Tag Archives: social conflict

In Lightning Memory: A Philosophical Dictionary à la Baroncelli

The following definitions combine insightful personal memories and personally memorable insights that I recall from, or associate with, Flavio Baroncelli (1944–2007) qua eloquent and witty teacher, brilliant and ingenious writer, fast and sharp conversationalist, generous and kind human being, and committed promoter of the teacher- and student exchange programmes linking together Iceland, my adoptive country, and the University of Genoa, my alma mater. Not all of them must be taken literally or too seriously; besides, I would not agree with some of them myself! All of them are, however, sincere tokens of gratitude, friendship and love to a truly remarkable individual, who enjoyed entertaining and shocking his audiences, but above all liked making them think, debate, and think some more. Furthermore, these definitions are a creative and inevitably poor attempt at exemplifying for the Anglophone public the sort of pithy and humorous style that, inter alia, made Baroncelli famous in Italy in his day.

 

Actuality

Another word for potentiality.

 

Addiction

A disease mistaken for moral failure.

 

Adulation

Causing pleasure by sly words, even when the listener knows that they are lies. Philosophers, in their stately parlance, would call it a perlocutionary speech act.

 

Advertising

The daily demonstration of how little control we have over our own will.

 

Agnosticism

A polite way for educated people to be open-minded pluralists in theory but narrow-minded atheists in practice.

 

Analysis (of concepts)

The bizarre tendency to turn ambiguous profundity into unambiguous superficiality.

 

Analytic (philosophy)

A typically modern attempt at making self-conscious philosophers sound like respectable scientists.

 

Banking

The best way to acquire power in a capitalist society, especially if one wishes to destroy it.

 

Beauty (physical)

One of the most important life-defining characteristics that a person can have the good luck to possess and that philosophers keep stating not to matter.

 

Bedroom

A seemingly private place where both neighbours and State authorities seem often eager to enter.

 

Brotherhood

The least understood yet most important principle of the French Revolution: without a modicum of genuinely felt compassion among fellow citizens, both liberty and equality will get used to ruin someone else’s life.

 

Censorship

A dangerous and stupid way not to listen to dangerous and stupid claims.

 

Chickens

When rasping hopelessly and continuously on a hard road surface, they exemplify instinctual behaviour as opposed to deliberate.

 

Cigarettes

Powerful, sweet, devious killers.

 

Clarity

The curse of any philosopher who may wish to come across as deep, original and worthy of enduring attention.

 

Coherence (aka consistency)

The unhealthy obsession with getting rid of all the instances of personal diversity, creativity, capriciousness and experimentalism that make individual life interesting and collective life possible.

 

Communism

The 20th-century political scarecrow that, for the duration of about one generation, made the de iure liberal countries of the world be actually a little more liberal than their de facto oligarchic past and present flag out.

 

Compassion

The most important virtue cultivated by Christianity.

 

Competition

A much-cherished liberal value, as long as it does not apply to oneself.

 

Complaining

Generally loathed by the very same people who have most reason to complain—an instance of slave morality.

 

Continental (philosophy)

A not-so-modern attempt at making self-important philosophers sound like profound mystics.

 

Courage

Someone else’s form of madness.

 

Culture

The folklore of the rich.

 

Daydreaming

Coping with far-too-real nightmares.

 

Defecation

Its training in infancy reveals how people prefer freedom to be qualified and circumscribed.

 

Discipline (and Punish)

The most important book by Michel Foucault, who taught us that the more societies publicly incense liberty and call themselves “liberal”, the less freedom common people truly enjoy in order to do as they please.

 

Dogs

The ideal sort of loyal, selfless, hard-working and simple-mindedly grateful employees that employers would like to have.

 

Economics (contemporary)

A branch of mathematics mistaken for empirical science.

 

Economics (modern)

A branch of philosophy mistaken for empirical science.

 

Elucidation

Clarification articulating possible meanings of a pithy expression, with consequent loss of aesthetic and thought-provoking value of the latter. Sterilisation by explanation. (E.g. paraphrasing a poem, explaining a joke.)

 

Emancipation

The possibility for all people to be as bad and as silly as the rich and powerful minorities frequently are.

 

Etiquette

Aristocracy’s last ditch at controlling modern society.

