of cosmopolitanism, as an alternative to the “national outlook” and to methodological nationalism in the interpretation of current globalisation processes. The “cosmopolitan outlook” may be distinguished from traditional cosmopolitanism because it replaces the opposition between cosmopolitanism and nationalism with a logic of coexistence of moderate forms of national belonging with a realistic cosmopolitanism: the either/or (aut-aut) alternative logic is to be replaced by that of both/and (et-et), a

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distinction made to include otherness into a single “cosmopolitan outlook”. Beck’s historical and sociological analyses are very wide-ranging, complex and subtle. Without dwelling on an exhausting review of his ideas which would require a long in-depth analysis, I think that his distinction between new liberalist globalism and cosmopolitan globalisation is clear, understandable and acceptable: the connection between globalisation and cosmopolitanism is only possible by overcoming the mistakes of economic globalism (of a new liberalist kind) and by replacing methodological nationalism with a “cosmopolitan outlook”. The latter is the guiding motive of innovative forms of transnational political action, aimed at building new cosmopolitan institutions in which national differences may coexist and be expressed freely and peacefully. According to Beck, we are dealing with a concrete utopia that is worth believing in. He suggests experimenting with it by opening political spaces at a national and transnational level, to build up a viable cosmopolitan democracy, avoiding empty words and abstract ideals.

3.2 Ecological sustainability Ecological sustainability is another area in which cosmopolitanism and globalisation can be compared. In this case also problems arise from the economic dimension of globalisation for the well-known difficulties related to the use of the planet’s natural resources and to the pollution produced by extensive industrial production. Some experts believe that if the whole of the world population were to reach the average consumption levels of western countries, two more planets like the Earth would not suffice to gather all the litter produced. In other words, there are problems of environmental compatibility for the development model that globalisation, based on the unlimited growth principle, looks to extend to the whole world. The planet’s resources remain limited. In this respect, Daly and Cobb’s remark concerning “misplaced concreteness” (Daly and Cobb 1996) is quite interesting. What development model is compatible with the planet’s resources for its population to survive? This is a global question to which neither globalism nor globalisation have yet been able to give a satisfactory answer. Is it possible to find an answer up the cosmopolitan road? Universal cosmopolitanism, based on recognition of the other party’s otherness, also recognises the otherness of the natural environment and respects and protects it as a common good for

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the whole of humankind. Such common good is to be shared to meet the requirements of justice and solidarity. This instils an attitude of profound respect for the environment which often clashes with environmental exploitation and manipulation by those pursuing a utilitarian and particularistic approach. As far as the ecological question is concerned, then, an initial theoretical opposition may eventually yield a virtuous link between globalisation and cosmopolitanism, precisely because a cosmopolitan person regards the whole world as his or her own home. Such a person is therefore better placed to highlight this issue as against other problems and threats that may jeopardise the common home of all humankind. Moreover, a cosmopolitan person may truly be concerned for the good of others and wonder what type of development a people may need, regardless of models proposed by western globalisation. The good of a human group is not determined a priori by the yardsticks of economic utilitarianism, but it is to be pursued each time taking into due account any specific historical, cultural, ethnic and environmental differences. It is vital then to face the problems of development in a cosmopolitan way, to devise a cosmopolitan development model, without any ideological imposition of readily made criteria and models, based on approaches that are distant and alien to local mentality and culture.

3.3 Cultural sustainability Cosmopolitanism acknowledges and upholds cultural differences and the multiplicity of existing cultures; globalisation, on the other hand, is often blamed for wishing to impose upon the whole planet a single way of thinking and a single global culture. In other words, cosmopolitanism as such cannot give up being multicultural and multiethnic, whereas globalisation, above all in its globalist version, inevitably tends towards mono-culturalism. This mono-cultural character of globalisation is interpreted in various ways: Serge Latouche (1992) refers to the “westernisation” of the world, whereas others argue for an Americanisation or McDonaldization of society (Ritzer 1996). An Americanisation of the world, in particular, would be effected by the worldwide imposition of a triple hegemony: military, economic and ideological (Beck 2003, 133). American economic hegemony would involve spreading a new liberalist view of market economy, which would benefit multinationals of American origin tending to accumulate capitals in rich countries, whereas ideological hegemony would point to a universal spread of American

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democracy and its values, as well as the civil rights it is based on. Leaving aside for the time being the problems connected with military hegemony, which, at any rate, is self-evident throughout the world, it may be observed that globalisation in this meaning poses serious problems of cultural sustainability, since the imposition of a single culture and of a single conception of market economy clashes with the existing cultural and ethnic differences. From this point of view, on 9/11 the World Trade Center in New York was chosen by blind terrorists as an emblem. American globalism (the triumph of global America) results in a chain of paradoxes, bearing in mind that the US has been a cosmopolitan State since the beginning, aided by different ethnic groups coming from various parts of the world. Moreover, the great majority of American citizensʊas individualsʊare not prone to xenophobia and to nationalistic arrogance. How can the United States become heirs of a mono-cultural nationalism which would make them feel like the leading nation on earth? We are faced with one of the paradoxes resulting from a nationalistic view of globalisation and spreading the idea of globalisation as a form of Americanisation of the planet as a whole (Beck 2003, 134). The spread of the English language, as a tool of global communication, may also be set within the framework of a mono-cultural view of globalisation, above all if this implies demising or failing to recognise values present in different linguistic traditions. Language is not only a means of communication, but also an expression of the values, mindframe and culture of a given civilisation: undermining the value of local languages may bring about a refusal of the English language, as evidenced some time ago in a letter to one of the main Italian newspapers, Il Corriere della Sera. A reader complained about the invasiveness of English in Italian national culture: “English is a barbaric language, an awful predator’s language, essentially conveying the values of capitalism”. I do not agree with such a definition of English as a mere expression of the values of capitalism, but it is up to the English-speaking countries to prove it clearly and unmistakably wrong to the whole world.

3.4 Political sustainability: what kind of democracy? One of the most serious problems concerning globalisation processes is their degree of democracy. Who is the ruling and guiding hand of these processes, since they are transnational phenomena escaping the control of individual States? Are existing international institutions (WTO, IMF, the World Bank) adequate and are they an expression of a real democratic will or are they not controlled by the stronger states and by high oligarchic

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concentrations of economic and political power? Will the rise and growth of localistic and nationalist movements possibly have an impact on globalisation dynamics? Each of the questions raised may call for a separate study along the lines of previous investigations by social scientists coming to more or less optimistic conclusions. Some refer non-optimistically to situations of postdemocracy (Crough 2003), while others, even more pessimistically, claim that politics has come to an end (Latouche 1998); some, on the other, wish that the emergence of transnational, cosmopolitan movements may be able to contrast the negative effects of globalism, and put forward a redefinition of power in the global era (Beck 2003, 231-245; 2010). In this respect, I would join the optimists’ camp and follow Beck’s argument, namely that if globalism represents a threat for democracy, cosmopolitanism may, on the other hand, be regarded as the new leading concept to describe the ways in which globalisation can be compatible with politics. For cosmopolitanism entails inclusive (both-and, et-et) not exclusive distinctions (aut-aut), as nationalism does. Cosmopolitanism is thus available to develop new forms of belonging and affiliation, without giving up its own origins. Only within the cosmopolitan democracy framework is it possible to make inequalities and differences meet, is it possible to be at once the same and different and ultimately free to abstain from a binding choice between two destructive options, namely living together as individuals giving up their own differences, or living separate lives within homogeneous national states communicating only through markets and violence. Only a cosmopolitan state accepting nationalities can override such alternatives. For nationalists this is nothing but unrealistic Utopia. On the other hand, it is worth remarking that some basic aspects of this utopia have already been implemented in all those countries in which democracy and human rights have been prevailing on autocratic and nationalist systems. In Beck’s opinion, the notion of a cosmopolitan and transnational state may be defined by contrasting it with three positions: a dangerous national self-sufficiency, the new liberalist idea of the minimal and deregulated State intervention in the economy, the imperialist model of a global state. He also argues that a cosmopolitan Europe made of differences may embody such an ideal transnational state (Beck 2003, 242). If we accept these arguments, the democratic sustainability of globalisation processes is directly proportional to their flexibility and ability to adapt to the cosmopolitan prospect of their implementation. Here is a new interlacement between globalism and cosmopolitanism. All those who believe in the values of democracy and who are committed to their real,

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not merely formal, implementation everywhere on earth should really focus on these values themselves.

3.5 The question of human rights The historical and geographical perspectives of democracy cannot be isolated from the question of human rights, since democratic regimes have been providing a context for the widest affirmation of civil, political and social rights. What is the link between globalisation and cosmopolitanism in the area of human rights? If no democracy exists without respect for human rights, then democratic globalisation is not possible in all those countries where human rights are not respected. We witness many cases in which economic globalisation advances alongside appalling human rights violations. China is the single most important example of a country where an authoritarian, repressive regime denies its own citizens the most basic civil, political and social rights. Paradoxically this situation presents extremely favourable conditions for companies, whose workers can neither make complaints or strike to defend their rights without very severe sanctions. This set of authoritarian, repressive conditions guarantees a discipline and a commitment of workers that is inconceivable in democratic countries and is “extremely moving” for those western entrepreneurs who invest in such countries. Within a new liberalist approach it is hardly relevant that China has the world record of capital executions, jailing dissidents, worker suicides, control and censorship of the media. It is hardly relevant that in Beijing the student uprising in Tiananmen Square of 1989 was repressed with the proclamation of martial law, with the intervention of the army and the use of tanks, besides the killing of 5000 dissidents. Globalism shows its cynical face here, in using different measures according to the different economic weight of the states involved: namely if an authoritarian state violates the most basic human rights, but it has the size, power and economic standing of China, then anything becomes acceptable. What really matters, after all, is market size, opportunities to increase economic exchanges and to reap new riches and large capitals. However, cosmopolitanism has to deal with the question of human rights, since its intrinsic multiculturalism and its intrinsic multiethnic perspective can lead it to accept situations in which such rights are violated. Here the debate becomes extremely steamy, since some even question the very existence of universal human rights. Multiculturalism can indeed leave room for relativistic positions and attitudes based on the assumption that all cultures have the same value and making it impossible

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to define precise criteria to evaluate the contents and rules operating in each individual cultural context. If multiculturalism coincides with cultural relativism, then you can accept all moral choices, all cultural expressions and models, even those contradicting universal human rights. This would then result in a relativistic cosmopolitanism, quite different from the universalistic one referring to universal human rights, as they have been defined at a global level in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, approved by the United Nations Organisation on the 10th of December 1948. There is no doubt a great deal of work remains to be done on these subjects, both within individual national cultures and at the level of intercultural and transnational interchange and dialogue. At any rate, I believe that the subject of human rights may turn out to be a very significant theoretical link between the various interpretations of globalisation and those of cosmopolitanism, inasmuch as it is an indispensable question in both cases. Cosmopolitanism, on the one hand, has to remain universal, globalisation, on the other hand, must deal with the problem of what is universal and of what is particular in the processes in which it comes into play, by setting criteria for ethical behaviour which should prevail on utilitarian globalistic criteria. Is a cosmopolitan globalisation of human rights ever conceivable? What are the indispensable universal values and the particular elements to be found in different cultures? How is it possible to establish cultural and political fora suited to provide guidelines concerning the respect and implementation of human rights, so as to promote their dissemination in all the countries affected by globalisation processes? Here too we are faced with a number of questions with no easy answers. A great deal of work will be needed to find new forms of convergence between globalisation and cosmopolitanism, within a broad cultural perspective accounting for semantic universals and the corresponding differentials to be found in each culture.

3.6 Comparing Europe and America: what kinds of cosmopolitanism and globalisation? According to Jeremy Rifkin (2004), two hundred years ago the founding fathers of the United States of America presented humankind with a dream which changed the world, but that now seems to be declining as a new generation of Europeans is creating a radically different dream, more suitable to face the challenges of a global society. This European dream would be rooted in a long process of critical reflection on some key

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notions of modernity, still regarded as indisputable in America: namely individualism, free market, the national state and the scientific exploitation of nature. In other words, the European dream would attach greater value to community relations than to individual autonomy, to cultural differences than to assimilation, to the quality of life rather than to the accumulation of wealth, to sustainable development rather than to unlimited economic growth, to universal human rights than to property rights, to global cooperation than to the unilateral wielding of power, to the construction of peace than to investments on the military and on war training. A Europe built on cultural differences looks then more cosmopolitan than America, the latter in turn preferring to assimilate differences. In actual fact, the assimilation of newcomers by the original Anglo-Puritan stock has been a constant preoccupation throughout American history. Even facing the massive invasion of new ethnic and cultural groups, the American tradition harkening back to those Puritan origins has always been able to react effectively. The new demographic and linguistic phenomena, such as the most substantial group nowadays, the Spanishspeaking Latin American one, when clashing with the American mindframe and culture, have most often preserved only the most superficial aspects of their identity. They have lost their own original traits and acquired the values and ideals of their new homeland, regarded by some as a transposition into the social, political and economic arena of the ideals and values of the Puritan religious tradition.8 The more cosmopolitan character of Europe, giving priority to cultural differences rather than to an assimilation approach, would also be apparent in the motto chosen by the European Union: “unity in diversity”. This motto shows that unity is possible while respecting existing differences, whereas the similar motto of the United States of America (e pluribus unum) mostly points to a unifying process in which a pre-existing multiplicity is reduced to unity. According to Rifkin (2004, 199), in the new scenario of global economy, marked by growing complexity and interdependence, opportunities can be created almost exclusively around shared risks, rather than around exclusive interests and individual entrepreneurial risks. For survival trust, reciprocity and co-operation are more important than rough individualism and aggressive behaviour. The very same conditions that are pushing 8

These values are: purity, moral sincerity, necessity to fight for a right cause, life as a trial and as self conquest, besides conquest of their own environment, as well as of the ideals of work, of efficiency, of success, of freedom as possibility to realise his/her own destiny (Buzzi 1994; Miller 1973).

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towards a co-operative economic model, based on networking architecture, are also influencing politics. Just like multinational companies, national States are also slowly joining co-operative networks, to adjust more efficiently to a globalised society. The European Union would then be the most advanced example of the new transnational governmental model, and for this reason observers worldwide would give its successes and failures their full attention. In this respect, Hutton has observed a strong contrast between the essential elements of economic efficiency and social fairness current in Europe and what he calls American “conservative” globalisation, centred on an instinctive unilateralism: The United States love depicting themselves as an extra-ordinary civilisation, charged with the sacred obligation, to themselves and to the world, to be guardians of the only right way. They have fought against and defeated first fascism and then communism. Nowadays, they feel they are the only existing North Star, the only authority capable of defining what is possible through consecrating the economy and society to the value of freedom. (Hutton 2003, 184)

In other words, the United States would still be strongly influenced by the sense of a particular fate and still be convinced of their own universal saving mission for all humankind. “This land has been placed here to be discovered by a special people, by a new progeny of human beings called Americans…..[destined] to reshape the world from scratch and to build for the whole of humankind a delightful city set on the mountain top”. (Ibid.) It is not a quotation from a speech by Winthrop or a sermon by Edwards, but the Closing Statement ending Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign in 1980. Also Kennedy’s idea of the New Frontier and the new conservative notion of exporting American freedom, democracy and values throughout the world, without refraining from military actionʊif necessaryʊare entirely in tune with the spirit of the universal mission reserved exclusively for the United States. To sum up, the United States and Europe would be marked by different levels of cosmopolitanism and nationalism, besides different developments of the economic, political and cultural dimensions of globalisation. At present, Europe prefers a more cosmopolitan model (Beck 2006), marked by processes of pluralist integration to the American model of assimilation within a single strongly self-referential culture to be duly exported throughout the world. Moreover, to the political-free and strongly competitive forms of globalisation advocated by the United States, Europe

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would prefer more co-operative, participated forms respectful of social rights and of the natural environment. These amount to different ways of conceiving cosmopolitanism and globalisation within the complex scenario of today’s world. These could spark an interesting comparison over the next few years, especially if Europe is up to the expectations and hopes many place in its future (Barcellona 2005).

4. Conclusion: what kind of relationship? By following through all the cross-references between different forms of cosmopolitanism and globalisation in the various realms of their mutual interaction, we can say that cosmopolitan globalisation will only develop if a co-operative approachʊat an economic, political, cultural, religious and communicative levelʊprevails upon an individualistic, competitive, self-referential and utilitarian model proper to new liberalist globalism. The preferential adoption of cosmopolitan alternatives may contribute to render globalisation sustainable from a geographic, ecological, social, cultural and political viewpoint. More specifically, as far as the ecological question is concerned, given its general character, I believe it is important to highlight the essential virtuous relationship to be established between globalisation and cosmopolitanism, in such a way as to develop and to spread a clear perception of the biosphere as the common home of the whole of humankind and of all the peoples in it. In view of this, the planet’s resources, that are necessarily limited and in some cases irreproducible, will have to be used in a virtuous and co-operative manner to fulfil the vital needs of the world population and should not be intensively exploited exclusively to meet particular needs of financial accumulation (Latouche 2003). Moreover, the question of human rights will have to be an area of special concern, as regards the links between globalisation, cosmopolitanism and universalism. It may be useful, in this respect, to refer to human rights as codified in the Fundamental Charter of Human Rights of the European Union, approved in Nice in the year 2000 and attached in 2004 to the Constitutional Treatise of the European Union. The Charter upholds the indivisible and universal values of human dignity, freedom, equality and of solidarity, as well as the principles of democracy, citizenship and the rule of law. In the analytical description of the universal values of dignity, freedom, equality and solidarity are listed eight areas in which human rights should apply: namely social security, health, social aid, family, education, work, housing and natural environment.

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With this Charter, then, Europe asserts the great importance of social rights, in addition to civil and political rights. Perhaps this is precisely one of the most substantial current differences between the general orientation of the European Union and that of the US. In Europe there are some people who believe that social rights may serve as guidelines for globalisation processes and that their worldwide implementation may become the universal goal to be preferred to all other particular interests. Are we faced with yet another Utopia? For sure, were it feasible to link a cosmopolitan globalisation with the global enactment of social human rights, we would witness a radical shift in the way its opponents perceive globalisation: it would no longer be regarded as exclusively subservient to the economic interests of the richest countries and of the American, European and Asian multinational corporations, but it would turn out to be serving the social rights of the world population. In any case, the current differences between Europe and America will have to give way to an unceasing dialogue, aimed at finding the best solutions for the numerous problems to be tackled on the world scene nowadays, particularly focussing on the question of human rights. Such a dialogue will turn out to be fruitful only if Europe manages to implement some elements of the European Dream as theorised by Rifkin and if the United States manage to overcome the unilateral approach that gives absolute priority to their own national interests above all others, in their relations with the rest of the world. These basic historical and political conditions are very essential to avoid the fall into globalism and to develop a very open globalization, able to have good and real influence on the historical process for the achievement of human rights, of democratic values and of universalistic cosmopolitanism. Only in this way will we be able to realise a virtuous circularity among human rights, democracy, cosmopolitanism and globalisation. Under the positive influence of the first three elements, globalisationʊin its turnʊcould have positive influence on the processes of human rights achievement and development of democracy and cosmopolitanism. The optimal relationship among our four elements, consequently, comes out as circular. In order to develop this circularity in a virtuous way, which could affect on the complexity and various diversities we live in, it’s necessary to suggestʊtogether with Beck (2003)ʊthe beginning of political, transnational and cosmopolitan movements, able to contrast the negative effects of the new liberalist globalism and to steer globalisation towards the “promised land” of human rights, democratic values and universalistic cosmopolitanism.

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References Albrow, M. 1996. The Global Age. Cambridge: Polity Press. Appadurai, A. 1996. Modernity at Large. Cultural Dimensions of Globalisation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota. Barcellona, P. 2005. Il suicidio dell’Europa. Dalla coscienza infelice all’edonismo cognitivo. Bari: Edizioni Dedalo. Bauman, Z. 2004. Wasted Lives. London: Polity Press. Beck U. 2010. Potere e contropotere nell’età globale. Rome-Bari: Laterza. —. 2004. Lo sguardo cosmopolita. Rome: Carocci. —. 2003. La società cosmopolita. Prospettive dell’epoca postnazionale. Bologna: Il Mulino. —. 2002a. “The Cosmopolitan Society and its Enemies”. Theory, Culture & Society, 1-2: 17-44 —. 2002b. Macht und Gegenmacht im globalen Zeitalter. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. —. 2000. Il manifesto cosmopolitico. Trieste: Asterios Editore. —. 1999. Che cos’è la globalizzazione. Rome: Carocci. —. 1997. The Reinvention of Politics. London: Polity Press. Beck, U., Giddens A. and S. Lash. eds. 1994. Reflexive Modernity. London: Polity Press,. Beck, U. and E. Grande. 2006. L’Europa cosmopolita. Società e politica nella seconda modernità. Rome: Carocci. Berger, P.L. and S. P. Huntington. eds. 2002. Many Globalisations. New York: Oxford University Press. Cesareo, V. 2000. Società multietniche e multiculturalismo. Milan: Vita e Pensiero. Crouch, C. 2003. La postdemocrazia. Rome-Bari: Laterza. Daly, H.E. and J. B.Cobb Jr. 1994. Un’economia per il bene comune. Como: Red Edizioni. European Union. 2000. The Charter of the Fundamental Rights of the European Union, Nice. www.cartadeidiritti.net, www.euparl.eu.int. Falco, G. 1963. La Santa Romana Repubblica. Milan-Naples: Ricciardi Editore. Featherstone, M. 1993. ed. Global Culture: Nationalism, Globalisation and Modernity. London: Sage. Featherstone, M., Lash, S. and R. Robertson. eds. 1995. Global Modernities. London: Sage Heelas, P., Lash, S. and P. Morris. eds. 1995. Detraditionalization. Oxford: Blackwell.

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Held, D. 2004. Global Covenant. Cambridge: Polity Press. —. 1999. Democrazia e ordine globale. Dallo Stato moderno al governo cosmopolita. Trieste: Asterios Editore. —. 1995. ed. Cosmopolitan Democracy. Cambridge: Polity Press. Huntington, S.P. 1993. “The Clash of Civilisation?”. Foreign Affairs. 72 (3): 22-49. —. 1997. Lo scontro delle civiltà e il nuovo ordine mondiale. Milan: Garzanti. —. 2004. Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity. New York: Simon and Schuster. Hutton, W. 2002. The World We’re In. London: Little and Brown Lash, S. 1999. Another Modernity. London: Routledge. Latouche, S. 2003. Justice sans limites. Paris: Fayard. —. 1998. Il mondo ridotto a mercato. Rome: Edizioni Lavoro. —. 1992. L’occidentalizzazione del mondo. Turin: Bollati Boringhieri. Letter to Diognetus (a Greek and an Italian edition can be found in: Simonetti, M. and E. Prinzivalli. eds. Letteratura cristiana antica. Casale Monferrato: Edizioni Piemme. 1996. Lull, J. 2000. Media Communication and Culture. A Global Approach, Cambridge: Polity Press. Miller, P. 1973. The Puritan Way of Life, in Puritanism in Early America edited by G.M. Waller, 32-53. Toronto: Lexington. Ramonet, I., Chao, R. and J. Wozniak. eds. 2004. Abécédaire partiel et partial de la mondialisation. Paris: Plon. Rifkin, J. 2004. The European Dream. London: Polity Press. Ritzer, G. 1996. The McDonaldization of Society. Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press. Robertson, R. 1992. Globalisation: Social Theory and Global Culture. London: Sage. Sen, A. 2000. La ricchezza della ragione. Denaro, valori, identità. Bologna: Il Mulino. Smith, A.D. 1993. “Towards a Global Culture?”. In Global Culture: Nationalism, Globalisation and Modernity by M. Featherstone, 171191. London: Sage. Tomlinson, J. 1999. Globalisation and Culture. Cambridge: Polity Press. Touraine, A. 1999. Comment sortir du libéralisme?. Paris: Fayard. Veneziani, M. 1999. Comunitari o liberal. La prossima alternativa? Rome-Bari: Laterza. Waller, G.M. 1973. ed. Puritanism in Early America. Toronto: Lexington.

CHAPTER FIVE HAS AFRICA INVENTED HUMAN RIGHTS?1 JEAN-LOUP AMSELLE

To begin with, one should note that, in this as well as in other cases, asking whether Africa invented human rights might prove more interesting than any actual answer to the question itself. We shall focus here on the Kurukan Fuga Charter and/or the Mande Charter which are said to have been drawn up before the Bill of Rights (1689), the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789), even prior to the Magna Carta (1215-1297). As Africa was the cradle of humanity, it would seem logical, within an Afro-centric perspective, that human rights should also have been born on that continent, in this case in West Africa, and in the SudanSahelian region. First of all, we shall foreground the “invention of the tradition” and the production of a “pattern”, that is, the establishment of a maximum distance between Africa and Europe. An attempt will then be made, on the contrary, to bring these two intellectual continents together, availing of certain aspects of the works of Michel Foucault, capable of enriching this debate or at least decentralising it. We shall then conclude by evoking the Revolutions of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, as counterpoints to reactive enquiry, though they remain under the banner of “African Renaissance”. The play representing the emergence of Human Rights on African soil is divided into a number of acts. In chronological order, all begins with Maurice Delafosse (1870-1926), colonial administrator, ethnographer and orientalist and his opus magnum Haut-Sénégal-Niger (1912) in which he paints an impressive ethnologicalhistorical picture of the “civilisations” of that part of Africa, in particular the great “Sudanese” empires (Ghana, Mali, Sonraï) which succeeded each other, all over this area, between the Eighth and Sixteenth centuries

1

I wish to thank Anne Doquet of the IRD for her help provided in drawing up this chapter.

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(Delafosse 1912).2 We do not know who informed Delafosse because his work is based on secondary information gleaned from enquiries carried out by colonial administrators (heads of districts) at the request of the governor general of French West Africa of the time, Clozel. From the point of view of what interests us here, it emerges clearly from the inquiry, that Sunjata Keita, having defeated Sumanworo Kanté, Emperor of Sosso, at the battle of Krina, in 1235 (a date invented by Delafosse), became the founding sovereign of the Empire of Mali (Delafosse 1912, 169). But, having reported this major event, Delafosse makes no mention whatsoever of the Kurukan Fuga meeting during which Sunjata Keita enacted the famous charter. It was for the first time, in 1960, with the publication of the book by the Guinean historian Djibril Tamsir Niane, Sunjata or the Mandingo epic, a translation of feats collected from the griot (jeli) Mamadou Kouyaté of Jeliba Koro in Guinea, that this event was mentioned in a book written in French (Niane 1960).3 The work, which does not include a complete literal transcription in Malinke, contains, however, a chapter entitled “Kurukan Fuga or the division of the world”, which tells of the meeting that Sunjata organised following his victory over Sumanworo and which brought together the chief clans of the empire as well as the newly subjected peoples (Id., 136143). It also announces the prohibitions (jo) and the norms of “joking relationships” (senankuya) governing relations between the various Mande clans. But, in the final chapter of the book, “The Eternal Mandingo”, Mamadou Kouyaté and Djibril Tamsir Niane not only describe the political organisation which Sunjata established during that meeting but they actually call it a “Constitution”, without knowing to what term in Malinke this French noun corresponds (“Go to Kaba and you will see the Kurugan Fuga clearing where the assembly which gave the Soundiata Empire its constitution was held”) (Id., 152).4

2

On the life and work of Maurice Delafosse, see J.-L. Amselle, E. Sibeud eds. 1998. 3 We say “written in French” because we have no dates for the transcription and publication of Souleymane Kanté’s Kurukan Fuga Gbara, see. infra. 4 One should notice that in the Sunjara epic gathered at Kela (Mali) by Jan Jansen there is no question of the Kurukan Fuga in Jansen, Duintjer and Tamboura. eds. 1995.

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1. Souleymane Kanté and the N’ko Souleymane Kanté (1922-1987), a Guinean marabout, in 1949, invented an alphabet by mixing Arabic and Latin graphemes, thanks to which he was able to translate the Koran and write many other books in Malinke (Amselle 2005). Among these books, it is worth mentioning a volume of “legislative customs”, probably inspired by the colonial codification or a variation of it contained in Haut-Sénégal Niger by Delafosse, and which contains the 130 “rules” or “laws” (ton5) emanated by Sunjata at Kurukan Fuga and which Souleymane Kanté, adhering closely to Delafosse’s chronology, collocates in 1236, a year following the presumed date of the battle of Krina (Kantè 1994). The first set of laws regards the old customs (landa),6 those drawn up by the elders and destined to be abolished later upon the adoption of new laws. The second set concerns Sunjata’s period in the Marka area, during which time the future sovereign came to appreciate certain Muslim customs of that country, especially the seven-day week. The third set contains those that followed the relinquishment of the laws in force during the reign of Sumanworo, the emperor defeated by Sunjata. These “laws”, “rules” or “customs” concerned a number of different domains: material possessions, ways of obtaining and transmitting them, marriage and the question of dowries, inheritance, the norms governing slaves, the organisation of labour within families and according to age, land rights, the prohibition of human sacrifice, the safeguard of foreigners, succession to chiefdom, rules concerning combat and the dead, oaths and ordeals, the calendar, social statutes (tontigi, tontan) and the associated “joking relationships”, etc. All these “rules” or “laws” arise from giving a fixed, standard juridical status to practices “performed” in various ways, over time, within, what we might call, for lack of a better term, “the Manden cultural area”. It is, therefore, a kind of oral codex “invented“ for the most part by Souleymane Kanté because, as he himself stated, the griots were incapable of formulating it and probably stems from observations or historical inquiries carried out among the custodians of the “tradition” (elders, griots, etc.) by 5

Ton: “rule, law, regulation, government, groups subjected to the rule, something which may not be derogated, obligation, duty, assigned goal”. Maurice Delafosse (1955, 759). 6 Lada and Landa: “coutumes, loi coutumière” from ladat in Arabic (Delafosse 1955, 452).

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that erudite Moslem. This oral codex, therefore, underwent a two-fold transformation: on the one hand, it became the object of transcription, the kind of “list” that type of operation involves, on the other hand, it was referred back to a distant past, to 1236, which date, as we have seen, is a total invention. The fixing of the oral codex in writing and dating it to the Sunjata era, makes it a “false archaism”, as well as placing its author and aforementioned co-authors, Mamadou Kouyaté and Djibril Tamsir Niane the aforementioned co-authors, in a position one might call “Afrocentric”.7 This is because, in actual fact, this dating operation makes the “laws” and the “Constitution” of Kurukan Fuga precede, by five centuries, the English “Bill of Rights”, and by six, the French Revolution’s “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen”. But when all comes to all, the question is not so much knowing whether these oral regulations may be compared to a “Constitution”, because being oralʊthat is not writtenʊeven if that is a problem, as discovering their purpose. One cannot doubt that the pre-colonial Manden world was endowed with rules, norms and values, although these rules, norms and values varied greatly depending on time and place, which too is a problem. The difficulty resides, most of all, in the fact that it is impossible to compare a set of rules, albeit a “code” or a “charter” like that of Kurugan Fuga with the Bill of Rights or the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. In actual fact, if one seeks to make a comparison at all costs, and supposes that the meeting actually took place in the Thirteenth century, it is rather with the Hammurabi Code, for example, given that one should make comparisons with a “Constitution” of any kind, seeing as the Kurugan Fuga charter intended, essentially, to regulate relations between groups and questions of social status. The two issues were, besides, closely linked because they regarded an extremely hierarchised society (warriors, “castes”, slaves) where the maintenance of social and political order was fundamental. In the story of the creation of the Kurukan Fuga charter, and in general in the narration of the deeds of Sunjata, one can detect the clear intention of promoting a vast project of social and political reorganisation aimed at putting an end to “wars of everyone against everyone”, which, within the Manden and West-African context in general meant factional warfare (fadenkele) between opposing provinces and chieftainships (kafo). From this stems the importance, as narrated both by Mamadou Kouyaté and Souleymane Kanté, of stipulating pacts between 7

The best-known representative of “Afrocentrism” is Cheikh Anta Diop 1974.

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rival “houses”, the famous senankuya, “cooled down”, “depoliticised” and transformed later into “joking relations” and “cathartic alliances” by colonial ethnology (Radcliffe-Brown, Griaule). Here we come up against a veritable instance of social and political contracts drawn up with a view to guaranteeing peace and maintaining order, by controlling rival aristocracies; something, all else being equal, a bit like the way Philip the Fair, in the thirteenth century, tried to centralise the French monarchy by limiting the power of his vassals. In the Sunjata epic, and the Kurukan Fuga assembly which marked its climax, one needs to detect the staging (by the dominant aristocracies, or the contemporary political elites that succeeded them) of a process of instauration or re-instauration of an imperial power which took over from that of Sumanworo Kanté, Emperor of Sosso.8 This is why Mamadou Kouyaté’s and Souleymane Kanté’s idea of comparing the Kurukan Fuga Charter to the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citoyen does not make much sense. Not because Africa or the Africans would not have been capable of drawing up a “Constitution” but because the charter in question does not testify in any way to an uprising against absolute monarchy analogous to that of seventeenth-century England’s Glorious Revolutionʊa revolution leading to the emergence of a parliamentary monarchyʊor any preoccupation whatsoever with the rights of the individual. Once again, this charter concerned exclusively the stipulation of pacts or alliances between groups, “social contracts” if you like, but social contracts which, strictly speaking, have nothing to do with the political philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau), aimed at guaranteeing, by reiterating the achievements of the Magna Carta, of the Habeas Corpus Act, and, availing of a fictional opposition between the “state of nature” and a “social contract”, the transformation of subjects into citizens endowed with certain rights.

2. The Kankan meeting (1998) In any case, this kind of anachronism, typical of all fundamentalisms, religious or cultural, makes a comeback whenever policies of decentralisation or policies favouring multiculturalism and ethnic diversity in the West African countries of the Sudan and Sahel areas, arise. With the support of international organisations, financiers and NGOs, in Senegal and in Mali 8

Whether within the framework of the decentralisation of administration in Mali or of the “African renaissance” so dear to Abdoulaye Wade, President of Senegal.

