socio-musings city

Social Movement Scholars Meet in a New Blog: Mobilizing Ideas

2011-12-24T18:46:00.000-08:00

As of December 2011, please follow my regular blog entries in Mobilizing Ideas, a social movements blog edited by Grace Yukich, David Ortiz, Rory McVeigh, and Dan Myers, hosted by the Center for the Study of Social Movements at Notre Dame.

http://mobilizingideas.wordpress.com

The blog publishes interdisciplinary perspectives on social movements, social change, and the public sphere. To enhance dialogue between scholars and activists, Mobilizing Ideas hosts exchanges between leading scholars from the social sciences and humanities and the activists they study, featuring original essays responding to a wide variety of problems related to social movements and social change.

As a contributing editor, I will write for Mobilizing Ideas regularly. Here is the link for my essays:

http://mobilizingideas.wordpress.com/author/musgurbuz/

Please join the conversation with your comments!

Muslim Reformers and the Post-Islamist Turn

2011-03-08T17:49:00.000-08:00

As the Arab revolts continue to unfold in the Middle East, an increasing debate over the emerging Islamic political actors takes place: are they post-Islamist activists as some scholars lately point out (see, for example, Asef Bayat’s works: 2007, Making Islam Democratic: Social Movements and the Post-Islamist Turn, Stanford; and, 2010, Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East, Stanford) or typical political Islamists who had alliances with various segments of their societies? Especially, the case of the Muslim Brotherhood after the Egyptian unrest has put these questions upfront. Is it a new era of post-Islamist turn in the Middle East? Or, is it a typical revolutionary episode in which moderates overthrown the government in the first place, and later, radicals take over- a trend we see from the Russian revolution to the Iranian revolution? At the center of these debates, we often see two non-Arab countries, i.e. Iran and Turkey, which are often depicted in a mutually exclusive duality in the Western media: can the Muslim Brotherhood internalize the liberal democratic values as the Muslim reformers in Turkey or will it be the engine of new Islamic Republic? In this sense, Tezcür’s scholarly analysis, Muslim Reformers in Iran and Turkey: The Paradox of Moderation (University of Texas Press, 2010), is a very timely contribution that provides a critical outlook in the wake of the speculative media comments on the emerging Islamic actors.

Tezcür’s book draws our attention to a quite interesting fact: the most prominent post-Islamist movements in the Middle East have emerged in two dissimilar contexts, i.e. Iran and Turkey. Analyzing the Reform Front (RF) in Iran and the Justice and Development Party (JDP) in Turkey, the author offers the first systematic and only comparative analysis of Muslim reformers in these greatly different countries in terms of regime type, political economy, sectarian affiliation, foreign affairs, and recent political history.

Tezcür begins with delineating conceptual underpinnings of the mainstream approach, known as the moderation theory, to study reformist actors who had radical inclinations. The moderation theory argues that once radical groups, who are committed to overthrowing the regime, are organized as vote-seeking parties; electoral process would make these groups abandon their revolutionary goals (p. 11). Despite his endorsement of the main ideas of the moderation theory, the author attempts to revise the theory to explore the process what he calls the ‘paradox of moderation’ through a close analysis of ideological and organizational processes in each case. Tezcür’s contribution can be summarized in three respects.

First, Tezcür advances the institutionalization effects in the moderation theory, which originally proposes that as parties founded by radicals grow, priorities of organizational survival gain priority over ideological goals. Putting into a context, for example, the moderation theory would expect the Sinn Fein to become more concerned about its organizational survival and electoral politics, which will ultimately lead to a breaking path in the IRA ideology. After providing a historical account of the radical leftist roots of the RF in Iran (pp. 116-26) and the radical Islamist roots of the JDP in Turkey (pp. 146-59) for novice readers, the author argues that both the RF and the JDP prioritized organizational survival over their ideology, albeit for different reasons. Tezcür convincingly show how the RF has gradually alienated students, women, workers at grassroots levels (chapter 6) and the JDP, on the other hand, have powerfully mobilized the grassroots but still failed to establish strong organizational ties with anti-systemic social actors due to constant pressures from the status quo elite to reach modus vivendi (chapter 7). According to the author, the Iranian and Turkish cases indicate that the type of relationship between Muslim reformers and their followers at organizational level should be further specified in the moderation theory. He concludes that the institutionalization effects in moderation process are valid as long as party members are motivated by selective incentives and believers have no alternative to turn to or lack substantial influence.