 

Euphemism

See “Get lost!” below.

 

Evolution

It is only after Darwin that people understood what the heck Lucretius and Telesio were talking about.

 

Exceptions (making)

The first step towards tolerance and pluralism.

 

Faith

An option generally available only to a person who stops doubting.

 

Folklore

The culture of the poor.

 

Geese

Birds that can be confused with swans, especially in Iceland.

 

Geometry

An exact formal science that can be used rhetorically as a persuasive labelling method for inexact metaphysical reasoning.

 

Get (lost!)

Uttered in a timely fashion, it can save a person the trouble of having to answer a difficult question.

 

Greek

If ancient, it is an excellent way to display one’s own erudition.

 

Health

The true source of happiness, yet regularly forgotten until missing.

 

Hegel (Georg Friedrich)

A typical German philosopher, he wrote several tomes to demonstrate that nothing stays the same.

 

History (of ideas)

A way to find out why we think the way we think.

 

Homogenisation

The equalising social process deplored by anthropologists whereby identifying the poor, the outcast, the loathed, the derided and the downtrodden becomes a little less easy.

 

Hume (David)

An uncharacteristically prodigal Scotsman, he noticed that the only way to be sure that all matches in the box do work is to light them all up.

 

Hypocrisy

The misunderstood virtue of avoiding conflict in reality by accepting conflict in principle.

 

Ideology

A set of loosely interconnected concepts, some of which may be even mutually contradictory, that allow people to feel justified in their claims and actions, or at least to project an air of justification for them.

 

Illness

The demonstration of the bodily basis of the mind.

 

Indifference

The least acknowledged yet most important virtue in a pluralist society: by caring little about what other people believe or do, mutual tolerance can be the norm.

 

Insight (aka Intuition)

Prejudice we like.

 

Institutions

The remarkable social invention whereby to preserve the memory of past errors and make the inexorably ignorant new generations somewhat less likely to repeat them.

 

Intervention (by the State)

A much-loathed socialist value, which liberals accept as soon as they are in trouble.

 

Jokes

A valuable means of instruction that can reach even those who do not wish to be instructed.

 

Kant (Immanuel)

A typical German philosopher, he wrote two tomes to undo an earlier one.

 

Knowledge

That which philosophers seek and analyse most, and yet have the least of.

 

Language

The precious and inevitable source of all misunderstandings.

 

Lashes (by whip)

As long as someone else gets more than you do, most slaves will not rebel against slavery.

 

Latin

Another good way to show one’s own erudition.

 

Liberalism

The political wisdom teaching that State authority should be used only to protect a person from her worst enemies: her neighbours.

 

Life

A rather bothersome business, but also the only one in town.

 

Lust

An open motive among men; less so among women. Gender equality’s lewd horizon.

 

Magic

Another way to understand religion.

 

Marx (Karl)

A typical German philosopher, he wrote several tomes to demonstrate that, normally, if the employer gets more, the employee gets less—and vice versa.

 

Meritocracy

A neologism by the privileged.

 

Mixed (marriage)

The easiest and fastest way to explain why a marriage did not last. No such option is available for divorces between people of the same ethnic origin, the explanation of which may then take years of keen psychological scrutiny.

 

Montaigne (Michel de)

His essays became so famous and commonplace that later philosophers forgot to mention the source of the ideas that they discussed and, eventually, Montaigne himself. There can be such a thing as too much fame.

 

More (Thomas)

Great wisdom expressed with clarity.

 

Nietzsche (Friedrich)

An atypical German philosopher, he wrote aphorisms to acknowledge a major yet neglected motive of human thought and action: resentment.

 

Nothingness

The likeliest outcome of a person’s life, which we spend trying not to think about it.

 

Order

In practice, the supreme official principle of social life.

 

Originality

The future outcome of the present ignorance about the past.

 

Pain (and Pleasure)

The fabric of our inner tapestry.

 

Philosophy

When good, it is the playful use of our imagination and of our reason in order to break apart, toy with and recombine concepts, beliefs and habits of thought, in order to make better sense of them. When bad, it is the skillful use of our imagination and of our reason in order to do the same and, in the end, be even more confused.

 

Poetry

An artificial reminder of life’s beauty.