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the humanistic (maaya) values of hospitality (terenga) relative to domestic power (ka mara la segi so), are deemed to be proof of good government while in the various countries of the area palavers between families or groups and debates within villages are encouraged, as useful ways of solving conflict and re-establishing peace between the various ethnic communities. This way, the Sudan and Sahel regions of West Africa, seen as a land of concord, is “sold” upon the international aid market as a perfect counter-example to be held up against central or coastal Africa (Ivory Coast), torn by tribal conflict and genocide. It is within this context that, in 1998, at Kankan in Guinea, following the initiative of the OIF (International Organisation of La Francophonie) and CELTHO (Centre for Linguistic and Historical Studies through Oral Traditions) that a seminar, open to participants from the various West African Sudan and Sahel countries, was held. The official aim of this workshop, or seminar, was the improvement of mutual understanding between exponents of tradition, researchers and communications experts, with a view to devoting themselves urgently to the collection and safeguard of the African oral heritage. During the seminar, many bard-narrators were invited to provide, in turn, their respective versions of the Kurukan Fuga charter; Judge Siriman Kouyaté, a Guinean magistrate, a member of an important family of bards, took it upon himselfʊin purest colonial styleʊto draw up a “summary”, in the form of a “constitutional text” containing 44 articles. The outcome of the 1998 meeting and subsequent “rediscovery” of the Kurukan Fuga charter brought about the marginalisation of the version by Souleymane Kanté, the Guinean marabout and inventor of the N’ko alphabet, whose text concerning the Kurukan Fuga also inspired colonial juridical custom and impacted considerably on the printed version provided in the final document of the seminar. Only the version drawn up during the seminar, based on a “summary” of the various versions provided by the bards and which ignored the Souleymane Kanté version completely, was authorised. Two contributions, on the contrary, occupy a position of primary importance: the “Sunjata Testament” by the Mali researcher Youssouf Tata Cissé, and narrated by his main informer, the bard Wa Kammissoko, and the “Hunters’ Oath”, an oral text believed to precede (1222) the Kurukan Fuga charter (1236) and contain articles regarding “human rights”. By tracing the genealogy of the Kurukan Fuga charter to the “Hunters’ Oath”, it has been, therefore, possible to “improve further” on Souleymane Kanté who, on his part, had simply claimed that the Charter was older than the 1689 “Bill of Rights”. The African version of human rights is at this

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stage presented as being contemporary, if not anterior, to the English Magna Carta (1215-1297). It is worthwhile to point out that if the Magna Carta establishes, almost by inaugurating it, the freedom of the individual as opposed to the arbitrary authority of the despot, it is difficult to find an equivalent in the Mandingo tradition prior to the Souleymane Kanté texts, those of the Kankan seminar or the “Hunters’ Oath” as published by Youssouf Tata Cissé. One might ask whether, in reality, such back-dating of the right of the individual to resist royal powerʊto be found in the entire tradition of English politics, from the Magna Carta to the Habeas Corpus to the Bill of Rightsʊdoes not derive from a “democratic” or “egalitarian” vision of the customs of the traditional associations of Malinke hunters (donso ton). At any rate, this is how they were made to appear beginning with the investigations of Youssouf Tata Cissé, and enhanced later by the theoretical elaborations of the anthropologist Claude Meillassoux. It cannot, therefore, be excluded that Youssouf Cissé, having been in close contact with Claude Meillassoux, may have woven into his work on the “Hunters’ Oath”, a version capable of providing democratic processes implemented all over Africa in the 1990s with the legitimisation of “tradition”. The end of the meeting, which the “rediscovery” of the Kurukan Fuga Charter concluded, therefore brought to light a number of principles or preoccupations of a strictly contemporary nature, like human rights, gender equality, the environment, cultural diversity or African unity, issues that all appear like to be “false archaisms”, to cite again LéviStrauss famous expression.

3. The outcome of the Kankan meeting: “Kurukan Fuga Charter” or “Mande Charter”? This process of the “invention of tradition” continued in the following meeting held at Bamako, in Mali, in 2004. There were many participants, some of whom had taken part in the Kankan seminar. During this new meeting, the Senegalese writer Boubacar Boris Diop, while trying to maintain his distance from the Afrocentric position of Cheikh Anta Diopʊwhose ideas had, in actual fact, had an immense impact on the process which led to the promotion of the Kurukan Fuga Charterʊmocks those who consider the charter as “an a posteriori construction drawn up by intellectuals prepared to go to all dishonest ends to find valid references for their own history” (1974). We, like this writer, without going to the point of speaking of fraud, cannot but think that both the Charter and its appendices (the “Hunters’

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Oath” and the “Mande Charter”) are a veritable elaboration aimed at generating a process capable of creating a cultural heritage. During the following meeting, held again at Bamako, in 2007, at the initiative of the Mali Minister of Culture, the charter’s development continued with the launching, by the already-mentioned Youssouf Tata Cissé, of the “Hunters’ Oath”, labelled as the “Mande Charter”. This latest version of the “tradition” has managed to prevail upon the international scene of “world cultures”, as it was the version chosen at Abu Dhabi in 2009 for inclusion in the indicative UNESCO’s Intangible World Heritage of Humanity list. It is impossible not to detect in this choice the outcome of rivalry between the two main beneficiaries of the Charter, Guinea and Mali. Similar rivalry becomes particularly evident in the graphic choices made, seeing as that the name of the assembly convoked by Sunjata may be written in two different ways: Kurukan Fuga, in the manner of the Mali tongue, or Koudoukan Fouga, in the n’Ko language of Guinea, that is in the manner as it is exhibited in the place where the famous gathering is supposed to have actually occurred. This “rivalry of allegiances”, to use the words of Malian research veteran Bakary Kamian during the “National Seminar for the Authentication of the Kurukan Fuga Charter”, held in 2010 at Kangaba, should not, however, lead one to forget the “complementary nature” of this “undeniable conquest of national heritage”, which reaches far beyond the borders of present-day Mali. During this seminar, an appeal was made, stated once more in “Afrocentric” terms, against “denial of any kindʊthat is, against any attempt to question the “real nature” of the charter following its inclusion in UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity listʊand what it might lead to, while the Mali authorities were invited to draw up a consensual version of the document. The final (provisional) touch was added by the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Mali independence at Kurukan Fuga, on the 1st of October, 2010, a ceremony during which the Malian President, Amadou Toumani Touré, in the presence of a numerous Guinean delegation, laid the foundation stone of a huge monument to be built in the famous “clearing”, thus fixing in cement and engraving in marble the different laws of that “unwritten constitution” (Keita, Kouyate 2010), and completing the process of consolidation of Malinke identity, begun several decades ago. Before concluding on this point, we need to add that the debate surrounding Kurukan Fuga, far from being limited to the West African milieu, has also entered the French political arena. The occasion was

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provided by the speech made by Ségolène Royal in Dakar in 2009, in response to a sadly famous one by Nicolas Sarkozy. During her speech, the then candidate for the Presidency of the French Republic, referred to the Mande Charter to demonstrate that “African man had already entered history decidedly”. We have to put an end to this false idea according to which democracy and fundamental rights had a sole cradle, the West. In a recent conference organised by Stéphane Hessel on the history of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man, of which he was one of the editors, he gave the word to Souleymane Bachir Diagne. The latter recalled that in the Mande Charter of the thirteenth century, in this “Hunters’ Oath” which might well address the whole world, one finds a definition of the rights of the human being which still applies today.9

4. Return to the pattern One cannot exclude a priori that the Kurukan Fuga assembly actually took place in the thirteenth century and that, during that gathering, Sunjata Keita, founder of the Mali Empire, promulgated a certain number of rules and passed or confirmed a whole series of pacts between the principal clans of the empire. Similarly, one cannot exclude either that it is a late reconstruction made by some griots and traditionalists anxious to legitimise the imperial power of the Keita or certain branches of it. So far, the emphasis has been placed on the issue of the “invention of the tradition”, not as the “discovery” of a hidden treasure, that is, its “rediscovery”, but as the creation of a new pattern. For this reason, the focus, willingly or unwillingly, has been on the meaning of the establishment of the greatest distance between Europe and Africa, that is, between the individual rights of western man and the hierarchical ideology of West Africa. One hopes, at this stage, to take the opposite route in order to draw Africa and Europe closer together; within this perspective it appears opportune to recall Michel Foucault’s workʊ“Society must be 9

http://www.lepoint.fr/actualites-politique/2009-04-07/le-discours-inte-gral-deroyal-a-dakar/917/0/332931. According to Libération (9 April 2009), Ségolène Royal’s speech at Dakar was drawn up by Souleymane Bachir Diagne, JeanFrançois Bayart and Elikia M’Bokolo. It is evidently possible to make an oral test like the “Hunters’ Oath” say what one wishes if one does not know the conditions in which it was enounced. On this issue, see the article by Souleymane Bachir Diagne, “Philosophie africaine et Charte africaine des Droits de l’Homme et des peuples”, Critique (“Philosopher en Afrique”), 2011, 771-772, 664-672, which encounters difficulty on this very question.

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defended”ʊwhich unexpectedly, and without the author’s being aware of it, provides the means through which to escape the unbridgeable gap between the two continents (Foucault 2003). The existence of this radical breach has, actually, the unfortunate effect of attributing the monopoly of human rights to Europe, thus arousing the ire of the post-colonials who, by way of retort, seek to “provincialize Europe”, and make it swallow its pride (Chakrabarty 2000). In his “Society must be defended”, Foucault seeks to deconstruct philosophy, especially that of the sixteenth-seventeenth centuries. In his opinion, the political philosophy of natural rights and the social contract, that of Machiavelli, Grotius, Hobbes and Pufendorf, represents a simple legitimation of royal sovereignty. Therefore, he opposes the pattern of the “war of the two races” (devised in the Seventeenth century by Boulainvilliers, and taken up again in the nineteenth century by liberal historians like A. Thierry and F. Guizot and then even by Marx with his class-struggle model) to that of political philosophy. These two models, in Foucault’s opinion, correspond to two legacies: that of Rome for political philosophy, that of Jerusalem for the “war of the two races”. The second model thus creates opposition, in a paradigmatic manner, within the framework of the history of France, but also within that of England, between two strata or branches of the population: on the one hand, the Franks, invaders from Germany and the forerunners of the nobles, on the other the autochthonous Gallo-Roman ancestors of the Third Estate. One finds the same dualism in the history of England with the Norman invaders as the ancestors of the aristocracy and the “native” Anglo-Saxons as the forerunners of the people. Foucault, who ignores exotic populations, despite the relevant position occupied by ethnology in his thinking, is unaware, however, of the fact that the pattern of the war of the two races, which he himself analysed within an exclusively European context, may be applied to other areas of the world, in particular to the African continent. Which political model, which theory of power is most widespread in Africa, and in particular in the West African areas of Sudan and Sahel, that is, in the region most interested in the “Kurukan Fuga Charter”? Among the Mossi, the Bambara and other populations, it is the opposition between the conquering chiefs on the one hand and the natives, those connected to the land and custodians of rites, on the other. This theory of power is particularly suited to the famous practice of “joking relationships” mentioned above, which are really simple political pacts, oral “contracts”, sanctioning power relationships between different groups (clans and lineages).

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Would it not be better, therefore, to consider this binary opposition between powerful conquerors and autochthonous populations as a veritable structural pattern reaching beyond geographical continents, the famous “cultural”, if not philosophical, areas? Is this not the kind of opposition it is “good to think of” beyond “cultural” differences that LéviStrauss had in mind? Does it not permit us to avoid those terrible problems which, as said before, lock thinking and philosophies within overly narrow geographical and cultural confines? Privileging this kind of pattern would, in any case, help to overcome some of the weak points of the “Kurukan Fuga charter”, at least its Kankan version. This version, in actual fact, unlike the “Kurukan Fuga Gbara” by Souleymane Kanté, provides no room for the “original dwellers” (lampasi), or “old dominators”, declassed following their defeat to “autochthonous” rank and “custodian of rites” status. This charter stems, in fact, from the power placed at the apex of a social hierarchy, that of the Emperor Sunjata, and offers the vanquished no escape route, no pardon. The case of the pattern of the war between the two races is quite different, it provides a scheme commonʊlet us recallʊto Europe and Africa alike. Siéyès detects this pattern, in particular, in the clash between the Ancient Regime and the Third Estate; the latter descending from the autochthonous Gauls, the former, the aristocracy, from the Franks, the invaders from the Germanic areas. This scheme of relativeʊand not absolute as in the case of present-day indigenous movementsʊautochthony is capable of providing the present struggle for political emancipation with a highly effective intellectual tool. And this, not in its existential and racial form, as in the case of recent defenders of Ivory Coast ivoirité, but as a tool by which to oppose men of power, seen as invading conquerors. This old pattern of conflict between two strata of the population or two social classesʊwhich goes beyond the usual North/South, Europe/Africa, West/Other dividesʊmay be safely recovered and used efficaciously to advance present-day political clashes. Apart from this, is it not time to renounce seeking at all costs “African” equivalents of the grand “European” philosophies and theories of human rights of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries, by applying a kind of “mimetic rivalry” which leads only to frustration and misunderstanding? The recent “African” democratic revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, although they have already become the prey of upholders of cultural nationalism, were initially conducted in the name of freedom of expression and democracy, without creating any particular problems for the protagonists. They felt no need to seek in the Koran, in the caliphates, in the “democratic” Berber traditions or elsewhere, political models capable

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of justifying their actions. The peoples of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, simply took their human rights and turned them against us, giving us an example of what needs and remains to be done to free ourselves too of “our” tyrants. They did not ask human rights for a passport, they simply expressed their own thirst for freedom and dignity. Nobody would dare accuse them of having thus betrayed any kind of “African” authenticity albeit that of North Africa.

References Amselle, J.-L. 2005. Branchements, Anthropologie de l’universalité des cultures. Paris: Flammarion. Amselle, J.-L., and E. Sibeud. eds. 1998. Maurice Delafosse. Entre orientalisme et ethnographie: l’itinéraire d’un africaniste. Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose. Chakrabarty, D. 2000. Provincializing Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Delafosse, M. 1912. Haut-Sénégal Niger, 3 volumes. Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose. Delafosse, M. 1955. La langue mandingue et ses dialectes (malinké, bambara, dioula). Dictionnaire Mandingue-Français. volume 2. Paris: Paul Geuthner. Diop, Ch. A. 1974. The African Origin of Civilisation. Myth or reality?. Westport, Connecticut: Lawrence Hill Co. Foucault, M. 2003. Society must be defended. New York: Picador. Jansen, J., Duintjer, E. and B. Tamboura. 1995. eds. L’épopée de Sunjara d’après Lansine Diabate de Kela. Leyde: CNWS. Kanté, S. 2010. “Kurukanfuga Gbara”. In “Cinquantenaire: Journée de Kurukanfuga, au cœur de la grande histoire” by E.M. Keita Kouyaté. L’Essor 10: 32-43. Odoi. N. and D. Doumbouya. 1994. edited by D. C. Conrad, Guinea: Kissidougou. 50 pages dactyl. Royal, S. 2009. Speech in Dakar. http://www.lepoint.fr/actualites-politique/2009-04-07/le-discoursintegral-de-royal-a-dakar/917/0/332931. Tamsir Niane, D. 1960. Soundiata ou l’épopée mandingue. Paris: Présence africaine.

CHAPTER SIX BODIES THAT DEMOCRACY EXPELS: THE OTHER AND THE STRANGER TO “BRIDGE AND DOOR”; THEORY OF SOVEREIGNTY, BIO-POLITICS AND WEAK AREAS OF GLOBAL BǴOS, HUMAN OR SUBJECTIVE RIGHTS? MASSIMO CONTE

3rd Stone From the Sun (J. Hendrix, Are You Experienced)

Introduction Cosmopolitanism, human rights and global society are three key terms for understanding “civil religion”, humanity and the complex phenomenon of global immigration in the twenty-first century. Initial attention goes to a television commercial (July 2011) of a new Italian automobile, with the testimonial that affirms the statement “luxury is not a privilege, luxury is a right”. A statement that becomes “the right of luxury”, among the many fundamental private rights in the existence of a person. In an ethnic ample space s(he) senses first the judicial in countries “that are in development”, but the worries are into the society of wellbeing too. The rights of people (social citizenship is subject to rights and duties), culturally (education, knowledge), socially and economically, solicit the query whether practical global justice,1 a theory of justice2 is a central 1 2

That is what T. Nagel asks, 2009. J. Rawls 1982.

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theme in Kant, according to “The state of peace between men together that coexist is not a natural state…The state of peace needs to be institutional”.3 The theme of global immigration and human rights, after the tragic experience of Nazism mutes its meaning and passes through a double contradiction, the first, economical and the other cultural. The first contradiction is diffused in an orientation that pushes towards the existence of rights for people coexisting in a regression of progress for collective rights, at work and to a dignified life, health and homestead. The intention of liberating people from the old servitude comes while being conditioned by aggressive political neoliberals that in the last ten years have lacerated social coexistence; worsening the conditions of well being; diffusing competitive and aggressive behaviour; concentrating wealth in oligarchies and a transnational elite. Political economics in the mean time transfers from the suburbs of the world to the centre of society of well-being deleterious social outcomes for civil cohabitation and social cohesion. Global immigration represents by necessity a new planetary innovation for institutions and in daily interaction: people are moving more around the world as never before seen in past eras. The physical contact with foreigners, strangers, in other words the “world that rotates around you” in the publicity of a cellular commercial, redefines the physical characteristics of space and social distance and acts on the quality of attitudes and judgements. This spatial proximity generates contrast actions between them, that is why finalized multicultural strategies are multiplied so as to be aimed at individual conscience rather than to the world of finance and money. It is the world of humanity that requests the humanity of the world with its knowledge of diversity and the reformulation of the identity memory, in a mutual fiduciary interaction between one’s own and other people’s rights and duties. The action of moving collectively out of fear of “contamination” prompts behaviours and actions of immunisation from differences in order to confirm the reassure one’s identity, as seen through the testimonials 3

I. Kant, 1982, 180-1. The objective for a “perpetual peace” a human project, a social construction. Georg Simmel (1998) has written pages relevant to the figure of the foreigner. “Bridge and Door”, the title for this work, bridges that open or doors that close to others, is the original synthesis that the Berlin sociologist attributes to the ambivalent behavior of opening and closing to others. See Conte, 2010. For an interesting phenomenological reading of the stranger see Waldenfels, 2008.

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reviving in Europe of the formation of dangerous right extremist movements founded on “fear”, the identity of race and xenophobia, and in Italy the civil degradation and attacks to pacifist cohabitation, provoked by actions of the Lega Nord.4 Aggressive behaviour and violence that have taken hold of the exposed layers, the less instructed of society, is being nourished by the politics and economics of the elite and bourgeois extremist, with requests to the institutional arena for a guarantee of social distance between “us” and “them” and to predispose ad hoc space of “immunisation” from “others”: “those who have reached today their maximum planetary deployment”. The normative aspects of the impunity of one’s rights can be violently contradicted and obliterated from government by ignoring ,on the outside, the international law and produces, on the inside, a state of permanent exception, that “still pretends to apply to one’s rights” (Agamben 2003).5 The new cosmopolitanism of humanity represents a progressive differentiation of the systems and social subsystems, of the tendencies to globalisation and the consequent intensification of the relationships between individuals pertaining to various cultures that the affirmation of the principles of multiculturalism has carried out; it has affected the current phenomenon of the identity crisis. (Crespi 2004, 8)6

4 This is a political party founded in the Eighties by a teacher, Umberto Bossi. Its main purpose is to gain the independence of the North of Italy. 5 In the right there is an extra exception legem. In Italy this wind of right has produced the passage from the Immigration reception centres for citizens immigrated for various reasons (among which, it is well to remember, refugees from wars, violated women, child soldiers, etc.) to the hateful CIE from the extremists of the Lega, Identification and Expulsion Centres, concentration centres like the famous one in Turin where free citizens, without having commited any type of crime, are segregated in fenced camps under the control of the police! For more than 18 months. This is the bare life that I refer to, these are the homines sacri that are the “killable”, those to which the social community looks upon in order to stigmatize with adequate endorsements without rights. 6 The debate is opened if multiculturalism declines in terms of integration or of social assimilation (the melting pot model, where diversities are approximated to the unit of advanced rank), or it is succeeded to govern with more complex politics of the diversities (salad bowl, where every “ingredient”, culture, conserves its flavour). From here arrive securitarian politics or new modalities in repressing immunisation, or programs inspired to selective solidarity, between those who try to conjugate inevitable social control with concrete policies of solidarity.

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The phenomenon of migration demands a mutual acknowledgement7 declined on the differences, on the diversities, in order to reach the cohabitation, that contrasts with the historical form of globalisation. The progressive opening to the world has often provoked homologation, instead of regulating the increase parts and interests of an interdependent system of elements interacting between them. The second contradiction concerns the reasons for which the topic of the human rights can be explained with the bio-politics concept of Foucault.8 The contradiction concerning human rights, after the politics of died Nazism of the shoah and the followed emphasis of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, had produced the defense, after the Second World War, of humanity in its entirety. Even here a contradiction is situated, for which “this that is worth for the single individual, is not valid for all men and vice versa. However, if you believe them, the three terms of individuality, rights and humanity do not succeed to get alone a single line” (Esposito 2007, 83), so that “the right is not able to unify humanity and individual. The individual cannot recognize its own being in the device of rights” (Ibid., 83-84) giving rise to a state of exceptions. Therefore the rights of the legitimate defense of “every man in an adequate form of life has been evident in the continuous violence upon this principal” (Ibid., 84).9 In this sense it can be affirmed that Never as today the notation of human rights appears to be delivered to an evidence of contradiction. To an increased succession on the plan of the enunciation a more pronounced distrust corresponds on that of their effective performance. (Ibid., 84)

This is the ontological and social failure, that affirms the principles of humanity that seem to always correspond to the concrete conditions of 7

For the theme of recognition and reciprocity see Honneth 1993, Crespi 2004, Habermas and Taylor, 2007. The spark of recognition determines a situation of reciprocity that surpasses traditional constraints and fixes roles (parental, religion, ethnic, territorial, gender), in order to propose itself in confrontation with an “other” founded on confidence. 8 See Foucault 2005a, 2005b, 2009b. Interesting receptions of bio-politics in Italian centre parties is proposed, from various perspectives, by Agamben 1995, 2003, and Esposito 2002, especially 2004 and 2007. 9 The author remembers the paradox of countries that give few compromises like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia (one of the more faithful allies in the Persian Gulf of the United States) entering to take part in the 2007 UN Human Rights Council!

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individuals, that it coincides with the progressive separation of principal theories and concrete human practices. The concept of a person is defined in: 1) the person vs. the body, principle of modern personalism; 2) the person assumes the body, with the first crushing over the biological matter of the second, as seen in the bioand tanato-politics of Nazism; and 3) through the body/person, with the first as property of the second, according to the instructions of the liberal thought of John Locke and John Stuart Mill.

1. Bio-politics and bio-power of/on life 1.1. Sovereignty theory and the regime of bio-politics. Zoé or Bíos? Regulations of the body and the bio-political life During the last few years the debate on global migration and human rights has been an interesting resumption of some categories of the ancient world with which interrogating the age of multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism shows the return of the living in the political agenda, with the entrance of zoȑ (bare life or deprived of qualifications of the animals, humans, gods) and the bȓos (form of life that is qualified individually or in groups) in the sphere of pȩlis, in a form of “politicization in bare life [that] as such constitutes the decisive event of modernity” (Agamben 2003, 6-7). Bare life is fixed in “a murderous and non sacrificial life of the homo sacer”.10 Let us see its merit. 10

Ibid., 11. On the contrary I intend with “bare life” the exclusion on which I found the city of men, all do not participate to the edification of the polis. It is enough to observe contemporary metropolises for verification. Ever more imposing masses “inhabit” the margins, the edges, and the uncertain borders of the metropolises. In rich China the censuses of the population reveal “forgotten” people, since in large city agglomerates their high mobility does not allow for a recording, so it does not exist for the sanitary system, housing, etc. These “nonpeople” are not recorded as legal subjects and are exactly classifiable like bare life. They are, like the masses sailing the Mediterranean on dangerous barges dying in dozens, private also in death in a judicial status following life, that were foreseen in their own country of origin. The barge then constitutes the symbol of an inclusion of the excluded ones. In the summer of 2011 Italy and Malta hid behind unprecedented transit in international waters and therefore not pertaining to the two countries, in order not to lend first aid to the boats full of desperate refugees, women and children (assistance was then later sent by Italy). So NGOs are not able to supply an estimate of how many died in the Mediterranean in 2011. If one reflects that the person, the only indivisible person is a human being of flesh and bone, it is difficult to accept that there died an imprecise number of people who,

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One of the characteristics of modern politics is not the exclusion of zoé in polis, but rather the decisive hand to the process for which the exception becomes the rule everywhere, the space of bare life, the marginal origin progressively ordering comes to coincide with the political space, exclusion and inclusion, outside and inside, bȓos and zoȑ, straight and made to enter in a zone of irreducible distinctions. (Ibid., 12)

This reproduced aporia in the folds of democracy does not succeed in saving the zoé, for which the forfeiture of the modern democracy and its progressive converge within the totalitarian states in spectacular societies (evident already with Tocqueville that has been found in the analysis of Guy Debord over spectacular societies final sanction) they have, perhaps, their root in this aporia. (Ibid., 13).11

Some elements seem useful for reflection. 1) “The same entitlements on bare life, leads in the bourgeois democracies, to the private supremacy on the public and the individual freedoms on the collective obligations”.12 2) Karl Löwith is the first to define “politicization of life” as the fundamental character of the politics of a totalitarian state. A dark convergence flutters between totalitarian democracy and states, in the sense that “before emerging impetuously to the light of our twenthieth century, the river of bio-politics, that drags with itself the life of the homo sacer, slides underground …It is like… every decisive political event has always a double face: the space, freedom, after having lost their rights in life, in death are anonymous. Like the common graves in war. 11 This is the unspoken part of the practice of demos, that of the “dark side of the moon” that results in expansion in the 1900s. What expansion? And is the whole of the twentieth century meant here? 12 Agamben 1995, 134. Being exhausted of interest for the common good to change itself in the most profitable private ambiance within one’s own personal security is what differentiates the freedom of the ancients from that of modern ones, effectively analysed in the well-known works of Benjamin Constant (2001) dedicated to the progressive sliding from the interest for the events of the polis with a delegation to represent the interests collectively released to the political rank.

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and the rights that the individual earns in their conflict with the central powers simultaneously prepared every time, a tacit, but increasing registration of their life in the state order” (Ibid., 133, my emphasis). This is the dark side that is not wanted to be noticed. 3) In democracy an intimate contradiction cohabits that “does not abolish the sacred life, but..crushes it and..scatters it in every single body, making it a stake in the political conflict” (Ibid., 137). In the Habeas corpus of 1679 the appearance of a person in front of a judicial court, neither an old subject of the relationships and feudal freedoms, nor the future citoyen, but a pure and simple “corpus” exactly, a metaphor of the political community that “maintains a strict tie with the bare life” (Ibid., 136-138) The organicist metaphor of Leviathan (Hobbes 2001) among other things lives in the forefront of works with a collective body state format from the single bodies, which bodies?, those “absolutely killable subjects to form the new political body of the West” (Ibid., 138.). The western state that for Michel Foucault has integrated in measure without subjective technical precedence of individualisation and objective procedures of totalisation, placing in competition the requests of individual freedom and the forms of coding of collective laws. This formulation contests the traditional approach to the problem of power, based in exclusive right on legal models (what is legitimate power?) and institutional (what is the State?), and suggests “liberating [it] from the theoretical privileges of the law and sovereignty, if an analysis is wanting to be made over the concrete game and historical power of the operational ways. (Foucault 2009, 80) Therefore, the theory of sovereignty slips, with a “maneuver”13 of biopolitic, from an ontology of the history of lives of individuals towards a life in history positively interpreted to a new ontology of the body and its powers, in order to think the political subject like an ethical subject” against the actual hypostatization of western thoughts which are “individual rights” (Foucault).

13

For the concept of “maneuver” see Agamben 2006, Deleuze 2007. Foucault centralises the theme through the thematic maneuver of power and its genealogy. Dispositif: it is equivalent to a pronounced sentence or an emitted official administrative action from a judge; or it is closer to stopping or arresting someone who is given an arrest warrant, official “certification” of the event. See also Dictionnaire de L'Académie française, 1694, 286.

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Here the contrast is between a theory of sovereignty acts with biopolitics disciplinary policies from the “body” of true rights towards a “right” of the body, orientated from the disposition of the power of knowing towards a political issue that involves the population of the species altogether, after having assumed the individual-body which is the initial matrix of regulation. “Living individual” and “species” determine the stake in the game of politics that regulates the individual title of the entire species, in the passage from a political anatomy of the body, (the body-car holistic gear of capitalistic production) that marks modernity until the seventeenth century, then moves the axis towards a bio-politic of the living and of the population (the body-species). In this way, the living bio-politic body “representative” of the population-species endures the sieve of a calculability threshold, becomes a probabilistic object whose criteria of measurability circumscribes the limit that a bio-power assigns to them in the most significant act: such life is the defense of human nature. I confronted the present tendencies in these two forms of sovereignty (political, bio-politics) in table 1, with the progressive substitution of the disciplinary regulating mechanisms. In the following table, I have confronted the historical dimensions that support the theory of sovereignty and the new forms of dominion taxes asserting itself on the bio-political regime. Table 6-1 Theory of sovereignty Politics Disciplinary mechanism body organism discipline institutions institutional organic discipline of institution

Bio-politics Regulating mechanism population biological processes regulating mechanisms state biological state unity state bio-control

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Table 6-2- Theory of sovereignty and bio-political theory Till the Eighteenth century

From the Eighteenth century

make die or let live* power of life and death (over subjects) forming of sovereignty starting from central soul or “Leviathan” (State offshoots of Leviathan central core) power over nature and things

let live or reject to death* defence of life and death study of state, peripheral/manifold

control over objects and procedures ability/activity forms of discipline ontologisation of reality anatomical policy of the body (bodymachine) social contract, delegate one’s own life the sovereign M. Conte on Foucault (2009).

life taking on importance power over man as a living being group regulation of individual bodies chance/self assertion forms of self-regulation biologisation of the living bio-politics of the living and population (body-species) negotiation and direct social to ties

1.2. Strangers and foreigners: killings of the homines sacri, state of expectation, bare life The progressive differences of the system and social subsystems, from the globalisation tendency and the consequences of the intensification of relationships between individuals belong to diverse cultures that have lead to the affirmation of the principles of multiculturalism. (Crespi 2004, 8)14

and affect “the actual phenomenon of identity crisis” (Ibid., 8). Social institutions and powers, act individually and social exchanges, in the age of multiple modernities or in postmodernity set the social foundations of one new form of social organization, in its pervasive globalism, that is being disseminated all over the world, like industrial capitalism and its twin enemy, state industrialization, made in the course of the twentieth century, quivering institutions, transforming cultures, creating wealth and causing poverty, provoking greed, innovations and 14

The debate is opened if multiculturalism declines in terms of integration or of social assimilation. This differentiates the securitarian policies and new modalities of excluding immunisation from others inspired to benevolent forms of solidarity of which it conjugates inevitable social control with concrete policies of solidarity. An interest confronted with the recognition of the multiculturalism era in Habermas and Taylor 2007. For the form of ethnic recognition see Honneth 1993.

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hopes, imposing with time hard sacrifices and seeding desperation. However we should not judge, it is sure a new world. We are participants of a new planetary: the mobility in the global world has assumed unknowing characteristics from other eras that places us in contact with many strangers:15 we see break people’s identities in their lives in a “world that turns around us”. This complexity of the global world needs to adapt governance to the solidarity. We act for far away events, but we “consume” the near social ties in violent and aggressive ways, available when problems are far away, aggressive when our physical space is occupied, closing doors instead of opening bridges. The contemporaneity that is opened to others reproduces inside oneself its own social inequalities and rights between subjects, strangers and foreigners (political refugees, immigrants from poverty, ethnic conflict, and the destitute bidonvilles of the world, until an entire ethnicity is stigmatised and considered “dangerous”, like the Roma and Sinti communities), to the pairing of the dangerous classes of the first half of the 1800s in the organicist positivism of Lombroso and Morselli (brigades, prostitutes, anarchists). The global migration of a million people renders urgent a verification of the analytical categories that intercept the contemporary social changes with the classic theory of sovereignty that withstands on pillars founded on the legitimacy of the individual subject’s natural rights or original powers; from the law, fundamental manifestation of power, from the State, speech on the ideal genesis of the State, beside which the topic of bio-politics16 is placed with sovereignties, disciplines, security. The sovereignty exercised in the borders of the State-nation that act as a filter and hinge is re-discussed by extr-territorial globalisation; the discipline that takes care of the bodies of the individuals and their correction (like the capitalistic discipline in the great factories of the first industrial revolution) in the social conflict, in the microphysics of power of every individual has been fragmented like in the great factories; in the end, the security that is applied to the population on a selective basis,

15

On the stranger-like metaphor of the uncertain one, of the beaten one that it disturbs, of the unknown person who worries, see the phenomenological approach in Waldenfels, 2008. On the foreigner see central author Georg Simmel, 1998. On the sociology of the global world in union with human rights see Cotesta 2004, 2012. 16 On this analytical work see Foucault 2005a, 2005b, 2009b.

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operates in a system of social relations that is fragmented by interests and values. In this way, to whom does security speak, who benefits, what are the characteristics to be included, to what does the insurance form alludes us to an immunization request in order to confine, delimit, exclude which we do not understand? The topic crosses the function that covers the confidence in contemporary social relations, for which the difficult relationship between citizens and public institutions, so like the perception of our same security depends on our own last analysis of our availability or of being trusting. The “other” seems to be always less trustworthy, first of all by virtue of the increasing mutual non involvement that characterizes the contemporary city life. (Conte 2009, 13)

In this way the growing worry referred to the security is not only the product of this spreading distrust it mutually characterizes the subjects in an atomized increasingly social context. The worry for a presumed criminal emergency hides alter distrusting elements, hides the sensation that these (the institutions, ours) are always less capable to be subject to their own aimed controls and territories of the daily lives of individuals. (Ibid., 14)

Hence the urgency of a theoretical distance that interrogates the new forms of contemporary social ties, faced in an articulated research work.17 The processes of bureaucratization and the social complexity in the 1900s drive the institutional topics towards the “friend-enemy” dialectic in the ominous decisional version of Carl Schmitt (1992, 2008) with the motive “the monarch is who decides on the state of exception”. The state of exception is a form of exclusion from the general norm, in western democracies it is concentrated on the subject that most “exceeds” the right: the stranger, migrant by necessity, and the subject that is included in the exclusion. A state of exception whose topological structure is of “Being out, and however, to belong” (Agamben 2003, 48). Hic Rhodus, hic salta. The “places” on which the state of exception exercises its “power” are exposed over two thresholds, one biological-identity of sexuality, the other social-cultural of ethnic and community. 17

In how much we have promised in the long excursus history in Conte 2009, in which trust come declined this modality is articulated in a sworn social connection, underlined in the volume below.

