The Limits Of Social Cohesion

Conflict And Mediation In Pluralist Societies

Peter L. Berger

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429975950
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Soziologie

Normative conflicts center on fundamental disagreements over issues of public morality and the identity of a society. In thinking about normative conflicts on a global scale, two principal questions arise. First, are there common characteristics of such conflicts worldwide? Second, which institutions polarize such conflicts and which can serve to mediate them? This pathbreaking book, edited by renowned sociologist Peter Berger, examines both questions through findings gained from a study of normative conflicts in eleven societies located in different parts of the world and at different levels of economic development. On both points, the findings have proved surprising. Although there are, of course, normative conflicts peculiar to individual societies, two features emerged as common to most of the societies examined: one concerns disputes over the place of religion in the state and in public life; the other is a clash of values between a cultural elite and the broad masses of the population. Often the two features coincide. For instance, in many countries the elite is the least religious group within the population, and therefore, resentments against the elite are often mobilized under religious banners. On the institutional question, the study started out with a bias toward the institutions of so-called "civil society" that is, the institutions that stand between the personal life of individuals and the vast mega-structures of a modern society. The finding is that the same institutions can either polarize or mediate normative conflicts. The conclusion suggests one must ask not just what sort of institutions one looks to for social cohesion, but what ideas and values inspire these institutions. Comprising reports from some of the leading scholars dealing with normative conflict, this book is an important contribution to understanding the cultural fault lines that threaten social cohesion.

1 The American Culture War

James Davison Hunter

As the Enlightenment architects designed the novus ordo seclorum, they deliberately restricted the role of religious ideals and religious institutions in the ordering of public life. They advanced this agenda not simply because religion violated their intellectual and aesthetic sensibilities but because they were determined to secularize public affairs in order to avoid the conflict that competing religious faiths often engendered— conflict that was frequently unwieldy entrenched, and more often than riot, bloody The Enlightenment architects regarded secularization of the public sphere through the privatization of religion as an innovative solution to the conundrum of pluralism and the conflict that pluralism inevitably fostered. Despite the intellectual establishment's smug confidence over the past two centuries that history was steadily progressing on this enlightened path, the "new order of the ages" has yet to witness the end to normative conflict. Indeed, conflict remains a defining feature of public life even in the most "enlightened" societies of the Western world. One explanation for this is that much of today's conflict remains fundamentally religious in nature—if not in explicitly institutional form, then certainly in character. Nowhere in the West is this more true than in the United States, where normative conflict manifests itself as a moral and even quasi-religious struggle to define the meaning of America. Thus, the ancient and abiding problem of societal conflict rooted in opposing "faiths" and contradictory ideals of national identity has not passed into memory as was once hoped. Rather, the United States (at least) has seen this conflict transformed. For better or for worse, the quandary of how democracy will arbitrate such conflict remains as pressing today as ever.

America at War with Itself

On the surface, normative conflict in the United States takes shape as a series of public policy battles between those who are ostensibly either conservative or liberal on a wide range of domestic issues—abortion and reproductive technologies, sexuality, the family the teaching of values in the public schools, multiculturalism, funding for the arts, the relationship between church and state, the role of religion in politics, and so on. It is essential to note, however, that there are layers of subterranean friction and hostility that animate these disputes over governmental policy For example, the controversy over abortion is more than a conflict over the politics of reproduction. Rather, it is a debate over the meaning of motherhood and the nature and extent of individual liberty. So too, the dispute over the National Endowment for the Arts and its funding of controversial art is more than a disagreement over the politics of governmental patronage. It is a serious debate over what constitutes "art" and what normative ideals art will represent. Likewise, the quarrels over textbooks in public schools are more than conflicts over the politics of educational curricula. Instead they are disagreements over the national ideals bequeathed to America's next generation. Similarly, the antagonisms over domestic partnerships and other gay rights concerns are more than squabbles over the legal rights of homosexuals. They represent a serious debate over the fundamental definition of "the family." And the brawls over crèche scenes on public property or prayer at school-sponsored sporting events are more than examples of the politics of church and state. Rather, they portray the evolving public debate over the role of religious institutions and religious authority in an increasingly secular society.¹ And so it goes. The family, the arts, faith, education, the media, law, and government—each realm is beset by a myriad of political controversies that themselves signal yet deeper crises over the very meaning and purpose of the core institutions of American society.

And percolating just under the surface of these conflicts over the meaning and purpose of American institutions are competing moral ideals of how citizens ought to order and maintain public life. These ideals are not mere political ideologies, reducible to party platforms. Rather, they are the moral visions that fuel vehement disagreements over policy and politics. Definitions of these ideals will be varied and nuanced. That is, citizens tend to articulate their moral ideals in a variety of ways. But when activists use the symbols of public discourse to translate these ideals, the ideals invariably come to represent sharply antagonistic tendencies. One moral vision is predicated upon the assurance that the achievements and traditions of the past should serve as the foundation of communal life and guide us in negotiating today's and tomorrow's challenges. Though often tinged with nostalgia, this vision is misunderstood by those who label it as reactionary. In fact, this vision is neither regressive nor static, but rather is both syncretic and dynamic. Nevertheless, the order of life sustained by this vision does seek deliberate continuity with the guiding principles inherited from the past. The goal of this vision is the reinvigoration and realization in our society of what traditionalists consider to be the noblest ideals and achievements of civilization. Against this traditionalism is a moral vision that is ambivalent about the legacy of the past—it regards the past in part as a curiosity, in part an irrelevance, in part a useful point of reference, and in part a source of oppression. The order of life embraced by this vision idealizes experimentation and, thus, adaptation and innovation according to the changing circumstances of our time. Its aim is the further emancipation of the human spirit.