 

Political (correctness)

The ungainly social process whereby the less respected members of a community can have a chance to be paid a little more respect.

 

Pornography

A widespread yet uncomfortable signpost of liberal freedom.

 

Potentiality

Another word for actuality.

 

Poverty

A person’s attribute that, if conspicuous, makes other significant attributes deplorable or intolerable to the surrounding individuals: age, race, religious affiliation, ignorance, ugliness, etc.

 

Prejudice

Insights we dislike.

 

Pride

A vice leading frequently to virtuous behaviour.

 

Quality

Often confused with quantity.

 

Quantity

Often confused with quality.

 

Questions

The best instrument available to reveal how ignorant we are, no matter the number of university degrees we may have.

 

Race

A historically popular but unnecessary notion which justifies people being nasty to one another. In its absence, freckles or bad pronunciation can serve the same purpose.

 

Radicalism

The art of making outlandish ideas sound plausible, thus duly impressing unsuspecting young minds and potential sexual partners.

 

Reason

The perplexing faculty to take apart whatever solid conclusion we had reached before.

 

Rhetoric

The unjustly neglected study of how language shapes people’s life under all circumstances.

 

Righteousness

The most dangerous virtue cultivated by Christianity.

 

Scepticism

Unwise over-intelligent overthinking—it is by far too delightful an endeavour for most philosophers to resist the temptation of indulging in it despite their own better judgment.

 

Sparrows

A natural reminder of life’s beauty.

 

Spinoza (Baruch)

Great wisdom could be expressed with more clarity.

 

Stratification

Having someone below you is usually more important than having someone above—another instance of slave morality.

 

Straw-man (fallacies)

Mistaken by logicians as fictional errors, they are the far-too-real claims of ordinary men and women; if one is willing, and brave enough, to listen to real people.

 

Stupidity

The regularly underplayed yet visibly increased outcome of greater freedom in human societies.

 

Swans

Birds that can be confused with geese, especially in Iceland.

 

Syllogism

A structured way of thinking and talking that allows the person using it to come across as astoundingly intelligent and thereby force another to shut up, even if the latter may actually be right.

 

Tolerance

The socially crucial ability to endure people that we dislike.

 

Toleration

The perplexing notion whereby tolerance is not enough in society, for we must also like the people that we dislike.

 

Torture

The most efficient way to get bad information from innocent weaklings and no information at all from guilty brutes.

 

Transubstantiation

To modern eyes, an old form of cannibalism.

 

Ugliness (physical)

One of the most important life-defining characteristics that a person can have the ill luck to possess and that philosophers keep stating not to matter.

 

Unpleasantness

That from which all great ideologies wish to free us once and for all, but which all great historians tell us that we must accept for any human endeavour to have a chance to work at all.

 

Urination

See defecation.

 

Violence

Whether threatened or applied, it is in practice the supreme unofficial principle of social life.

 

Voltaire

The best example of how being a master of style condemns a man to being remembered as a minor thinker.

 

Wealth

A person’s attribute that, if conspicuous, makes other significant attributes invisible to the surrounding individuals: age, race, religious affiliation, ignorance, ugliness, etc.

 

Will

We like thinking of it as free, despite all contrary evidence.

 

Wittgenstein (Ludwig)

A Continental philosopher mistaken for an analytical one.

 

Xanadu

One of the many words for the imaginary place of endless joy that all cultures have concocted and that only some silly philosophers would state not to want to go to.

 

Youth

The time of peak performance in a person’s life, the rest of which is spent trying to make use of ridiculous concepts that can help that person to enjoy some respect and self-respect: the wisdom of old age, the charm of grey hair, the value of experience, etc.