Second, Tezcür contends that ideological moderation of radicals can not be reduced to a byproduct of changes in strategic incentives; instead, it needs to be considered as a separate process that often facilitates, accommodates, or even hinders behavioral moderation. The author provides an excellent account to demonstrate how the radical Muslim activists in both Turkey and Iran had a long walk in ideological change as they engaged with the liberal ideas that had previously been dismissed as un-Islamic and established societal platforms where they could generate self-criticism. Tezcür highlights the importance of civic spheres, which consists of magazines, journals, non-governmental organizations, professional associations, and media outlets, in forming a pious middle class that enables ideological moderation. Based on my studies in militant Kurdish activism in Turkey and revolutionary movements around the world, I think that the author’s conceptual contribution on ideological moderation is important and insightful to understand similar cases. For anti-systemic movement activists, their ideological framework have a potential to be the ultimate source of legitimacy for their actions, and therefore, is not easy to dismiss even strategic incentives exist. Splits among Kurdish militants after the PKK leader Öcalan’s declaration of the Democratic Republic thesis, in which he renounced the goal to establish an independent Kurdistan, show that ideological moderation can not be reduced to material benefits.

Third, the author claims that ‘behavioral moderation may actually hamper democratic process in ways that are not anticipated by moderation theory’ (p.213) as seen in Iran and Turkey where ‘moderate strategies pursued by Muslim reformers that involved reconciliation, compromises, and electoralism actually impeded and delayed, if not undermined, democratic struggles’ (p. 214). Although I agree with the author on behavioral moderation’s negative outcomes, we need to be fair to the moderation theory on this particular point. The moderation theory primarily concerns with taming radicals in the legitimate political structure avoiding violent means and analyzes important ideological and behavioral processes towards democratic transformation. In this sense, the theory does not really expect ex-radicals to become engines of democratization in their countries. Hence, when we concede the fact that taming process is a process of hegemonic relations, we also acknowledge that the transformed ex-radical actors shall play within boundaries of their own legitimate political structure, which is not fully democratic. If we consider the Turkish case, the JDP’s inclusion into the mainstream and its break from the National Outlook’s Islamist agenda can be interpreted as a successful step toward democratization. Thus, the author’s emphasis on negative aspects of the JDP’s engagement with the secularist establishment can be misleading. For many observers, the JDP has been exceptionally successful in playing the chess with the secularist elite within the boundaries of legitimate structure (see, for example, Ümit Cizre’s edited volume, 2008, Secular and Islamic Politics in Turkey: The Making of the Justice and Development Party, Routledge).

Tezcür’s work is very reader-friendly, which is a rare quality for books that have ambitious conceptual frameworks. The author’s ability to weave his fieldwork interviews with statistical data is impressive. I especially find the organization of the book very helpful. After theoretical discussions in Chapter 1 and 2, the author portrays larger picture of the Muslim reformers as an emerging phenomenon in various countries around the world (chapter 3 and 4). In chapter 5, Tezcür provides a brief overview of the institutional and ideological bases of guardianship (i.e. the secularist establishment in Turkey and the guardians of the Islamic revolution in Iran) as well as the dynamics of electoral competition for those readers who are not familiar with the Turkish and the Iranian politics. Tezcür’s detailed analyses of the Iranian reformers and their Turkish counterparts, chapter 6 and 7 respectively, are followed by a comparative analysis of the two recent elections, namely the Turkish Parliamentary elections of 2007 and the Iranian Parliamentary elections of 2008 (chapter 8). The final chapter includes not only implications of the author’s findings but also a brief analysis of the summer 2009 uprising in Iran.

Muslim Reformers in Iran and Turkey: The Paradox of Moderation is a thought-provoking work that needs to be studied closely. Some chapters of the book would be usefully assigned as case-study texts in upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses.

The Egyptian Revolution 2011: Initial Reflections

2011-02-11T14:05:00.000-08:00

What a historic moment! Today, precisely 32 years after the Iranian Revolution (February 11, 1979), the Egyptians celebrate the realization of their long dream. When Foucault was cherishing the revolution in Iran, he in fact embraced the power of unheard millions: "It is perhaps the first great insurrection against global systems, the form of revolt that is the most modern and most insane." The Iranian revolution was followed by a great disappointment for many but we are apparently having a different phase in the Middle Eastern politics after the revolt in Tunisia. Iranians did shout "Islam, Khomeini, We Will Follow You," and "Khomeini for King"; Arabs now are shouting "Freedom," "Democracy," and "Dignity." The victory in Tunisia and Egypt reminded me what Tocqueville's reflections on the French Revolution: "Nations that have endured patiently and almost unconsciously the most overwhelming oppression often burst into rebellion against the yoke the moment it begins to grow lighter." After the hegemonic fear barrier gone, each backward step of the dictators strengthened the revolutionaries. Mabruk Egypt!