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2. Vocabulary on overall society and migratory phenomena The universe as a world of global connection and “continuous informative flow” (Conte 2007) confronts cultural differences, relations, languages, customs, style of lifestyles and religion, that solicit defensive psychological reactions when faced with the “threat” of the other. This is the result of a skilful sociological inquiry in the ambivalence of human beings taken between attraction and refusal of the other (Simmel1998). The cosmopolitanisation of the world, the oversight develop all that is needed and renders urgent a reflection that qualifies new links, content and words with which to prefigure new worlds. This is the reason why it is necessary to qualify words that make us aware to qualify language that interprets new dynamics and social phenomena. In table 3, I propose a set of vocabulary that incorporates terms and open an analysis covering a wide range of the topic of global society and its internal movements. Table 6-3 Vocabulary of society and global migration Vocabulary community-society cultural integration-assimilation social inclusion-exclusion (discrimination, segregation, racism, ethnic, cultural) identity (I-others) restock power; communication reciprocity-recognition multiculturalism (melting pot vs. salad bowl particularism-universalism-cosmopolitanism other-foreigner-stranger state of exception, bare life The implied terms are not exhaustive to how much they are propaedeutic in the design of an ideal map of language with which to verify the emerged global dynamics in the physical space and sociological planetarium. Comparison of such vocabulary would be of aid to anyone who works in such thematic order to orientate and propose to the decisive politicians, the crucial topics on which they operate.

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3. Conclusion As we have seen, life more than rights is at the centre of political action, but their relational mutation changes the terms of attribution of confidence to multiple cultural and social audiences. This complex social architecture that presides over the social relations between those who are similar, but moreover between those who are diferent, needs that fundamental resource of life to associate confidence in itself, in others, in technology, in the world, by virtue of the fact that “without confidence we could not raise ourselves from bed in the morning”, to use the meteoric metaphor of Luhmann (2002). To further emphasise this, human rights shrink the rights of certain groups of people (women, the young, the unemployed, those with precarious existences, foreigners, cultural minorities, etc.) and reduce personal guarantees as to the security (immunisation) of a symbolic space and rationale. In a different way, it could disseminate new immunising safety-catches while in the meantime losing portions of individual freedom, disowning the liberal principles of Locke, Mill, Smith. The aporia in the new millennium lives within the refusal between an individual pretension to rights and self-determination with a removal from durable engagements and to the contemporary demanded to the State, moreover always stranger, to the protection with new immunity maneuvers, grown to excess in the last few decades. Clarify this sentence! The continuous demand for protection evokes securitarian tensions that make citizens blackmailable, less critical, and therefore more likely to exchange freedom with personal security, with the result: “The risk of the modern freedom is that, absorbed in the enjoyment of our private independence and in following our particular interests, we renounce very easily to our right to participate in political power”. (Constant 2001) These securitarian demands as to the invasions of the “Barbarians” concerningt two faces: of immunisation that generates new violence (physical, verbal, single, organised, theistic with the kamikaze, mass rapes being “contagious” in Serbia, Bosnia, Rwanda, etc.); of residual deductions with modernity according to the immunity that it exempts from the burden from obligation (behaviour that obtains interests from the other) and from duty (normal behaviour). This immunity order of “localization” (the territory) and “of the ordering” (the State)18 in renewing the ius sanguinis contrasted with the ius soli, is declined with a de-socializing emphasis towards those same 18

Two fundamental elements of Schmitt’s “nomos della terra”.

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normative institutions and state institutes of social constriction whose participation is invoked. This field of acting in the bio-political regime erects walls in the private vital space and leaves unattended the public space where new ones bundle forms of post-democratic government out of the contemporary social phenomena, a field of the new strategies of power that while they include species and subjects, assets and objects, isolate categories of people lacking in protection of their fundamental rights, firstly the right to live, returning to the homines sacri or “killable” subjects. This is a reflection on citizenship like on the title of a person rather than on belongings to a territory, whose borders have been re-discussed by the “destruction of the creator” of capitalism and by the new extraterritorial borders of the State-nation. The worldwide phenomenon of immigration indicates to us that the road followed obligates us, like homo sapiens, not to leave anybody behind, because in the end we could find ourselves left behind. The other bothers us, but without the other we are not able to circumscribe our multiple identities, because the other that looks at us is us, in our acceptance and refusal, in our attraction and revulsion. Simmel docet when he picks apart the intimate matrix of ambivalence which constitutes the individual in its inner motions, like in eversion manifestations of social encounters with others, the reasons of acceptance “of the other”, or those activated in a course of action “for the other”, with an oppositional refraction “against the other”. The other and the stranger, the other that is a stranger, figures with which modernity seemed to have come to terms, are reproduced which functional requests deducted in the nucleus of same modernity. Figures whose rights have been taken away and the ambivalent act of being human, not being qualified to be between us, that shrivel us, with theirs, our same legitimacy to participate rightfully to the human assembly and to stretch the ideal of a “man of humanity” (Simmel 1998).

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References Agamben, G. 1995. Homo sacer. Turin: Einaudi. —. 2003. Stato di eccezione. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri. Bauman, Z. 2002. Il disagio della postmodernità. Milan: Paravia Bruno Mondadori Editori. Castells, M. 2000. End of Millennium. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd. Cesareo, V. 2007. ed. La distanza sociale. Una ricerca nelle aree urbane. Milan: FrancoAngeli. Constant, B. 2001. La libertà degli antichi paragonata a quella dei moderni. Macerata: Liberilibri. Conte, M. 2008. “Little Naked Pangs of the Self”. The Real Performance of the Self and the Function of Trust in Goffman’s Action Theory”. International Review of Sociology-Revue Internationale de Sociologie. 18 (3): 375-392. —. 2009. Sociologia della Fiducia. Il giuramento del legame sociale. Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane. —. 2010. “La Fiducia e l’ambivalenza umana nella Wechselwirkung di Georg Simmel”, in Simmel e la cultura moderna, edited by V. Cotesta, M. Bontempi, M. Nocenzi, 411-435, vol. I, La teoria sociologica di Georg Simmel. Perugia: Morlacchi Editore. Cotesta, V. 2004. Sociologia del mondo globale. Rome-Bari: Laterza. —. 2012. Global society and Human Rights. Leiden: Brill. Cotesta V., Bontempi M. and M. Nocenzi. eEds. La teoria sociologica di Georg Simmel. Perugia: Morlacchi Editore. Crespi, F. 2004. Identità e riconoscimento nella sociologia contemporanea. Bari: Gius. Laterza & Figli. Esposito, R. 2002, Immunitas. Einaudi: Turin. —. 2004. Bíos. Turin: Einaudi. —. 2007. Terza persona. Politica della vita e filosofia dell’impersonale. Turin: Einaudi. Foucault, M. 2004a. Naissance de la Biopolitique. Cours au Collège de France 1978-1979. Seuil: Gallimard. —. 2004b. Sécurité, Territoire, Population. Cours au Collège de France 1977-1978. Seuil: Gallimard. —. 2005a. Nascita della bio-politica. Corso al Collège de France (19781979). Milan: Feltrinelli. —. 2005b. Sicurezza, territorio, popolazione. Corso al Collège de France (1977-1978). Milan: Feltrinelli. —. 2009a. La volontà di sapere. Storia della sessualità. Milan: Feltrinelli. —. 2009b. Bisogna difendere la società. Milan: Feltrinelli.

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Habermas, J. and C. Taylor. 1992. Kampf um Anerkennung im Demokratischen Rechtsstaat. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag. Hardt, M. and A. Negri. 2003. Impero. Milan: BUR. Hobbes, T. 2001. Leviatano. Il pensiero occidentale. Milan: Bompiani. Honneth, A. 1993. Riconoscimento e disprezzo. Sui fondamenti di un’etica post-tradizionale. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino Editore. Kant, I. 1982. Stato di diritto e società civile. Rome: Editori Riuniti. Lasch, C. 2001. La ribellione delle élites. Il tradimento della democrazia. Milan: Feltrinelli. Merton, R. K. 1970. Teoria e struttura sociale. Analisi della struttura sociale. Bologna: il Mulino. Nagel, T. 2009. È possibile una giustizia globale?. Rome-Bari: Editore Laterza. Rawls, J. 1982. Una teoria della giustizia. Milan: Feltrinelli. Rodotà, S. 2009. La vita e le regole. Tra diritto e non diritto. Milan: Feltrinelli. Schmitt, C. 1992. Teologia politica. vol. 2, La leggenda della liquidazione di ogni teologia politica. Milan: Giuffré. —. 2008. La tirannia dei valori. Riflessioni di un giurista sulla filosofia dei valori. Milan: Adelphi Edizioni. Simmel, G. 1998. Sociologia. Milan: Edizioni di Comunità. Waldenfels, B. 2006. Grundmotive einer Phänomenologie des Fremden. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag.

PART TWO: EMPIRICAL STUDIES ON GLOBAL SOCIETY, COSMOPOLITANISM AND HUMAN RIGHTS

CHAPTER ONE BETWEEN THE RIGHT TO THE PLACE AND THE RIGHT IN THE PLACE: THE UNCERTAIN STATUS OF RESIDENCE BETWEEN GLOBAL URGES AND LOCAL RESISTANCES ENRICO GARGIULO

Introduction During the last decades, the rapid changes of the global political and economic scenario that caused the crisis of the state have also thrown into crisis one of the most emblematic institutions of modernity: citizenship. As a consequence, citizenship is no longer the exclusive form of relationship between individuals and political power. When citizenship started to lose its monolithic compactness, its “fragments” started to moveʊso to speakʊupwards and downwards. Moving upwards, they went to compose a new legal statusʊEuropean citizenship; moving downwards, they connected to local contexts the entitlement of some fundamental rights and began to give shape to a system of local citizenships. Therefore, national citizenship has been joined by new forms of citizenship,1 making membership more complex and articulated and fragmenting the status of citizenship. While citizenship seems to lose its relevance, a new status, among the others, is gaining an increasing importance: residence.2 1

On this topic, cf. Bauboeck 1994, Soysal 1994 and Zanfrini 2007. It could be useful, for English mother-tongue readers, to highlight the fact that the Italian word “residenza” defines the place in which a person has his permanent home, and the word “domicilio” defines his temporary address, contrarily to what 2

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The status of national citizen is joined therefore by a new entity: the formal status of whoever is legally residing in the territory of a state. Although the condition of non-citizen resident is by previous to the far socalled “crises of the state”ʊthe figure of denizen,3 indeed, was already present during the Middle Agesʊthe process of European integration and, at the same time, the process of regionalisation within single states confers to this condition a new centrality. The system of local citizenship which is gradually arising has some potentialities but, at the same time, involves some evident risks. If, on one hand, the systems of local rights could be considered as more inclusive towards migrants than the national ones, on the other hand they can turn into heavily exclusionary mechanisms. The so called “residence”, that is to say the inscription into the registry office of a town is, in specific terms, the bone of contention between who promotes forms of local citizenship which are at least potentially universalistic and who, on the contrary, defends increasingly particularistic forms of citizenship.

1. Crisis of national citizenship or crisis of a state-centred perspective? According to many scholars, it is possible, through citizenship,4 to rethink the idea of the social beyond the opposing ideologies of the twentieth century. Danilo Zolo (1994, ix-x), for instance, considers citizenship a strategic and expansive idea, that has the capacity to cover, at least in part, the theoretical vacuum opened by the crisis of the “received paradigms” of socialism and liberal-democracy. According to this meaning, a particular concept of citizenship is invoked in order to recast a conception of this institution that is, at the same time, close to the liberal-democratic principles which are aspired to, but not only formalistic or procedural. Citizenship, in other words, is considered a plausible answer to the problem of the inclusion of individuals inside a political order; a problem that has been raised by the failure of socialist collectivism and by the many critical words pronounced happens in English. Furthermore, the term “residenza” has both a more general meaning and a more specific legal value, referring to the practice of inscription into the registry office of a town (the register of births, marriages and deaths), required by law of Italian citizens and of foreigners who regularly reside in Italy. 3 On the meaning of this term, see Hammar 1989. 4 Many publications testimony the “rediscovery” of citizenship. Among these, see Andrews ed. 1991; Barbalet 1988; Roche 1992; Turner 1986.

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against the model of the atomised individual typical of liberal thought. More generally, the strong emphasis put on the substantial dimension of citizenship has made the republican model of this institution the more attractive model for the majority of scholars.5 Nevertheless, while citizenship was still occupying a central position in the academic debate, some events seemed to declare the end of modern citizenship as national citizenship:6 the process of European integration, particularly with the birth of European citizenship (Lippolis 1998), and the process of devolution, which has taken place in many western countries (OCSE 2001; Vandelli 2002). Both these processes are linked, in socialscientific literature, to the more general “crisis of the state” (Derlugian 1996). The changes which the state is actively interested in represent, beyond any doubt, a factor of crisis for citizenship: the systemic forces that are weakening state sovereignty also operate on this institution, downsizing its function. National citizenship, as a consequence, is strongly limited by dynamics that are both internal and external to the state. This institution, that represented the exclusive link between the citizens and the state, has turned into one of the possible forms of relationship between individuals and a political power no longer only detained by the state. What we want to underline on this occasion, notwithstanding, is that the entire path of citizenshipʊand not only its latest developmentsʊmay be adequately understood only if considered within a systemic perspective. Economic, political and social global-sized factors, indeed, have shaped such a path from the beginning. In this sense, the role of citizenship has always been supra-national, even before European citizenship was born. Therefore, if we intend citizenship as a theoretical category completely framed within the semantic field of the state, then this category currently shows the signs of a crisis. If, instead, we intend citizenship as a category which finds its meaning within systemic and not only intra-national processes, then this category still maintains its relevance today. Its role in the global processes of exclusion is more clearly visible than ever. In our opinion, the misunderstanding of the role played by citizenship is due to the kind of unit of analysis that is commonly used in current literature: the nation-state. In a state perspective, in fact, this institution appears to be the natural link between a nation-state and its members: .

5

About the republicanʊor “active”ʊconception of citizenship, and on the differences between this conception and the liberalʊor “passive”ʊconception, see Dagger 2002; Gosewinkel 2001; Habermas 1990; Sau 2004. 6 On the new forms of citizenship see Bauböck 1994; Soysal 1994; Jacobson 1996; Hoffman 2004; Ong 2005; Rigo 2007.

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every state-entity has its own citizens, and this is the natural state of things. As underlined by Linda Bosniak, citizenship has been conventionally assumed to be a national enterprise; it has been assumed to be an institution or a set of social practices situated squarely and necessarily within the political community of the nation-state. Given this assumption, there has not seemed to be much of anything to talk about. (Bosniak 2001, 237)

Accepting the “natural” fact that such a link exists, the majority of scholars have rather concentrated on how this link is shaped. The discussions around citizenship, therefore, concentrate on its features, on the rights that it grants and on the ways with which these rights may be claimed, while the most frequent questions about citizenship concern its effectiveness in contemporary societies, or, in other words, the natureʊactive or passiveʊof the citizen. The route of citizenship, from such a perspective, shows itself as a glorious path of progressive inclusion. This path, as such, by means of an increasingly profuse system of rights should lead to equality among citizens. In other words, if we view citizenship from a state-centred perspective, it shows without any doubt its inclusionary side, efficaciously summarising the kind of protection that every state allows to its citizens: each state appears like a distinct but interconnected atom, exerting its jurisdiction on its own citizens by means of an expansive use of rights; on the other hand, what happens outside of a state, in particular to the persons that aren’t official members of it, doesn’t fall within its sphere of influence. But, if in place of a state-centred perspective we adopt a systemic one, the scene appears quite different. From one external to the state territory perspective, citizenship looks like a somehow arbitrary link between a state and some of the persons which live within it. This link, now, no longer appears no longer as something natural, but as an artificial fact, while the questions concerning how to concretely defend citizen’s rights are replaced by questions concerning who are the owners of such rights, who has access to them and why these persons are considered such.

2. Citizenship in a global perspective State-centred and atomistic perspectives are quite common in social sciences. In these disciplines, explanation normally “highlights either ǥinternal’ properties of the entities investigated or the ǥexternal’ properties

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concerned with its relation with other entities within a wider system”. (Wade 2005, 17) As underlined by Robert Wade talking about the “crisis of the state”, the majority of the literature on the topic privileges a path of the first kind (ibid.). A similar statement may be made, as we have already pointed out, about the works on citizenship. More generally, we can underline how many social researches are characterised by a sort of “methodological nationalism”, since they share the assumption that “the nation/state/society is the natural social and political form of the modern world” (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002, 302; Hopkins 1982). The sharing of this assumption proves that “the epistemic structures and programmes of mainstream social sciences have been closely attached to, and shaped by, the experience of modern nation-state formation”. (Ibid., 303). In order to understand the political dynamics of capitalism, however, it is possible to go beyond a perspective that assigns to the states and to the international system a political role which is independent from the economic sphere and that, as a consequence, conceives “state” and “market” as dichotomic terms. Nevertheless, we don’t want to deny the importance of the first term within the logic of capitalism. According to Braudel, indeed, capitalism that hasn’t built the state, but has inherited it, may triumph only when it identifies with this political institution (Braudel 1981). Rather, it’s important to achieve a better understanding of the role performed by the stateʊbut also and especially by the marketʊwithin the broader capitalistic system. In this sense, the equation “capitalism = free market” must be reconsidered: if market is the realm of pure economy, then capitalism is its antithesis, not its synonym of it. Braudel, in fact, dividing human economic activity into three different levels, distinguishes the second, the one of market economy, from the third, the one of capitalism. This last level, which moves above the level of the market, is the zone of the counter-market, the realm of the exercise of power; here capitalism places itself (Braudel 1979). The close relation between political power and market, therefore, makes it necessary to link the study of the state with the study of the context in which states have risen and evolved. This context can be characterised as a world-system, that is a social system, one that has boundaries, structures, member groups, rules of legitimation, and coherence. Its life is made up of the conflicting forces which hold it together by tension and tear it apart as each group seeks eternally to remould it to its advantage. (Wallerstein 1974, 229).

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According to Wallerstein, up until today only two kinds of worldsystem have existed: world-empires and world-economies;7 both are defined by a sole division of labour; nevertheless, while the first one is characterised by a single political entity which extends across the great majority of the globe’s surface, albeit with a limited control on it, the second is characterised by a plurality of political entities (Ibid., 230). Capitalism is constituted by a world-economy which has survived for 500 years without transforming itself into a world-empire: it “has been able to flourish precisely because the world-economy has had within its bounds not one but a multiplicity of political systems” (Ibid.). Considered as an historical system, capitalism can be identified with “that concrete, time-bounded, space-bounded integrated locus of productive activities within which the endless accumulation of capital has been the economic objective or “law” that has governed or prevailed in fundamental economic activity” (Wallerstein 1995, 18). The state, therefore, cannot be the only protagonistʊand so the only unit of analysisʊof the social sciences because capitalism as an economic mode is based on the fact that the economic factors operate within an arena larger than that which any political entity can totally control. This gives capitalists a freedom of manoeuvre that is structurally based. It has made possible the constant economic expansion of the world-system, albeit a very skewed distribution of its rewards. (Ibid.)

Out of a state-centred perspective and adopting a systemic one, the path of citizenshipʊnow considered, as a consequence of this change of perspective, a world-wide phenomenonʊshows itself in a different light: within the world-system, the lengthening of the catalogue of citizenship’s rights, as well as the extension of the citizen’s set, that may be noticed inside the economically and politically core-countries appears closely bound with the worsening of the life conditionsʊand so to the constriction of citizenshipʊthat have been noticed on the outside of these countries. In this sense, the transition of the “subject” into the “citizen” which has concerned some areas of the world-system, went along a parallel process whose outcome has consisted in the establishment of new subjects in different areas of the same world-system. The function of citizenship, therefore, cannot be adequately understood if considered exclusively as a chapter of each single state’s domestic 7

The concept of world-economy was introduced by Fernand Braudel. On his definition of this concept, see Braudel 1981.

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policy. It must be rather interpreted in the light of the role performed by this institution within the world-economy: that of a legal instrument ʊbetter if equipped with socio-cultural-like rhetorical statementsʊused as a control element within political and economic processes that are, at the same time, inclusionary and exclusionary. In the light of these suggestions, exclusion appears as the central figure in the history of citizenship. The path of this institution, in fact, especially during the centuries following the French Revolution, has been characterised by an uninterrupted conflict among groups of people aiming to narrow the number of citizens, and other groups, instead, aiming to widen this number to include new classes of persons: Too many persons were citizens. The results could be dangerous, indeed. The story of the nineteenth century (and indeed of the twentieth) has been that some (those with privilege and advantage) have been attempting to define citizenship narrowly and that all the others have been seeking to validate a broader definition. It is around this struggle that the intellectual theorizing of the next 200 years centred. It was around this struggle that the social movements were formed. (Wallerstein 2002)

Citizenship, thus, by means of its inclusionary and at the same time exclusionary action, has made legal a world-wide system of privileges. The maintenance of such a system of privileges shows some constants and, at the same time, strong discontinuities. Without any doubt, a recurring theme is represented by the presence on the world scene of social groups conflicting with each other in order to achieve a position of hegemony.8 An element of discontinuity, instead, may be found in the internal composition of these groups, which can change as a consequence of new deals among social parties that modify the balance of power within them. The history of social deals among dominant and dominated groups is tightly entwined with that of the global hegemonies9 exerted by the states: 8

The concept of hegemony used here is drawn by Giovanni Arrighi’s The Long Twentieth Century. Recovering Gramsci and his distinction between a kind of power based on “pure and simple dominion” and a kind of power related to dominion but increased by the exercise of a “moral and intellectual direction”, Arrighi defines hegemony as “the additional power that accrues to a dominant group by virtue of its capacity to place all the issues around which conflict rages on a “universal plane” (Arrighi 1994, 28). 9 This notion is an extension of the concept of hegemony from the relations among groups within a stateʊnamely from the intra-national levelʊto the relations among states – namely to the international level. “Worldwide hegemony”, thus,

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“the consolidation of each world hegemony presupposed the establishment of new “historical compromises” capable of bringing social conflict under control”, while, during the hegemonic transitions the widening of the social foundations of the hegemonic bloc was accompanied by, indeed, premised on a de jure or de facto exclusion of the majority of the world’s population from access to the same rights and privileges.(Silver and Slater 1999, 152; see also Arrighi 1994, 29-30).

In order to understand the role performed by citizenship within the processes of global exclusion it could be useful, now, to pay attention to the changes of this institution and to the rise of local citizenships in the Italian context. More specifically, we will focus on the status around which local citizenships are taking form residence.

3. Residence and its internal tensions In the Italian legal system, the concept of residence is defined by Article 43 of the Civil Code, and corresponds to the place in which a person has his permanent home. The notion of residence is made up of an objective elementʊdue to the presence of a person in a specific placeʊand of a subjective oneʊdue to the decision of this person to use this place as his legal residence (Morozzo della Rocca 2003, 1013). If the Civil Code defines the legal notion of residence, other lawsʊLaw 1228/1954 and the Presidential decree of the president 223/1989ʊ translate this notion in a specific administrative act: the enrolment into the registry office. Through this act, the formal acknowledgement of the condition of resident takes place. Although the definition of residence is based on the continuity of a person’s dwelling place, the constant presence of an individual in local territory is not sufficientʊin itselfʊto grant him the acknowledgement of the formal status of resident. Not everyone who actually lives in the area of a specific town is enrolled into its registry office. In other words, the resident population de facto, do not always coincide with the resident population de jure. For this reason, the notion of residence, as the notion of citizenship, can be considered both in a substantial and in a formal sense.10 A resident in a substantial sense is someone who is steadily present on the local becomes “the power of a state to exercise functions of leadership and governance over a system of sovereign states (Arrighi 1994, 27). 10 On the different dimensions of citizenships and their reciprocal tensions let me refer to Gargiulo 2008a.

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territory, while a resident in a formal sense is only who is actually enrolled. Between the two different meanings of residence exists a relationship of potentialʊand often realʊtension. The substantial condition of residence doesn’t automatically develop into a legal connection between a person and the town in which he materially leads his life, that is to say in the formal condition of residence: enrolment in the registry officeʊdespite the intentions of the person who appliesʊcan even not take place. From a legal point of view, the tension between the two kinds of residence is quite problematic. Firstly, the tie between the enrolment and the acknowledgement of some personal rights (due to the individuals as such and not only as citizens) is very strict. In specific terms, the link between the enrolment into the registry office and some rights contained in the articles of the Italian Constitution seems to be evident: Article 2, that ratifies the respect of human rights as inalienable and sets out the right of individuals as members of social formations; Article 14, which ratifies the inviolability of the residence and, more generally, of private life, so protecting individuals from arbitrary measures of the civil service; Article 16, that ratifies the freedom of movement and circulation of individuals, and includes freedom of domicile, residence and abode; Article 32, which sets out the right to health of citizens and the community (Morozzo della Rocca 2003, 1018). Moreover, the assumption on which is based the distinction between the two kinds of residenceʊthe discretion of the civil registrarʊis unfounded: in the execution of his registry duty, the mayor acts in the character of a “Government officer”, as an organ of the civil service, and not as an autonomous political actor. For these reasons, consequently, residence arises as a “perfect subjective right” (Ibid., 1020). The Supreme Court has further confirmed this assessment, restating the merely formal nature of the power of control assigned to the civil service in matters of enrolment in the registry office: the mayor’s measures of acceptance of applications for enrolment have only a declaratory value and are not constituent of the right to residence (Cass. 1081/68). Aside from legal contents, the distinction between the two kinds of residence is controversial from a political point of view, as it structurally shapes the constitutive process of new local citizenships. While legitimising the denial of registration of individuals who permanently and regularly reside in a local territory, this distinction provides a justification to the detachment between the substantial and the formal dimension of the local citizenship, producing significant effects on individuals belonging to specific categories: the impossibility to concretely exercise rights of which they are holders.

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To residence, indeed, is connected the access to some fundamental benefits and services, such as entitlement to the National Health Service;11 the registration of professional licenses; the acquisition of a VAT number (and the connected possibility of undertaking commercial or professional activities); the access to family income supplements; the access to tax breaks for the purchase of one’s principal residence; the access to social assistance; the access to the educational system; as regards EU citizens, the eligibility of participation in local elections; as regards foreign citizens in general, the achievement of citizenship. Denying residence means therefore to obstructʊor even to stopʊthe access to these rights and services.

4. The development of residence in the Italian system: a brief excursus Attention towards residence is not new. Already in 1939, by means of measures against urbanism,12 the possibility of moving to towns with more than 23000 residents is forbidden to individuals who cannot demonstrate they work there permanently. After a little more than fifty years later, although the abrogation of the law promulgated in 1939 and the existence of new norms concerning residence, many local governments still practice control on people’s movement through registration: often, in order to be registered, individuals are illegitimately required to provide specific documentation, as possession of a job inside the local territory, availability of a home and absence of previous criminal records. The high frequency of this kind of request by many local registry officers lead the Italian Home Office to issue two ministerial circularsʊn. 8 of 29th May 1995 and n. 2 of 15 January 1997ʊto assure on the whole national territory the right of registration even to those individuals who live in crumbling houses, with no fixed abode or with criminal records. But it is only after a decade that interest in the topic of residence became central. At the beginning of 2007, with the Legislative Decree n. 30 of 6th Februaryʊwhich puts into effect the European directive 2004/38/CE, that regulates the movement of European citizens among 11

The issue is controversial. Even if formally “entitlement” to the NHS and the status of resident are not connected (foreigners, indeed, should be able to register simply by declaring their place of domicile), they are often linked in order to deny specific groups of individuals rights. 12 These measures were provided by Law 1092 of 6th July 1939, subsequently repealed by Law 3 of 10th February 1961 (Morozzo della Rocca 2003, 1019).

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member statesʊthe right to stay on Italian territory of these citizens is partially restricted. An EU citizen who applies for registration has to show, as well as a valid identity card or a passport, proof of the fact that he works, or, if he is not a worker, proof of his economic means and health insurance. After little more than two years, during the month of July 2009, the act of Parliament n. 94ʊan act that is part of the so called pacchetto sicurezza13ʊintroduced some restrictive changes to the criteria that regulate residence. These changes place at risk specific kinds of peopleʊparticularly nomad and gypsy populationsʊwith obstacles for local administrations when they have to create a list of the young people required to attend school. The compilation of this list, in fact, is possible just on the basis of the registers of the resident population (Dinelli 2010, 691). The laws we have been talking about up to now directly concern the issue of residence. Aside from them, there is another Parliament Act, promulgated during the summer of 2008, that regards this issue, even if indirectly: Act No. 125, introducing some considerable changes to article 54 of the TUEL (Unique Text of the Local Administrations), gives mayors more power than in the past, also in matters of residence. According to the new version of this article, a mayor has the power to pass a decree even outside a state of emergency.

5. The Mayor’s orders about residence: a local form of exclusion From the summer of 2008, as a consequence of the changes to article 54 of the TUEL, many mayoral decrees are enacted (see Chiodini 2009 and Chiodini and Tortorella 2010). Among them, measures concerning residence are not the most frequent, although interest in this topic is increasing over time: from 2008 to 2009 the percentage of mayoral orders concerning the awarding of resident statusrose from 0,4% to 2,4% (Chiodini 2009). Nevertheless, less than two years later, the Constitutional Court repealed14 these measures (Vandelli 2009). More specifically, the Court abrogated the part of the so called pacchetto sicurezza that awards mayors the power to enact a decree even outside of a state of emergency.

13 14

In English its translation is “security law series”. Sentence n. 115, April 2011.

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Mayors’ interests in residence, however, predate the reform of article 54 of the TUEL. At the end of 2007, Massimo Bitonci, the Mayor of Cittadellaʊa little town near Padova, in the north-east of Italyʊenacted a decreeʊimmediately given the name “Against drifters”15 by journalists, designed to introduce specific standards required for residence applications.16 These standardsʊquickly becoming/establishing a pattern for the Decree of other town’s Mayorsʊoperate in a different way depending on the different categories of people that are involved. EU citizens intending to stay on the Italian territory for more than three monthsʊwho, according to Italian law, are required to registers the resident populationʊare encumbered with obligations exceeding those stated by national law: if lacking a regular job, their income must be above a certain threshold, their accommodation must be in keeping with specific standards of hygiene and they must demonstrate they are not “socially dangerous”. Non-EU citizens, alternatively, must comply with other obligations: they must be in possession of a currently valid residence card, or, if this card is expired or in phase of renewal, they must assure, their EU counterparts, the availability of “suitable” accommodation, an annual income of legal provenance superior to a fixed minimum and present, also, a valid passport with a legal entry visa. The case of Cittadella is rather illustrative of a specific trend: some mayors require further documentation in order to grant inclusion into the local population registers so as to achieve a selection of the people “worthy” of staying in the territory of their town. The meaning of this selection can be summarise as follows: these mayors claim their authority to decide who can legally stay and who cannot on a specific portion of the national territory. This power, nevertheless, according to the national law is not entitled to mayors: residence is a topic of national competence, despite the fact that registration practices are attributed to the competence of local administrations. For this reason mayors who decide to introduce further criteria to the inclusion into the registers of the resident population decide to assume a political role despite the technical nature of their task.

15 16

“Anti-sbandati”, in Italian. On the legal implications of Bitonci’s decree see Campo 2007 and Paggi 2007.

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Conclusions The path of residence in the Italian context, therefore, highlights some ambivalent tendencies, partly similar to those which have marked the course of citizenship. This course, indeed, has been characterised by a constant tension: although rights aspire to a universal dimensionʊwhich could be entitled to persons as such and not only to citizensʊtheir acknowledgements and effective guarantees can be exclusively obtained in a national dimension. Their protection, in theory, is at least in part a duty of supranational organisations, but de facto is left to the will of single states. The two poles of this tension between universalism and particularism, therefore, are constituted at one extreme by a project of “global” citizenship, that is a status to which correspond or rather, could or should correspondʊas this status exists only partially but not de factoʊthe rights of every individual regardless of his national membership, and at the other by citizenship stricto sensu, that is to say by the status of citizen and its corresponding rights. Only the first of these two kinds of citizenship includes without excluding at the same time, while the second is inherently exclusionary. The last one, nevertheless, is real and tangible; the first one, on the contrary, is undefined and elusive. If national citizenship has become the point of intersection between universalistic and particularistic urges, residence seems to occupy a similar position: on one hand, the status of resident seems to act as an equalising power with regards to the differences related to citizenship ʊone could be resident whether as citizen or as foreignerʊon the other, however, it seems to act as a factor which empowers those differences, the effects of being denied residency are much more devastating for a noncitizen than for a citizen. In other words, the residence status is capable of interpreting the transformations which are taking place in the central zones of the global system: the high migratory fluxes towards these zones could be equally and effectively handled with an instrument that can officially recognise the permanent presence of an individual on a specific territory, aside from his national membership. At the same time, residence becomes a potentialʊand easily practicableʊexclusionary mechanism: the actual access to residency is run in a very arbitrary way by some local political actors who clearly wish/desire to make a “selection” between wanted and unwanted people in the bounds of the territory for which they are politically responsible. Therefore, within the Italian context is taking shape a multilayer inclusionary/exclusionary system: at the higher level we found European citizenship, strictly reserved for citizens of Member States but not

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available to extra-community citizens, even when they are regularly present in the territory of the European Union; at the intermediate level we found national citizenship, whose access criteria change from state to state; at the lower level we found local citizenship, whose access is regulated in part by local authorities and in part by the national authority. This system, getting closer to the lower level, could become either more inclusive or more exclusionary: at the lower level exclusionary mechanisms against people who are formally included on the base of the higher levels’ criteria may be activated. For this reason, it is not possible to understand for sure whether the process of rights’ localisation is moving towards extreme forms of localism or not. Residence, in fact, can easily turn from the condition of means of access to fundamental rights into the condition of obstacle to the real inclusion of migrants into the community.