 

Zionist

Often confused with “Jewish” and “Israeli”, it can be combined with them in the following matrix:

Jewish, Israeli and Zionist

Non-Jewish, Israeli and Zionist

Jewish, Non-Israeli and Zionist

Jewish, Israeli and Non-Zionist

Non-Jewish, Non-Israeli and Zionist

Jewish, Non-Israeli and Non-Zionist

Non-Jewish, Israeli and Non-Zionist

Non-Jewish, Non-Israeli and Non-Zionist

Where Categorizations of Self and Others Meet. Some Remarks on Erik Allardt’s Theory of Struggles for Recognition between Ethnic Groups

The title of my paper is meant to express what recognition is all about from an Allardtian point of view.[1] In his 1979 book on Implications of the Ethnic Revival in Modern, Industrialized Society, the sociologist Erik Allardt understands recognition as the process, in which self-categorizations and categorization delivered by relevant others are reconciled (or at least coincide) (Allardt 1979). The subtitle in turn claims two things: firstly, that Allardt indeed does have a theory about struggles for recognition between ethnic groups – a fact that few if any scholars working on recognition have noted. Secondly, that I will deliver some remarks on this circumstance. Allardt has not presented this theory anywhere in great detail, and I will be able to present here a theory about Allardt’s theory to an even lesser degree.  My paper will therefore have the character of some remarks on what I see as the key points underlying Allardt’s approach to recognition as he has presented it in the afore mentioned book on ethnicity.

In a first step, I present the outlines of the Allardtian conception by highlighting five central aspects to it. I argue that Allardt proposes a dialogical, processual, classificatory and maybe even hermeneutical conception of recognition, which furthermore foresees some of the critique that has been directed against contemporary accounts of recognition. Secondly, I very briefly sketch out his typology of different ethnic conflicts of recognition as well as his analysis of the ethnic conflicts of post-1968 Europe in order to underscore the diagnostic power of the Allardtian recognition-theoretical vocabulary. Finally, I will briefly note how Allardt tries to justify his conception of ethnicity recognition-theoretically and developmentally.

I

Before I dwell more systematically into his use of the concept of recognition, I wish to point out a couple peculiarities about Allardt’s book. It is namely important to note that Allardt is a sociologist in a classical Nordic sense: He is not mainly a grand social theorist with a fine taste for abstract philosophical disputes, but an empirically oriented social researcher setting out pragmatically to work out some problems of social science. This concerns Allardt’s approach to recognition as well, and it prepares two difficulties for the contemporary philosophical reader:

Firstly, this empirical approach to recognition, although it at a first glance might seem attractive due to the very theoretical nature of the contemporary recognition discourse in philosophy, makes it hard to see from where Allardt derives his conception of recognition. Allardt himself does not give any clue at all about the sources for his use of the concept. In his book, there is not a single reference to any work, in which the concept of recognition would be elaborated systematically. It seems farfetched to assume a direct Hegelian origin here. Rather, one might speculate about Mead, Parsons or Bourdieu as social-theoretical sources, although Allardt’s conception does not really resemble any of those options.

Secondly, with an overly empirical approach there necessarily arises the question about the theoretical and conceptual validity of the empirical work done. The empirical data as well as the analysis in Allardt’s book are restricted to the linguistic, territorial minorities in Western Europe. Nevertheless, Allardt hopes that “the results and the theoretical discussion will… throw some light on the impact of ethnicity generally and on the political mobilization in terms of ethnic characteristics other than language such as race, culture, and perhaps even religion” (Allardt 1979, p. 9). In today’s Western Europe this restriction to linguistic minorities would obviously be highly problematic, since many parties of significant ethnic conflicts do not constitute linguistic groups and many linguistic groups do not regard themselves as ethnic groups. Allardt, himself a Finland Swede, treats the Swedish speaking Finns as an ethnic group, even if, according to Svenska Finlands Folkting (2005), a vast majority of the Finland Swedes do not regard themselves as an ethnic group, but as a cultural and linguistic minority among the Finns. This treatment seems even stranger considering that according to the conception of ethnicity Allardt wishes to defend in his book, it is constitutive for an ethnic group that “some significant part of it desires to be categorized… as a distinct ethnic entity” (Allardt 1979, p. 10).

These two circumstances make it somewhat difficult to reconstruct the Allardtian theory of recognition philosophically. Accordingly my reconstruction will not consist in a close reading of what is manifest in Allardt’s book. Instead, much of what I will be saying in this paper is to be understood as a conceptual explication of what is philosophically implicit in Allardt’s very empirical approach to the study of struggles for recognition. The shady side of such a procedure is, of course, the distance it creates between the interpretation and the text. The advantage, however, is that the outlines of a not yet considered account may appear before our interpreting eyes and enrich our understanding.