Upcoming Revolution in Egypt

2011-02-02T14:04:00.000-08:00

Maureen Dowd's article in NY Times notes Robert Kagan's (who is a neoconservative and Iraq war advocate who co-founded the prescient Working Group on Egypt) criticism of Obama administration for its failure to predict the Egyptian unrest long before. Alas, I know some comments of social scientists that underlined improbability of an Egyptian revolution right after the Jasmine revolution in Tunisia two weeks ago. Now, the US politicians are in queue to blame one another.

A revolution is like an earthquake. You could anticipate where it might happen by studying fault types; yet, you would never know its exact place & timing. In this sense, it's often quite unpredictable. Social scientists hate the capricious quality of revolutions. Yet, this very quality have appealed scholars for a long time.

Foretelling the upcoming revolution in Egypt is not a scientific prediction anymore. Mubarak can leave the country at any moment and the Egyptian revolutionaries have already started to chant victory songs. The media pundits' forecasts in these days are more like the national weather alert for an approaching winter storm. Get ready for the new phase of the Middle Eastern politics!

Vive La Revolution 2.0!

2011-02-01T09:13:00.000-08:00

Only a handful of political analysts would have imagine today's stunning picture in the Arab world just few weeks ago. Now, we try to understand why the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia has happened and how it has sparked a great revolutionary sentiment throughout the Middle East: Mass protests have broken out in Egypt, Algeria, Jordan, and Yemen, thanks to the Web 2.0 as novel means of resource mobilization. For me, it's a rare opportunity to analyze this extraordinary historical moment with my students. Some of them are conducting a cyber-ethnography to trace the Jasmine Revolution, which is not quite done yet until a democratic regime emerges.

One of the best analysis that I came across so far was Professor Mohammed Bamyeh's (http://www.sociology.pitt.edu/faculty/?q=mohammed-bamyeh/view) post to Sociology of Islam web group. In his initial reflections, he wrote the following:

At the moment it is abundantly easy to sense everywhere in the Arab World elation at what appears to be one of greatest events in modern Arab history. A genuine popular revolution, spontaneous and apparently leaderless, yet sustained and remarkably determined, overthrew a system that by all accounts had been the most entrenched and secure in the whole region. The wider implications beyond Tunisia are hard to miss. Just as in the case of the Iranian revolution more than three decades ago, what is now happening in Tunisia is watched by all in the Arab world--as either a likely model of the transformation to come in their respective countries, or at least as a badly needed source of revolutionary inspiration.

...

First, Tunisia had seemed for long to be an unlikely candidate for revolution due to its apparent stability, comparatively healthy economy, relatively good educational system, and strength of state apparatus. Stability and longevity were characteristic of the regime. In 44 years of independence, the country had known only two presidents. The idea of “president for life,” which now is more or less the rule in the republican parts of the Arab World, was in fact pioneered as an official term by the first Tunisian president Habib Bourguiba in 1975. From today’s perspective it is hard not to feel somewhat nostalgic to the bygone innocence of that moment: where else would a president now openly acknowledge the pointlessness of the cynicism and formality associated with being repeatedly re-elected, without opposition and always with practical unanimity?

Even amongst Arab governments distinguished in the arts of authoritarianism, the regime that had just been toppled stood out. The regime of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali allowed no opposition of any kind, no criticism of the president, hardly any civil society, banned much of the foreign and Arab press, and whatever part of the internet it deemed even remotely dangerous—including Facebook and similar social media. In 2009, the Committee to Protect Journalists placed Tunisia third among the most dangerous countries in the world from which to blog. At the same time the OpenNet Initiative, which traces the number of blocked sites and categories, found the former Tunisian regime to be the most hostile Arab regime to internet freedom. During the reign of Ben Ali, the security apparatus had virtually free hand in arresting and torturing suspects everywhere, including in mosques.

In spite of this climate of total control, the revolution found ways to spread images and stories that proved crucial for its further growth and ultimate success. Mobile phones became uniquely valuable for taking images of confrontation and sending them around the country, and whatever communication or internet resources were available captivated the full attention of what appears to have been an enormous number of disaffected people, who without any prior plan staged a revolution. What is significant here is the factor of creativity. The revolution appears to have taken place not because it had resources—a model already familiar from the completely resourceless first Palestinian intifada in 1987. The events in Tunisia suggest that when there is enough reason for it, a revolution invents the resources that are appropriate for it. That was the case in Tunisia in 2011, just as it was in Palestine in 1987 and in Iran in 1979.