References Ambrosini, M. 2010. Richiesti e respinti. L’immigrazione in Italia Come e perché. Milan: il Saggiatore. Andrews, G. ed. 1991. Citizenship. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Arrighi, G. 1994. The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power and the origins of Our Time. London: Verso. Arrighi, G. and B. J. Silver. 1999. Chaos and Governance in the Modern World System. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Baglioni, L.G. 2009. Sociologia della cittadinanza. Prospettive teoriche e percorsi inclusivi nello spazio sociale europeo. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino. Barbalet, J. M. 1988. Citizenship, Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Bauboeck, R. 1994. Transnational Citizenship. Aldershot: Edward Elgar. Bosniak, L. 2001. “Denationalizing Citizenship”. In Citizenship Today. Global Perspectives and practices, by T. A. Aleinikoff, D. Klusmeyer, 37-52. Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Braudel, F. 1979. Civilisation matérielle, économie et capitalisme (XVXVIII siècle). Les jeux de l'échange. Paris: Libraire Armand Colin. —. 1981. Afterthoughts on Material Civilisation and Capitalism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Campo, G. 2007. “Cittadella e dintorni”. Diritto, immigrazione e cittadinanza VII (4): 63-69. Caponio, T. 2006. “Associazionismo straniero e politiche per gli immigrati. Dinamiche di esclusione e partecipazione a livello locale”. Impresa Sociale. 75 (2): 23-55.

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Castaldi, M. 2004. “La residenza e la residenza anagrafica: la necessità di un reale chiarimento sulla portata dei concetti e sulla loro corretta applicazione in ambito anagrafico”. Lo stato civile italiano C (8): 530535. Chiodini, L. 2009. “Le ordinanze comunali a contrasto dell’insicurezza urbana: un’indagine nazionale”. Autonomie locali e servizi sociali, 3: 499-510. Chiodini, L. and W. Tortorella. 2010. “Le ordinanze dei sindaci e oltre”. Amministrare 40 (2): 317-324. Cinalli, M., Giugni, M. and A. Nai. 2010. “La partecipazione politica e la protesta degli immigrati. Una comparazione del ruolo delle opportunità politiche in nove città europee”. Rivista italiana di scienza politica XL (3): 397-421. Coscia, A. 2006. “L’abitualità della dimora (residenza) tra atto amministrativo e negozio unilatero privatistico”. Lo stato civile italiano CII (11): 836-837. Cotesta, V. 1992. La cittadella assediata. Immigrazione e conflitti etnici in Italia. Rome: Editori Riuniti. Dagger, R. 2002. “Republican Citizenship”. In Handbook of Citizenship Studies, edited by Isin, E.F. and B. S. Turner, 145-157. London: Sage. Derlugian, G. M. 1996. “The Social Cohesion of the States”. In Hopkins, T. K. and I. Wallerstein, 148-177. Age of Transition: Trajectory of the World-System 1945-2025. London: Zed Books.. Dinelli, F. 2010. “La stagione della residenza: analisi di un istituto giuridico in espansione”. Diritto Amministrativo, XVIII (3): 639-708. Gargiulo, E. 2008. L’inclusione esclusiva. Sociologia della cittadinanza sociale. Milan: Franco Angeli. —. 2008b. “Verso una “cittadinanza locale”? La frammentazione della cittadinanza sociale tra sfera sovranazionale e welfare regionale”, paper presented at the Conference of ESPAnet Italia Le politiche sociali in Italia nello scenario europeo, available at http://www.espanet-italia.net/conferenza2008/p_session7.php. Gosewinkel, D. 2001. “Citizenship, Historical Development of”. In International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, edited by N.J. Smelser, and P. B. Baltes, 212-34. Oxford: Elsevier. Habermas, J. 1990. Staatsbürgerschaft und nationale Identität. St. Gallen: Erker Verlag. Hammar, T. 1989 “State, Nation and Dual Citizenship”. In Immigration and The Politics of Citizenship in Europe and North America, edited by W. R. Brubaker, 81-96. Lanham: University Press of America. Hoffman, J. 2004. Citizenship beyond the state. London: Sage.

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Hopkins, T. K. 1982. “The study of the Capitalist World-Economy: Some Introductory Considerations”. In World-Systems Analysis. Theory and Methodology, edited by T.K. Hopkins and Wallerstein, 9-38. Beverly Hills: Sage. Hopkins, T.K. and Wallerstein, I. 1996. Age of Transition: Trajectory of the World-System 1945-2025. London: Zed Books. Jacobson, D. 1996. Rights Across Borders. Immigration and the Decline of Citizenship. London: The John Hopkins University Press. Lippolis, V. 1994. La cittadinanza europea. Bologna: il Mulino. Lippolis, V. 1998. “European Citizenship: What It Is and What It Could Be”. In European Citizenship: An Institutional Challenge, edited by M. La Torre, 217-235. The Hague: Kluwer Law International. Mariani, F. 2010. “Iscrizione anagrafica e domiciliation: un breve confronto tra le istanze di sicurezza italiane e le esigenze di coesione sociale francesi”. Diritto, immigrazione e cittadinanza, XII (1): 78-97. Morozzo della Rocca, P. 2003. “Il diritto alla residenza: un confronto tra principi generali, categorie civilistiche e procedure anagrafiche”. Il diritto di famiglia e delle persone, XXXII (4): 1013-1048 —. 2006. “I diritti anagrafici degli stranieri”. Diritto, immigrazione e cittadinanza, VI (1): 54-71. OCSE. 2001. Devolution and Globalisation. Paris: OECD. Ong, A. 2003. Buddha is Hiding: Refugees, Citizenship, the New America. Berkley: University of California Press. Paggi, M. 2007. “Il ricorso gerarchico contro l’Ordinanza del Sindaco di Cittadella (PD)”, available at: http://www.meltingpot.org/articolo11747.html. Picchio, M. 2008. “Cittadinanza, conflitto sociale e normatività. Una lettura di Marshall”. In Paradigmi e fatti normativi. Tra etica, diritto e politica, edited by A. De Simone, 321-366. Perugia: Morlacchi. Pilati, K. 2010. “Disuguaglianze strutturali e partecipazione politica degli immigrati filippini, egiziani ed ecuadoriani a Milano”. Polis. XXIV (2): 257-285. Rigo, E. 2007. Europa di confine. Trasformazioni della cittadinanza nell’Unione allargata. Roma: Meltemi. Roche, M. 1992. Rethinking Citizenship. Welfare, Ideology and Change in Modern Society. Cambridge: Polity Press. Sau, R. 2004. Il paradigma repubblicano. Saggio sul recupero di una tradizione. Milan: FrancoAngeli. Silver, B.J. and E. Slater. 1999. “The Social Origins of World Hegemonies”. In Chaos and Governance in the Modern World System,

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edited by G. Arrighi, 175-250. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Soysal, Y.N. 1994. Limits of Citizenship. Migrants and Post-national Membership in Europe. Chicago: University Press. Turner, B.S. 1986. Citizenship and Capitalism: The Debate over Reformism. London: Allen and Unwin. Vandelli, L. 2002. Devolution e altre storie. Paradossi, ambiguità e rischi di un progetto politico. Bologna: il Mulino. Wallerstein, I. 1974. The Modern World-System. Vol. 1. Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Academic Press. —. 1995. Historical Capitalism with Capitalist Civilisation. London-New York: Verso. —. 2002. “Citizens All? Citizens Some! The Making of Citizen”, E.P. Thompson Memorial Lecture. University of Pittsburgh, April 18, http://fbc.binghamton.edu/papers.htm. Wimmer, A. and N. Glick Schiller. 2002. “Methodological Nationalism and Beyond: Nation-State Building, Migration and the Social Sciences”. Global Networks 2, (4): 301-334. Zanfrini, L. 2007. Cittadinanze. Appartenenza e diritti nella società dell’immigrazione. Rome-Bari: Laterza. Zolo, D. 1994. “Prefazione”, in La cittadinanza. Appartenenza, identità, diritti, edited by D. Zolo, vii-xx. Rome-Bari: Laterza.

CHAPTER TWO ITALIAN ARMS EXPORT IN LATIN AMERICA OVER THE PAST FORTY YEARS: WHAT ROLE IN THE REPRESSION OF HUMAN RIGHTS? SILVIA SORANA

Arms and their trade in the world can be seen as a point from which to analyse a country in the international context. Following the flows of exports and connecting them to the historical-political situation in which they are inserted can provide useful elements for interpreting historical events. Since the first half of the 1970s, most Latin American countries continued their preious experience with military dictatorships. In these years, the governments of many Latin American countries started a secret alliance, named Plan Condor,1 which was intended to build a supranational cooperative structure to contrast Marxist ideology and eliminate left-wing social movements and any other form of protest (Comblin 1979; Arriagada 1980). In 1976, Plan Condor instigated action against leaders of opposition movements such as the Revolutionary Coordinating Junta (JCR).2 Different countries internally practiced tortures, kidnappings, clandestine detentions and enforced disappearances so as to suppress social, political and ideological dissent and to eradicate every form of subversion. The construction of this international network ensured that the great mass of exiles and political refugees could not escape from detention. The United States guaranteed the existence of these regimes by favouring the realisation of Plan Condor so as to ensure its economic and

1

Code name of foreign policy operation, implemented in the Seventies, with the support of U.S. President Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. 2 CIA, Secret report, A Brief Look at Operation Condor, August 22, 1978 in www.gwu.edu.

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strategic interests through the collaboration of the intelligence services of Latin America and Europe. The regimes already in existence since the early Sixthies in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, followed the coup in Brazil, which established a regime that continued from 1964 to 1985. In Peru, between 1962 and 1975, there were four military coups. In 1973, the coup of General Pinochet in Chile established a military junta, which lasted until 1988. Argentina and Uruguay became military dictatorships in 1976.

1. Political repression and arms imports Enforced or involuntary disappearances have been defined by the United Nations as “a particularly heinous violation of human rights and an international crime”.3 A disappearance has a double impact: firstly, the victims are removed from the protective precinct of the law; secondly, the families, ignorant of the fate of their relatives, experience protracted mental anguish, not knowing whether the victim is still alive. The main objective of the enforced disappearance is to arbitrarily dispose of political opponents and to spread terror within society. The disquietude generated by this practice is not limited to the victims and their relatives but also affects the society as a whole. The main purpose of a government is to protect the lives and welfare of its citizens. To accomplish this objective political leaders control and manage institutions and political power and protect their citizens from external threats. However, when the main purpose of rulers becomes the improvement of their power, citizens in conflict with this objective are perceived as a threat. Repression may be considered useful as a preventive measure to intimidate opponents but requires, however, some preconditions: in line with Most and Starr (1989), governments must be able and willing to use repression; according to Poe, Tate and Keith (1999) rulers decide to use repression because they perceive the existence of one or more threats. As believed by Davenport (1995) and others (Stohl and Lopez 1984; Eberwein 1987; Gurr 1986a, 1986b; Ziegenhagen 1986; Franks 1989; Hoover and Kowalewski 1992) repressive strategies vary significantly based on different elements, therefore the perception of domestic unrest is multidimensional. In line with Davenport (1995b), it is important to underline which are the elements of the internal political conflict that push rulers to apply repression. If one of the most important factors to 3

United Nations Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances, fact sheet No. 6 (Rev 2), Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (2006).

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characterise domestic threats is the frequency of conflicts, Davenport identifies three other factors: the presence of violence, the “strategic variety” and cultural deviance. According to him, the most extensive use of repression is expected when conflict frequency and variety are high, behaviour is violent and cultural norms are challenged. Different characteristics of states, such as system type, coercive capacity, economic factors and international relationships of dependency, impact the differences in the perception of threats across countries and time and influence the likelihood of repressive behaviours. Referring to system type, numerous empirical studies (Hibbs 1973; Ziegenhagen 1986; Henderson 1991) show that, in the presence of a democratic system, the likelihood of violent repression of threats decreases. This effect is attributed to the fact that generally democracies have a diffused consensus based on the electoral process. Different political regimes do not respond in the same way and have a different sensitivity to domestic threats: nondemocratic regimes are more sensitive to multidimensional threats than transitional and democratic governments. This difference in perception of domestic threats determines that nondemocratic governments are more repressive in order to maintain the status quo (Davenport 1995b). The role played by coercive capacity has two explanations: the first is based on the idea that the availability of resources for repression reduces the costs of its implementation and makes repressive strategies more attractive (Laswell 1941; Randle 1981; Goldstein 1983; Gurr 1986a; Davis and Ward 1990; Walker and Lang 1988). The second approach highlights the role played by the coercive apparatus, that tends to preserve its role through the promotion of repressive measures, in order to reduce threats. Another aspect that influences the perception of threats is related to economic factors, in particular economic development (Banks 1985; Henderson 1991; Mitchell and McCormick 1988; Goldstein 1983). Certainly difficulties in satisfying basic human needs increase the likelihood of anti-systemic behaviours, which in turn trigger the repressive response from the government. Finally, the last factor is the international relationship of dependence that determines the necessity to protect economic and political interests. The use of repression is increased when dependencies are stronger. Poe, Tate and Keith (1999) identify additional determinants of the use of repression. In line with Davenport (1995b), they underline the roles played by system type, economic development, international relationships and by a repressive apparatus in maintaining the status quo, but they also suggest that demographic conditions (Henderson 1993), military control

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(Boswell and Dixon 1990; Poe and Tate 1994), the presence of a leftist government, a past British cultural influence and the involvement in international war, can exercise an important influence (positive or negative) on the use of repression. The results of the empirical studies of Poe, Tate and Kate (1999) show that “the past level of repression, democracy, population size, economic development, international and civil wars” are the determinants of the repression of human rights. Nevertheless, differently from the precedent study of Poe and Tate (1994), the presence of a military regime determines a statistically relevant intensification of repression (Poe and Tate 1999), and the likelihood of the application of repressive politics is equally enhanced by the increase of investment in the army (Davenport 1995a). If these factors influence political repression, what are the factors that determine the import of arms? Pearson (1989) hypothesized that there are six factors associated with weapons importation: 1) geographical area and population; 2) regime type; 3) defense expenditure levels, number of military and nuclear weapons status; 4) economic characteristics: national wealth, international trade, technological development, and local defense production capabilities; 5) foreign and domestic conflict: war involvements; 6) alignment patterns: alliance orientation. The findings of Pearson’s study (1989) are the following: the first and second factors taken into account (area, population and characteristics of the government) have, in aggregate, a small influence. The largest impact is military variables, in particular budgetary military expenditures and technology. Military regimes have a small influence on the import of arms. If we shift the attention from the global level to the regional level, Pearson highlights that the variables have a different significance. In particular, the findings related to Latin America during the seventhies and Eighties, show that the variables with the most impact are the size of the military (in the seventhies), the level of military expenditure and being at war (in the eighties) especially for Argentina, Cuba and Chile. Therefore, Pearson points out the effects, in the eighties, due to the past importation of arms. Finally, according to Pearson (1989), other important factors that determine the importation of weapons are identifiable in the nuclear risk potential and in local weapons production. Can we assert that the determinants of human rights repression and arms importation are the same? When we take into account the factors that influence these two phenomena, we can observe that, for both, the main factors are the same:

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1) system type or regime type; 2) economic characteristics (economic development); 3) dependency; 4) foreign and domestic conflict (including civil war); 5) coercive capacity (defense expenditures, coercive apparatus, military apparatus and military size); 6) past level of repression and past level of arms importation. According to the study of Poe, Tate and Kate (1999) on personal integrity abuses and to that of Pearson (1989) on the correlates of arms importation, we can observe that regarding system type, the absence of a democratic regime increases both repression and arms importation. Secondly, economic characteristics and in particular the increase of national wealth plays a dual role: on the one hand, it reduces the violations of human rights by eliminating the risks of social unrest, on the other, it increases a country’s ability to purchase weapons. Dependency determines an increase in human rights repression because of the need to protect foreign interests; secondly, foreign policy alignment reinforces the pressures to procure foreign military hardware. The fourth factor, common to both phenomena, is the involvement in domestic or in international conflicts. In particular, by referring to civil wars, these exert the largest impact on personal integrity abuse and represent an important factor to explain the increase of weapons importation. The fifth common factor identified is coercive capacity, defined as the economic ability of governments to acquire weapons and the role played by military and coercive apparatus. With regard to political repression, military control exercises an important influence by increasing the violation of personal integrity rights but the same factor does not necessarily determine an increase in arms importation. Anyhow, a high level of military expenditure, linked to the strengthening of the coercive apparatus, raises the level of arms imports. Finally, in both fields of research (political repression and arms importation) an important effect is due to history: if the past is characterised by a high level of political repression and by a high level of arms imports, this facilitates the use of repression (Davenport 1995a) and militarization in the current period. If most of the factors that influence the two phenomena are similar, which is the effect of arms importation on human rights? Blanton (1999) explains this relationship as follows: the first evidence of her study is the existence of a “positive association between arms imports and the repression of personal integrity”. Like Davenport (1995a), Blanton confirms the role played by the past use of repression. Another element highlighted is the role of domestic arms production that reinforces

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the effect of the acquisition of arms on human rights violation. Lastly, the presence of internal or external conflict and economic development confirms that maintaining security and order through repression is a priority for a regime that perceives itself to be threatened. All of these evidences confirm that human rights violation and arms importation are closely bound. Moving on from these considerations, the next part of this study is aimed at investigating human rights violations during the last forty years in Latin America.

2. Human rights violation: the dark ages of Latin America The United Nations (UN) has estimated that, until 1985, almost 90,000 people disappeared in Latin America. The Political Terror Scale (PTS) has been used to measure the extensiveness of human rights violations (torture, illegal detentions and enforced disappearance).4 This scale (PTS) is compiled by Amnesty International and the U.S State Department, on the basis of annual reports on repression and political violence. The coding categories are the following: 1) […] people are not imprisoned for their views, and torture is rare or exceptional. […] Political murders are extremely rare; 2) there is a limited amount of imprisonment for nonviolent political activity. However, few persons are affected, torture and beating are exceptional. […] The political murders are rare; 3) there is extensive political imprisonment, or a recent history of such imprisonment. Execution or other political murders and brutality may be common. Unlimited detention, with or without trial, for political views is accepted; 4) the violation of civil and political rights are expanded to larger numbers. Murders, disappearances are a common part of life. In spite of its generality, on this level terror affects primarily those who interest themselves in politics or ideas; 5) the violation of civil and political rights have been expanded to the whole population. The leaders of these societies place no limits on the means with which they pursue personal or ideological goals.

4

For more details see www.politicalterrorscale.org.

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The violation of human rights is evaluated, by the PTS, on the basis of three criteria: scope, intensity and range. The scope refers to the type of violence being carried out by the state (imprisonment, torture, killing, etc.); intensity describes the frequency with which the state employs a given type of abuse; range describes the portion of the population targeted for abuse, that is the segment of society affected by the abuse. In the following first figure it is possible to observe the average level of the PTS for each Latin American country, divided into three decades. Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador show a level of repression and violence with a higher average level between 1976 and 1986. In most of the countries considered there is a strong decrease of political violence in the last decade. Colombia represents an exception because it shows an increasing trend in all three decades. The following figure collects the countries that recorded the highest level of violation and the corresponding year. Argentina has the highest level of violation for six consecutive years, between 1976 and 1981. The same is true for Guatemala and El Salvador, who have registered level 5 for the duration of eighties. Finally, the country that remains at the highest level in the last twenty years is Colombia. It’s possible to consider the evolution of the perception of freedom by individuals in Latin American countries. In the early years most of the countries are partially free or not free from dictatorship but, since the middle of the ninenties, no country in Latin America results as being not free. Uruguay became a free country from the mid-eighties. Venezuela is showing an opposite trend: from 1976 to 1991 the country was free but in 2009 no more. Lastly Peru, in 1976, was a partially free country and during the eighties totally free, but from 1992 Peru was not free; only since 2001 has it returned to a democratic government. The Freedom House rankings are defined on the basis of two indicators: political rights and civil liberties that are divided into seven categories.5 The average of the indicators determines the condition of a country. Graphic 3 shows the average of rankings assigned by Freedom House, calculated over three decades. In the years of the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, the violation of civil liberties and political rights in Chile reached its maximum value (5.5) and was maintained as such for an entire decade. The same happened in Nicaragua (during the conflict between the Sandinista revolutionary government and the counter5

Methodology summary at: http://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/ Methodology%20Summary,%20FIW%202012.pdf

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Figure 2-1 “The Political Terror Scale” (PTS) of Latin American countries

Author’s elaboration on Political Terror Scale

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Figure 2-2 Countries that recorded the highest level of violation in different years

Author’s elaboration on the Political Terror Scale

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revolutionaries group of Contras supported by the United States)6 as in Paraguay (during Stroessner’s military dictatorship). Generally, the average trend of the rankings descends/decreases from the first decade analysed to the last. Both Venezuela and Colombia show a deterioration of the level of freedom during the whole period under review. For both the analysis based on the PTS and on the Freedom House data, the division into three decades has been implemented to facilitate the perception of the levels of rights violations and freedom.

3. The arms trade: Italian exports to Latin American countries Arms sales represent an important element of the Italian economy. In 2009, the global expenditure on armaments reached a value of 1.572 billion dollars7 (at constant value of 2008), the same value recorded during the Cold War. Graphic 4 shows the total for Italian exports of arms since 1950. The trend increases until the early eighties, then decreases. The growing trend restarts in the twenty-first century. Figure 2-3 Freedom in Latin America

Author’s elaboration on Freedom House

6 7

See West, W. Gordon. 2009. SPRI 2010.

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Studying Italian arms exports to Latin America8 it is possible to note that the trend highly resembles exports to other countries, even if, exports related to Latin America began to multiply from 1970 and showed the highest level between 1980 and 1982. Since 1984, exports decreased practically to zero to return to modest growth after 2004. Referring to the Italian arms exports to each Latin American country, the highest level of exports recorded is to Venezuela. In Peru we can see four waves of imports, among which the most important, in terms of value, happens between 1977 and 1980. In Ecuador, there was importation of Italian arms between 1982 and 1984. Other countries, while remaining less visible due to the big value of imports of these three countries, have concentrated most of their imports from Italy in the seventies and eighties. Figure 2-4 Italian Arms Export

Author’s elaboration on SIPRI data

8

The Latin American countries to which Italy has exported arms are: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. From this point on when we speak about Latin America we intend the countries listed above.

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Concerning, respectively, the growth of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) between 1960 and 2009 and total arms imported by Latin American countries between 1976 and 2009, the countries that import more weapons, in particular between the end of the seventies and the beginning of the ninenties, are those that show a higher GDP growth rate. An exception is represented by Peru that while being the third lowest country in terms of GDP, in three phases is the largest importer of Italian weapons. It is necessary to underline the level reached by Argentina in 1983 because no other country in this region, among those considered, has ever imported weapons to the same value. From 1976 to 1986, Italy has the largest share of exports to Venezuela, Peru, Brazil and Ecuador, with levels up to 80%. In particular, in 2005, 2006 and 2007, Peru bought almost all of its weapons from Italy.

4. Italian arms in Latin America: an analysis of exports in relation to human rights violations The following analysis examines the relationship between arms exports to Latin American countries and the human rights violation in these countries between 1976 and 2009. In the case of Argentina, the highest level of exports is recorded in 1983, the same year in which the level of violation is at its maximum. In these years 22,000 people were murdered or disappeared (the total is about 30.000), during which time Italy exports almost all of its weapons to Argentina.9 This result does not prove that 9 The government of Giulio Andreotti (1986) decided to maintain relations with the Argentinian military junta because of many Italian economic interests in the country: Fiat, Pirelli, Eni, Magneti Marelli, Techint and Ferruzzi, the Bank of Naples, BNL, the Banco Ambrosiano of Roberto Calvi and the Rizzoli group had a strong presence in Argentina. Anyhow the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Franco Foschi, informed the government about what was happening in Argentina. In Buenos Aires, the only one to help Italian families was Consul Enrico Calamai. The Italian ambassador in Argentina, Carrara, in addition to closing the Embassy, had an attitude tending to reduce the importance of the phenomenon of disappearances and of violation practiced by the military junta: “…here the problem of public order has been successfully resolved” said Carrara in an interview with Lanfranco Vaccaro, a journalist of the “Europeo”. It is important to keep in mind that in those years in Argentina Licio Gelli, head of a clandestine Masonic lodge, called Propaganda due (P2) was particularly active. When in 1981 the list of members of the P2 was published, it showed, as members, important men of the Argentinian military junta: Jose Lopez Rega (Minister of Social Welfare), Alberto Juan Vignes (Foreign Affairs Minister), Admiral Emilio

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between the two events there is a cause-effect relation, but it shows that, in that period, Italy had important trade relations with the military junta, despite having information of disappeared Italian citizens. In Argentina, if it is not possible to identify a direct relation between human rights violations and arms exports, it is possible to underline a political and moral responsibility of the Italian government. By choosing to protect economic interests and by benefiting from the huge investments (in) and collaboration of the military junta with Italian companies (up to 6 trillion lire for the arms supply), the Italian government did not protect the lives of Italians and other people in Argentina. With regard to Italian arms exports to Brazil in the last thirty years, we can note that almost all the exports occurred between the late seventies and early eighties. As it can be seen from the arms exports in Brazil and from the values of the PTS, the results are less obvious compared to Argentina because the violations are estimated between levels 4 and 5 in almost all the years considered. For this reason a reconstruction of the historical and political situation of the country can help to contextualise Italian arms exports in Brazil. From 1964 to 1985 the country was under the control of a military dictatorship. As presidents of the country six generals succeeded one another: Castelo Branco, Costa, Silva, Medici, Geisel and Figuredo. In 1985 Tancredo Neves becomes the first democratically elected president of Brazil, after twenty years of military regime. The repression practiced during the previous twenty years was equally as brutal as that practiced in Argentina and Chile. Brazil has only recently begun to identify those responsible for human rights violation. The documents made available by National Security Archives10 shed more light on the relation between the Brazilian dictatorship and the US government, allied to prevent the formation of other leftist governments like that of Salvador Allende and Fidel Castro. All exports from Italy to Chile occurred between years 2001 and 2008 which correspond to a PTS value equal to 2. Italian weapons were thus exported in a period where the level of human rights violation Eduardo Massera (Commander-in-Chief of Argentine Navy), Admiral Carlos Alberto Corti and other members of the military apparatus. About Licio Gelli, Massera said: “I have to admit that Gelli has actively contributed to spreading the truth around Europe about the war conducted against terrorism”. On several occasions the role of the P2 in promoting Italian arms sales in Argentina was investigated; in Guarino and Raugei's book (2006: 136-137) we can find that: “Affiliated to the Gelli’s lodge is also Michele Principe, president of Selenia, who sells in Argentina missiles and radars. Principe is, in fact, a member of the lodge […]”. 10 http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/

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was low. During the dictatorship of General Pinochet the PTS values had varied between 4 and 5, then decreased to 3 in the final years of the dictatorship.11 In Colombia, the values of the PTS, between 1976 and 2009, alternated between levels 4 and 5. For thirty years the country has been the centre of a conflict between the Armed Forces and guerrilla movements. Two paramilitary groups are still active: the FARC-EP (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) and the ELN (National Liberation Army). The increase of Colombian military expenditure (which, in 2008,12 reached 4% of GDP) is due, on the one hand, to governmental actions against the FARC and, on the other, to tensions with Venezuela and Ecuador. Violations of human rights are attributable both to government forces and guerrilla groups because the armed forces kill civilians to hand over their corpses as guerrillas killed in combat; on the other hand, guerrilla groups practise murders, rapes and kidnappings. Italian arms exports to Colombia took place in two phases, between 1983 and 1984 and again in 2003. In the case of Ecuador, Italian weapons were exported in the early ’80s where the value of PTS was equal to 2. Only in 1986 and 1987, did Ecuador experience more marked violations. Therefore, it is necessary to underline that in this country the imports of arms from Italy did not happen in relation to particular human rights violations. Italy exported weapons to Mexico in four different years: in 1994, 2000, 2001 and 2003. In this country the level of violations of human rights has varied between 3 and 4 and only in 1994 did Italy export weapons at a level on the PTS that was higher than 3. Italian arms exports to Peru need special attention because it is possible to note that, over a period of five years, this country imported around 70% to 100% of its weapons from Italy.13 At the same time, in 1979, Peru’s level of human rights repression is equal to 4. 11

At the moment of the coup, on 11 September 1973, images of the country were broadcast around the world. Faced with the outraged public opinion, the Italian government decided not to legitimise the Chilean military regime, and in contrast to what happened in the following years in Argentina, the Italian Embassy offered support and asylum to the Italians in Chile. 12 SIPRI, Yearbook 2009. 13 In these years, in Peru, “God’s banker”, Roberto Calvi, is particularly active. Calabrò, in her book, “Le mani della mafia” (1987), says that Calvi began doing business in Peru through the arms supply. Peru needed to raise funds to buy two “Lupo” frigates from Italy. Calvi offered a loan through his Banco Ambrosiano and in exchange he asked to open a branch of his Bank in Lima. Through the

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The exports to Uruguay, which are characterised by a single delivery, occurred in a year with no recorded violations of human rights. However, the exports to Venezuela are very conspicuous. It is worthy of note that the supply of Italian arms, in the early 1980s, represented more than 80% of the country’s total imports.

Conclusions There are many factors that may affect human rights conditions. Attention has been focussed on the analysis of Italian arms exports, on the level of human rights violation, and on the use of political violence in the countries analysed. The acquisition of Italian arms by Latin American countries is mainly concentrated in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Furthermore, we can see that most of the Italian arms exports took place during the period in which almost all countries investigated were governed by a military or authoritarian regime. However, while it is not possible to say to what extent Italian arms exports have contributed to increasing human rights violation, it is possible to see that, in most of the countries analysed, with the fall of the military regimes, political repression and violence decreased together with the amount of Italian arms exports. Anyhow, the political and social events happened in Latin America help infer that the “tolerance” practised by the international community, the maintenance of trade relationships and in particular the sales of arms have report of the session of the Italian Chamber of Deputies (12 September 1987), it is possible to identify the network of Italian interests in Latin America. In this report are listed the arms deliveries to the governments of Peru, Venezuela and Ecuador, and the financing of the Vernon government in Guatemala and the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua. After describing the actors, and the routes of arms and drugs, Cipriani, a member of parliament, refers to the role of the P2 Masonic lodge in supplying Exocet missiles to Argentinian military junta and in the arms sales to Latin America through the funds of the Institute for Works of Religion (the Vatican Bank), and Calvi’s Banco Ambrosiano. One of the main objectives of this network is to sell weapons but also to support the anti-Marxist authoritarian regimes (that) the United States and Vatican engaged against liberation theology and socialist and communist influence. With regard to the Italian arms trade, the Banco Ambrosiano financed the sale of six frigates to Venezuela, six corvettes to Ecuador and four frigates to Peru and many Augusta helicopters (www.sipri.org.). Cipriani also refers that “from the Banco Ambrosiano of Lima have passed many of the transactions of oil and arms with Chile, Nicaragua, Argentina, Brazil […]” and that the members of the P2 lodge also had other interests in these countries, in particular, the realisation of an Augusta helicopter factory and the construction of the Buenos Aires subway.

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often replaced the willingness to intervene in defense of human rights. After the fall of military regimes, the international debate has focussed on the effects of the “silence” of the politics, the press, the Church and on the effects of the economic interests in these countries. The same happened in Italy. The discovery of a network of interests between politics, economy and the Church has allowed to identify and to exclude those responsible. Yet, after the Eighties, Italy has continued to export arms to countries that, on many occasions, have been responsible for serious violations of human rights. The Italian arms trade saw a more severe and stringent regulation on exports only from 1990. Law 185/1990 was established after a series of allegations of trafficking to countries at war, to countries under UN embargo, or to countries responsible for violations of human rights. Among the different restrictions, article 1, paragraph 6, letter “d”, prohibits the export of weapons “to countries whose governments are responsible for serious violations of international conventions on human rights, verified by the competent organs of the UN, EU and Council of Europe”.14 The evidence given here shows that, after this law came into force, Italy continued to export arms to countries like Colombia and Brazil where Amnesty International has repeatedly documented violations of human rights.15 Therefore, it follows that developing shared guiding principles at an international level to regulate arms transfers by including human rights violation as a stringent parameter to deny authorisation to export is necessary. The improvement of international agreements can be seen also through the monitoring and the limits of the arms trade, as an important contribution to the protection of the personal security of individuals.

References Andersen, M. E. 1988-1989. “The Military Obstacle To Latin Democracy”. Foreign Policy 73: 94-113 Arriagada, G. H. 1980. “National Security Doctrine in Latin America”. Peace and Change: A Journal of Peace Research 6: 49-60. Banks, D. 1985. “Patterns of Oppression: A Statistical Analysis on Human Rights”. American Statistical Association: Proceedings of the Social Science Section 62: 154-63.

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http://www.governo.it/Presidenza/UCPMA/doc/L185_9luglio1990.pdf. http://50.amnesty.it/sites/default/files/Colombia.pdf; http://50.amnesty.it /sites/default/files/Brasile.pdf. 15

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Blanton, S. L. 1999. “Instrument of Security or Tools of Repression? Arms Imports and Human Rights Conditions in Developing Countries”. Journal of Peace Research 36 (2): 233-244. Boswell, T. and W. Dixon. 1990. “Dependency and Rebellion: A CrossNational Analysis”. American Sociological Review 55: 540-559. Calabrò, A. M. 1987. Le mani della mafia. Milan: Feltrinelli. Comblin, J. 1979. The Church and the National Security State. New York: Orbis Books. Davenport, J. 1995a. “Assessing the Military’s Influence on Political Repression”. Journal of Political and Military Sociology 23: 119-144. —. 1995b. “Multi-Dimensional Threat Perception and State Repression: An Inquiry Into Why States Apply Negative Sanctions”. American Journal of Political Science 39 (3): 683-713. Davis, D. and M. Ward. 1990. “They Dance Alone: Deaths and the Disappeared in Contemporary Chile”. Journal of Conflict Resolution 34: 449-75. Eberwein, W. D. 1987. “Domestic Political Processes”. In The Globus Model: Computer Simulation of Worldwide Political and Economic Developments, edited by Stuart Bremer, 34-52. Boulder: Westview Press. Franks, C. E. S., ed. 1989. Dissent and State. New York: Oxford University Press. Goldstein, R. J. 1983. Political Repression in 19th Century Europe, Totowa: NJ, Barnes and Noble Books. Gordon West, G. 2009. “The Sandinist Record on Human Rights in Nicaragua (1979-1990)”. Réseau Européen Droit et Société 22/1992. Guarino, M. and Raugei F., 2006. Gli anni del disonore. Dal 1965 il potere occulto di Licio Gelli e della Loggia P2 tra affari, scandali e stragi. Roma: Edizioni Dedalo. Gurr, T. 1986a. “The Political Origins of State Violence and Terror: A Theoretical Analysis”. In Governmental Violence and Repression: An Agenda for Research, edited by M. Stohl and G. Lopez, 45-72. New York: Greenwood Press. —. 1986b. “Persisting Patterns of Repression and Rebellion: Foundations for a General Theory of Political Coercion. In Persistent Patterns and Emergent Structures in a Waning Century. edited by M. Karns, 149.168. New York: Praeger. Henderson, C. 1991. “Condition Affecting the Use of Political Repression”. Journal of Conflict Resolution 35 (1): 120-42. —. 1993, “Population Pressures and Political Repression”. Social Science Quarterly 74 (2): 322-333.