Allardt distinguishes first of all between two different kinds of recognitive relations that may be of relevance for the sociology of ethnicity. First, there is what Allardt calls relations of recognition within ethnic groups: Persons are recognized as members of an ethnic group by other members of the same ethnic group. To Allardt this kind of ethnic recognition is relevant for theories of processes of ethnic identity formation. Allardt’s book, however, does not claim to contain any such theory. Therefore Allardt turns his interest to the second kind of recognitive relation relevant for the sociology of ethnicity: The subject matter of a theory of ethnic conflicts is according to Allardt reducible to the study of recognitive relations between ethnic groups. Allardt’s study is concerned with asymmetrical relations between dominant and dominated ethnic groups (paradigmatically between majorities and minorities). This is the dimension in Allardt, which is of utmost interest and will be exposed further in this paper.

In the following I present in five steps the Allardtian conception of recognition by highlighting five important aspects of his use of it:

1. Allardt’s conception of recognition is, first of all, dialogical. It has become a common place in political theory to refer to any political action concerned with difference or identity as struggle for recognition. In these accounts, recognition is often regarded as a “monological” act directed at persons or groups. Recognition is in such theories conceived monologically since the attitudes, values etc. of the recognizee do not have any effect on the recognitive act of the recognizer.

According to Allardt, by contrast, ethnicity becomes politically salient and sociologically relevant in the moment when ethnic self-categorizations and external categorizations conflict (Allardt 1979, p. 32). This is a case of ethnic misrecognition. At this point, it is for us important to note merely the fact that in Allardtian ethnic conflicts both the dominated and the dominant group claim recognition. Allardt seems to conceive relations of recognition in a manner anticipating what Ikäheimo and Laitinen later have called a “two way complex of recognitive attitudes” (Ikäheimo & Laitinen 2007, 38), meaning that a mere recognitive attitude of one person or group towards another does not suffice to constitute a relation of recognition. On the contrary, according to a dialogical conception of recognition, it takes the attitudes of both parties to constitute a relation of recognition. In other words, in order for a recognitive relation to exist between two groups, one group’s recognitive attitude towards the other group must be recognized by this other group as relevant. The basic structure of recognition in Allardt can thus, at this point of argument, be said to be dialogical: Group A recognizes group B as X, whereas group B recognizes group A as an authoritative recognizer of X’s.

This shows that Allardt, albeit lacking any direct reference to Hegel or Hegelian literature on recognition and preceding recognition theorists such as Axel Honneth and Charles Taylor by more than a decade, may be on this point placed in the same Hegelian tradition of theorizing recognition as these.

It is important to note, however, that this dialogical and mutual character of recognition does not necessarily imply that the relation is symmetrical. One might imagine several constellations, in which a dominated group under some constraint might be in need of recognition by a dominant group and recognizes it as its superior, whereas the latter recognizes the subservient group merely as a competent recognizer of its superiority. If such asymmetrical relations are deemed to fail, is another question of dispute. (This kind of recognitive relation is paradigmatically exposed in Hegel’s story about Master and Bondsman in his Phenomenology.) 

To sum it up: According to the dialogical aspect of the Allardtian conception, recognition is a complex of mutual acts and attitudes.

2. A second aspect of Allardt’s approach – namely, its processuality – also separates it from most non-Hegelian, everyday political jargon accounts of a politics of recognition. Allardt does not describe recognition essentially as an act or a condition. Rather, in Allardt’s story recognition seems to be rendered as a series of mutual acts, or even better, as a complex process of mutual acts and attitudes. Recognition is something that happens in time, has a number of phases, has a certain “logic” or “grammar,” constitutes a sort of achievement and induces change in the shared life-world of both parties.

As a preliminary Allardtian definition of recognition at this point we may thus suggest that recognition is a processually conceived complex of mutual acts and attitudes happening under constraint of time.

3. But what kind of process is recognition? To Allardt it is first of all a classificatory process, and that brings us to the third aspect I wish to emphasize. Allardt describes misrecognition in ethnic conflicts as a qualitative mismatch between the self-categorizations of an ethnic group on the one hand and the external categorization of it by a more dominant group on the other. It often seems that Allardt understands recognition as not much more than a process of intersubjective categorization between groups of persons. It is indeed difficult to find Allardt saying explicitly much more about what recognition is than this:

A classifies B as X, whereas B classifies A as an authoritative classifier of X’s.