In Tunisia, the opposition parties were clearly caught off-guard by the events, and remained unable to direct the revolution that maintained a character of spontaneity to this point, when the revolution appears to have already attained the basic demands on which all participants agreed—the departure of Ben Ali, the promise of free elections, free association, free media, and the release of political prisoners. By contrast, in the case of the first Palestinian intifada and the Iranian revolution, both of which lasted much longer than the Tunisian revolution before they could reach any goals at all, leaderships and coordinating committees emerged after an initial period of spontaneity, and they served to introduce an element of planning into those uprisings. All those revolts were characterized by organizational or networking creativity, necessitated by the fact that the authorities had been highly vigilant in collecting knowledge about then making inaccessible all revolutionary resources, including means of communication as well as potential leadership at all levels.

Second, the Tunisian revolution seems to have been born out of a condition of closed possibilities and not simply out of economic grievances. The revolution began in marginal and neglected parts of the country, and the trigger appears to have to do with economic grievances. Yet if revolutions were to be explained by economics alone, it would be hard to explain this revolution. For by any meaningful comparison (to the Maghreb countries, the southern Mediterranean, or the Arab World more generally), Tunisia did not seem to be doing exceptionally badly.

The worst economic news was unemployment figures, which officially remained high at 14%, and much higher among young people. But such rates are not unusual in the region, and several Arab countries have officially much higher rates of unemployment. Poverty rates remained steady for years at a little over 7%, but that was nearly half of what it had been in 2000, and a vast improvement over the 22% it had been when Ben Ali assumed power in 1987. In other countries nearby, poverty rates remained steady for years at much higher rates: 20% in Egypt, 15% in Morocco, and nearly one quarter of the population in Algeria. In 2009 per capita income in Tunisia worsened slightly and stood at $7,200, close to the level it has been at 2005. But overall the decline was not drastic, and that amount was still higher than any neighboring country except oil-producing Libya, but higher than neighboring oil producing Algeria ($6,600), as well as Morocco ($3,800) or Egypt ($4,900). Tunisia’s life expectancy compared very well to other Arab countries, as did its literacy rates. One may even question the gravity attached to one of the main grievances against Ben Ali’s development policies, namely that they exacerbated class differences by benefitting some more than others. As measured by the Gini index (at 40), Tunisia’s income distribution appears in fact to be more equal than that of Malaysia or China, for example, as well as most Third World countries. It appears equivalent to that of Turkey and Israel, neither of which expect a revolution (at least from those they regard to be their citizens).

...
The revolution in Tunisia was a response to a sense of closed possibilities. Nowhere do we see any identifiable “structure of opportunities” that could have made it possible. Everywhere we see the opposite—absence of any opportunities whatsoever. The pre-revolutionary climate displays a scene of extreme desperation and exasperation. And it is precisely that scene that was so poignantly allegorized in the protest-suicide of a young man after the police took away from him the last meager resource he had for leading a decent life.

Revolution here is triggered in a closed political cosmos. Obviously, regime’s insistence on substituting the leader cult (or official populism) for democracy or civil society can at the end of the road only produce a revolution, regardless of how strong the regime’s repressive apparatus might be. The weaknesses of this model of governing may now be apparent to Arab leaders, but their demonstrated short-sightedness, pervasive corruption, and entrenched ethic of self-service, make it questionable as to whether they may be shaken into learning the right lesson, even though it might be in their own interest. But regime leaders could be just as suicidal as their opposition could be, especially if the political scene they had spent decades creating and honing cannot accommodate any reform without crumbling completely. This is perhaps the conundrum that we are facing now, and there are two likely reasons for it.

First, the fanatic priority attached to regime survival has entailed the elimination of all sustained voices of reform within existing regimes. This was manifested in the removal of all possible competition to the leader, although competition for prestige, positions and resources at lower rungs of the system was not prohibited and in fact was to be expected. But what became increasingly apparent in republican, and in some cases even royal, Arab state politics over the last few decades, is the absence of a clear successor to the leader of the state. Over the years, such early collective leadership structures as the oft- called “revolution’s leadership council,” usually characteristic of regimes formed through military coups, were dismantled or weakened. In many countries the office of the vice president was eliminated or replaced by a number of vice-presidents so as to dilute the ability of a single person to act as a magnet for an inner-regime reform movement. At the same time, we saw an investment in personality cults, which was meant to elevate the leader far above all other possible competitors; the investment in sons or other family members as likely successors; the frequent removal of all potential contenders within ruling parties; and the toleration, if not encouragement, of corruption among state elites, which had the effect of producing in them an attachment and loyalty to a system that worked so well for them. Often those tended to be new elites, meaning that they had no traditional power or wealth base in society to fall back upon were they to lose their state connection.