But again, there is more. Underneath it all—beneath the public policy disputes, the institutional crises, the conflicting moral visions—are different and competing understandings of what is real and the means by which we can know what is real; different and competing understandings of what is good and true and the means by which we can know what is good and true. These conflicting cultural impulses, and the moral visions that give them form, are, at their core, animated by conflicting metaphysical assumptions—realist and antirealist.

Historical Transformations

In the United States today, rudimentary metaphysical disputes over what is real and what is good and true—with all of their social and political consequences—stem from the nation's founding and the cultural impulses that dominated that historical period some two hundred years ago. These cultural impulses consisted of Enlightenment rationalism (rooted in the urban elite of Boston, Philadelphia, and the southern states) and the biblical pietism of Reformed Protestantism (which defined the theological core of most Protestant sects). In the years leading up to the American Revolution, the Enlightenment and Calvinist revolutionaries made strategic alliances with each other in opposition to British rule. But these political associations were always strained and provisional.

Particularly after the Revolution, Enlightenment and Calvinist revolutionaries no longer regarded their strategic alliance as necessary. Jedidiah Morse's Fast Day sermon delivered on May 9, 1798, set the mood for the decades to follow: "[L]et us beware," he proclaimed, .. of blending the end with the means. Because atheism and licentiousness are employed as instruments, by divine providence, to subvert and overthrow popery and despotism, it does not follow that atheism and licentiousness are in themselves good things, and worthy of approbation."² In this post-Revolutionary social and political environment, the tension between the "infidel philosophers" and the preachers of "superstition and bigotry" was unrelenting and the rhetoric often fierce. This tension manifested itself most infamously in the hostility between Timothy Dwight (the grandson of Jonathan Edwards and at the time president of Yale University) and Thomas Jefferson. Dwight accused Jefferson of being an atheist and predicted that if Jefferson were elected to the presidency he would bring about the destruction of Christianity in America.³

By the early decades of the nineteenth century public manifestations of the conflict between the advocates of secular rationalism and the advocates of biblical faith had been buried—the powerful institutions of reformed Protestantism did not so much defeat as assimilate the ideas and institutions of the Enlightenment. A critical reason for this assimilation was that early nineteenth-century America remained agrarian, localistic, and communal. Well over nine out of ten Americans lived in rural and agrarian communities, communities with populations typically no larger than 500 to 1,000. The residents of these communities were overwhelmingly Protestant, if not formally then in background and disposition. Enlightenment ideas, which were at that point congenial only to a small urban elite, simply could not penetrate this environment or the public imagination cultivated by this environment. Nor could these Enlightenment ideas penetrate beyond the indigenous hostility of Protestantism's local clerical establishments; local clerical elites were much more influential on the population and on public culture than were the national elites with whom we typically associate the founding period and the early decades of the Republic.

Throughout most of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century the influx of Catholics from Ireland, Germany, Italy and Eastern Europe (1830-1860), and the influx of Jews primarily from Germany (1880-1920), posed the greatest challenge to Protestant domination in America.⁴ Needless to say, the transformation in the religious and ethnic content of the American population during this period spurred an intense economic and political rivalry, most often expressed through religious animus. Anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism remained defining features of American politics and culture beyond the mid-twentieth century.

But times have changed. In the post-World War II period, and especially around the mid-1960s, one sees a dramatic transformation of American public culture—an unmistakable trend of tolerance among Protestants, Catholics, and Jews (as well as Mormons and others) became evident. One series of national surveys conducted between 1966 and 1984, for example, shows that during this period strong prejudicial feeling both for and against different religious faiths declined. Neutrality among Catholics, Protestants, and Jews generally increased, and antipathy toward various religious groups subsided.⁵ Most scholarly research conducted on interreligious and cultural conflict in the post-World War II period focused on anti-Semitism. And once again, the empirical data demonstrate a dramatic decrease during this period in the proportion of the population holding negative perceptions of Jews.⁶ Even among white Evangelical Protestants, who represent the sector of the population historically most hostile to Jews, anti-Semitic feeling was quite low. According to one survey conducted in 1986 for the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, there is no longer any "strong direct evidence" suggesting that "most Evangelical Christians consciously use their deeply held Christian faith and convictions as justification for anti-Semitic views."⁷

This expansion of inlerreligious tolerance is not an isolated phenomenon but has taken place in concert with the slow but steady expansion of social and political tolerance (toward communists and atheists), racial tolerance (toward Blacks and Hispanics), and even sexual tolerance (toward homosex...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 United States of America The American Culture War
• 2 France The Past in the Present: Redefining Laïcité in Multicultural France
• 3 Germany Normative Conflicts in Germany: Basic Consensus, Changing Values, and Social Movements
• 4 Hungary Uncertain Ghosts: Populists and Urbans in Postcommunist Hungary
• 5 Chile Revolution from the Top and Horizontal Mediation: The Case of Chile’s Transition to Democracy
• 6 South Africa South Africa: Normative Conflicts, Social Cohesion, and Mediating Institutions
• 7 Turkey Some Notes on Normative Conflicts in Turkey
• 8 Indonesia Islamic Tolerance: The Struggle for a Pluralist Ethics in Contemporary Indonesia
• 9 India The Conflict of Norms and Values in Contemporary Indian Society
• 10 Japan Normative Conflicts in Japan
• 11 Taiwan Normative Conflicts in Contemporary Taiwan
• Conclusion: General Observations on Normative Conflicts and Mediation
• Executive Summaries
• Bibliography
• About the Contributors