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Hibbs, D. 1973. Mass Political Violence. New York: Wiley. Hoover, D. and D. Kowalewski. 1992. “Dynamic Models of Dissent and Repression”. Journal of Conflict Resolution 36: 150-82. Laswell, H. 1941. “The Garrison State and Specialist on Violence”. American Journal of Sociology 46: 455-68. Mitchell, Neil J. and J. M. McCormick. 1988. “Economic and Political Explanations of Human Rights Violation”. World Politics 40: 476-98 Most, B.A. and H. Starr. 1989. Inquiry, Logic and International Politics. Colombia: University of South Caroline Press. Pearson, F. S. 1989. “The Correlates of Arms Importation”. Journal of Peace Research 26 (2): 153-163. Poe, Steven C., Neal Tate C. and L. C. Keith. 1999. “Repression of the Human Right to Personal Integrity Revisited: A Global Cross-National Study Covering the Years 1976-1993”. International Studies Quarterly 43: 291-313. Poe, Steven C. and C. Neal Tate. 1994. “Repression of Human Rights to Personal Integrity in the 1980s: A Global Analysis”. American Political Science Review 88: 853-872. Randle, M. 1981. “Militarism and Repression”. Alternatives VII: 61-144. Réseau Européen Droit et Société. 2009. Retrieved 2009-03-30, The Sandista Record on Human Rights in Nicaragua (1979-1990), Retrieved 2009-03-30. SIPRI, 2010. “Armaments, Disarmaments and International Security”. In Sipri Yearbook 2010. Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, www.sipri.org. Stohl, M. and G. Lopez. 1984. The State as Terrorist: The Dynamics of Governmental Violence and Repression. Westport: Greenwood Press. Tutino, S. 1982. “Ottobre Nero in Argentina. Massera si presenta come erede a Peron”. la Repubblica del 24/09/1982. United Nation, Economic and Social Council. 1985. Report of the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, Commission on Human Rights, E/CN/1985/15. Walker, S. and Lang I. 1988. “The Garrison State Syndrome in the Third World: Research Note”. Journal of Political and Military Sociology 16: 105-16. Wood, Reed M. and M. Gibney. 2010. “The Political Terror Scale (PTS): a Re-introduction and a Comparison to CIRI”. Human Rights Quarterly 32 (2): 367-400. Ziegenhagen, E. 1986. The Regulation of Political Conflict. New York: Praeger.

CHAPTER THREE COMMUNICATION, GLOBALISATION AND VIOLATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS ANGELA MARIA ZOCCHI

In the mid 1990s, when the globalisation processʊin its different dimensionsʊwas already one of the main interests of the scientific community, Danilo Zolo, in a work entitled Cosmopolis, strongly drew attention to the fact that about half of the world population suffered from the “lack or systematic violation of fundamental rights normally recognised by a western rule of law (which does not mean also defended)”. A list of the violations followed as an example: the genocide, torture, summary executions, disappearances, political murders, child abuse, rapes, genital mutilations of girls, violent explants of organs destined to illegal trade, slavery, illegal arrests, abuse of political refugees and immigrants, execution of minors and disabled people, corporal punishments, degrading treatment of prisoners, prostitution exploitation, racial discriminations, but also and above all absolute poverty and hunger. (Zolo 1995, 141)

How much space was and still is dedicated by the media to these themes? In 1998, Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, in a text destined to stimulate a lively debate, Manufacturing Consent, underlined the responsibility of the media, putting at the centre of the analysis those filters in the information process that are the expression of insidious forms of ideological control. They are “embarrassing” events, Chomsky and Herman declared, and therefore they are ignored, that is, covered up with silence (Noelle-Neumann 2002), as in the case of the atrocities perpetrated in East Timor. At the same time, other events, such as the atrocities committed by the Red Khmer, have been considered worthy of attention. In other words, there are some manipulation strategies of public opinion that, instead of stopping discussion as it happens in totalitarian

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regimes, draw the attention of the audience towards some topics, thus keeping the discussion within specific limits. This way debate is not impeded, on the contrary it is encouraged as long as the media “faithfully remain within the system of premises and principles that constitute the common opinion of the élite […]” (Chomsky and Herman 1998, 368). It could be remarked that there are also independent sources of information: for example, as the same Chomsky and Herman underline, some non-commercial radios “offer a world-ranging information, exhaustive services, and debate and discussion spaces generally excluded by the great media” (ibid., 374 and 397), but above all, today there are new communication and information spacesʊthose of the Internetʊthat, unlike traditional and centralised media such as the press, radio and TV, are difficult to control. The Internet, underlined Pekka Himanen, became an important media for free individual expression in the totalitarian societies. The hackers, who created this media, from the e-mail to the newsgroups to chat, and the Web, have helped the dissidents in various parts of the world to use Internet. (Himanen 2001, 74).

Moreover, it is undeniable that the Internet, thanks to its characteristics, can be, and has actually been, a precious means for the defense of human rights. For example, in the second half of the 1990s, during the Kosovo crisis, when “the Serbian forces executed men, raped women and entire populations had to leave their villages forced to exile”, while “the official media of Yugoslavia declared that everything was going fine” (Ibid., 7475), the Internet, a fundamental instrument of communication in globalisation, was able to inform about what was happening. As prophetically anticipated in the 1960s by Hannah Arendt, in a “worldwide communication system” the truth comes out sooner or later: “fragments of facts continuously interfere and upset the propaganda war between the images in conflict” (Arendt 1995, 67). However, in the current scenario of globalised information, if on one hand the violations of human rights undoubtedly have more possibilities of being revealed, on the other hand, censorship can still block those possibilities, or their possible effects can be thwarted by a plurality of different factors. Let us start from censorship actions. An emblematic case is China. On occasion of the 2008 Olympic Games, “contravening the human rights agreements signed to obtain the assignment of the Games, the regime did not hesitate getting rid of the potential peace laws disturbers, in view of the sports event of August” (Rampini 2008, 35).

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Just think about the arrest of the famous humanitarian activist Hu Jia: “His ability in bypassing the censorship and using Internet potentialities as sounding-board towards the external, had made him particularly unbearable for the regime” (Ibid.), which has also tried to “neutralise” his wife, Zeng Jinyan, author of the Tiananmen 2.0 blog that became a lack of freedom denunciation symbol. China, Filippo Barbano has recently wrote that is going through its first industrial revolution, with all the freedom limits that still prevent it from producing events that are not only material productive fluidity, as during the greater compulsoriness of the capitalist economy period. (Barbano 2011, 174).

In other words, there can be economic development without observance of human rights, which implies primarily the concept of person. A fundamental concept of Christian ethics (Wils and Mieth 1994), but also a juridical and philosophical concept, as well as of strategic relevance for that analysis perspective that, going beyond the concepts of socius, status, and role, considers the subject as a person (Barbano 1961), to the point of qualifying itself, as “Sociologia per la persona” (Sociology for the person) (Belardinelli 2009; Gruppo SPE 2004; Gruppo SPE 2007). Returning to censorship, we must also say that even in the countries that do not use forms of open censorship, embarrassing events or opinions can still be covered with silence, according to the well-known way described by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann (2002), and at the same time, we cannot exclude that visibility could turn out to be invisibility (Bourdieu 1997, 19), or that the possibility of the traditional media1 of being selfreferential could produce censorship effects (Bourdieu 1997, 28). The most alarming aspect, in my opinion, seems the fact that often, even when information circulates, they are unable to stimulate the action. They seem to be blocked by a widespread “compassion crisis”, as well as by persisting “states of denial” that include also Europe, which, at the same time, tries to forget and live down a past made up also of colonialism, imperialism, and totalitarianism (Cotesta 2012).

1

From a recent study, carried out by the “Laboratorio di Ricerca sulla Comunicazione Avanzata dell’Università degli Studi Carlo Bo” of Urbino, between 2010 and 2011, on a representative sample of the Italian adult population, it emerged that the traditional media still dominate the Italian scene (cf. LaRiCA 2011).

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If on one hand, information possibilities have been increasing in recent years2 especially through the effects of communication globalisation, and therefore, also the possible responsibility, on the other hand accurate analyses, such as those of Boltanski and Cohen, draw attention to widespread disengagement. In other words, today we urgently need of solving the delicate matter of a new compassion policy, a policy aimed at common people, who have no contractual or natural obligation to act. According to Boltanski, the central problem of this policy is to be located in a specific form of “surplus”: the excess of unhappy people (Boltanski 2000, 245). A fact that impinges both on the possibilities of representing suffering in the sense that “the media space is not unlimited and cannot be entirely dedicated to showing off unhappiness” (Ibid.), and on the profile of the action to the extent that it tends to nourish a sense of powerlessness that can block the same action. The defense against the excess of unhappiness is often represented by removing from our mind the images of suffering diffused by the media and devolving to others the solution of the problems we cannot face. A defensive attitude that emerges clearly from the pages of States of Denial by Stanley Cohen who, in the spirit of denial sociology, asks himself two fundamental questions: 1.What happens to our knowledge about other people suffering? 2.How does this knowledge influence us? Cohen asks himself about the mechanism that makes people deny what they know, both in the private sphere (individual denial), as well as in the public one. It is this latter form of denial that represents the first and maybe the deepest root of collective immorality that can assume the form of a cultural denial (for example, the Holocaust denial movement), or of an official denial, which includes all the public, collective, and highly organised forms of denial. Between 1915 and 1917, about one million two hundred fifty thousand Armenians were killed by the Turkish army or died during deportations. The events were reported in details by the official documents, narrations of the survivors, declarations of witnesses, and historical studies. 2

Already in the 1970s, Primo Levi, in the Appendix (1976) of Se questo è un uomo, wrote that “the western world has many and serious defects and dangers, but compared to the past it has a great advantage: it is possible to know everything about anything” (Levi 1987, 188). Moreover, with the Internet and its progressive diffusion, the possible alibi of unknowing has rapidly continued losing credibility.

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Immediately after, the main details were unconditionally accepted by external observers. However, for eighty years the following various governments of Turkey have firmly denied any responsibility for genocide or any other deliberated massacre. (Cohen 2002, 24)

To the distinction between individual, cultural, and official denial we must add the one between literal denial (for example, “it did not happen”; “it is not true”), interpretative denial (for example, “what happened is not genocide”), and implicit one (for example, “it is not my problem, someone else will take care of it”). This latterʊhoweverʊis strictly connected to the increased quantity of information. However, the information overload problem is not new. Regarding this, we could mention sociology classics; Simmel, for example.3 Specifically, I am referring to an observation, contained in Concept and Tragedy of Culture (1911), relative to the paradoxical condition of man in modernity: the sensation of being surrounded by an infinity of elements of culture, which are not insignificant, but fundamentally not even significant, that, in their multitude, are somewhat suffocating, because man cannot assimilate in his interiority every single content, but not even limit himself to refuse them, since it potentially belongs to the sphere of his cultural development. (Simmel 1976, 106)

Words that in my opinion seem to constitute much more than an anticipation of the infoglut typical of our period, if with the term “anticipations” we mean, based on what Merton affirmed, “previous formulations that, even if overlapping the successive ones, do not have the same centre of interest and do not develop the same series of consequences” (Merton 1992, 28). However, the same Merton, often misinterpreted and hastily presented as an old functionalist, in an essay entitled Mass communication, Popular Taste, and Organized Social Action (1948), written together with Lazarsfeld, draws attention to the narcotising dysfunction of the media, dwelt on the informative overload, pointing out that: the “wide availability of information can stimulate only a superficial interest for the problems of society, and this superficiality often hides the indifference of the mass. […] The interested and informed citizen can be pleased about what he knows, without realising that he refrains from deciding and acting. In brief, he considers his mediate contact with the 3

Regarding Simmel as a “sociologist of communication”, refer to Pacelli 1996.

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If, as we have seen, the information overload problem is not new, neither is the “spectator’s dilemma”. By no coincidence, Boltanski mentions the parable of the Good Samaritan. However, there is a good side: communication globalisation has emphasised the importance of both problemsʊinformation overload and spectator’s dilemmaʊalso redefining their relation. The Internet, the main instrument of communication globalisation, which for its capacity of extending and spreading the discussion about events of public relevance, could be the most suitable means to form a public instead of a mass,4 has in fact largely increased the information overload situation. So, how do we defend ourselves today, against the incremented quantity of information? As we have already said, often our defense is denial: we deny that the facts claim an answer from us. In other terms, we decide not to act using excuses like: What can a common person do? Someone else will think about it. It is not my problem. We do not deny the facts, but we decide not to act: the denial is “implicit”. The children that are starving to death in Somalia, mass rape of women in Bosnia, a massacre in East Timor, homeless people in our streets, are recognised facts, but they are not seen as an element of psychological disturbance or full of a moral imperative to act. (Cohen 2002, 30-31) 4

In this regard, the considerations of Wright Mills who, during the 1950s, are emblematic: “the element that allows easily distinguishing the public from the mass is the type of communication means. In a public community, communication is based especially on discussion, while the other information instruments only extend and spread it, connecting an initial group, where the discussion started, with the other groups. In a mass society the type of communication prevailing is the one of the great information means used automatically, compared to which the public communities are only markets, and it is necessary only that they are in the range of some specific instruments” (Wright Mills 1966, 285).

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By no coincidence, Amnesty International, in its “appeals to action”, has always tried to contrast the compassion fatigue through targeted attacks to the practice of “implicit” denial: the problem is not only the one of human rights violations, but especially the indifference towards these violations (Ibid., 271). Analysing the letters sent by Amnesty International in the second half of the 1990s, with the aim of finding new supporters, Cohen observed that these appeals are based on a scheme articulated in different parts, which answer to some fundamental questions: who are you; what is the problem; who are we and what are we doing; what can you do; why should you do something? A sequence that tries to make people aware of their responsibilities neutralising, at the same time, the idea of powerlessness that is at the base of “implicit” denial, indicating in a simple and clear way what is possible to do, with the awareness that often we decide not to act because it is not clear how we can act. The message is that the individual not only can, but also must do something to fight against the violations of human rights. In a context such as the current one, full of messages, characterised by a “mediate visibility” incremented by communication globalisation (Thompson 1998), the important point is not the lack of information, but the fact that “information slides away in the same moment it is presented. The problem is not to explain how a person ‘denies’, but how it is possible to attract his attention” (Cohen 2002, 37). Susan Sontag points out that: “In a period of information overload, photographs represent a rapid way to learn and a compact format to memorise” (Sontag 2003, 18). Especially in an environment dominated by a continuous stream of images,5 “the memory resorts to still frame” (Ibid.). Amnesty International widely used and still uses photographic images, both “negative” and “positive”; and maybe, always it is also by no coincidence, chain letters, spreading via word of mouth across the Internet, are based on photographic images.6 5

“What characterises the so called advanced societiesʊRoland Barthes wroteʊis that today these societies consume images, while in the past they were consuming beliefs […]” (Barthes 1980, 118-119). 6 In this specific case, they are images of the Holocaust. The PDF file, attached to emails, starts with the following sentence: “IT SEEMS IMPOSSIBLE! General Dwight Eisenhower was right when he ordered to make many videos and take many photographs”. Then, at the end of the message, you can read, “This e-mail is sent as a chain, in memory of the 6 million Jews, 20 million Russians, 10 million Christians, and 1900 catholic priests assassinated, massacred, violated, burnt, starved to death, and humiliated, while Germany and Russia were looking

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Some photographs that seize the eye’s upset the reassuring contexts of our everyday life; they touch us deeply and instantly involve us emotionally, and emotions are connected “on one side with desires and, on the other, with intentions that bind towards action” (Boltanski 2000, 241). There is no indignation without images; in the absence of images, facts are condemned to indifference and silence.7 “The main enemy of dictatorships and underdevelopment”, Bernard Kouchner affirmed at the beginning of the ninenties, “remains photography and the starts it causes. Let us accept it without resigning: it is the law of sensation. Let us make the best of it” (Kouchner 1991, 194). If on one hand it is true that, in a period of information overload, photographic images are still capable of capturing attention, on the other hand we should not forget the risk of making everything spectacular, that is, the fact that often the mass media deal with people “to create emotions only for internal purposes: the audience ratings” (Pardi 2003, 13).8 On the contrary, information about human rights make sense if the image does not turn out to be only pure “show”, but instead is able to exhort and stimulate action. Therefore, photography not only to denounce and capture one's attention, but also to stimulate the “modal” imagination, that is, to help imagine what it is possible to do (Boltanski 2000, 81), for example, with “positive” images of collective mobilisation. Maybe, the best way to summarise is appealing to action that is, inviting ourselves not to remain trapped inside the information overload but be aware of the fact that increased information possibilities can actually become a surrogate of action: we are happy to be informed without realising that we refrain from deciding and acting. The risk is remaining simple spectators when faced with the challenges of distance and proximity in our globalised society.

elsewhere”. Finally, the objective of the message is clearly expressed: “The objective they want to reach by sending this email is that it is read by at least, 40 million people all over the world. Be one of the rings of this chain and help send the email all over the world. Translate it in other languages if necessary! DO NOT DELETE IT. You will lose only one minute of your time if you send it to other people”. 7 Moreover, as Ramonet observed, it was thanks to the image that TV prevailed over other media (see Ramonet 1999). 8 In the context of this work, I consider it appropriate to remind that, in the same essay, Francesco Pardi underlined how in our complex society we “answer to the emergency of the person not through repression, as it happens in “Antigone”, but through indifference, which becomes decisive for keeping a differentiated order” (Pardi 2003, 12, italics mine).

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References Arendt, H. 1995. Verità e politica. Turin: Bollati Boringhieri. Barbano, F. 2011. “Libertà come evento”. In Storicità della libertà: frammenti, edited by A. M. Zocchi, 169-176. Milan: FrancoAngeli. Barbano, F. 1961. Sociologia della politica. Concetti, metodi e campo di ricerca. Milan: Giuffrè. Barthes, R. 1980. La camera chiara. Nota sulla fotografia. Turin: Einaudi. Belardinelli, S. 2009. “Sociologia per la persona”. Studi di Sociologia, XLVII, 3: 239-248. Boltanski, L. 2000. Lo spettacolo del dolore. Morale umanitaria, media e politica. Milan: Raffaello Cortina. Bourdieu, P. 1997. Sulla televisione. Milan: Feltrinelli. Chomsky N., and E. Herman. 1998. La fabbrica del consenso. Milan: Marco Tropea Editore. Cohen, S. 2002. Stati di negazione. La rimozione del dolore nella società contemporanea. Rome: Carocci. Cotesta, V. 2012. Global Society and Human Rights. Leiden: Brill. Gruppo SPE. eds. 2004. Verso una sociologia per la persona. Milan: FrancoAngeli. —. 2007. La sociologia per la persona. Approfondimenti tematici e prospettive. Milan: FrancoAngeli. Himanen, P. 2001. L’etica hacker e lo spirito dell’età dell’informazione. Milan: Feltrinelli. Kouchner, B. 1991. Le malheur des autres. Paris: Odile Jacob. LaRiCA. 2011. Le news e gli italiani: dalla carta stampata, alla rete, al mobile. L’informazione: da rito a puzzle, http://larica.uniurb.it/wpmu/news/news-consumer-italia. Lazarsfeld, P. F. 1967. Metodologia e ricerca sociologica. Bologna: il Mulino. Levi, P. 1987. Opere, vol. I. Turin: Einaudi. Merton, R. K. 1992. Teoria e struttura sociale. Bologna: il Mulino. Noelle-Neumann, E. 2002. La spirale del silenzio. Rome: Meltemi. Pacelli, D. 1996. ed. I sociologi della comunicazione. Rome-Pisa: Istituti Editoriali e Poligrafici Internazionali. Pardi, F. 2003, “Il concetto di persona nella società complessa”. Studi di Sociologia, XLI, 1: 5-14. Ramonet, I. 1999. La tyrannie de la communication. Paris: Galilée. Rampini, F. 2008. L’armoniosa repressione. MicroMega 4: 33-42. Simmel, G. 1976. Arte e civiltà. Milan: ISEDI. Sontag, S. 2003. Davanti al dolore degli altri. Milan: Mondadori.

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Thompson, J. B. 1998. Mezzi di comunicazione e modernità. Una teoria sociale dei media. Bologna: il Mulino. Wils, J.-P., and D. Mieth. 1994. eds. Concetti fondamentali dell’etica cristiana. Brescia: Queriniana. Wright Mills, C. 1966. La élite del potere. Milan: Feltrinelli. Zolo, D. 1995. Cosmopolis. La prospettiva del governo mondiale. Milan: Feltrinelli.

CHAPTER FOUR HUMAN RIGHTS DISCOURSES IN EUROPE: THEORETICAL INSIGHTS AND EMPIRICAL APPLICATIONS EUGENIA DE ROSA

Introduction As highlighted by the number of recent contributions, human rights is becoming a fundamental concept for contemporary sociology globally. A whole range of practices and issues are raised by human rights activists, agencies and researchers belonging to different disciplines and working with different perspectives. In particular, more attention has been paid to substantive concerns compared with methodological and ethical ones. Some topics that have been addressed within current debates are: relationships between human rights and transnationalism, the constitutionalisation of human rights and the role of the state (Nash 2011, 2009), the process of globalisation, institutionalisation of multiple social inequalities and human rights (Nash 2009; Benhabib 2004, 2007, 2008), and the relationships between citizenship, political identity and human rights discourses (Isin 2005; Isin and Turner 2002 and2007; Isin, Nyers, Peter and Turner 2008). However there is more to be debated and any version of the right-based approach needs to be analysed in terms of its normative contentʊthat is, in terms of what ideals it invokes, what vision it represents, and how this vision is contrasted with existing practice and turned into a basis for reorienting development practice and practioners. (Cornwall, Nyamu-Musembi 2004, 1430)

In such a context, how have human rights been implemented in practice? What are the main approaches, methods and tools belonging to the tradition of European human rights studies? Have academic communities,

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national and local authorities of European countries and NGO actors developed different human rights norms, practices and languages? Have different discourses developed? These are some questions for research on which the article has been based. In order to provide answers to these questions the article reviews European, national and local contributions, documents, reports and assessments on human rights produced since 1990 by academics, public authorities and NGOs. Selecting those frameworks based on the interaction of theoretical contributions, empirical research, and legislative production, three main human rights discourses (or rhetoric), are identified. For each one of their features, the theoretical and methodological issues raised within are analysed. Secondly, approaches, methods and indicators are reviewed, introducing a practical example when each discourse is applied. Thirdly, differences and similarities among discourses are tackled. Finally, challenges to which social theorists, human rights researchers and activists must respond are illustrated.

1. Three human rights discourses: an overview Identification of the main human rights discourses has been achieved by working from the assumption that a human rights discourse: x is a sociological category and a social practice (Benhabib 2002); x reflects social theories and normative projects such as those underlying the process of European integration; x is not only a set of values and principles but is also an analytical framework for action and knowledge. Those frameworks are based on the interaction of theoretical contributions, empirical research, and legislative production. According to this statement, the following three human rights discourses analysed are: (a) the capability approach applied to human rights studies as developed by the research network constituted by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, the Human Development and Capability Association and the CASE-LSE1 (UK); (b) the activities of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) in developing a European area of non-discrimination and promoting human rights; (c) non-governmental organisations’ activities, 1

The Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE) is a research centre based at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

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projects, research and assessment operating in the field of human rights such as Oxfam, Amnesty International, Terre des Hommes International, Save the Children and Action Aid. These discourses or frameworks can be seen as playing the common assumption in different ways. They are promoted by different types of organisations (universities, the European Union institution, civil society organisations) working with human rights.

2. The human development & capability approach (HDCA) and human rights discourse During the past ten years the capability approach developed by the Nobel Prize winning economist Professor Amartya Sen has attracted significant interest amongst academics of all countries and policymakers, both at an international (e.g. UN organisations) and national level (e.g. government agencies). Research attention has been considerable as can be seen by the activities in the UK context of the Human Development & Capability Association, the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion of the London School of Economics and Political Science and two Cambridge university academic centres. It is noteworthy that Sen’s discourse is based on the critique of heterodox development policies through the proposition of a capabilities space (1999). So social, economic, and political systems should be evaluated in terms of the valuable freedoms that people can and do enjoy while individuals should not be treated as a means to an end, but rather as an end. Linking human rights and the capability approach represents a new topic in that root (Vizard, Fukuda-Parr and Elson 2011; Burchardt and Vizard 2011). If the idea of human rights has increasingly been being applied as a framework for the “rights-based development” approach, the HDCA complements the international human rights framework by providing normative support for positive obligation and duty (Vizard 2006; Sen 2004). Relations between positive and negative freedom, obligations and human rights are connected by the concept of basic capabilities (see “the capability framework, fundamental freedoms and human rights”, Vizard 2005, 19). More specifically the HDCA complements and reinforces the HRA in two practical elements: first

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Vizard (2005) also suggests that in such a way Sen has developed a “scholarly bridge” between human rights and economics with important methodological and substantive implications. Applying human rights standards and principles into policy frameworks for development, poverty alleviation and other areas of public policy is a further element in literature that links the capability approach to international human rights law and practice (Vizard, Fukuda-Parr and Elson 2011).

3. Theoretical insights and empirical applications Before outlining in more detail an empirical implementation of the Human Development & Capability Approach (HDCA) and Human Rights, some theoretical and empirical issues involved in the CA are summarised in table 1. These are selected because of their relevance with regard to human rights studies. Table 4-1 Theoretical issues and methodological issues Theoretical issues An ahistorical conception of community and freedom. Des Gasper argues “Sen, like JS Mill, would not accept that his liberalism is part of the narrative of capital” (2008, 13). This perspective has implications for policy and for analysis because “people working in a human rights framework are typically strongly conscious of the associated histories of struggle” (2008, 21); Adaptive feature of capabilities so capabilities can also depend on one’s own individual responsibility (Qizilbash 1997);

Methodological issues It is reductive to use the CA within a welfare economics approach and choice theory (see non-welfaristic research in welfare economics and measurement not limited to utility or monetary representation of utilities); Difficulties addressed by supporters of quantitative empirical approach are (1) the selection of the relevant functioning; (2) the measurement of these functions at the individual level; (3) the aggregation of these functions into a composite (scalar) measure of individual welfare; (4) the aggregation of individual welfare to social welfare; “the predominant use of rather exploratory

Human Rights Discourses in Europe Freedom is not the unique value to consider (Des Gasper 2008); The contribution of the CA in studying human rights goes beyond “the evaluation of advantageʊthe agenda of conventional welfare economics” (Des Gasper 2008); Séverine Deneulin’s three criticisms for Sen’s theory: first it is necessary to pay more attention to the society context and its historical evolution; second, freedom is insufficient as a theory of the good and the capability approach needs more content in such a theory; third, political freedom is an insufficient and unreliable path to promotion of other human freedoms (2006);

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measurment techniques…only very few attempts have been made to operationalize Sen’s concept of capabilities” (Kuklys 2005, 21, 30); Problems with multidimensionality and cross-country comparisons; unclear importance of processes; data less regularly collected with regard to other approaches; impossibility of set evaluation. How to deal with multidimensionality even if only of basic functioning (Ruggeri Laderchi, C., R. Saith, and F. Stewart 2003); For measuring capabilities outcomes are not sufficient but it is necessary to distinguish personal agency and opportunity structure where individual choice takes place (Alkire 2005; Alsop and Norton 2004).

Nussbaum’s contributions (1997, 2000). As reported by Vizard (2005) the author notes that “Sen’s treatment of the capability approach is too vague and fails to differentiate valuable freedoms from the trivial and the bad and has defended the necessity of applying and extending the capability approach on the basis of a definite list” (e.g. 1997, 2000, 2003, 2008). According to Nussbaum “The capabilities on my list are what I call combined capabilities, by which I mean the internal preparation for action and choice, plus circumstances that make it possible to exercise that function…these central entitlements are pre-political, belonging to people independently of and prior to membership in a state” (2011, 5).

In general, although the capability approach spreads to many new topics and a wide range of application exists, more attention has been placed on Sen’s approach to empirical implementation by means of

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quantitative and in particular, econometric techniques. Focussing on the evaluation and accountability of programs and policies based on the integration of HDCA-HRA, the review highlights recent attempts to develop quantitative indicatorsʊperformance indicatorsʊto measure human rights while there is a lack of studies that investigate social mechanisms and processes implicated in those programs. In spite of that tendency, an attempt in this direction is the Equality Measurement Framework and the Human Rights-based Capability List.2

4. The equality measurement framework and the human rights-based capability list An example of how HDCA-HRA could be applied in practice has been proposed by the LSE Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion with the development of the Equality Measurement Framework (EMF). The Equality and Human Rights Commission, a body with the legal duty to protect, enforce, promote and evaluate equality across the nine “protected” grounds3 and to request the production of tools for measuring and evaluating freedoms or capabilities and for monitor and evaluate progress towards equality in UK. The development of the EMF has drawn on the following three inputs: the theoretical underpinning of the capability approach developed by Amartya Sen; the international human rights framework and extensive consultation with the general public, individuals and groups at risk of discrimination and disadvantage. (Burchardt and Vizard 2009, 1; 2011)

In order to operationalise, in a processual way, the concept of inequality of substantive freedom three aspects have been selected: inequality of outcomes, autonomy (choice, control and empowerment) and processes (discrimination and other aspects of unequal treatment such as lack of dignity or respect). According to the EHR Commission’s mandate and responsibilities as set out in the Equality Act (2006), inequality has been disaggregated at least by age, disability, gender, race and ethnicity, religion and belief, and sexual orientation and identity. Additional characteristics such as social class, family type, asylum and refugee status

2

A further empirical application is the Good Relations Measurement Framework (2010). 3 Age, disability, gender, race, religion and belief, pregnancy and maternity, marriage and civil partnership, sexual orientation and gender reassignment.

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can also be used in the framework. Figure 1 shows a 3D substantive freedom matrix. A list of central and valuable freedoms and opportunities was proposed as the result of a two-stage process in line with a participatory method. First, the international human rights framework was used to compile a list of essentials regarding what central and valuable freedoms might be (inequality in ten domains: life; physical security; health; education; productive and valued activities; participation, influence and voice; individual, family and social life; identity, expression and self respect; legal security). Second, this list was further added to and improved through a series of deliberative consultations, workshops and interviews that involved many different types of people and groups including children at high risk of discrimination and disadvantage. Figure 4-1 The “substantive freedom matrix”

The Human Rights-based Capability List is the result of such a kind of deliberative consultation (see “The development of a children’s list”, “Proposed children’s list”, “Revised adults’ list”). An overview of the groups interviewed is presented in table 2.

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Table 4-2 Deliberative exercises First step General public including urban and rural residents, Welsh speakers; Parents and children; Elderly people and carers; Pakistani women, Bangladeshi men; Transgender people; Young adults

Second step General public; Lesbian, gay and bisexual people; People with mobility impairments, with sensory impairments, with dyslexia; People from ethnic minority groups; Sikh, Muslim and Jewish people; Teenagers (13–16)

It is worth noting two aspects where CASE operationalises the concept: x focus on complex and processual dynamics. It suggests a framework to study personal agency and individual choice within the opportunity structure: “information about unequal outcomes will be considered alongside information about inequalities in autonomyʊwho did the choosing, the adequacy of the options available, and whether the outcomes would have been chosen, given real choiceʊand information about inequalities in processʊwhether there is discrimination, or other aspects of unequal treatment, such as a lack of dignity and respect” (Equality and Human Rights Commission 2009, 3); x participation, context sensitivity and an historical conception of community, freedom and human rights. The substantive freedom matrix has been developed by the involvement of many different groups that during deliberative exercises described “what things a person would need to be or do to live a really good life in Britain in the 21st century and reviewed a selection from the list of domains of central and valuable freedoms prepared by CASE comparing it with their own spontaneously generated list and making any comments or revisions” (Burchardt and Vizard 2009, 6).

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Figure 4-2 HRMF Panels, Indicator Dashboards and Evidence Base

Progress to date is with the Children’s Measurement Framework (2011) and, more specifically, the Human Rights Measurement Framework (2011). Nevertheless while based on domestic legislation (e.g. the Human Rights Act) and international normative instruments signed by the UK, the Human Rights Measurement Framework has the advantage of contributing to “go[ing] beyond the concept of legal enforcement, violations and minimum compliance” (2011, xxxiii). With regard to empirical application, indicators, namely dashboards balancing structure, process and outcome, have been developed and agreed on for each of the HRMF panels/areas which are the Right to Life, the Prohibition of Torture and Inhumane or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, the Right to Liberty and Security of the Person, the Right to a Fair Trial, the Right to Respect for Private and Family Life, the Right to the Highest Attainable Standard of Physical and Mental Health, the Right to Education and the Right to an Adequate Standard of Living. Beyond its conceptual addition of contributions to the contextual domain of the evaluation policy, it is worth noting that the HRMF provides a qualitative and quantitative evidence base useful for showing,

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on one hand, the gap between data available and information needs and, on the other hand, that the formal model must continuously be adapted.

5. The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights discourse A second human rights discourse is built on the activities of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), a European Union advisory body established in 2007. In fact in the last few years, the FRA has been growing collecting data on fundamental rights, conducting research and analysis, providing independent advice to policy-makers, networking with human rights stakeholders, and finally developing communication activities to disseminate the results of its work. At the same time production and evaluation of human rights legislation has been increasing as seen by the activities of the European Union and national constitutional law production in the area of fundamental rights, court decisions but also in Special Bodies or similar institutions’ judgements and opinions on discrimination on grounds of racial and ethnic origin and on those of sexual orientation in the EU Member States. In these settings the “Human Rights Discourses” need to be understood as emerging from the relations both between European Union strategies (social theory and normative framework) and those of European, national and local powers, institutions and groups that are involved in human rights promoting policies. In particular, many of the recent debates on European economic and social integration have come to turn on the rulings of the European Court of Justice in the creation of a European area of nondiscriminationʊboth on the basis of some specific characteristics and that of nondiscriminatory transnational access to the social security systems of the member states. Two different positions have prevailed: the first argues that the jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) is increasingly moving in a social policy direction which has been called “Polanyian” restricting the reach of the Common Market (Caporaso and Tarrow, 2009); in contrast to this view, followers of the second position contend that “politically enforced social integration has not made much progress in the last decades, while market-enforcing integration and European nondiscrimination policies have asymmetrically profited from integration through law” (Höpner and Schäfer 2010, 3). More generally it is important to consider implications related to the grounding of such a human rights discourse in human rights legislation and European union institution or agencies.