Thus over time it became less and less expected that reform would come from within existing regimes. No “free officers” were to be produced, and even military coups that had been so frequent and that served as channels of reform as well as for expressing popular resentments in the 1950s and 1960s, became unusual as of 1970. Within a decade thereafter, even power struggles over policy directions within existing regimes became rare, and especially the top leaders tended to rule more or less for life. One of their tools of longevity consisted of producing uncertainty about likely succession and fear about the consequences of any succession while they were alive.

That meant, essentially, that the end of regimes became associated with the end of their leaders. And it also meant that all public frustration and resentment would converge on the leader as a person. That reality rigidified the political scene. Any show of weakness meant the end. Thus when Ben Ali, having already ruled for 23 years and is now 74, sought to calm the revolutionary crowds by promising not to run for office again (in 2014!), he found himself forced to flee the country the following day. Following his speech, but before his departure, all commentators noted the single most exceptional fact about what he said: it was his first expression of weakness. The logic of the regime he had built meant that any first expression of weakness will be your last.

The revolution, by contrast, represents exactly the opposite qualities—weakness and martyrdom are its ideological fuel, absence of leadership is what keeps it together, weak organization is what makes it hard to capture. One of the most striking facts about this revolution is that even after a month of constant activism, it has remained leaderless and has seemed to be capable of going on as such. Further, its relatively peaceful quality has been absolutely impressive—all deaths and injuries have been result of state violence. Surprisingly, these two qualities—sustained leaderless movement and sustained absence of violence—seem related. For the revolution would have been easily defeated by the state had it turned to violence, given the state’s vastly superior repressive apparatus and the likely withdrawal from the streets of all those segments that had been drawn to the movement out of a sense of moral outrage but who were not prepared to be part of a violent crowd. In fact, it seems that the unusual longevity and sustained energy of the revolution has been dependent on a collective moral outrage alone, but not organization, leadership, or a detailed political program. And the absence of revolutionary violence in the face of state violence only deepened that sense of moral outrage, giving it the quality of messianic commitment.

This messianic commitment, another striking quality of this revolution, bears no resemblance to religion, and it may indeed appear as a mystery as to why religion did not play a greater part in this revolt, even though organized religious forces had been part of the Tunisian opposition for three decades. But religious opposition, which since 1979 has been the main internal obsession of Arab regimes, appears in the context of the Tunisian revolution, so far largely secular, to have all along been part of a larger social consensus that transcends religiosity. The common demands to this point seem to be more basic, even intuitive: the right to be respected as a citizen, to enjoy a decent life and to participate in the creation of the system which rules over the person. These very old demands are not uniquely religious, nor uniquely communist, nor uniquely nationalist, even though these discourses have served as different vehicles for expressing them.

Music and Social Movements

2010-12-15T19:26:00.000-08:00

William Roy's recent book, Reds, Whites, and Blues: Social Movements, Folk Music, and Race in the United States (Princeton Univ Press 2010), is quite successful in revisiting the role of music in mobilization. I particularly enjoyed his analytical approach to culture. According to Roy, scholars tend to analyze social movements as knowledge-bearing entities that focuses on cultural change. This is especially evident in oft cited work of Eyerman and Jamison- Music and Social Movements (1998), where the authors stressed the cognitive praxis of social movement activists. This approach, Roy continues, regards culture as system of symbols and meanings; and therefore, pays attention to content of that system than the concrete social relations that embed in. In this sense, Roy asks an intriguing question: what explains the fundamental differences between the musical achievements of the Communist Party and those of the civil rights movement.

Throughout the book, Roy documents how the civil rights movement was more successful than the Communist Party at facilitating music as an integral part of collective action that actually informed movement practice. Although the Communist Party activists achieved to diffuse their movement culture into the broader culture, they could not make their music remains at the core of social network. Roy concludes that the effect of music on social movement activities and outcomes depends less on the meaning of the lyrics or the sonic qualities of the performance than on the social relationships within which it is embedded.

Although I agree with Roy in his theoretical criticism, it would be very nice to see a recognition of recent works in similar lines. Roy is not the first author who criticizes the study of culture in social movement scholarship. And, there are some important contributions that regard culture as the constitutive of the structure (Polletta 1999; Steinberg 1999; Williams 2004; Armstrong and Bernstein 2008). The author did not engage this emerging literature in the field.

