Re: coercion and community

Dale Cyphert (DXC20 who-is-at PSUVM.PSU.EDU)
Sun, 12 May 96 12:54 EDT

Jay, It seems like your explanation of the individualistic/communitarian
differences are a matter of discourse ABOUT social control/coercion,
rather than degrees along some sort of pain/harm continuum. You
distinguish between the special interests of a few versus the interests
of the many, which seems like a given. That is, there will ALWAYS be
some individuals whose special interests are not identical with the
group's. So, your problem is with the situation in which the
individuals who articulate the group's concerns are also benefitted as
individuals? I can't see that this is an inherently evil situation, and
might just be the way any society uses discourse, and discourse norms,
to "enforce"/"protect"/" stabilize" its own existence.

You say that "high levels of coercion" are a result of the degree to
which people feel that articulated/norming interests are not the same as
their own, and thus resist the norming agenda. Okay, but doesn't it
make a difference as to who's interests are out of sync with the group's
overall interests? The way you put it, it seems that an awareness of
being 'normed' makes the 'norming' a bad thing.

There seem to be points in every culture where resistance to the norming
is an acceptable, and even healthy thing: adolescence, political
conversation, individual midlife crises. The thing that changes from
culture to culture is the vocabulary we use to talk about the ongoing
individual/group balancing act. Western academic 'talk' is so heavily
weighted toward the resistance to norms (academia, after all, is one of
the sites at which cultures do question their own norms), that it
becomes difficult to talk about norms except in pejorative terms.

The real question is not whether a culture is "coercive" or "not
coercive"; all are in the sense that they establish and maintain
themselves. Nor is the problem simply one that arises when individuals
become aware of the norming; since that could happen from EITHER "their
dispositions for the collective norms, or from their sense of individual
interest." The norms of any culture change in response to changes in its
own environment, and individual 'resistance to norms' is the way in
which that happens. The only way to judge 'coercion' is to separate the
discussion of the rhetorical process by which change occurs, (ie talking
about whether norming is a good or a bad thing) from the discussion
around whether or not a group's norms are still viable (ie talking about
whether classroom rules benefit only a few students or most of them), or
perhaps whether the group's boundaries are 'wrong' for the situation (ie
should the one or two children who learn 'best' by walking around be
disciplined toward the classroom's sit still and let others concentrate
rule, or should they be part of a different classroom that 'fits' their
own individual interests more closely?). This is where the ethical and
practical questions really get hard.

dale