[governance] Parminder's exchange with Bertrand

[Jeanette Hofmann]

My spontaneous reaction was the same as Michael's but here is a slightly 
more elaborate one:

There are different traditions of understanding modern societies. Milton 
  probably believes the ideas of John Stuart Mill and assumes that 
everyone who doesn't lives in a "rhetorical trap". Yet there are 
different traditions as well; Durkheim considering solidarity, 
Tocqueville considering conditions and implications of democracy, Weber 
worrying about the dominance of rationality etc, etc. None of these 
latter traditions start out with the individual, they build on a 
collective notion of society and modern life. Both schools are still 
around, and probably many flavors in between. Both are legitimate, and 
it is worth discussing - and fighting - the political implications of 
each. Illegitimate I find only those contributions which deny that there 
is more than one way to understand or strive for global rule-making.

jeanette

michael gurstein wrote:
> Milton, why not just favourably quote Margaret Thatcher's famous tag "there
> is no such thing as Society" and leave the rest of the rhetorical flourishes
> aside.
> 
> MBG
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Milton L Mueller [mailto:mueller at syr.edu] 
> Sent: Thursday, February 25, 2010 12:57 AM
> To: 'Jeanette Hofmann'; governance at lists.cpsr.org
> Cc: Parminder; Bertrand de La Chapelle
> Subject: RE: [governance] Parminder's exchange with Bertrand
> 
> 
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Jeanette Hofmann [mailto:jeanette at wzb.eu]
>>
>> I completely disagree with a solely individual notion of global 
>> governance.
> 
> This is just a rhetorical trap that you have fallen into, and has utterly no
> bearing on my argument. Any collectivity is in the end composed of
> individual human beings. This does not mean that all governance must take
> place bilaterally through contract; it does not mean that no individuals
> need take into account group interests and solidarities. A collective entity
> can and will create and impose rules or regulations. The issue is what
> institutional framework permits the individuals who actually live and
> breathe to create collective governance arrangements and what status do they
> accord people as participants within and shapers of them. In creating
> governance arrangements, these groups must respect and express the interests
> and preferences of the people within them. Any other approach constitutes a
> form of authoritarianism or mysticism, e.g., "some people are less important
> than others and don't deserve to be represented or heard;" "collective
> consciousness;" "racial spirit" or other such nonsense). 
> 
>> Autonomy and self-determination do not rest and
>> refer to, at least not necessarily, on individual freedom only. What 
>> we are all arguing about here concerns democratic "rules for a life in 
>> common", as
> 
> Tell me what it means to speak of "life in common" without reference to the
> individuals who live and who form groups. I am not interested in reified
> notions of group consciousness or races or other such ghosts.
> 
> And tell me how dividing up the world into "governments" (an
> institutionalized collectivity with guns) "business" (corporate entities
> based on trade/markets) and "civil society" (which overlaps with both
> previous categories and has no homogeneity of interest and no guns and no
> money other than what the first two give it) makes any sense. 
> 
> --MM
> 
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