At this point, I think, it is relevant to ask: What exactly is recognized here? Classifications of groups?

According to Allardt ethnic conflicts begin in general by some hegemonic group claiming acknowledgment of some standards of public life that involve such categorizations of a dominated ethnic group that the group cannot endorse; in contrast to this, the dominated group claims recognition of its right to self-categorization. On the one hand, the object of recognition seems to be rights, standards, categorizations and classifications. On the other, we have the mutual recognition of groups as authoritative categorizers, classifiers and bearers of rights and duties.

It seems, however, that what is to be recognized in Allardt is the ethnic group as an authoritative classifier/categorizer. To recognize an ethnic group as an authoritative classifier/categorizer would then imply some kind of an acknowledgement of the rights, standards, categorizations and classifications it endorses.

Now, in saying this, it also becomes clear that Allardt is committed to an unusually thick conception of recognition. Because the recognizee is constituted by two different species of classifiers/categorizers (self-categorizers and external categorizers), the “two-way complex” is expanded to a “high-way complex,” in which A does not merely recognize B as a X, whereas B recognizes A as an authoritative recognizer X’s – but also vice versa! Recognition in Allardt seems namely to be constituted by the following complex of attitudes, in which A stands for a dominant group and B for a dominated group:

A recognizes B as an authoritative self-categorizer,

whereas B recognizes A as an authoritative categorizer of self-categorizers;

this, however, commits B to recognize A as an authoritative external categorizer,

whereas A recognizes B as an authoritative categorizer of external categorizers.

However, it remains unclear, whether Allardt conceives this complex of attitudes as a series with a fixed sequence, or simply as those relations, which, in whatever way, constitute the necessary conditions of a recognitive complex.

It might also be worth noting, that to Allardt, the majority group does not stand in need of recognition of it as an authoritative self-categorizer, nor does the minority have any anticipation of recognizing it as such.

To summarize this third point, Allardt understands recognition as a processually conceived complex of classifying mutual acts and attitudes happening under constraint of time.

4. Furthermore Allardt appears to comprehend recognition as a hermeneutical process. The way in which he treats ethnic conflicts seem to open for the interpretation that to him struggles for recognition are interpretive struggles, although the concept of an interpretive struggle does not come up in his book (cf. Allardt 1979, p. 31). To Allardt, in struggles for recognition the issue is not directly about recognition or misrecognition of identity as something external to the process of recognition itself. Following this processual, classificatory and hermeneutical account, the struggle for recognition could therefore be understood as an interpretive process, in which the classifications of ethnicity brought about in external and self-categorizations constitute better or worse interpretations of identity (and Allardt sees these categorizations as at least partly constitutive of identities). Recognition in Allardt would, accordingly, be a processually conceived complex of mutual classifying acts and attitudes happening under constraint of time in a social context of a shared, diverse and (at least partly) interpretation-dependent value horizon.

5. Following the lead of this hermeneutical and processual conception of recognition, Allardt does not have to suppose that legitimate recognition is dependent on some external standard of an authentic identity that should be recognized. To recognize an ethnic group would then not (necessarily) involve recognizing some “true” or “authentic” identity. On the contrary, the normatively important point for Allardt’s recognition policy recommendations seems to be to recognize the dominated group’s right to self-categorization and the duty of the majority or the otherwise dominant group to take such self-categorization into account when dealing with issues that affect the group in question. It is thus important to note that the process of recognition, according to this account, does not, to begin with, necessarily involve regarding the self-categorization of the dominated group as true or as even the best possible categorization. By contrast, it is in the process of recognition itself that the standards are sought for and found.

In this manner, Allardt manages to avoid the standard objection to theories of recognition that recognition in identity politics reifies identities. On the contrary, his theory is internally opposed to such stigmatization and conceives it as the mode of misrecognition, whereby groups are imposed such (external) categorizations that the members cannot endorse. This form of reification of identities is in his theory already internally conceived as a form of misrecognition that is to be overcome by open and fallible conceptions, categorizations and interpretations brought about in the dialogically, processually and hermeneutically comprehended complex sequence of recognition.

