I will follow your lead in linking to yet another dimension of these
issues. This is one that arises in part from recent debates on our local
university politics list, and from your initial frustration with
conservative students.
Why are conservatives? I know the usual theories (fears, reaction,
preservation of privilege, false consciousness, habitus) and they are
insightful as far as they go -- but they have never satisfied my
ethnographic sensibilities, my belief that one needs to understand the emic
perspective as a reference point for all other accounts of an Other. Why do
conservatives believe they ought to believe as they do?
Most conservatives, especially activists, are not people who actually wield
substantial power. Powerwielders are mostly pragmatic and cynical in my
experience; they are not bound to any ideology, whatever they espouse
publicly. Many conservatives are in fact very average people. It is the
central frustration of most radical movements in the US that a lot of the
people who ought to be seeking redress of grievances are in fact opposed to
structural changes or values shifts. I do not believe that conservatives
typically occupy social-structural positions very different from those of
liberals or radicals. We share the same backgrounds, the same objective
interests.
Of course, people who are actively excluded from some important domains of
social life, or actively discriminated against, are slightly less likely to
be conservative, but even so, there are plenty of Gay Republicans and
Clarence Thomases. Some are opportunists, and conservatives reward
adherence, especially from oppositional minorities, but many are quite
sincere.
It is their sincerity that our theories refuse to deal with; we want to
explain it way, not understand it in its own terms.
We will never be able to make a more just society through democratic means
until we truly, and sympathetically, understand the consciences of
conservatives.
JAY.
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JAY L. LEMKE
CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
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