I appreciate Roy's emphasis on the fact that music is primarily a social relationship. I also believe that studying relations between music and social movements in the age of Youtube & Facebook requires further analysis. My ongoing study on Islamic protest music repertoires, which explores the link between transformation of social relations after Youtube revolution and the Islamic activism, is an endeavor in this vein.

Democracy in Iran

2010-10-27T18:59:00.000-07:00

Compatibility of Islam and democracy has widely been discussed especially after the 9/11 attacks. At the center of these debates, a country is often on the spot: Iran. Lately, the post-election protests in 2009 summer were much debated in the Western media, posing questions about mass mobilizations among younger Iranians. Ali Mirsepassi invites us to read the mass political mobilization over the “missing votes” within the broader historical context in which the continuing struggle for democracy against both Islamist and secularist authoritarian ideologies over the decades. Therefore, according to the author, today’s massive movement for democratic change is hardly surprising. Indeed, “like similar movements in the history of Iran, it is represented by a cross-section of Iranians from the poor to the middle class, the religious to the secular, the lay people to the clergy, and so on” (p. xi), and therefore, it is well embedded in the culture of public protest in modern Iran.

Mirsepassi’s book calls to re-think the historical trajectory of modern Iran to understand complex relationship between Islam and democracy. In the opening chapters, the author criticizes the Eurocentric notion of monolithic modernity by suggesting a nuanced conception of multiple modernities in which multiple forms of rationality, secularism and cultural expression are analyzed. Mirsepassi warns against the traps of culturalism, which views Islam and democracy as incompatible, within the Eurocentric model of modernity by pointing out historical-temporal structures of Muslim populated countries including economies, technologies, populations, organizations, languages and discourses. The author also engages with oft-cited analyses of Talal Asad on secularism. Mirsepassi questions Asad’s description of secularism as a specific political tradition in Europe, claiming that the politics of secularism have become a significant part of national democratic struggles in Islamic societies.

Democracy in Modern Iran is a good introduction to reflect upon relationship between Islam and democracy. I hope that this work will be followed by more concrete institutional analyses, ethnographies, and quantitative studies alike so that Mirsepassi’s analytical approach bears illustrative fruits in future.

Symbolic Politics, the Arizona Law, and the Mosque Controversy

2010-08-27T12:06:00.000-07:00

So called "Ground Zero mosque" reinforced long tension between the two Americas that Joseph Gusfield described in his Symbolic Crusade : There is a changing face of the United States, the America that has welcomed all sorts of diversity and appreciated pluralism versus the old, the first United States that emphasized its Protestant Anglo-Saxon heritage. As Gusfield brilliantly explained, the American Temperance Movement, which seemed to be a social movement that targeted the practice of alcohol consumption, was in fact a large social backlash to the great immigration waves in the 19th and the early 20th century. The alcohol controversy was the tip of the iceberg. The two Americas were in fight: The Protestant Anglo-Saxon America showed its reaction to predominantly Catholic "immigrants" through the alcohol debate (since it was the "immigrants" who consumed alcohol as a part of their everyday life). For the "real" Anglo-Saxon Americans, the culture of the immigrants should be transformed. In other words, they should be assimilated to be a part of United States. Yet, what the Anglo-Saxon Americans did not explicitly assert was the fact that they did not like the Catholic "immigrants" who posed a challenge to their economic and social status. Thus, the whole issue, according to Gusfield, was predominantly about status and power. It was only translated thorough symbolic fights over the alcohol.

Although the immigrants of the 19th century has long been a part of the United States (and some of them even joined the old America), the war between the two Americas has never ended. Today, the old/first America has named new "immigrants" who should be adapted/assimilated, i.e. Mexicans, Latino/a Americans, Arab-Americans, Muslims, etc. Of course, the issues that are raised should be symbolic in nature (as we had alcohol consumption in the 19th century).

In symbolic politics, the target is a cultural product such as language, headscarf, mosque, minaret etc. Consider the English-Only movement (http://www.us-english.org/). It is reminiscent of the American Temperance Movement: at a first glimpse, you think that it is about one specific issue (alcohol or language); yet, only when you go to the roots, you can understand the crux of the matter. It's a social backlash against the Latino/a "immigrants" whose language is Spanish. Now, come to the Mosque controversy in New York. If you just look at the posters/slogans of those who oppose the mosque (which are predominantly about "Sharia," "Iran," "Taliban," etc.), you would think that Americans will vote on constitutional change or something. The poll results that indicated 1/5th of Americans believe that Obama is a closet Muslim demonstrates how the mosque controversy has become much about symbolic politics and less about apparent debate. We hear less about the crux of the matter: increasing number of Americans who are less tolerant towards the "other" minorities because of the economic downturn, and that the old/first America has become more worried about their economic and social status. Following Gusfield, I read these issues as larger status politics. Using Spanish, building Mosque? The tip of the iceberg!