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In trying to understand to what extent such discourse distinctively differs from others in terms of approaches, methods and indicators, it is useful to analyse the Multi-annual Framework (MAF) implemented by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights in collaboration with other EU bodies, the Council of Europe and other international organisations working on the topic of human rights.

6. The Agency’s Multi-annual Framework (MAF) Underlying concepts of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights’ discourse can be gathered from themes set up in a five-year Multiannual Framework.4 Looking at the adoption of a MAF for 2007-20125 the concept of human rights in Europe is conceptualised into the following sub-concepts: a. Racism, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance; b. Discrimination based on Sex, Race or Ethnic Origin, Religion or Belief, Disability, Age or Sexual Orientation and Against Persons belonging to Minorities and any combination of these grounds (Multiple Discrimination); c. Compensation of Victims; d. The Rights of the Child, including the Protection of Children; e. Asylum, Immigration and Integration of Migrants; f. Visa and Border Control; g. Participation of the EU Citizens in the Union's Democratic Functioning; h. Information Society and, in particular, Respect for Private Life and Protection of Personal Data; i. Access to Efficient and Independent Justice. These concepts (or themes) could also be grouped into the different chapters of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union which are Freedom (e, f, h) Equality (a, b, d), Citizen’s Rights (g) and Justice (i). 4

The Agency’s Multi-annual Framework (MAF) was adopted on 28 February 2008 by the Justice and Home Affairs Council of the European Union on proposal of the European Commission and after consulting the European Parliament. Objective, scope and tasks are set out in Articles 2 to 4 of Council Regulation (EC) NO 168/2007 establishing the Agency. 5 See Council Decision (2008/203/EC) implementing Regulation (EC) No 168/2007.

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7. Theoretical insights and empirical applications As is shown by the review of the FRA’s research projects carried out from 1999 to 2011 (i) the Agency’s research collecting and analysing data is increasing and (ii) the Agency’s areas of activity have been extended beyond racism, xenophobia and related intolerance placing particular attention on the situation of migrants (regular and irregular), the movement of migrants and European boundaries issues. Until July 2011 six research projects were carried out while for the previous year it is possible to observe the following distribution: 2010 (24), 2009 (10), 2008 (7), 2007 (4), 2006-1999 (28). Information about its main approaches and methods are gathered from the review. According to it the FRA’s research production involves: Annual reports on fundamental issues (e.g. “The situation of persons crossing the Greek land border in an irregular manner”, 2011) and comparative reports across EU countries; Primary data collection based on surveys such as the EUMIDISʊEuropean Union Minorities and Discrimination Survey or Violence against womenʊan EU-wide survey (2010-2013); Secondary data collection; Case studies such as “Housing conditions of Roma and Travellers in the EU” (2009); In-depth analysis on emergence phenomena and of the phenomena which, traditionally, are scarcely considered by official and institutional sources such as the situation of irregular migrants and the obstacles and barriers to access public services and entitle social citizenship. In the first field of analysis we could place, for example, the research paper “Coping with a fundamental rights emergency. The situation of persons crossing the Greek land border in an irregular manner” (2011) and the “Treatment of third-country nationals at the EU’s external borders: Surveying border checks at selected border crossing points” (2010-2011). In the second field of analysis it is worth mentioning “Migrants in an irregular situation: access to healthcare in 10 European Union Member States” (2011) and the report “Migrants in an irregular situation employed in domestic work: Fundamental rights challenges for the European Union; Mapping and collecting case law to analyse the impact of European legislation on human rights (e.g. “Data protection institutions and measures” 2010);

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The use of participatory methods as seen in the report “Separated asylum-seeking children: An examination of living conditions, provisions and decision making procedures in selected EU Member States” carried out through child centred participatory research; Design research based on matching legislative and sociological analysis; Identifying and circulating best practices (e.g. Multiple discrimination in healthcare, 2010-2012) and identifying mechanisms (e.g. Access to justice in Europe: an overview of challenges and opportunities). With regard to indicators used to measure the implementation of fundamental rights the FRA recently organised a Symposium to debate “Fundamental rights indicators” (2011)6 involving different agencies international organisations such as the World Bank, UNESCO,7 UN Human Rights bodies and international networks such as the Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Net (ESCR). In particular, five key areas were investigated in the FRA Symposium: Data protection, Rights of the Child (with subareas Family Environment and Alternative Care, Protection from Exploitation and Violence, Education, Citizenship and Cultural Activities, Adequate Standard of Living),8 Roma, Disability and Access to justice. The table below summarises some theoretical and methodological issues related to the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights’ discourse as briefly revealed before. Besides the FRA’s human rights discourse the main challenge posed by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights regards its role and the margin of action in the normative project of the promotion of European integration in a context characterised by the dichotomy of/between “market-correcting integration vs market-enforcing integration” (Caporaso and Tarrow 2009; Höpner and Schäfer 2010) and “the two speed Europe” (Balibar 2004, 2005). 6

Document available at http://fra.europa.eu/fraWebsite/attachments/MK-speechfra-symposium2011.pdf. 7 UNESCO major programs’ cover five sectors (Education, Natural Sciences, Social and Human Sciences, Culture, Communication and Information) while its special themes are: Climate Change, Biodiversity Initiative, Culture of Peace, Dialogue among Civilisations, Education for Sustainable Development, Foresight and Anticipation, Gender Equality, HIV and AIDS, ICT in Education, Priority Africa, Least Developed Countries, Post-Conflict and Post-Disaster Responses, Science Education, Small Island Developing States and Youth. 8 See FRA (2010), “Developing indicators for the protection, respect and promotion of the rights of the child in the European Union”.

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Table 4-3 The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights’ discourse Methodological characteristicsstrengths Approaches and methodologies need to be suited to the topic: use of different research design and methodology, integrated approaches and mixed-method; Cooperation and engagement with the Agency’s stakeholders in collecting and analysing data; Attention to the path-dependency and cross-country comparability. Attention is not exclusively placed on performance indicator and best practices; Integration between legislative and sociological perspectives.

Theoretical challenges The influence of the FRA’s nature and mandate on research activities. Is the agency able to give space to different and competing descriptions of human rights and citizenship?; Connection and influences between agency activities and the normative project to create a European area of nondiscrimination and to promote economic and social integration; Which is the role of law and legislative instruments in talking human rights both at European and national level? Does EU work by setting out a vision of what it ought to be?

8. NGOs’ Human Rights discourse The third discourse identified is related to how human rights have been implemented in practice by NGOs (i. e. Oxfam, Amnesty International, Terre des Hommes International, Save the Children, Action Aid) that work in the field of human rights in Europe. NGOs’ ways of talking about human rights distinctively differ from others. Most NGOs see human rights as a framework that can transform the concept and practice of development focussing on facilitating recognition and rights exercised on those who are discriminated against and marginalised. From the review it is possible to identify the following specific steps and features that characterise NGOs’ Human Rights discourse: - Human rights can be seen as an instrument (i) to think about poverty, reframe poverty and pursue accountability for poverty; (ii) to re-politicise participation and also to mobilise communities in building alliances; (iii)

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to connect disparate actors for social change; (iv) to reframe poverty shifting (self) perceptions; (v) to monitor government policy for its impact on people experiencing poverty and to strengthen the capacity of duty holders (state and non-state actors) and accountability (Donald and Mottershaw 2009); - Most organisations perceive human rights approaches9 in terms of rights based development;10 - Rights based approaches have different starting points. Development and HR were seen as separate domains until the mid 1990s. In fact, on one hand social and economic rights encountered scepticism as to their status as rights, in particular in the US; on the other hand mainstream human rights groups tended not to employ “rights based approach” until the year 2000 (Cornwall and Nyamu-Musembi 2004); - Factors that contributed to increasing participation amongst development in “rights based approaches to development” were: the end of the Cold War, NGO activism, shifts in aid delivery, rights as a way of reframing participation, distancing the discourse of rights based approaches from the right to development (2004, 1423-1425); - Rights talk and linking human rights and development are plural.

9. Theoretical insights and empirical applications Analysing Human Right Based Approaches (HRBAs) and Human Right Based Approaches to Development two aspects emerge, namely: the 9

Legitimacy, Empowerment, Transparency, Participation, Multi-level guide and inform all areas of an organisation's work in its application of human rights based approaches (see http://www.ihrnetwork.org/hr-based-approaches_180). Legal imperatives to apply HRBA are: a) the human rights treaty obligations of EU Member States and partner developing states; b) the obligation of states to respect their treaty obligations when they act through the entities they create; c) the EU founding treaties; d) EU-ACP treaty relations. 10 As synthesised in the document “Human Rights-Based Approaches and European Union Development Aid Policies”: “A human rights based approach to development therefore means that development: a) is explicitly based on the international human rights law framework; b) involves policies and practices that seek to empower all those in the development relationship, as a matter of human rights; c) involves policies and practices that promote the right of beneficiaries to active, free and meaningful participation; d) addresses discrimination (across all grounds prohibited by human rights law) and priorities groups that are vulnerable to having their human rights violated, and; e) subjects development processes and actors to human rights accountability, through clarity regarding rights and duties, rights holders and duty bearers” (2008, 5).

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substantial specificity of these discourses and plurality of the ways NGOs are talking about and practising human rights. With regard to the first aspect, as pointed out by Cornwall and Nyamu-Musembi (2004) in talking and linking human rights and development by NGOs, human rights are at the same time: x normative principles, x a set of tools to practise and implement human rights; x component of programs and projects such as anti-poverty, local development and capacity building programs; x justification and aspects of argumentation for intervention aimed at strengthening the capacity both of citizens and institutions (Donald and Mottershaw 2009). Consequently, one of the main theoretical challenges to tackle is to evaluate the implementation levels of human rights discourses which are those connecting, or contrasting, human rights versions developed by NGOs with EU social theories (e.g. the concept of economy and society), EU normative projects (e.g. the European Social Model, Free market and free circulation of goods and people), UE, government, local strategies and policies having implications in terms of human rights. Some indication can be drawn from the “Human Rights-Based Approaches and European Union Development Aid Policies” (2008), a joint initiative of the International Federation Terre des Hommes, Action Aid International, Amnesty International EU Office, and the International Human Rights Network. The research was carried out to explore the extent to which the EU promotes and integrates Human Right Based Approaches (HRBA) in its external development aid policies. More specifically the approach of HRB is investigated by the analysis of the five legal principles on which the approach is built. The principles are: a.Express application of the international human rights framework; b.Empowerment of rights holders; c.Participation in one's own development (as of right and not just as best practice); d.Non-discrimination and prioritisation of vulnerable groups; e.Accountability of duty-bearers to rights-holders (for process and impact). Even if the review of development policies has produced examples, with particular emphasis on children and disability, of accurate statements

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of the human rights law framework and commitments to promoting the principles of HRBAs, according to the report the current EU overarching development policy framework, the European Consensus on Development 2005 fails to provide a clear and accurate definition of human rights based development, one which acknowledges and promotes human rights as both the means and the goal of development”. (HRBA 2008, 39).11

More generally,the empirical implications of the specificity of human rights versions developed by NGOs should be noted. On one hand, NGOs’ Human Rights discourse is inherently characterised by (i) complexity (principles, tools, aspects of programmes or projects and argumentation), non-linear causal chains, multiple (simultaneous or alternative) and causal strands as well as multiple levels of causal chains when considering the implementation of human rights programmes, projects and interventions; (ii) focus on power relations and its transformations, both on a local and global scale. On the other hand different difficulties in monitoring and evaluating “Human Rights Projects” and human rights goals have emerged from the review of evaluation and assessment documents, because of (a) the context-dependent on human rights outcomes (O’Neil, Foresti and Hudson 2007; Raworth 2001; Sida 2005), (b) difficulties in cross country comparability linked to the theoretical content of indicators (“to decide what to measure and why”); (c) a growing focus around results-based management shown by international organisations (e.g. WB); (d) difficulties in assessing processes of change such as turning point, (e) difficulties in measuring and providing a theoretically-devised report of the causal relations for demonstrating which factors or mechanisms lead to different results. As far as the second aspect is concernedʊplurality of the ways NGOs are talking about and practising human rightsʊthe review underlines how NGOs works vary according to the following factors: central commitment, mission or strategies; field, themes and issues; types of activities, projects or programs; operationalisation of the concept of human rights and indicators developed. In spite of similarities among human rights discourses operating in Europe, NGOs have developed and promoted 11

Other types of EU policies are failing to use human rights terminology with legal precision; to identify core development challenges and make a misrepresentation of the relationship between policy commitments and legal obligations.

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specific practices and tools such as the use of social media and new technologies, advocacy activities and project work methodology. Some examples of tools created by NGOs working on human rights that are worth mentioning are Demanding Human Rights developed by ActionAid,12 the Women’s Indexʊarticulated into Health, Education, Economic, and Political Status componentsʊand the Children’s Index by Save the Children (see Child Rights Programming). As part of its research activities, one especially wothy of note is Save the Children focus on the situation of foreign minors (Foreign Minors in the Family, Foreign Unaccompanied Minors and Child-trafficking) as highlighted, for example, by the publication of the second report on “Foreign Minors in Italy” (2011) that comprises the fundamental rights of protection, family reunion, home, development and education for migrant children. For an overview see table 4 below in which the activities of Oxfam, Amnesty International, Terre des Hommes International, Save the Children and Action Aid are considered.

10. Differences and similarities across human rights discourses Drawing on the previous analysis, in this section some features, similarities and differences across the three human rights discourses or rhetoric are explored and synthesised. The type of organisation that mainly promotes HR discourse, the role attributed to human rights, methodological features, the role of the legal dimension, and the main strengths and weaknesses are the main criteria by means in which the three human rights discourses could be further characterised and classified (table 5).

Conclusions: challenges and some ways forward In the last few years the concept of human rights has been so successful and increasingly included in European legislation with policy documents as well as a socio-legal approach that human rights is becoming a crucial theme for contemporary sociology. In reviewing ways in which human rights have been defined and practised since 1990 by different organisations working on human rights in Europe, this article has

12

Even though developed in a global perspective, see also the “Tax Justice Advocacy Toolkit” (2012).

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shown that talking human rights is plural such as partly different human rights norms, languages and practices exists. More specifically three human rights discourses or rhetorics, promoted by different agents, have been envisaged. These rhetoricsʊmainly developed by a University and Research Network, a European Union Institution (advisory body) and by Civil Society Organisations, respectivelyʊare the Human Development & Capability Approach (HDCA) and Human Rights discourse, The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights’ discourse and the NGOs’ Human Rights discourse. Highlighting differences and similarities in terms of concepts, languages, approaches, methods, tools and fields of application has given rise to the proposal for an initial systematised comparison of the discourses. Differences emerge with reference to the interaction between the social and the normative-legal dimension. In the CA and Human Rights discourse the International Human Rights Framework is a guide for the identification of individual substantive freedoms (valuable things that people can do and be) providing a pragmatic starting point for the development of a capability list and avoiding excessive extent semantics and vagueness of the concept of human rights. In particular Nussbaum notes that CA usefully supplements the language of human rights: by simply being highly concrete and close to the ground…if the language of rights often strikes people as abstract…the language of capabilities seems like a natural extension of their demands, not like a foreign imposition…One further advantage of using…a language people in nations all over the world use in their daily activities, is that we do not even appear to be imposing a western construct upon formerly colonized peoples. (2011, 29).

Central commitment, mission or strategies

Amnesty International “Our vision is for every person to enjoy all the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights standards”.

“We are outraged by the poverty and injustice in the world”. Work is framed by Oxfam’s commitment to five broad rights-based aims: x the right to a sustainable livelihood; x the right to basic social services; x the right to life and security; x the right to be heard; x the right to an identity. The mission of the Terre des Hommes organisations is to provide active support to children, without racial, religious, political, cultural or gender-based discrimination. The Convention on the Rights of the Child constitutes the conceptual framework guiding the activities of the Terre des Hommes organisations.

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Oxfam

Table 4-4 NGOs and HR

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Save the Children’s new mission is to inspire breakthroughs in the way the world treats children and to achieve immediate and lasting change in their lives.

Save the Children

“Our work is about directly improving the lives of the women, men, youth and children living in poverty. From 2012 to 2017 we will deliver on our plans that will result in millions of the poorest and most excluded people having: x access to land; x food security; x improved public services; x more accountable governments; x quality education; x resilience to disasters and shocks; x freedom from violence; x economic rights”.

ActionAid

Main field, themes and issues NGOs work on

Active citizenship; Agriculture; Aid effectiveness; Climate change; Education; Emergency response; Gender justice; HIV and AIDS; Health; Indigenous & minority rights; Natural resources; Peace & security; Private sector; Trade; Youth outreach. Death Penalty Abolition; Armed Conflict; Arms Trade; Business and Human Rights; Campaign for International Justice; Children and Human Rights; Demand Dignity; Detention and Imprisonment Discrimination; Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; Enforced Disappearances; Freedom of Expression; Health and Human Rights; Human Rights Defenders; Human Rights Education; Human Rights in China and the Beijing Olympics; Indigenous Peoples; Individuals at Risk; International Justice; Poverty and

Protecting children from exploitation and Violence; Children on the Move; Child labour Health and Education: providing the essentials; Encouraging child development; Children in Emergencies.

Human Rights Discourses in Europe Child Protection; Education; Health and Nutrition; HIV/AIDS; Livelihoods; U.S. Programs.

Food rights; Women’s rights; Governance; Education; Emergencies & Conflict; Climate Change; HIV and AIDS.

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Human Rights Education; Campaigns; Public events.

Annual Report

Development programs; Emergency interventions; Campaigns.

Annual Report

Report

Annual Report

Development and Humanitarian Aid Projects; Campaigns; Child Rights Advocacy; Research and evaluation on the impact of interventions.

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Types of activities, projects or programs

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Annual Report See also “State of World’s Mothers 2011” Report

Program Areas; Campaigns; Emergency Response.

Annual Report See also Report by theme

Partnership and Networking; Campaigns; Demanding HR.

Indicators of Oxfam’s activities related to the Millennium Development Goals Indicators in Country reports: number of civilians assassinated or executed by armed groups; suicide attacks, abductions and unlawful killings Indicators of activities and results by axes of intervention

Indicators in the “State of World’s Mothers 2011” Report: The Mothers’ Index, The Mothers’ index rank Indicators in Report by theme (e.g. “Tax Haven Tracker”): The big 4 high street banks’ top overseas locations; FTSE 100 companies in selected countries

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University and Research Networks

The International Human Rights Framework guides the identification of individual substantive freedoms (valuable things that people can do and be) and provides a pragmatic starting point for the development of a capability list

Main actor

Role attributed to Human Rights

CA and Human Rights

European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights European Union Institution (advisory body) Human Rights indicates fields and themes of action that could also be grouped into the sub-concepts of freedoms, equality, citizen’s rights, justice

Table 4-5 Comparison of the three Human Rights discourses

Human Rights are at the same time principles, tools, aspects of programs or projects and argumentation

Civil Society Organization

NGOs

Source: official NGOs (Oxfam, Amnesty International, Terre des Hommes International, Save the Children and Action Aid) web site (updated to July 2011)

Type of Indicators (examples)

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Provide an analytical framework able to connect personal agency and opportunity structures and develop Outcome, Process and Structural Indicators

Comparability

Strengths

Weaknesses/Issues

Methodological features (Strengths)

Comparative element. In developing a children’s capability list, the provisional list for children produced by The Equalities Review was compared to the Every Child Matters (ECM) framework and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child Deliberative consultation including different types of people and groups at high risk of discrimination and disadvantage

Influence of the normative project

Political, power relations, voice and accountability of communities are included in the empirical applications of human rights

Approaches and methodologies need to be appropriate to the topic: use of different research design and methodology, participatory approaches and mixed-method Promote quality of research based on the appropriateness of the methods and on the contextualisation of the legal dimension

Measuring and describing complicated aspects; evaluating complex interventions, programs or projects with multi-level effects (local and global)

Develop innovative tools and practices including also power and political dimension

Tool to recognise and promote human rights

Theoretical element and field of analysis

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Role attributed to the legal dimension

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It is important to note that the CA and Human Rights discourse has the advantage to provide an analytical framework able to connect personal agency and opportunity structures (inequality of outcomes, autonomy, and processes) useful to investigate social mechanisms and processes implicated in the implementation of HR. To note that in its last version (“The Human Rights Measurement Framework”, 2011) this discourse is moving towards a structure-processoutcome framework (OHCHR 2008) such as FRA research activities.1 Compared to the others, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights’ discourse stands out as specifically European context-based. As shown by its focus on migration, movement of people across borders and identification of obstacles and barriers to access public services and gain(?) social citizenship, this discourse is constitutively grounded into the normative project to create a European area of nondiscrimination and to promote social European integration. In such a framework the legal dimension represents both a theoretical element and a field of analysis. So, if on one hand the FRA promotes quality of research on human rights based on the appropriateness of methods and on the contextualisation of the legal dimension, on the other hand there is the risk of not overcoming “the legislative route” (Vizard, Fukuda-Parr and Elson 2011) of the European normative project and of not focussing on contrasted existing national and European HR practices and policies. A specific way to define and work with HR is proposed by NGOs also operating in Europe. The NGOs’ human rights discourse has in fact the advantage of showing how human rights are at the same time principles, (innovative and participatory) tools, aspects of programs or projects and argumentation including also the political and power relations dimension, voice and accountability of communities. In this sense NGOs’ discourse refers to a complex, multi-level (local and global) and not exclusively European based context framework that raises the fundamental question:to what extent do human rights discourses in Europe differently point human rights and are they able to change politics, power relations and social stratification? Drawing a conclusion, the comparison of the three human rights discourses highlights that focus on mechanisms and processes connecting personal agency and opportunity structures, methodological appropriateness 1 See the agency’s statements about efforts needed to deal with the relationship between the three elements. In 2012 the FRA will present a report that draws on the experience with the indicators on the rights of the child and that of some other existing FRA-projects with close relevance to indicators (Source: official website).

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and political and power relations as dimensions of HR are some aspects in which integration between human rights discourses might be used to develop a European human rights framework.

References Alkire, S. 2005. “Why the Capability Approach?”. Journal of Human Development 6 (1): 115-33. Alsop, R. and A. Norton. 2004. “Power, Rights and Poverty Reduction”. In Power, Rights and Poverty: Concepts and Connections, edited by R. Alsop, 3-14. Washington, DC: World Bank. Amnesty International, Terre Des Hommes International Federation, International Human Rights Network, Action Aid 2008, “Human Rights-Based Approaches and EU Development Aid Policies”, http://www.ihrnetwork.org/uploads/files/10.pdf. Balibar, E. 2004. We, the People of Europe? Reflections on Transnational Citizenship. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Benhabib, S. 2002. The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era. Princeton: Princeton University Press. —. 2004. The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents and Citizens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —. 2007. “Twilight of Sovereignty or the Emergence of Cosmopolitan Norms? Rethinking Citizenship in Volatile Times”. Citizenship Studies 11(1): 19-36. —. 2008. Another Cosmopolitanism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Burchardt, T. and P. Vizard 2009. Developing an equality measurement framework: A list of substantive freedoms for adults and children, Equality and Human Rights Commission - Research report 18, http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/uploaded_files/research/18_subst antive-freedoms-for-adults-and-children.pdf. Burchardt, T. and P. Vizard. 2011. “‘Operationalizing’ the Capability Approach as a Basis for Equality and Human Rights Monitoring in Twenty-first-century Britain”. Journal of Human Development and Capabilities 12 (1): 91-119. Candler, J., Holder, H., Hosali S., Payne A. M., Tsang T. and P. Vizard. 2011. Human Rights Measurement Framework: Prototype panels, indicator set and evidence base. Equality and Human Rights Commission - Research report 81, http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/uploaded_files/humanrights/HR MF/hrmf.pdf.

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Caporaso, J. A. and S. Tarrow. 2009. “Polanyi in Brussels: Supranational Institutions and the Transnational Embedding of Markets”. International Organization 63: 593-620. Cornwall, A. and C. Nyamu-Musembi. 2004. “Putting the ‘rights-based approach’ to development into perspective”. Third World Quarterly 25 (8): 1415-1437. Kuklys, W. 2004. Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach: Theoretical Insights and Empirical Applications. Berlin: Springer. Deneulin, S. 2006. The Capability Approach and the Praxis of Development. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Donald, A. and E. Mottershaw. 2009. Poverty, inequality and human rights. York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. FRA. 2010. Developing indicators for the protection, respect and promotion of the rights of the child in the European Union. Vienna: FRA. Gasper, D.R. 2008. From Valued Freedoms, To Polities And Markets The Capability Approach In Policy Practice. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Institute of Human Development, Delhi, 1013 September. Höpner, M. and A. Schäfer. 2010. Polanyi in Brussels? Embeddedness and the three dimensions of European economic integration, MPIfG Discussion Paper 10/8. Cologne: Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies. Isin, E. F. 2005. “Citizenship after orientalism: Ottoman citizenship”. In Citizenship in a Global World: European Questions and Turkish Experiences. edited by F. Keyman and A. Icduygu, 31-51. London: Routledge. Isin, E. F. and B. S. Turner. eds. 2002. Handbook of citizenship studies. London: Sage. Isin, E. F., P. Nyers and B. S. Turner. eds. 2008. Citizenship between Past and Future. London: Routledge. Nash, K. 2009. “Between Citizenship and Human Rights”. Sociology 43(6): 1067-1083. Nash, K. 2011. “States of Human Rights”. Sociologica 1: 1-20. Nussbaum, M. C. 2011. “Capabilities, Entitlements, Rights: Supplementation and Critique”. Journal of Human Development and Capabilities 12 (1): 23-37. —. 2008. “Human dignity and political entitlements”. In Human Dignity and Bioethics: Essays Commissioned by the President’s Council on Bioethics, edited by A. Schulman and T. W. Merrill, 351–380. Washington DC: US government Printing Office.

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—. 2003. “Capabilities as fundamental entitlements”. Feminist Economics, 9: 33-59. —. 2000. Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —. 1997. “Capabilities and Human Rights”. Fordham Law Review 66, 273-300. OHCHR. 2008. Report on Indicators for promoting and monitoring the implementation of Human Rights http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/icmc/docs/HRI.MC.2008.3EN.pdf. O’Neill, T., M. Foresti and A. Hudson 2007. Evaluation of Citizens’ Voice and Accountability: Review of the Literature and Donor Approaches. London: DFID. Qizilbash, M. 1997. “A Weakness of the Capability Approach with Respect to Gender Justice”. Journal of International Development 9 (2): 251-262. Raworth, K. 2001. “Measuring Human Rights”. Ethics and International Affairs 15 (1): 111-31. Ruggeri Laderchi, C., R. Saith, and F. Stewart 2003. “Does it matter that we do not agree on the definition of poverty? A comparison of four approaches”. Oxford Development Studies 31(3): 243-272. Sen, A. K. 1993. “Capability and Well-Being”. In The Quality of Life, edited by M. Nussbaum and A. K. Sen, 30-53. Oxford: OUP. —. 1999. Development as Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. —. 2004. “Elements of a Theory of Human Rights”. Philosophy and Public Affairs 32(4): 315-356. Sida. 2005. Goal, Perspectives and Central Component Elements. Stockholm: Sida. Vizard, P. 2006. The HDCA approach and human rights: briefing note, 16 http://www.capabilityapproach.com/thematic/Vizard%20Briefing %20Note.pdf. —. 2005. The contributions of Professor Amartya Sen in the field of human rights. CASE paper 91, 1-55. London, UK: Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, London School of Economics and Political Science. —. 2000. Conceptualizing Poverty in a Human Rights Framework: Foundational Issues in Ethics, Economics and International Law. PhD Thesis, London: London School of Economics. Vizard, P., S. Fukuda-Parr and D. Elson. 2011. “Introduction: The Capability Approach and Human Rights”. Journal of Human Development and Capabilities 12 (1), 1-22.

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Websites CASE, The Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion http://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/case/ FRA, The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights http://fra.europa.eu/fraWebsite/home/home_en.htm http://fra.europa.eu/fraWebsite/research/research_en.htm http://fra.europa.eu/fraWebsite/research/projects/proj_indicators_en. Human Development and Capability Association http://www.capabilityapproach.com/index.php Oxfam http://www.oxfam.org/ Amnesty International http://www.amnesty.org/ Terre des Hommes International http://www.terredeshommes.org/ Save the Children http://www.savethechildren.org/ Action Aid http://www.actionaid.org/

CHAPTER FIVE THE HIV/AIDS PANDEMIC: SOCIAL RISKS AND MORAL PANIC IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT BRUNO MEINI

Introduction Currently, HIV/AIDS remains one of the most feared infectious diseases in public health debate. In everyday life, from media-watching to pub talk, HIV/AIDS is rarely out of public consciousness. The volume of coverage diverges quite a bit from country to country. However, the media’s initial excessive interest in the disease soon seemed to wane. Later news accounts tended to put on a more sensationalized and extreme tone than in the past and contributed to feeding a widespread atmosphere of terror. Specifically, the HIV/AIDS panic took off in the late 1980s and surged through the 1990s as one the greatest health-related scares of our time. The initial AIDS panic was based on assumptions and irrational and insubstantial evidence. Through the media people were led to believe that the human immunodeficiency virus was mainly caused by the immoral lifestyles of the gay community. The media's portrayal of the gay issue provoked mass public resentment towards homosexuals with serious effects on social cohesion (Herek and Capitanio 1998). The seriousness of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in vast geographical areas such as sub-Saharan Africa or South-East Asia reinforced an already rising concern with health or, to be more accurate, with disease. Contemporary obsession with illness and death, so strongly strengthened by the HIV/AIDS crisis, heightened the dependence of patient on doctor and fortified the power of the state over each individual. The perception of risk can then be easily manipulated by institutional actors for instilling fears and anxieties in people and, in so doing, encouraging them to retreat from complexity and the apparent social problems of everyday life and pushing

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them into a siege mentality. In other words, the state can use the fearful atmosphere generated by the HIV/AIDS pandemic in order to engineer social consensus and control (Hosseinzadeh and Hossain 2011). HIV/AIDS fuels discriminatory attitudes towards those social groups which are already socially-excluded because of their risk-taking behaviours. This labelling process can lead to becoming suspicious about any individual who comes into contact with these groups. This attitude is influenced by a sentiment of repulsion for the modes by which a healthy individual can be infected by an HIV-carrier. Moral disapproval mainly affects both those behaviours that simulate a health condition and those which most increase the risk of transmitting or being infected by the virus, such as high-risk sexual practices (for example, anal sex), sexual promiscuity, commercial sex and drug abuse. The stigmatisation of some population groups has never offered solutions to problems (Mawar, Saha, Pandit and Mahajan 2005). HIV/AIDS also poses a persistent and non-violent threat to the existence of individuals, as the virus drastically shortens life expectancy, undermines quality of life and limits participation in lucrative activities. The political, social and economic consequences are equally harmful to the community, in turn weakening its security (Hadingham 2000, 120). HIV/AIDS does not fit into the traditional definition of security, but into the innovative concept of human security. In essence, human security means safety for people from both violent and non-violent threats, and entails taking preventative measures in order to reduce vulnerability and minimise risk and taking corrective action where prevention is unsuccessful (Hubert 1999).

1. The concept of risk Risk represents one of the pivotal concepts of epidemiology and occupies a central position in our culture. It can be intended as a “conceptual mechanism through which to determine the possible and/or likely outcomes of our actions in the face of the structural uncertainties thrown up by the social and natural world” (Dannreuther and Lekhi 2000, 575). It is a tool used for predicting and monitoring the future of the following elements: weather, business management, environment protection, crime control, transport and promotion of health (Heyman, Henriksen and Maughan 1998, 1296). This operation postulates that some individuals, groups and experts have or believe they have the indispensable resources for obtaining adequate measurements. As regards diseases, worthy of special attention among these are epidemiologists. They make choices

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based on available, albeit imperfect, data. Epidemiological categories are therefore constructions based on the availability of specific information and on the procedures for gathering, classifying and measuring choices (Paicheler 1996, 343). It must be stressed that the impact of each epidemic is different according to the nation and to the community which it affects, and this depends on two important elements: susceptibility and vulnerability. The former is used to describe those factors which determine the extent of the epidemic. These factors can be physical (as in the case of the construction of a new road), environmental (the drought which causes exceptional movements of a population), cultural (a specific sexual practice), economic (an unjust distribution of income), or social (the more hazardous kind of labour). This concept can be applied to each field: society, social group, organisation or enterprise. The latter describes the characteristics of a social or economic entity which will be made fragile by the deleterious impact of a disease. Therefore, a unit can be described as susceptible to an infection created by an epidemic and vulnerable to its effects (Whiteside 1998, 79-81). The question of what determines the susceptibility or vulnerability of a society is of paramount interest to politicians and those who have planning capacities. The Jaipur Paradigm tries to offer an operational support to institutional actors. It has been devised to serve as an econometric model able to exemplify the relationship between the HIV/AIDS pandemic and society. This paradigm is based on a central premise, namely that, in relation to HIV/AIDS, societies are distinct in two parameters distributed on a continuum: susceptibility and vulnerability. Two factors modulate the level of susceptibility and vulnerability of a society: the level and distribution of wealth and income and the degree of social cohesion. The latter concept is difficult to quantify but easy to individualise by one’s capacity of intuition (Fourie and Schönteich 2001, 31). HIV/AIDS undermines the cohesion of the social fabric which should capture the worth of intra-community dynamics. It weakens the social ties that unite people (organisations, institutions, key individuals, events, customs, rituals) into a community and the quality and strength of these ties determine the cohesiveness of the community. As we have seen, social cohesion is one of the two exposure variables of the Jaipur Paradigm and it has frequently been linked to community health outcomes (Decosas 2003, 8-10).