Nevertheless, this conception of recognition remains open to the normative relevance of authenticity. That is, authenticity is something that may be rendered relevant in the process of recognition, but it is, however, not a self-evident object of recognition.

Finally, we arrive at the standpoint that recognition is a processually conceived complex of mutual acts and attitudes oriented towards matching self- and external categorizations, happening under constraint of time in a social context of a shared and (at least partly) interpretation-dependent value horizon.

 

II

As we have seen, Allardt regards ethnic misrecognition as the mismatch between self- and external categorizations and recognition as the process, in which such categorizations are brought to reconciliation. On the basis of this conception of ethnic recognition, Allardt now works out a typology of ethnic conflicts. Following what has been said about recognition so far, two kinds of ethnic conflicts can be distinguished: namely, conflicts, in which a dominant group imposes external categorizations on an inferior group, on the one hand, and conflicts, in which the self-categorizations of an inferior group are rejected by the dominant group, on the other (Allardt 1979, p. 43-52).

a) Conflicts of imposing external categorizations: In this first case, we have a hegemonic (paradigmatically majority) group imposing on an inferior (paradigmatically minority) group a categorization that this group cannot endorse (and that may be implicit in some policy, cultural scheme or whatever). Paradigmatic cases for Allardt here include Nazi policy toward Jews and hegemonic North American cultural schemes in their relation to African Americans). This kind of ethnic domination typically is played out as stigmatization and material exclusion of the inferiors to the advantage of safeguarding the material privileges of the hegemonic group. It is as a rule based on a strong hierarchical ethnic division of labor.

b) Conflicts of rejecting self-categorizations: In this second case, we have a hegemonic (paradigmatically majority) group rejecting the self-categorization of a dominated (paradigmatically minority) group. Here the hegemonic group does not dominate the inferiors by imposing external categorizations, but by not taking its self-categorization into account. Domination takes the form not of material exclusion, but of coerced cultural assimilation. Paradigmatic cases for Allardt here include the Basque-Castilian conflict in Spain and Friulian activism in Northern Italy. This kind of ethnic domination typically is played out as hegemonic monopolization of “neutral” standards of public life. Such domination is possible, even expected, in societies with weaker ethnic division of labor.

In a next step, Allardt turns this distinction into what he calls “a historical pattern of majority-minority relations” (Allardt 1979, p. 43). In a vain that anticipates Taylor’s later distinction between a politics of universalism and a politics of recognition (cf. Taylor 1992), Allardt distinguishes between the politics of discrimination and the politics of recognition. These two political schemes are founded on the two types of ethnic conflicts just mentioned. Whereas ethnic conflicts before the Second World War were based on hegemonic nationalist imposition of external categorizations on minority groups, the ethnic conflicts of Allardt’s coeval post 1968 era follow the grammar of struggles for recognition, in which anti-hegemonic nationalist minority groups claim acknowledgement of their self-categorizations. Furthermore, Allardt takes the politics of discrimination to be based on a more “primitive” kind of majority-minority relation, where the criteria of ethnicity were the categorizations performed by the majority; the politics of recognition, by contrast, constitutes a more “refined” majority-minority relation, in which the categorizations and criteria of ethnicity themselves have become a subject-matter of conflict (Allardt 1979, pp. 43-44). Allardt is convinced that the central problems of a politics of discrimination (material exclusion, strong ethnic division of labor, stigmatization etc.) should be solved, in order for the problems of a politics of recognition to appear on the scene at all (Allardt 1979, p. 45).

By the distinction between a politics of discrimination and a politics of recognition it is not meant that the former would be based on a non-recognitive conflict. On the contrary the politics of discrimination is based on stigmatizing misrecognition of minority groups, and in this respect also it represents a kind of politics of recognition. The point that Allardt seems to make, is rather that there are two different grammars of recognitive conflicts, that these are typical of two different phases in the history of majority-minority relations, and finally that they demand distinct policies.