The Politics of Mosque and Minaret

2010-08-18T18:48:00.000-07:00

There is a considerable literature on headscarf politics as an expression of symbolic boundary work. It seems it is time to conceptualize other dimensions of Muslim exclusion/integration. Now, the Ground Zero mosque debate has intensified symbolic politics in the US, a country where the headscarf practice is a non-issue. As the debate becomes a symbolic power game, meaning of mosques themselves are also in change radically. In near future, mosques might increasingly attain a political meaning, i.e. symbol of victory or defeat, since the issue has become much politicized.

Last year, the Swiss ban on minarets was quite a shock to Muslims in the West. In the November 2009 referendum, a constitutional amendment banning theconstruction of new minarets was approved by 57.5% of the voters. Only four of the 26 Swiss cantons were in opposition to ban. The largest party in the Swiss Parliament, the Swiss People's Party, strongly supported the campaign against minarets, which was seen as a symbol of radical Islam. Wonder how many minarets were in Switzerland last year? About a population of 400.000 Muslims (which makes the Switzerland's second largest faith after Christianity) had only four minarets. The poster campaigns targeted the Swiss people's feelings of freedom and liberty as demonizing Muslim women.

Four Decades After Milgram, We’re Still Willing to Inflict Pain

2008-12-29T17:18:00.000-08:00

Editorial Observer
The New York Times
Four Decades After Milgram, We’re Still Willing to Inflict Pain
By ADAM COHEN

In 1963, Stanley Milgram, an assistant professor of psychology at Yale, published his infamous experiment on obedience to authority. Its conclusion was that most ordinary people were willing to administer what they believed to be painful, even dangerous, electric shocks to innocent people if a man in a white lab coat told them to.

For the first time in four decades, a researcher has repeated the Milgram experiment to find out whether, after all we have learned in the last 45 years, Americans are still as willing to inflict pain out of blind obedience.

The Milgram experiment was carried out in the shadow of the Holocaust. The trial of Adolf Eichmann had the world wondering how the Nazis were able to persuade so many ordinary Germans to participate in the murder of innocents. Professor Milgram devised a clever way of testing, in a laboratory setting, man’s (and woman’s) willingness to do evil.

The participants — ordinary residents of New Haven — were told they were participating in a study of the effect of punishment on learning. A “learner” was strapped in a chair in an adjacent room, and electrodes were attached to the learner’s arm. The participant was told to read test questions, and to administer a shock when the learner gave the wrong answer.

The shocks were not real. But the participants were told they were — and instructed to increase the voltage with every wrong answer. At 150 volts, the participant could hear the learner cry in protest, complain of heart pain, and ask to be released from the study. After 330 volts, the learner made no noise at all, suggesting he was no longer capable of responding. Through it all, the scientist in the room kept telling the participant to ignore the protests — or the unsettling silence — and administer an increasingly large shock for each wrong answer or non-answer.

The Milgram experiment’s startling result — as anyone who has taken a college psychology course knows — was that ordinary people were willing to administer a lot of pain to innocent strangers if an authority figure instructed them to do so. More than 80 percent of participants continued after administering the 150-volt shock, and 65 percent went all the way up to 450 volts.

Jerry Burger of Santa Clara University replicated the experiment and has now published his findings in American Psychologist. He made one slight change in the protocol, in deference to ethical standards developed since 1963. He stopped when a participant believed he had administered a 150-volt shock. (He also screened out people familiar with the original experiment.)

Professor Burger’s results were nearly identical to Professor Milgram’s. Seventy percent of his participants administered the 150-volt shock and had to be stopped. That is less than in the original experiment, but not enough to be significant.

Much has changed since 1963. The civil rights and antiwar movements taught Americans to question authority. Institutions that were once accorded great deference — including the government and the military — are now eyed warily. Yet it appears that ordinary Americans are about as willing to blindly follow orders to inflict pain on an innocent stranger as they were four decades ago.

Professor Burger was not surprised. He believes that the mindset of the individual participant — including cultural influences — is less important than the “situational features” that Professor Milgram shrewdly built into his experiment. These include having the authority figure take responsibility for the decision to administer the shock, and having the participant increase the voltage gradually. It is hard to say no to administering a 195-volt shock when you have just given a 180-volt shock.

The results of both experiments pose a challenge. If this is how most people behave, how do we prevent more Holocausts, Abu Ghraibs and other examples of wanton cruelty? Part of the answer, Professor Burger argues, is teaching people about the experiment so they will know to be on guard against these tendencies, in themselves and others.