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2. The risk society Global health issues are often neglected as interest areas of international relations. Just lately the languages of risk and security has converged around these global health issues, particularly in the case of the HIV/AIDS pandemic (Elbe 2008, 177). According to Beck risk can predict a future catastrophe, a perception that often ignores the very conditions that cause it; HIV/AIDS is one such modern catastrophe. He defines risk as “a systematic way of dealing with hazards and insecurities induced and introduced by modernization itself” (Beck 1992, 21). This definition considers the notion of risk as a synonym of hazard, danger or insecurity and then relates it to one specific set of historically novel dangers, those associated with modernisation. The concept of risk thus becomes analytically useful for Beck as a means of emphasising the existence of new global dangers such as environmental degradation or nuclear technology which are not caused by random acts of nature, but which are the fruit of human modernisation themselves (Elbe 2008, 181). The HIV/AIDS pandemic is reversing decades of development in the hardest-hit regions of the world and also threatens to affect the youngest and most economically productive generations. As a consequence, policy makers embrace a risk management perspective which allow them to adopt prevention strategies keeping under control the allocation of resources (Burchardt 2007, 7). Mattes (2003) points out that besides killing an increasing number of public servants and elected officials, HIV/AIDS could severely jeopardise the process of political institutionalisation that young democracies need to develop a strong and effective state that enforces a system of rules. The disease will cause a shrinking proportion of competent officials. They would have been at their positions for a time so long that they develop the specialised skills, expertise and professionalism needed to do their work. This situation represents a great pressure on the governmental structure which risks being unable to address the most serious political and social problems. There is an urgent need for intervention strategies aimed at sensitising and informing the population on the issue of the local fight against the HIV/AIDS epidemic. In 1999, for instance, the Secretary General of the United Nations launched the International Partnership against AIDS in Africa. In this initiative were involved the following institutions: African governments; the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) (a global programme specifically designed to fight AIDS); the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) (a worldwide organisation which primarily deals with the maternal-foetal transmission of HIV/AIDS and

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provides aid to children orphaned by the pandemic); the United Nations Population Fund (UNFP) (an international development agency which deals with the existing connections between demographic policies and epidemiologic factors); the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) (a global development network which works with countries to understand and respond to the development dimensions of HIV/AIDS and health, recognising that action outside the health sector can contribute significantly to better health outcomes); the World Trade Organisation (WTO) (organisation which safeguards the intellectual property rights of antiretroviral drugs); the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) (organisation which deals with pro-women policies, especially those which fall within the so-called risk groups); the World Bank and the Regional Development Banks (they supply organisational, economic and financial support to financial administrations); the World Health Organisation (WHO) (a specialised United Nations agency that coordinates international efforts to control outbreaks of infectious disease, such as Sars, malaria, tuberculosis, influenza and HIV/AIDS); various private foundations and companies, numerous non-governmental organisations and the G8 donating countries. The general objective of the abovementioned organisations is to control infectious diseases, while their specific goal is to combat against AIDS by a series of initiatives such as supporting local health care systems, developing pharmaceutical industries that can produce antiretroviral drugs at reasonable prices and supporting school programmes that provide information on prevention measures (Fleshman 2000, 24; Piot 2002, 31-32).

3. The risk-security nexus The global dimension of HIV/AIDS can be inferred by the spread of the disease throughout the world. Its presence is no longer limited to subSaharan Africa, as many believed during the 1990s. It has spread throughout the various developing geographical areas and at an especially alarming rate in Central America, the Caribbean and Eastern Europe and in some Asian regions. On the contrary, in Europe, North America and in the other high-income countries the pandemic has been contained thanks to progresses in pharmaceutical research and to the efficiency of the monitoring and prevention services (WHO, UNAIDS, and UNICEF 2011). HIV/AIDS is seen as a threat with implications for the well-being of individuals, households, communities and states. But, little analysis has been done for the recognition of the HIV/AIDS pandemic as both a cause and consequence of insecurity. Too many African governments still fail to

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recognise that HIV/AIDS is more than a public health issue. HIV/AIDS also threatens government stability and potential security (International Crisis Group 2001). The acquired immunodeficiency syndrome can’t, however, be ascribed to the traditional idea of security but is part of a recent concept, specifically that of human security (Axworthy 1999). Traditionally, the concept of security has been interpreted in militaristic terms as the military defense of the state while HIV/AIDS does not fit into this traditional definition of security (Bedeski 1999). In fact, state security, in most African countries, is not only threatened by armed attacks by other countries but also by more insidious menaces, many of which take advantage of specific state weaknesses. For many, a disease can also represent a grave security threat, even worse than physical violence (Cilliers 2004). However, since the end of the Cold War, policy makers and scholars have increasingly begun to think about security as something more than the exclusive military defense of state interests (Pharoah and Schönteich 2003). In the 1994 Human Development Report (HDR), the United Nations advanced a new concept, opening new perspectives. While the old concept of security was seen as the “security of territory from external aggression, or as protection of national interests in foreign policy or as global security from the threat of nuclear holocaust” (UNDP 1994, 22), the new concept of human security was seen as “safety from such chronic threats as hunger, disease and repression” as well as “protection from sudden and hurtful disruptions in the patterns of daily lifeʊwhether in homes, in jobs or in communities” (UNDP 1994, 23). This last innovative people-centric concept of human security changed the basic idea of security, connecting security itself with citizens rather than territories and with human sustainable development rather than weapons (UNAIDS 2002). The two principal components of human security were “freedom from fear” and “freedom from want” (UNDP 1994, 24). These twin ends of protection and empowerment symbolise the core principles of guaranteeing survival, basic human needs and human dignity (Gunduz 2006, 53). The intention of human security is to capture the post-Cold War peace dividend and redirect those resources in the direction of an agenda of development (Axworthy 1999, 2). Hubert (1999, 15) expands this conceptualisation, stating that: in essence, human security means safety for people from both violent and non-violent threats. It is a condition of a state of being characterised by freedom from pervasive threats to people’s rights, their safety or even their lives…It is an alternative way of seeing the world, taking people as its point of reference, rather than focusing exclusively on the security or

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territory of governments. Like other security conceptsʊnational security, economic security, and food securityʊit is about protection.

In his conceptualisation, Hubert cites two out of seven threats to human security: economic security (poverty, unemployment, homelessness), food security (undernourishment, famine, hunger), health security (disease, infections, ineffective health care), environmental security (degradation, pollution, natural disasters), personal security (physical torture, war, crime, aggression, violence), community security (ethnic and race tensions, oppression, discrimination) and political security (repression, torture, illtreatment, human rights abuses) (UNDP 1994, 25-33). The concept of human security focuses on the security of individuals and communities and recognises state authorities as the main defenders and protectors of citizens’ rights. This concept includes a departure from a traditional international relations security notion, where state is the main referent object to a holistic vision, in which people and their interrelated social and economic milieu obtain pre-eminence over states (Thomas 2001, 161). In addition, it has not substituted the conventional notion of national security. The national security topic appears to still be of more importance in worldwide security plans and funds. In fact, in the field of international relations state stability and national security remain prevalent in comparison with health issues, especially HIV/AIDS. There is no general agreement on the HIV/AIDS epidemic as a real danger to national security (Gunduz 2006, 55).

4. HIV/AIDS and moral panic The AIDS scare was one of the most distorted, deceitful and cynical public health issues of the last 30 years. Western governments often exploited the disease to create a new moral framework for society. Public officials sometimes sought to police and regulate the behaviour of the public through unfounded fears. In particular, they used the spectre of the HIV/AIDS pandemic to alarm people and push them to behave morally. They were usually supported by shameful media campaigns which widened the gap between us (the healthy) and them (the HIV positive and the AIDS sufferers) (O’Neill 2008). The HIV/AIDS disease was originally known as the gay plague (Critcher 2003, 41) because it was initially discovered among homosexual men. As a consequence, the press adopted the acronym GRID (Gay Related Immune Deficiency) in order to define the HIV/AIDS syndrome (Gabrielle 2000, 32). This label was the fruit of a homophobic atmosphere

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which aimed to reinforce prejudices, discriminations and stigma against the homosexual community (Critcher 2003, 41). The initial account of HIV/AIDS could easily be turned into what Cohen describes as a moral panic, “a condition, episode, person or a group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests; its nature is presented in a stylized and stereotypical fashion by the media” (Cohen 1972, 9). The effects of moral panic, particularly in the afore-mentioned case, give support to labelling theory (Becker 1963). The term moral panic was coined in 1972 by Stanley Cohen in his book Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and the Rockers. It occurs when the media use a scapegoat to explain an issue and through various methods of manipulation persuade their audience to believe that the issue has been discovered and solved by controlling the scapegoats. Disproportionate reactions by the public to a media reporting can cause danger to social values, thus it is necessary to find effective solutions to prevent mass hysteria phenomena (Thompson 1998). The most systematic account of moral panic is provided by Goode and Ben-Yehuda. According to the author, moral panic is composed of five crucial elements: concern, hostility, consensus, disproportionality and volatility. Concern (different from fear) must be at a heightened level over the threat (HIV/AIDS in this case) and manifest in a concrete way. This can include media reporting, opinion polls and social initiatives and so on (Goode and Ben-Yehuda 1994, 33-40). They add that the media may well be “infused with hysteria about a particular issue or condition” but if this does not generate public concern then there is no moral panic (Goode and Ben-Yehuda 1994, 26). Subsequently, there must be a greater level of hostility towards HIV-carriers than the rest of the population and a general agreement or consensus among society on the fact that a threat of contagion actually exists. The fourth element of moral panic focusses on the extent to which the “degree of public concern over the behaviour itself, the problem it poses, or condition it creates is far greater than is true for comparable, even more damaging actions” (Goode and Ben-Yehuda 1994, 36). This element is dependent on empirical information: figures or numbers (of victims, deaths and so on) which, within the context of the moral panic, are often greatly exaggerated. Without the element of disproportionality the concept of moral panic fails. In addition, moral panic is volatile because it unexpectedly explodes and then almost as quickly as it comes to light dies down or disappears. However, this does not mean to say that moral panic does not produce any lasting effect or impact. As the case of HIV/AIDS

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shows, there is evidence that moral panic resulted in changes in prevention strategies or in the adoption of effective social policies. Finally, it is necessary to expand the coverage of the prevention schemes towards both vulnerable groups and the general population in order to render moral panic ineffective . In addition, a plethora of studies from developed and developing countries have highlighted several prerequisites to significantly reduce the spread of HIV, such as sufficient political and financial support from the government; better coordination and cooperation between government agencies; a powerful alliance with nongovernmental and community-based organisations; and high levels of participation of vulnerable groups, including the participation of people living with HIV and AIDS in designing, implementing and evaluating health care programmes (Nasir 2010).

Conclusions In the light of what we have previously described, we can highlight some final critical aspects both on theoretical and practical grounds. Firstly, the concept of panic can’t be considered as an appropriate tool by which to make the multifaceted social dimension of the HIV/AIDS phenomenon more transparent. Panic negatively impacts on the categorisation process, a mental process which serves to facilitate the study and comprehension of some specific objects or phenomena. This concept can also help to reflect on discrimination, stigmatisation and marginalisation processes, which are directly involved in an event that causes a strong emotional impact, such as being diagnosed as seropositive (Mengheri 1999, 73-74). Secondly, the collective representation of HIV/AIDS in terms of a war against so-called deviant social groups risk being misleading and creating a witch-hunt climate which makes the implementation of effective prevention policies increasingly difficult. However, this irrational and sometimes surreal situation is giving way to a more rational and realistic atmosphere, which is permeated by a new and prevalent social awareness. This last is due both to the phenomenon’s international dimension, which prevents the lawmakers of a country (increasingly exposed to pressures from international organisations) from adopting stigmatising and discriminatory measures, and to the steady and alarming diffusion of the HIV/AIDS disease among sections of the population which do not exclusively belong to the high-risk social groups (UNAIDS 2007). Thirdly, the negative impact of HIV/AIDS on society can only be reduced by providing antiretroviral drugs on a vast scale. The cost of

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antiretroviral therapy implicates a problem of access to cures, despite relevant progress toward universal access to antiretroviral drugs having been achieved. Public and private aid agencies must intervene in assuring treatment to an increasing number of HIV-positive patients in order to keep any excessive reactions connected to fear of contagion under control (Highleyman 2011). Lastly, the state can’t use criminal law as a weapon in ethicising campaigns aimed at promoting specific lifestyles and at prosecuting conducts discretionally considered immoral or asocial. Choosing a criminal policy would not only be uneffective in combating HIV/AIDS, but would actually be gravely counterproductive, as it would generate the false impression that criminal laws could resolve AIDS-related issues and also contrast with an effective preventive strategy based on a rational political- and health-information campaign (Wainberg 2009).

References Axworthy, L. 1999. Human security: Safety for people in a changing world. Ottawa: Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Beck, U. 1992. Risk Society: Towards a new modernity. London: Sage. Becker, H. S. 1963. Outsiders: Studies in the sociology of deviance. New York: Free Press. Bedeski, R. 1999. Defining human security. Victoria: Centre for Global Studies. Burchardt, M. 2007. “Managing Risks through Solidarity? HIV/AIDS and the Organization of Support in South Africa”. SCARR Working Paper 19, School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research, University of Kent, Canterbury. Cilliers, J. 2004. Human Security in Africa: A conceptual framework for review. Pretoria: African Human Security Initiative. Cohen, S. 1972. Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers. London: MacGibbon and Kee. Critcher, C. 2003. “Unhealthy Preoccupations: AIDS”. In Moral Panics and the Media, edited by C. Critcher, 33-47. Buckingham: Open University Press. Dannreuther C., and R. Lekhi. 2000. “Globalisation and the political economy of risk”. Review of International Political Economy 7 (4): 574-594. Decosas, J. 2003. The Social Ecology of AIDS in Africa. Geneva: UNRISD.

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Elbe, S. 2008. “Risking Lives: AIDS, Security and Three Concepts of Risk”. Security Journal. 39 (2-3): 177-198. Fleshman, M. 2001. “AIDS prevention in the ranks: UN targets peacekeepers, combatants in war against disease”. African Recovery 15 (1-2): 16-18. Fourie P., and M. Schönteich. 2001. “Africa’s new security threat: HIV/AIDS and human security in Southern Africa”. African Security Review 10 (4): 29-42. Gabrielle, G. 2000. Representations of HIV and AIDS. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Gardiner, R. 2001. AIDS: The Undeclared War, Towards the Earth Summit 2002. London: Stakeholder Forum for Our Common Future. Goode E., and N. Ben-Yehuda. 1994. Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance. Cambridge: Blackwell. Gunduz, Z. Y. 2006. “The HIV/AIDS epidemic. What’s security got to do with it?”. Perceptions 11 (2): 49-84. Hadingham, J. 2000. “Human security and Africa: Polemic opposites”. South African Journal of International Affairs 7 (2): 114-121. Herek, G. M., and J. P. Capitanio. 1998. “Symbolic prejudice or fear of infection? A functional analysis of AIDS-related stigma among heterosexual adults”. Basic and Applied Social Psychology 20 (3): 230241. Heyman, B., M. Henriksen, and K. Maughan. 1998. “Probabilities and health risks: A qualitative approach”. Social Science and Medicine 47 (9): 1295-1306. Hosseinzadeh, H. and S. Z. Hossain. 2011. “Functional analysis of HIV/AIDS stigma: consensus or divergence?”. Health Education and Behavior 38 (6): 584-595. Hubert, D. 1999. “Human security: safety for people in a changing world”. Paper presented at the regional conference: “The Management of African Security in the 21st Century”. Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, Lagos, 23-24 June. Highleyman, L. 2011. “HIV Eradication: Time to Talk about a Cure”. Bulletin of Experimental Treatment for AIDS 23 (2): 13-27. International Crisis Group. 2001. HIV/AIDS as a security issue. Washington, DC: International Crisis Group. Mattes, R. 2003. “Health democracies? The potential impact of AIDS on democracy in Southern Africa”. ISS Paper 71 (April): 1-16. Mawar, N., Saha, S., Pandit, A., and U. Mahajan. 2005. “The third phase of HIV epidemic: Social consequences of HIV/AIDS stigma and

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discrimination and future needs”. Indian Journal of Medical Research 122 (6): 471-484. Mengheri, M. 1999. “Emarginazione e aggressività”. In Verso la cessazione della sofferenza: AIDS, emarginazione, sistemi sociosanitari, edited by M. Mengheri, 61-76. Pisa: Edizioni ETS. Nasir, S. 2010. “Moral panic in fighting AIDS”. The Jakarta Post. June 24. http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/06/24/moral-panic-fightingaids.html. O’Neill, B. 2008. “The exploitation of AIDS”. The Guardian, June 12. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/12/aids.health. Paicheler, G. 1996. “La prevenzione: l’articolazione tra individuo e società nella gestione della salute”. In Psicologia sociale della salute: salute e malattia come costruzioni sociali, edited by G. Petrillo, 326-351. Napoli: Liguori Editore. Pharoah R. and M. Schönteich M. 2003. “AIDS, security and governance in Southern Africa: Exploring the impact”. ISS Paper 65 (January): 116. Piot, P. 2000. “The international partnership against AIDS in Africa”. AIDS Infothek 12 (2): 31-32. Thomas, C. 2001. “Global governance, development and human security: Exploring the links”. Third World Quarterly 22 (2): 159-175. Thompson, K. 1998. Moral Panics. London/New York: Routledge. UNAIDS. 2002. HIV/AIDS and Security. Geneva: UNAIDS. —. 2007. Reducing HIV Stigma and Discrimination: a critical part of national AIDS programmes. Geneva: UNAIDS. UNDP. 1994. Human Development Report 1994. New York: Oxford University Press. Wainberg, M. A. 2009. “Criminalizing HIV transmission may be a mistake”. Canadian Medical Association Journal. 180 (6): 688. http://www.cmaj.ca/content/180/6/688.full.pdf. Whiteside, A. 1998. Implications of AIDS for demography and policy in Southern Africa. Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press. WHO, UNAIDS, and UNICEF. 2011. Global HIV/AIDS response: Epidemic update and health sector progress towards universal access. Progress report 2011. Geneva: WHO, UNAIDS, and UNICEF.

CHAPTER SIX HOW DO PEOPLE ENGAGE WITH GLOBALISATION? A COSMOPOLITAN SOCIALISATION APPROACH VINCENZO CICCHELLI

“Cosmopolitan social theory understands social relations through a universalistic conception of humanity and by means of universalistic analytical tools and methodological procedures. Its simple but by no means trivial claim is that, despite all our differences, humankind is effectively one and must be understood as one” —Robert Fine 2007: xvii.

The aim of this paper is not to linger on the features of globalisation. Over the last few decades, a sizeable body of cross-disciplinary research has focussed on the development of a global society (Robertson 1992; Held, McGrew, Goldblatt, and Perraton 1999). In most fields of the social sciences, the analysis of supra, cross and transnational phenomena and dynamics are becoming increasingly relevant. The perspective I am working from is focussed on understanding in which way people engage with globalisation. By doing this, I intend my research to be in line with the perspectives of the emerging cosmopolitan consciousness and practices that are derivative of a globalised world, in which nations are no longer the only units of analysis (Kendall, Woodward and Skrbis 1999). Following a broad literature, I suppose that cultures are not confined to nation-states, even if comparative works confirm the widely accepted thesis that national contexts still impact considerably on people’s conditions (Galland and Lemel 2007). This chapter deals with the emerging cosmopolitan consciousness and practices that derive from young people’s experiences of the globalised

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world. Based on interviews with students from the Erasmus program,1 the focus is on awareness of one’s cultural pluralism, the place that “otherness” is granted within one’s own identity and the broadening sense of one’s national belonging at various levels. This awareness can be termed Cosmopolitan Bildung. A sense of familiarity is certainly the bedrock of cultural adherence. But at the same time, in a world made up of connected cultures under the pressure of globalisation, familiarity cannot be the only yardstick by which one can measure reality and identity.

1. The emergence of a global awareness After more than four decades, the attempts to understand the increasingly interconnected realities in which we live have generated thousands of pages of both theoretical and empirical research on globalisation. Following Held’s classical definition, globalisation can be thought of as the widening, intensifying, speeding up, and growing impact of worldwide interconnectedness (Held, McGrew, Goldblatt, and Perraton 1999). It is an extensive set of changes to the ways in which societies interact. For most of human history, social change has been slow and gradual; the pace of change is accelerating vertiginously, as globalisation involves a process of speeding up, an increasing velocity of human activities (Giddens, Appelbaum and Duneier 2005). More specifically, the concept of globalisation refers not only to the compression of the world but also to the “intensification of the consciousness of the world as a whole" (Robertson 1992, 8). I will show here that there is some credence to the view that the awareness of the globality of our world is now emerging. Several factors are leading to a global awareness among people. It is common knowledge that, for some years, a broad field of social studies has been devoted to the analysis of some seemingly unrelated phenomena that, in actual fact, are convergent and belong to the same movement. For instance, the markets that have proved to be more and more interdependent, transnational agencies and institutions are on more missions than ever (as are for instance the UN, IMF, the International Court of Justice, G8 and so on); economic communities (such as NAFTA, ASEAN or the birth of the euro) have been built and larger political 1

I am inspired here by several considerations taken from my last book on the academic mobility of European students, based on a corpus of 170 interviews with students from several European countries studying in Paris and with Parisian students in other European countries (see Cicchelli 2012).

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communities appeared (European Union). Nations are no longer bound to take on national projects, but participate instead in global flows of capital, goods, and people. Within this increasing interdependency of national societies, we are witnessing a growing flow of people in movement (Lévy 2008). They may be moving for various reasons, such as migration, business, tourism, pilgrimages and education. Leisure mobility has reached an unprecedented level of development and involves huge technical, human, financial and cultural flows. In such an increasingly global world international mobility is more important than ever. The world has shrunk and as a consequence mobility is laid open to paradox. On one hand travellers can be exposed to unfamiliarity, which might encourage them to question their cultural patterns and possibly modify their value judgements. On the other hand they might also be confronted with a feeling of déjà vu. The omnipresence of some goods (such as Coca Cola, McDonald’s food, Starbucks coffee, Gap outfits etc.) evoke and maintain a feeling of amazing familiarity with travellers, in spite of the great diversity of life styles, life rhythms, cultural patterns and languages that still characterise the world. And yet, it is not necessary to take to the road in order to be aware of globalisation. In strongly interdependent societies, life can seem to depend on anonymous and unpredictable forces of globalisation that people cannot control. At the same time, there are more possibilities for cross-national contact. Even in an ephemeral way, travellers can experience cultures that were once considered exotic or peripheral. A broad supply of iconographic material, as for instance shots of the Earth taken from space or documentary films on the impacts of human activities on nature (Szerszynski and Urry 2006), may partly contribute to people’s encounter with globalisation. The success of some movies about global warming risks contributes to creating a feeling of belonging to the same world. However, virtual experiences of a global world are above all shaped by the faster and more intensive circulation and dissemination of news. An increasing number of people come across the same news (broadcasted by “global medias” such as CNN, Fox, EuroNews, Al Jazeera, BBC World) and discuss them through the blogosphere, thanks to innumerable blogs. Various significant events (such as wars, assassination attempts, the tsunamis, genocides) that shock people around the world generate shared emotions (Truc 2010). When a celebrity (such as John Lennon, Lady Diana or Michael Jackson) dies comparable feelings of sympathy can be found expressed all around the world. And it is likewise for planetary

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sportive events (such as the Olympic Games or the Football World Cup). Last, but not least, we are witnessing the birth and development of social networks (such as Facebook, Linkedin or Myspace), cosmopolitan utopias that bring together millions of people making it possible for them to meet and keep in touch in order to create a potential world of friendship. All these factors are linking people together across borders more than in the past and confront them with cultural, ethnical, and national differences. This connected world is still made up of various, heterogeneous cultures. We do not live, as everyone knows, in a “flat world” (Friedman 2005). We no longer inhabit, if we ever did, a world of separate national communities living side-by-side. We live in a world of overlapping communities of fate where the trajectories of all countries are deeply enmeshed with each other (Held McGrew, Goldblatt, and Perraton 1999). “Political communities can no longer be considered (if they ever could with any validity) as simply ‘discrete worlds’: they are enmeshed in complex structures of overlapping forces, relations and networks” (Held and McGrew 2007, 4). Dramatic changes have occurred in geo-politics, such as “the end of the Cold War, the demise of a bipolar world, the promise of a more open and collaborative international initiatives" (Kofman 2007, 239). Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, ten years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the contours of world order are still in the making.

2. How do people engage with globalisation? The perspective I am working from is focussed on understanding in which ways people engage with globalisation. I am more sympathetic to this perspective than to the one emphasising the impact of globalisation on biographical trajectories, lifestyles and everyday life. As John Tomlinson already underlined, the trouble with these phrases (the impact of globalisation on culture or the cultural consequences of globalisation) is that, taken literally, they imply globalisation to be a process which somehow has its sources and its sphere of operation outside of culture. (Tomlinson 2007, 150)

In the view of this author, cultural identity is much more the product of globalisation than its victim (Tomlinson 2003, 268). As globalisation distributes the institutional features of modernity across all cultures, it produces “identity” in its modern sense. There is a strong logic between the globalisation process and the institutionalized construction of identity. Therefore, I endeavour to address how and in what ways people are the

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agents of this developing global frame of reference. Globality or globalism (McGrew 2010) refers to the growing awareness of the world as a shared social space. The above processes (the increasing interconnectedness, the rapid growth of mobility and cross-border activities, and the pervasiveness of “global media”) raise several questions: What is the link between transnational economics, political and institutional structures and peoples’ beliefs in and consciousness of becoming cosmopolitan? Is there any reluctance to change? What about the sense of local belonging in a supposedly cosmopolitan age? Are we witnessing an extension of belonging to a wider world? How can we understand the processes of socialisation and cultural plurality? The answers to these questions have renewed the field of investigation. Former studies on globalisation markets and the profound changes in capitalism have been joined by new approaches based: a) on the transnationalisation of politics, activism, protest, solidarity and cooperation between states, on the dynamics of formation and transnational spread of ideas, institutions and practices; and b) on the process of cosmopolitanisation of individual consciousness and the emergence of shared values and ideals. All these perspectives, however, share the seminal idea that recent world-wide developments imply to develop and advance existing sociological methods to understand increasingly transnational and global levels of social reality. One of the main challenges that sociology and social sciences face today is to understand how individuals, collective actors and structures cope with the dilemmas, tensions and ambivalences of modern societies embedded in supranational dynamics. A momentous body of cross disciplinary research in the last few decades has focussed on the development and impacts of a global society, and more recently on the cosmopolitan consequences of such changes. The idea of cosmopolitanism has re-emerged in the last two decades as a major focus for debates about social change, globalisation, and cultural differences (Kendall, Woodward and Skrbis 2009). We know today it is no longer tenable to see global society in terms of a single, integrated and unified conceptual scheme, which means it is more compelling to conceive globalisation in the plural. The term cosmopolitanism is highly context-dependent and even volatile (Vertovec and Cohen 2002). There are almost as many definitions of cosmopolitanism as there are scholars of this topic. The idea of cosmopolitanism existed long before that of globalisation as we know it

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today (Coulmas 1995).2 But in spite of this, globalisation has improved some features related to cosmopolitanism for many reasons as we have seen. “‘Cosmopolitan’ can mean anything from an attitude or value, to a regime of international governance, or a set of epistemological assumptions about the nature of social structures” (Woodward, Skrbis and Bean 2008, 208). In the first case, from an axiological perspective, cosmopolitanism is a cultural phenomenon, defined by openness to other cultures, values and experiences. In this sense, cosmopolitanism refers to the multiplicity of ways, values and norms that shape our common and plural world. A cosmopolitan approach is rooted in the recognition of the plurality of modernities, civilisations and societal transformations. In the second case, from a praxeological point of view, in spite of the fact that there is no world governmentʊwhich means that nation-states try to manage changing situations as best they can, defending their own interestsʊ cosmopolitanism refers to a strong claim for supranational regulation. In today’s globalised world, the increasing interaction between states and other actors raises the question of how issues that go well beyond national borders can be effectively regulated. The proliferation of international institutions and recourse to different instruments of international regulation over the last few decades is in part a response to a growing need to manage these issues in the most appropriate way. In an interconnected world, there has been a renewed enthusiasm for thinking about what it is that human beings have in common. This has led to a renewed interest in examining the normative principles that might underpin efforts to resolve global collective action problems and to ameliorate serious global risks (Brown and Held 2010). Finally, from an epistemological outlook, cosmopolitanism is related to the study of a set of concepts meant to unfold the cosmopolitanisation of the world (Beck 2006; Cicchelli and Truc 2011). From this theoretical point of view, one can ask how social scientists combine the two pillars of a cosmopolitan sociology, e.g. the claim for universalism and the respect of particularism. As Robert Fine emphasised, formulating a cosmopolitan approach lies in the following stand: Cosmopolitan social theory is a collective endeavor to build a science of society founded on a claim to universalism. Its basic presupposition is that the human species can be understood only if it is treated as a single subject, 2

It is not possible to say when globalisation started (Chanda 2007) and a broad discussion concerning the main events in the history of modern globalisation (Cotesta 2006) would not be necessary for the purpose of this chapter.

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within which all forms of difference are recognized and respected but conceptualized as internal to the substantive unity of all human beings. (Fine 2007, 34)

3. Cosmopolitan challenges: condition, outlook and belonging I would like to insist on the cultural dimension of cosmopolitanism. Investigating cosmopolitanism from the individual awareness perspective means looking at cosmopolitanism “on the ground” as action and attitude, taking into account the narratives of ordinary people instead of archetypal cosmopolitans (such as global business elites, refugees, expatriates). According to Kwame Anthony Appiah (2006), a cosmopolitan approach should start by taking individuals as the proper object of moral concern, which means it should also take the choices individual people make seriously including those related to lived culture, the global spread and hybridisation of culture. Much of the existing literature addresses the difference between the cosmopolitan condition and the cosmopolitan outlook (what I have called the cosmopolitan mind, Cicchelli 2012, see also Fine 2006). The cosmopolitan condition is related to the several features of the globalisation of our societies, as we have seen, while cosmopolitan outlooks (or mind) are shaped (and reinforced) not only by transnational structural factors. Yet the globalisation process and manifestations enable us to experience a plurality of cultural influences (Cotesta 2009). Going more deeply, cosmopolitan outlooks are associated with: a) a stance toward openness and cultural forms and practices of other ways of living, thinking, acting; b) the dialectic between the sense of belonging to a common world and the sense of belonging to a local level. This means that the individual developing a cosmopolitan perspective will retain some allegiance to particular groups, such as families, friends, and communities, and will have to balance a combination of demands and concernsʊthe universal and the particular/localʊthroughout their lives. In short, the cosmopolitan will be an expression of the interpretation of the global and the local. (Hopper 2007, 175)

The core requirements of cultural cosmopolitanism include: a) the recognition of the increasing interconnectedness of political communities in diverse domains including the social, economic and environmental; b) the development of an understanding of overlapping “collective fortunes” which require collective solutions, locally, nationally, regionally and

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globally; c) the celebration of difference, diversity and hybridity while learning how to “reason from the point of view of others” and mediate traditions (Held 2002, 13). From this point of view, and as Skrbis and Woodward (2011, 66) pointed out, cosmopolitanism is a performed frame of reference for dealing with openness to everyday cultural difference. What is emerging is a new way in which people see the world, combine and use local allegiances and a broader sense of belonging, the way in which they manage multiple identities, the awareness of such changes. The local-cosmopolitan dimension refers to the scale of social environment in which the individual sees himself. Locals view themselves primarily as members of the local community while cosmopolitans are more aware of their relationships to larger social organisations (Dye 1963). Yet the promise of being locally situated and at the same time globally connected and mobile has never seemed more possible than it is today. The question remains as to whether it is positive and realistic for us to have multiple loyalties. Can we sustain community and solidarity with our neighbors while we look beyond our nation? And if we can’tʊor won’tʊconsider distant strangers as part of our own world, are there increasingly dire consequences? (Woodward, Skrbis and Kendall 2008)

The forms of identification with humanity and the globe are fractured by boundaries of self and other, threats and opportunities, and the value of things global and local, which means that most people are likely to be ambivalent cosmopolitans (Skrbis and Woodward 2007).

4. An example: the cosmopolitan Bildung of Erasmus students In the following pages, I would like to give an example of how cosmopolitan socialisation works within a specific situation: the mobility of Erasmus students. The main question I raised in a book devoted to this topic was what education, what cultural baggage do young people need today if they are to become citizens of Europe and of a global society. The concept of cosmopolitan Bildung I introduced aims to answer that question by exploring how students learn about other European cultures. Travels forms youth, to which the Erasmus exchanges constantly attest. Travelling, seeing other horizons, discovering other means of living, of being. To learn, to understand, to enrich oneself, to open oneself, to adapt oneself, so many qualities necessitated and required all at once by

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travel, this is how students often described their reasons for departure (Cicchelli 2012). The journey of European students in foreign lands is without doubt inherited from this ancient tendency of the elites for cosmopolitanism, visible by the propensity of youth to grab hold of these voyages to experience the world. Its novelty resides in the fact that, for the first time, this mobility is favoured by European institutions. My investigation addressed such questions as: “who is the Other I met abroad, and what kind of place do I give him/her?” The research was undertaken in order to better understand the place allotted to otherness in contemporary identities. I focussed on the way in which young people mark out symbolic and cultural identity borderlines between themselves and the natives. To do so, I examined a) what otherness means to the interviewed when they compare their own societies with the host society; b) what is appreciated (or rejected) by young people when they describe the host society; and c) the presence (or non presence) of gap-bridging efforts on the part of the students with natives. The above three topics find all of the students’ narratives. An Erasmus exchange is full of promises of empowerment and selffulfilment, adventure and self-discovery, encounters and life sharing. I call them “cosmopolitan promises”. Two of the most recurrent reasons that accounted for students undertaking an exchange programme were curiosity for unfamiliar ways of living and the chance to meet young people from all over Europe. This seems as if a fraction of contemporary European youth was experiencing a certain inner emptiness and was trying to perfect his or her education with new knowledge and by eye-witnessing new realities. Being shaped by the pervasiveness of alterity and prominence of cosmopolitan sociability, these journeys are a form of socialisation to otherness, but they are characterised also by the omnipresence of otherness. For this generation, merely being familiar with your own culture is not enough. Opening up one’s circle of sociability by means of international encounters, learning to read the codes and behaviour of other lands, finding one’s way in the different European societies and at different levels (sub-national, national and transnational), being able to orient oneself among the various types of European societies, and on being able to situate themselves on different geo-cultural levels: these are the pillars of an education that places value on the virtue of an open mind. This stay abroad is meant to improve the capacity of young people to be selfreflective, to develop inter-cultural skills. And yet living abroad means taking risks. Decentring might prove disturbing for young people (e.g. by observing one’s own self and becoming aware of the relativity of one’s own way of living). The

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reflexive comparison between the host and one’s own society could provoke critical feedback. During an Erasmus exchange a young student’s initial certainties regarding his or her customs may still change. The difficulties of integration and above all the lack of hospitality and lack of concern of the young natives in the host country are often mentioned in the interviews. The interviewed often complain that their counterparts in age will not help them to decipher the cultural patterns of the host country. The socialisation to cultural differences seems to be the aim of the travellers and not the priority of the natives. The result is that the Erasmus students socialise with one another and are all interested in sharing their experiences. Their circle of sociability is therefore, in most cases, international. If this is not initially selected, the “Erasmus bubble” becomes the guarantee of the international character of the journey and seems to be the only one apt to entertain this thrust towards the meeting, to concretise this utopia of festive communion. Thus, the journey may be a series of enchantments and disenchantments, of euphoria and disappointments. This education to alterity, which we have termed cosmopolitan Bildung, is less of a long-lasting and irreversible learning than an ambivalent and incomplete tentative to make a place for the other in one’s identity (Cicchelli 2007). In most cases, cosmopolitanism does not exclude a profound feeling of attachment to a culture with clearly drawn traits. The cosmopolitanism of young Europeans must not be seen as a universal citizenship. It expresses more a desire to reach a horizon of universality by encountering other ways of being and thinking, while remaining strongly attached to the homeland. Hence, it is clearly understood that to call yourself European, you must begin with a national identity. The cosmopolitan mind is rather the work of a social actor in driving his or her culture of belonging to a meeting with other European cultures. Cosmopolitanism consists in recognizing and appreciating the other as a stranger. And that means that he/she is not completely a stranger, nor an exact copy of oneself. Re-conciliating community and otherness, identity and difference, finding the universal in the particular and the particular in the universal, that is not only the definition of the dialectic but the condition of all authentic dialogue. (Hassner 2002)

This meeting of European neighbours could provoke reformulations of frontiers of belonging. Notably, the “pure” model of the unattached cosmopolitan is very marginal in my data (Myers, Szerszynki and Urry 1999; Laczko 2005). In the great majority of cases, the interviewees claimed a strong national identification that co-exists with a strong interest

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for other European ways of living. The inhabitants of Europe do not refer to themselves as European, Estonian etc. Compared to national identities, the extent of a strong European identity is still to be confirmed. The Union is not yet in the hearts and minds of its inhabitants. “The European flag or hymn don’t evoke the same patriotic feelings as they do in their American counterpart” (Halman, Sieben and Van Zundert 2012). For the young people interviewed, Europe represents a space open to mobility: they all claim a right to freely choose where to travel, live and work. The EU is considered the frame in which every single national culture is guaranteed. Differences should be protected and promoted throughout the continent. This issue is important in the interviews. The cultural and historical diversity and the peaceful coexistence of European countries is a most characteristic feature of Europe, which means a lot to young people. The painful past, made of wars, genocides and persecutions, has been forgotten for the sake of peace and equal dignity of each country. The “European mosaic” is thus distinguished from other Western areas, particularly from the United States (Kumar 2008). However, according to the results of the survey, the asserted European specificity does not imply a feeling of transnational belonging. The extent of a strong European identity is still to be confirmed.