 

 

Politics of discrimination 

 

Politics of recognition 

 

Period 

 

Pre WWII

 

Post 1968

 

Form of conflict 

 

Conflicts of imposing external categorization

 

Conflicts of rejecting self-categorization

 

Form of domination 

 

Material exclusion

 

Cultural assimilation

 

Motivational ground of domination 

 

Safeguarding material privileges, persecution

 

Monopolizing standards of public life

 

Form of resistance 

 

Fight against discrimination

 

Fight for recognition

 

Form of emancipation 

 

Emancipation from coercive determinacy to indeterminacy

 

Emancipation from indeterminacy to non-coerced determinacy

 

Good  

 

Inclusion (basic material needs)

 

Well-being (needs of belonging, esteem, self-realization)

 

Cultural division of labor 

 

Strong

 

Weak

 

Paradigmatic cases 

 

Civil rights movement of African-Americans

 

Basque activism

 

III

 

Allardt further argues, that this historical development, or more precisely the transition from a politics of discrimination to a politics of recognition, comes with a transformation of the nature ethnicity itself: On the basis of the recognitive conflict constituting the politics of recognition also the socially shared understanding of what ethnicity is changes. In the transition from conflicts of imposing external categorizations with their politics of discrimination to conflicts of rejecting self-categorizations with their politics of recognition, primordial elements in the socially effective conception of ethnicity give way for what Allardt calls “subjective” elements.

Whereas in societies, in which the conflicts of imposing external categorizations and the politics of discrimination constitute ethnic policy, distinctive cultural patterns and common ancestry are seen as criteria of ethnicity, the “subjective” conception of ethnicity, by contrast, is recognition- and self-categorization-based. The only constitutive criteria for ethnicity in the post 1968 era are, according to Allardt, collective self-categorization and the existence of some formal social organization, by means of which the group might seek external recognition.

Conception of ethnicity 

 

Primordial 

 

“Subjective” 

 

Criteria of ethnicity 

 

Distinctive cultural patterns

 

Common descent or ancestry

 

Self-categorization & identification

 

(Formal) Social organization

 

Dominating categorization 

 

Coercive external categorization (politics of discrimination)

 

Collective self-categorization (politics of recognition)

 

This development is, to Allardt, to be understood as progress and emancipation since the new “subjective” conception of ethnicity allows many more options for cultural action than the earlier one. The self-categorization-based ethnicity is “functional in modern society as it provides a (more flexible) social bond where old ascriptive structures have eroded. Ethnicity is less divise than integrating in many respects” (Allardt 1979, p. 67). It also pacifies ethnic conflict since it “clearly lessens the importance of ascriptive demands and increases the options open to individuals” (Allardt 1979, p. 67).

In this, Allardt also justifies his own conception of ethnicity recognition-theoretically and developmentally: Struggles for recognition between dominant and dominated ethnic groups, ranging from conflicts of imposing external categorization to conflicts of rejecting self-categorization, have brought about a conception of ethnicity that is more reflexive and aware of its own social foundations than the earlier one, which originated in the coercive external categorization practices of a politics of discrimination. The “subjective” conception of ethnicity has a kind of developmental validity, since not endorsing it would mean returning to some kind of a primordial conception of forcing external standards on dominated groups and therefore falling behind the struggles and learning processes separating the post 1968 generations from pre WW II Europe.

References

Allardt, Erik (1979), Implications of the Ethnic Revival in Modern, Industrialized Society. A Comparative Study of the Linguistic Minorities in Western Europe, Helsinki: Societas Scientarium Fennica.

Svenska Finlands Folkting (2005), “Folktingets undersökning om finlandssvenskarnas identitet – Identitet och framtid”, Helsinki: Folktinget.

Ikäheimo, Heikki & Laitinen, Arto (2007), „Analyzing Recognition. Identification, Acknowledgement, and Recognitive Attitudes towards Persons,” in: van den Brink und Owen (eds), Recognition and Power: Axel Honneth and the Tradition of Critical Social Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge Univerity Press.

Taylor, Charles (1992), “The Politics of Recognition,” in: Amy Gutman (ed.), Multiculturalism and “The Politics of Recognition”, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

 

Endnotes


[1] I am grateful to the participators at the Winter Session of NSU Study Group in Turku and at the philosophical seminar at University of Jyväskylä both in February 2012 as well as to Federica Gregoratto for challenging and illuminating comments and questions, most of which have found no sufficient further elaboration in the paper. I thank professor Peter Kraus for making me aware of the existence of an Allardtian approach to recognition.