An instructor at West Point contacted Professor Burger to say that she was teaching her students about his findings. She had the right idea — and the right audience. The findings of these two experiments should be part of the basic training for soldiers, police officers, jailers and anyone else whose position gives them the power to inflict abuse on others.

Reviving Camelot?

2008-01-05T17:07:00.000-08:00

Obama's appeal transcends race and party. His Iowa victory suggests that it may be possible to reclaim the national unity America has lost.
By Eleanor Clift
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Jan 4, 2008

When John F. Kennedy sought the presidency in 1960, Lyndon B. Johnson, the seasoned Senate leader who would become his running mate, looked down on the young upstart and complained he hadn't done anything to warrant such lofty ambition. Kennedy was an undistinguished senator, but he had been in the Senate for eight years after moving up from the House, where he was first elected in 1947. Imagine what LBJ would say about Barack Obama, who has barely three years in the Senate, one of which has been spent running for president.

The Senate is not an institution eager to accommodate people who want to make a fast start, and Obama has gained the endorsement of only two colleagues, Richard Durbin, the senior senator from his home state of Illinois, and Kent Conrad of North Dakota, a state no Democrat will carry. By contrast, Hillary Clinton, who's paid her dues on Capitol Hill, has 10 endorsements from Senate Democrats. We can only guess what earthy expression LBJ might employ to assess Obama's meager accomplishments in the Senate, but it's beside the point because that's not how the voters are sizing him up.

What Obama has is Kennedy's ability to inspire and to play the generation card. When Obama talks about "the fierce urgency of now" and warns against those counseling patience, he's dissing a return to the Clinton years, but he's also echoing JFK's Inaugural declaration, "The torch has passed to a new generation of Americans." How can we know whether Obama--now buoyed by his victory in Iowa--will prove comparable in substance and actual performance to the figure that lives on in our collective imagination? Bill Clinton, on the Charlie Rose show some weeks ago, said a vote for Obama is a "roll of the dice." It was characterized as a negative attack, but it's true.

In the Senate gallery, tourists hang over the balcony to catch a better view of the junior senator until the cops shoo them back. Obama represents the possibility of reclaiming the national unity America has lost, and his appeal transcends race and party. Republicans are more fearful of him than Hillary Clinton as the nominee because they don't know how to run against him any more than Hillary does. Portraying Obama as too liberal is an old saw that has lost its resonance. As for experience, it fell flat for Hillary in Iowa. Ted Sorensen, the venerable wordsmith who advised JFK, asks, "What experience? Just because she lived there? I have three boys who played hide and seek in the White House."

Sorensen has overcome age (he'll be 80 in May) and disability (he's lost much of his sight but not his vision) to campaign for Obama. It is the first time in more than 40 years that he has gotten this excited about a candidate. He recalls that Kennedy was not yet 40 years old when he began exploring the possibility of becoming president. Obama is 46. It's not how many years you live in the White House, or your contacts with foreign leaders, or even your personality, he says, that make a great president. "What matters is judgment." The first chapter of Sorensen's upcoming memoir is about the Cuban missile crisis and those 13 days in June of 1962 when the world teetered on the edge of a nuclear exchange. Kennedy broke with conventional thinking to negotiate with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev at the height of the crisis. Soviet missiles were withdrawn after an exchange of personal letters.

Sorensen's memoir is due out in May with the title "Counselor: A Life on the Edge of History." He recalls with wonder that JFK hired him, a Nebraska boy who had not gone to Harvard, who hadn't served in World War II, and who was untested by Washington standards. His admiration for Kennedy is undiminished by time, and what he sees in Obama is a similar willingness to have an open presidency, to consider new ideas, and to break with Washington groupthink. "I don't want this book to be a partisan screed, but I do reflect on what happened to the Kennedy legacy and why I'm taking part in this campaign despite age and disability." Sorensen believes that electing Obama would represent such profound change in the image America presents to the world that it would help regain much of the ground lost these last seven years.

Unaccustomed to writing in the first person and struggling with his diminished sight, the result of a stroke, Sorensen took almost six years to complete the book. He promises a fuller account of familiar events, some new correspondence from Jackie Kennedy, and perhaps more light on the widely held belief that he wrote Kennedy's Pulitzer Prize-winning "Profiles of Courage." He jokes that if there's another book in him, it would be titled, "I'm Not the Author of 'Profiles of Courage,' But If I Were, This Is How I Would Have Gone About It." For now, he's settled into a familiar role as counselor to another young upstart whose sense of possibility rekindles a time long past but never forgotten.
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/84399
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