To conclude In my view, the cosmopolitan perspective is today the most exciting and moreover helpful perspective for understanding emerging cultural issues and new social phenomena in a globalised world. But several questions are still unanswered. What is the down side of new normative injunctions to be openminded and curious? How do people cope with this pressure to be openminded? The question of familial (or school) transmission of openmindedness is still unexplored. Finally, the question of the reproduction of social inequalities in this kind of socialisation is underrated. Even if the opportunities to confront global imagination are bigger than in the past, cosmopolitan practices such as speaking a foreign language, travelling and studying abroad, are still the prerogatives of the upper classes. Answers to these questions require extensive research, theoretical models and willingness to question existing analysis: this is the challenge scholars should take up in the future in order to displace the aloof, globetrotting bourgeois image of cosmopolitanism (Vertovec and Cohen 2002).

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References Beck, U. 2006. Cosmopolitan Vision. Cambridge: Polity Press. Brown, G.W. and D. Held. 2010. The Cosmopolitanism Reader. Cambridge: Polity Press. Chanda, N. 2007. Bound Together: How Traders, Preachers, Warriors and Adventurers Shaped Globalisation. New Haven: Yale University Press. Cicchelli, V. 2007. “Des identités meurtrières aux identités plurielles. Quand Autrui est une composante de soi”. In Adolescences méditerranéennes. L’espace public à petits pas, edited by M. Breviglieri, and V. Cicchelli, 409-445. Paris: L’INJEP–L’Harmattan. —. 2012. L’esprit cosmopolite. Voyages de formation des jeunes en Europe. Paris: Presses de SciencesPo. Cicchelli, V. and G. Truc. 2011. De la mondialisation au cosmopolitisme. Paris: La documentation Française. Cotesta, V. 2006. Images du monde et société globale. Laval: Presses universitaires de Laval. —. 2009. Les droits de l’Homme et la société globale. Paris: L’Harmattan. Coulmas, P. 1995. Citoyens du monde. Une histoire du cosmopolitisme. Paris: Albin Michel. Dye, T. R. 1963. “The Local-Cosmopolitan Dimension and the Study of Urban Politics”. Social Forces 41 (3): 239-246. Fine, R. 2006. “Cosmopolitanism. A social science research agenda”. In Handbook of Contemporary European Social Theory, edited by G. Gerard, 242-253. London: Routledge. Fine, R. 2007. Cosmopolitanism. London: Routledge. Friedman, T. 2005. The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century. Farrar: Straus and Giroux. Galland, O. and Lemel, Y. 2007. Valeurs et cultures en Europe. Paris: La Découverte. Giddens, A., Duneier, M. and R. P Appelbaum. 2007. Introduction to Sociology. London: W. W. Norton & Company (6th edition). Halman L., Sieben I. and M. Van Zundert. 2012. Atlas of European Values. Trends and Traditions at the turn of the Century. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Hassner, P. 2002. “Le cosmopolitisme entre chaos et république”. Revue de Synthèse. 123 (1): 193-199.

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Held, D. 2002. “National Culture, the Globalisation of Communications and the Bounded Political Community”. Logos. A journal of modern society and culture 1 (3): 1-17. Held, D., McGrew, A., Goldblatt, D. and J. Perraton. 1999. Global Transformations: Politics, Economics, and Culture. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Held, D. and A. McGrew. eds. 2007. Globalisation Theory: Approaches and Controversies. London: Polity. Hopper, P. 2007. Understanding cultural globalisation. Oxford: Polity Press. Kendall, G., Woodward, I. and Z. Skrbis. 2009. The Sociology of Cosmopolitanism: Globalisation, Identity, Culture and Government. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Kofman, E. 2007. “Figures of Cosmopolitan: Privileged Nationals and National Outsiders”. In Cosmopolitanism and Europe, edited by C. Rumford, 239-256. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Kumar, K. 2008. “The question of European Identity. Europe in the American Mirror”. European Journal of Social Theory 11 (1): 87-105. Laczko, L. S. 2005. “National and Local Attachments in a Changing World System: Evidence from an International Survey”. International Review of Sociology-Revue Internationale de Sociologie 15 (3): 517528. Lévy, J. 2008. “Introduction”. In L’invention du monde. Une géographie de la mondialisation, edited by J. Lévy, 11-36. Paris: Presses de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques. McGrew, A. 2010. “Globalisation and global politics”. In The Globalisation of World Politics, edited by J. Baylis and S. Smith, 1633. Oxford: Oxford University Press (5th edition). Myers, G., Szerszynski B. and J. Urry. 1999. “Cosmopolitanism and Care in Everyday Lives”.Working Paper, CSEC. Lancaster: Linguistics, Sociology Department, Lancaster University. Robertson, R. 1992. Globalisation: Social Theory and Global Culture. London: Sage. Skrbis, Z. and I. Woodward. 2007. “The ambivalence of ordinary cosmopolitanism: Investigating the limits of cosmopolitan openness”. The sociological review 55 (4): 730-747. —. 2011. “Cosmopolitan Openness”. In The Ashgate Research Companion To Cosmopolitanism edited by M. Rovisco and M. Novicka, 53-68. Farnham: Ashgate.

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Szerszynski, B. and J. Urry. 2006. “Visuality, mobility and the cosmopolitan: inhabiting the world from afar”. British Journal of Sociology 57 (1): 133-151. Tomlinson, J. 2003. “Globalisation and cultural identity”. In The Global Transformations Reader edited by D. Held and A. McGrew, 269-277. Oxford: Polity Press. Tomlinson, J. 2007. “Globalisation and Cultural Analysis”. In Globalisation Theory: Approaches and Controversies, edited by D. Held and A. McGrew, 148-168. Oxford: Polity Press. Truc, G. 2010. “Le cosmopolitisme européen à l’épreuve du terrorisme. Une analyse des réactions européennes aux attentats du 11 mars 2004 à Madrid et du 7 juillet 2005 à Londres”. In Regards sur le cosmopolitisme européen edited by M. Royer and E. Bousquet, 17-33. Bruxelles: Peter Lang. Vertovec, S. and R. Cohen. 2002. “Introduction”. In Conceiving cosmopolitanism, edited by S. Vertovec and R. Cohen, 1-22. Oxford: Oxford University Press,. Woodward, I., Skrbis, Z., and C. Bean. 2008. “Attitudes toward globalisation and cosmopolitanism: Cultural diversity, personal consumption and the national economy”. The British Journal of Sociology 59 (1): 207-226.

CHAPTER SEVEN “WHEN DO THE PEOPLE TALK IN EUROPE?” SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND DEMOCRATIC THEORY IN THE EUROPEAN MULTILEVEL GOVERNANCE PAOLO DE NARDIS AND LUCA ALTERI1

This paper analyses the attitude of the Italian left-wing (both institutional and extra-parliamentary) towards the process of Europeanisation: from an initial indifference to the creation of a system of expectations, at present mainly disappointed. The essay proceeds following the approach of theoryʊresearchʊtheory and is developed in its different parts. The first section briefly analyses the relation between the Europeanization process and the institutional left-wing party. In the second section the “New global” approach to the European dimension is explored with the support of a specific empirical investigation. The last section analyses the assumptions that make the European multilevel governance theoretically suitable for the development of the constituent potential within mass mobilisations.

1. The institutional left-wing and Europe: indifference and inaction The contribution of Communist parties and leaders to the construction of a united Europe was minimal in the individual countries, in comparison to the contribution of the Liberal, Christian Democratic and (to a lesser degree) Social Democratic parties and leaders. The Communist party pointed out the discriminating and elitist content of the European 1 Although this paper was conceived jointly, Paolo De Nardis wrote sections one and four, while Luca Alteri wrote sections two and three.

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government for years against: this strong opposition also had national colourings (identification between European integration and Atlanticism was criticised, and “the Europe of monopolies” was accused of being a compromise between France and England for the maintenance of colonial empires). More generally, there was a firm conviction that European policy was not separable from its capitalist basis and so its destiny was to go into crisis sooner or later, because of the irresolvable contradictions of capitalism. Specifically in Italy in the Fifties and Sixties, the babbling on Europe from the Italian Communist Party burdened the Social Democratic and Catholic parties with showing the way towards a European “selfunification” (the proposal made by Dossetti dates back to 1948), useful to overcome the stalemate of the European continent and to take advantage of the position as a crossroads between the two blocks of the Cold War. At least in the specific Italian context, the fall of the Berlin Wall did not heal this difference. The unfortunate coincidence between the acceleration of European integration desired by Delors with the Maastricht Treaty and the deconstruction of the entire Italian political system during the Tangentopoli years did not facilitate mutual understanding. The prevailing position of the left-wing parties and leaders (and not only the Italian ones) towards Europe in fieri was to “not annoy the drivers” (Bronzini 2004, 85) and instead, to obtain from the works of the Convention a compromise of developing a federal European future, but to project it much forward. Therefore, Dahrendorf’s (2001) critical position against a Europe seen as a “last utopia for left-wing supporters” seems difficult to sustain,and more widespread appears to be the theory that the Nation-State abdicates (partially) its sovereignty, so as to realise what Polanyi (2000) called “the utopia of self-regulated market”. The relation between Europeanisation and the extra-parliamentary leftwing is only partially different: for decades forms of collective mobilisation have shown little interest in European integration, allowing (along with much wider parts of the public opinion) the national political class to proceed independently and to ratify the new continental arrangements. This happened long before the Maastricht and Amsterdam Treaties. On closer inspection, there was no deep study either of the Schuman Declaration, the Treaty of Paris or the Treaty of Rome, despite the many profiles (constitutional and innovative) that characterised these steps. The same applies to constitutionalisation and to the significant judicial dialogue between the European Court of Justice and its national counterparts. No study also meant no remarkable acts of protest or dispute against the general outlines, in an attitude of angry indifference that

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seemed inherited from the institutional left-wing parties (or at least many of them): whether there was or not a political Europe, social movements did not seem interested.

2. The extra-parliamentary left-wing and Europe: lines of an empirical research Later, a school of thought that sees an opportunity rather than a risk in the European Union, develops within the “New global” movement born in Seattle in December 1999. In this regard, we mention the results of an empirical study achieved over the first four editions of the European Social Forum (Florence 2002, Paris 2003, London 2004, Athens 2006) by a group of researchers from different universities. By “social forum” we mean a physical and symbolic place where civil society, social movements, trade unions and nongovernmental organisations meet to discuss “from below” issues of public interest, often absent from the official diplomatic agenda. Born in the wake of the successful experience of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre (Brazil) the fora are repeated at different levels, both inside and outside national borders. The experience of the European Social Forum (ESF) is one of the most interesting, especially for the ability to find a partially independent continuity from the cycle of protest. The fact that the “New global” movement has repeatedly met to outline the characteristics of a Social Europe (“of the people, not of the states”) is indicative of the attention that the unconventional forms of political participation have reserved to the European dimension. The research was conducted by distributing a structured questionnaire to the participants of the various fora. The following pages will show the results of the section on “Europe and democracy”, mainly highlighting the cases of the first and the last forum object of the research, so that any change of opinion and attitude can be investigated, over a sufficiently large period of time (from Florence 2002 to Athens 2006). Since the 2002 questionnaire distributed in Florence, activists were asked to indicate, on a number of definitions, the two that best corresponded to their image of Europe. Also, considering only, for ease of comparison, option by option, in 30.5% of the cases the definition of Europe as “an alternative to the United States” prevailed, confirming a substantial feeling of anti-Americanism or at least a radical opposition to the George W. Bush administration. Following, 23.8% of the answers the continent as “the cradle of human and social rights”, andʊright afterʊ21.9% of respondents called it “the only socio-political alternative

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available in the century of globalisation”. All three most popular responses justified the high confidence levels that were at that time accorded Europe, considered as the core of a supra-national governance that could provide an actual representation. There were also more critical definitions on the present and future prospects of the continent (Europe as a “closed fortress, defending its own well-being” and as a “set of far and binding institutions”), but they saw only a few preferences (respectively 15.8% and 6.6%). The definition of Europe as the “centre of Christian civilisation”, connected with the discussion at the time already in vogue on the clash of civilisations, convinced only 1.4% of respondents. Translated in Athens 2006, the same question provided some food for thought: the definitions that could be part of a hypothetical pars construens (those expressing a positive definition, however radical, of the continent) had lower incidence compared with the first ESF (Europe as an “alternative to the U.S.” and as “the cradle of rights” were both at 18.6%; Europe as an “alternative to globalisation” was at 14.6%), and reached almost the same level as the destruens definitions (Europe as a “closed fortress” went up to 20.6% and as a “set of far institutions” rose to 16.3%). The almost doubled portion of preferences attributed to the definition of the continent as the “center of Christian civilisation” (9.2%) should not be underestimated, especially in view of the opening of the European Social Forum in the East areas. The results of Athens 2006 confirmed that the concept of Europe had an ambivalent meaning for the youth of the ESF: on one hand it was the opportunity for a renewed public space, where a great nation comes out of the local neighbourhood or town and looks at a global horizon; on the other hand, Europe was also the place of bureaucracy that is often associated with the free market, social regression, exclusion from citizenship and incipient racism. The questionnaire for the activists wanted to maintain this ambivalence expressed through statements that hid opposite judgements on the European Union and on which respondents gave voice to their views. The following table (Table 1) shows the level of commitment indicated by activists in the first and last ESF, in order to emphasiseʊas previously announcedʊany change of opinion within a sample which, although not reproducible in exact terms, participated to an event that maintained its own uniformity in the five-year period considered.

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Table 7-1 Agreement Level on the following statements in the two different Social Forums mentioned above (%)

EU decisions are taken by bureaucrats EU homogenises regional and local differences EU increases inequalities EU can be an obstacle against the power of Multinational companies EU represents a post-national democratic institution

ESF 2002 ESF 2006 High Low High Low 79.2 20.8 86.3 13.7 49.2

50.8

55.3

44.7

27.0

73.0

58.7

41.3

53.9

46.1

49.2

50.8

70.5

29.5

53.5

46.5

The answers, in the polarised modalities “high” and “low”, reveal that, at least in the 2002 edition, the participants of the European Social Forum were not anti-European, but considered the EU as an institution worthy of trust, once released from some of its bureaucratic burdens: the European space was seen as an ideal intermediate condition to dissolve the local/global dyad and to deal with those issues for which the nation-state was found to be too small and international organisations too helpless. Already during the Florentine protest event, however, the desired Europe differed from the one proposed by Maastricht and by the European Economic Zone. Nor, on the other hand, was the continental regulation desired represented by a macro-European state, with the consequent exaggeration of bureaucratic limits and of the oligarchic practice of the old national team, with its own currency, its own army, its own tax system. Activists hopes were focussed, rather than on a specific institutional structure or on a well-defined international policy line, on the creation of an open political Subject that would provide a wider concept of citizenship, according to which all those who lived, worked or had the continent as an existential condition were recognised as “citizens of Europe”. The discussion on the purposes and the risks linked to the EU recalls the topics of European citizenship and the ways in which it can be declined. Political rights, access to health care, multi-level voters, but also the simple freedom of movement within the continent: being an EU citizen requires the availability of a system of options, yet often conditioned by the collapse of the European welfare system. It is victim of the limitation of “deficit spending” and of the disuse of the usual State economic policy instruments made by the new class of European technocrats.

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What did, therefore, the “New global” activists expect by the European Union? What opportunities did they think would be provided by the new institutional structure? Were the expectations still affected by the State model, or were they turning towards other directions of social life? The following table (Table 2) includes a number of aspects on the meaning of being a European citizen to which the “New global” activists of the Florence and Athens Forum have expressed their liking. Table 7-2 What does it mean for you to be a citizen of the European Union? Question submitted to the ESF activists2 The right to move and reside freely in each country of the Union The right to work in any country of the Union The right to vote in local elections of the EU State of residence The right to vote in national elections of the EU state of residence The right to vote in elections for the European Parliament in the EU state of residence The chance to benefit from the right to health care and social welfare in each EU State The chance to travel and study in each country of the European Union Identify with a common Constitution Total

Florence 2002

Athens 2006

22.7%

28.7%

11.5%

15.2%

1.9%

5.9%

2.9%

5.0%

2.3%

5.6%

6.6%

9.1%

17.6%

16.7%

33.5% 100,0%

13.8% 100,0%

In the questionnaire, respondents were asked to express three preferences: in order to facilitate comparison, here we will present only the first option expressed. The data express, obviously, an agreement with what was earlier said: the first item selected by the 2006 Forum activists concerned the right to move freely within the European Union. More than one in four respondents had placed this option as their first choice in a set of three 2

Only the first option chosen is expressed.

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answers, obviously influenced by the discussion organised by the Social Forum in its last two editions concerning the temporary prohibition of access to the “old Europe” for citizens of the new Member States (in evident contradiction with the free flow of capital and seriously against the principle of equality of rights among citizens). The high adhesion to the item on the “opportunity to travel and study in each country of the European Union” (although a slight decrease compared to four years earlier) confirmed, obviously referring to the student condition (or the young), the concentration on the right to mobility within Europe. There was a significant change on the item about work, that gained a lot of success and exceeded 15% as a first option. What is unexpected, however, is the collapse of the item referred to “identify with a common constitution”: in 2002 more than one third of respondents (33.5%) chose the common constitution as the first meaning, in order of importance, of being European. After four years, the percentage has declined to 13.8%, with a delta of - 19.7% approval. The negative influence of the European constitutional process and the democratic deficit that characterises it is clear, as well as the growing gap between the political class and the civil society. On the other hand, the higher adhesion accorded by the Athens activists to the items concerning the extension of the right to vote in local (+ 4.0%), national (+ 2.1%) and European (+ 3.3%) elections reminded how the new European political system needed at least an electoral legitimacy. Expectations, demands, disappointment, criticism: the feelings of the young (and of the not so young anymore) “New Global” generation towards official Europe, that is difficult to build. There is, above all, interest and desire for comparison according to democratic and participatory rules. It seemed useful, therefore, constructing an index that, in addition of emphasising ambivalences and expectations towards the European dimension, could quantify the difference between “Ideal Europe” and “Real Europe”. The index, defined as “Europeanism” is achieved by joining two other different indices that measure the closeness/remoteness towards the European Union. The activist will be defined “anti-European”, “cold Europeanist” and “convinced Europeanist”, depending on his/her responses (Table 3). The constitutional emergency and the political conflict that followed, together with other domestic and foreign policy events (for some countries the consequences of the war in Iraq, the decline of real purchasing power

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within national markets, high fuel prices, the future entrance of states that do not respect civil and political rights into the EU...), led the activists of the ESF in Athens towards a much wider Euroscepticism than was seen in the past. Table 7-3 Europeanism Index

Anti-Europeans Cold Europeans Convinced Europeans Total

FSE 2002 25,6% 28,8% 45,6% 100,0%

FSE 2006 43,0% 48,0% 9,0% 100,0%

In Athens 2006, only a minority of activists (less than ten per cent) self-identified as “convinced Europeanist”, while the majority of respondents showed no sympathy for the actual construction of the EU, in absolute (43%) or relative (48%) terms.

3. “When do the people talk?” The popular

constitutionalism of the Third Millennium Empirical evidence shows a cooling of the “New global” militants’ expectations towards the European Union, also because of the international situation that belied the hope of an anti-imperialist, if not anti-American Europe. Nevertheless, empirical research also confirmed a connectionʊat least in the first instanceʊbetween the “New global” movement and the European dimension, by the aspects of democratic theory. The European Union was in fact considered the example of a supranational (even better, post-national) subject, capable of challenging the Weberian model of government based on authority, hierarchy and bureaucracy. On the assumption that the social and political order today does not arrange itself in a self-centred and hierarchical system but in a polycentric and negotiation process, the political system relies on a variety of partial adjustments and on a network of relationships to find the right balance. These considerations bring us back, more specifically, to the multilevel governance model, in which the state interacts with different partners: local authorities, associations, companies and national trade unions, NGOs and supranational institutions. Europe is a prime example of this model: the European Commission, the European Council, national parliaments

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and the European Parliament in Strasbourg are legally separated but also connected spaces that gave rise to a new order (governed by international law and at the same time by common law), to a supranational political entity that guarantees rights and obligations to individuals without a state intrusion and, finally, to an intergovernmental coordination structure. According to a widespread interpretation, the European Union has already passed the “sovereignty” of nation-ntate period and has structured a democracy that is “multipolar” and divided into several levels, the intersection of which produces a decision-making process that is no longer the result of a “sovereign will”: “with the EU, we are witnessing the end of the State-person, final sheath of statist authoritarianism, and at the same time we enter into a constituent and almost permanent process, since the relation between institutions, companies, market and citizens would be evolving towards always different balances” (Russo 2004, 15). The cornerstone of the modern era (the State, but also its own sovereignty and the ways in which it was formed) suffers a displacement that activates processes of redefinition of the relations between society, economy and politics. The changes that are taking place, which began in the Nineties of the last century (though partly anticipated in the first decade after the Second World War) are closely linked to globalism development and draw in Europe a complex relocation of social relations and institutional links, having an impact on an over 400 million-inhabitant society. These changes are too deep to avoid multiple interpretations, nor do they allow to validate the equation “overcoming the Nation-State = creation of a federal Europe”. The social scientist’s critical eye must go back to the origins, as acutely mentioned by Neil MacCormick: We can talk about a Post-sovereign Europe. It is a Europe made of States that are no longer absolutely sovereign and that interact with and through a community that has an independent legal system. In turn, the Community or the Union which now forms it, is not nor is expected to be in the process of becoming a sovereign federal union....This evolution, that transcends sovereignty, has not been realized through a process whose outcome is that the once State powers do not exist or can no longer be exercised in Europe: however, these powers cannot be exercised by a single powerful structure that has a single regulatory framework. They still exist, but have been distributed or redistributed in new and special ways. (MacCormick 2003, 278)

In line with these ideas, MacCormick also deviates from alarm at the Union’s democratic deficit and from the complaints against the interruption of the “constitutional process”. The Scottish political scientist

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observes that the continental institution has a “mixed constitution”, in which a bureaucratic oligarchy exercises power under the control of notdirect democratic-representative agencies: the Commission, the Council of Ministers and the Parliament. The “common good” and public interest would, therefore, be protected by an elite group of “wise men”, able to make decisions that are unpopular in the short term, but beneficial to the citizens in the longer term (see also Fitoussi 2003). MacCormick’s interpretation scheme allows the alchemy of a Europe that has a constitution, but does not have a previous Constituent Assembly or at least a Parliament with a constituent mandate: it is the same mechanism as the one developed in Bruce Ackermann’s research on the constitutional history of the United States, where he defeats the metaphysical notion of “people” by raising the question: “When do the people talk?” (Ackermann 1991-1998). This simple question invites us not to reflect in a taken for granted way, since it destroys the expectation of the political class to speak “in the name of the People” and to represent the general interest. According to the author, the parliamentary majorities and the government’s claims to represent the people are “irrational” and “demagogic”, relying only on institutional events (elections) that, at most, would be able to punish a posteriori the decisions taken. Daily politics, however, does not allow any transubstantiation of the people, which are completely excluded from decision-making processes. The people create themselves as an institution through complex processes in which social movements, associations, trade unions, political parties, various representative institutions, and courts (including the Supreme Court) create when altogether form an interaction whose result can be metaphorically described as the Will of the People. During normal stages of “making politics”, however, no structure represents the people that, on the contrary, simply vanish. From this interpretative framework derives the chance (applicable to the European Union) to elaborate a Constitution as a result of the interaction between States, Parliaments, Courts of Justice: because of the non-existence of a “naturalistic People” and their formation through a plurality of processes and structures, there can be the magic of a “Constitution without people”, of constituent stages without participation, by virtue of a multilevel plurality of institutional actions. At first reading, Ackermann’s critique seems to have the effect (opposite to the initial one) of excluding the people from constituent processes: the author, however, is keen to see when and how the people, uti singuli et universi, actually enter decision-making processes. This happens in theory every time an anti-substantial practice of deconstruction

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of the idea of “the People” is accepted and, in general practice, can be analysed backwards over different historical periods.3 We have three types of the Author’s final thoughts: a) “the people is not the name of a superhuman entity, but the name of an extensive process of interaction between political elites and ordinary citizens” (Ackermann v. II, 11), which aims to invent new constitutional expressions or assign new meanings to old ones. b) “If they [politicians] want to review existing principles, they must return to the people and gain a deep, broad and crucial popular support” (Ackermann v. II, 187). c) “The normal legislative process is designed to take many decisions in the absence of a mobilized and politically aware majority. The highest legislative level requires, however, rigorous testing to political movements which hope to gain a higher sense of democratic legitimacy speaking for We the People ”(Ackermann v. II, 5). According to what was expressed, it is reasonable to currently exceed a point-vision of the constituent power, accessing a conception of constituent processes in which a plurality of actors (mass mobilisations, movements, trade unions, parties, parliament, constitutional court, referendum...) compete for “speaking on behalf of We the People”.

4. The constituent dimension of social movements According to some scholars of the “New global” legal dimension, the multi-level structure of the European political space could also be applied to the social confrontation and to the conflict that potentially can be generated, opening up “spaces for an ongoing dialogue between the demands of the social movements and the different management of the res publica practices, creating multidimensional connections otherwise 3

The author focusses on American history and on three very interesting periods: the federalist foundation, the republican reconstruction after the Civil War, and The New Deal. In all three of the cases, the ways prescribed for constitutional revision were broken, on the altar of the constituent power’s statement: the Philadelphia Convention breaks the Continental Congress because it claims to speak “in the name of the people” that the Congress abandoned; the 14th Amendment, son of the Civil War, extends rights to all citizens, regardless of skin colour; during The New Deal, Roosevelt comes to tamper with the Supreme Court composition in order to initiate reformist economic and social policies. What may seem an arbitrary demonstration of will, actually is a moment of rupture and innovation, in which the people come into play by breaking the political rules and by interacting with a political elite to form a new order.

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impossible to be practiced in the single Nation-State dimension”. (Allegri 2003, 177). An analysis of continental transformations creates, therefore, the opportunity to challenge some of the interpretation constraints and to suggest a methodological approach that enables a rethinking of the tradition of Democratic Constitutionalism, aware of the new hermeneutical tools that consider the social complexity and the production connections between the social movements’ praxis and institutional dynamics. Even if the vexata quaestio of the democratic deficit has for a long time accompanied the EU evolution, it does not seem the right key for dealing with the EU polity, since the entire principle of democracy (in which the deficit is articulated) remains anchored to state (sovereignty) politics. If today, after the Second World War, the training process of constitutional States seems difficult to repeat in the European dimension, it seems even less likely to enlarge the articulation of those political forms at the continental level and yet maintain credibility. The multi-level governance model shows that the political space in which democratic constitutionalism was conceived and practised has irrevocably changed, breaking up into several levels and inviting the expression of a new “constitutional imagination”. From this point of view, the social movements contribution may develop on two levels: the first would include Social Movement claims capable of penetrating the political agenda of global institutions, up to the point of a EU reform. An example of this are some statements of the “White Paper on European Governance” (2001), where participation in the democratic life of the Union is encouraged and some principles of good governance (“openness, participation, accountability, effectiveness and coherence”) are proposed. Connected to what was said before is the “principle of participatory democracy”, expressed also in the draft of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe proposed by the Convention on the Future of Europe (Title VI, Part 1, Art. I, 46): although in a subordinate position compared to the “principle of representative democracy” (Article I, 45), it is significant that also the members of this Convention have felt the need to rethink the principles of democracy in a post-national era. The introduction of the “participation principle” (unthinkable in a global context pre Seattle-Porto Alegre) is certainly due to the communication and mobilisation capacities of social and global movements, even if the pro-participation request is reduced to a procedural formula: “the Union institutions give citizens and representative

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associations...the opportunity to diffuse and publicly exchange their views on all sectors of the Union” (section 1, art. I, 46). The pressure of large collective mobilisations works on a different level that we might call “meta-legal” (just think of the wide participation at the various European Social Forums or at street demonstrations against imperialist wars and an over-liberalisation of the labour market): these events demonstrate the “constituent capacity” of social movements, in an attempt to free the European dimension from the “technocratic and elitist shell” (Bronzini 2003, 11) in which it was wrapped from the beginning. The “New global” praxis, then, should not concentrate on lobbying towards Parliaments, following nineteenth and twentieth century modalities that are unsuitable for a contextʊsuch as the Europeanʊwhich was not born because a presumed “European people” convened a constituent assembly. Collective mobilisations should, instead, innovate society by building discussion fora that are not focussed on delegation or representation, but on harmonisation of national claims. The idea of a European basic income, the right to a lifelong and continuous education ensured by EU institutions and the recognition by all European countries of “migrants’ rights”, are single issues of a possible common platform towards a post-national, post-worker and post-socialist “new European social model”. As a last consideration, the characteristics of the new social model described above not only outline an innovative “constitutional product”, but also an unknown development compared to the political nature of the nation-state. The latter has developed weaving, still discontinuously, four different “narrations”: a) Liberal Narration: the history of the extension of civil rights, from the Magna Carta (1215), the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789), to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), in a struggle for a progressive universalisation of those privileges initially limited to a particular social group or small political communities; b) Statehood narration: the starting points are identified in the concept of sovereignty (Bodin, Hobbes) and the principle of non-interference within territorial boundaries (Treaty of Westphalia 1648), later elaborated in international law to regulate interstate anarchy; c) Democracy narration: its origin can be retraced in the Greek polis, forerunner of modern European politics, and then we find it in Republican Rome and in the state experiences of Florence and Venice. The full statement is in the eighteenth century, with the substitution of the concept

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of State sovereignty with the concept of popular sovereignty (Rousseau) and its realisation in the American and French Revolutions; d) Revolution narration: the term is understood in its more general, almost etymological, value in the sense of “creation of a higher order than the existing one by using collective actions”. Behind this narration we find reflexivity (ability to imagine other possible worlds), historicity (tradition to include this imagination over time) and agentiality (conviction that this exercise can actually create a new condition). On closer inspection, the constituent action of the “New global” movement towards European multi-level governance does not belong to any of these narrations. The time (and the right way) will come to see if the present path will continue enough to become the fifth narration, or if it is only an “accident” of history.

References Ackermann, B. 1991. We the People. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Allegri, G. 2003. Oltre l’Europa convenzionale: i mille piani dei movimenti sociali nell’Europa politica. In Europa, costituzione e movimenti sociali, edited by G. Bronzini, H. Friese, A. Negri, and P. Wagner. 175-210. Rome: Manifestolibri. Bronzini, G. 2003. “Introduzione”. In Europa, costituzione e movimenti sociali, edited by G. Bronzini, H. Friese, A. Negri, and P. Wagner. 714. Rome: Manifestolibri. —. 2004. “Il sentiero interrotto della Costituzione europea”. Alternative 3: 81-90. Dahrendorf, R. 2001. “L’Europa unita, ultima utopia”. La Repubblica, September 5th. Fitoussi, J. P. 2003. Il dittatore benevolo. Bologna: il Mulino. MacCormick, N. 2003. La sovranità in discussione. Diritto, stato e nazione nel Commonwealth europeo. Bologna: il Mulino. Polanyi, K. 2000. La grande trasformazione. Turin: Einaudi. Russo, F. 2004. “L’Europa post sovrana tra mito e realtà”. Alternative 3:14-23.

CONTRIBUTORS Vittorio Cotesta, Italy, University Roma Tre Áron Telegdi-Csetri, Romania, The New Europe College, Fabio Introini, Italy, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano Francesco Villa, University Cattolica of the Sacro Cuore of Milan Jean-Loup Amselle, France, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales Massimo Conte, Italy, Institute Study and Social Research of Naples Enrico Gargiulo, Italy, University of Turin Silvia Sorana, Italy, University Politecnica of the Marche Angela Maria Zocchi, Italy, University of Teramo Eugenia De Rosa, Italy, Sapienza University of Rome Bruno Meini, Italy, University of Pisa Vincenzo Cicchelli, France, Université La Sorbonne Paris V Paolo De Nardis, Italy, Sapienza University of Rome Luca Alteri, Italy, Sapienza University of Rome