[governance] Parminder's exchange with Bertrand

[Bertrand de La Chapelle]

The philosopher famously says : "there are two categories of people in this
world : those who believe that there are two categories of people and those
who don't" :-)

On an even lighter note :

There are three categories of people in the world : those who now how to
count and those who don't !


But I digress ....

Best

Bertrand


On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 10:42 PM, Jeanette Hofmann <jeanette at wzb.eu> wrote:

> 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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-- 
____________________
Bertrand de La Chapelle
Délégué Spécial pour la Société de l'Information / Special Envoy for the
Information Society
Ministère des Affaires Etrangères et Européennes/ French Ministry of Foreign
and European Affairs
Tel : +33 (0)6 11 88 33 32

"Le plus beau métier des hommes, c'est d'unir les hommes" Antoine de Saint
Exupéry
("there is no greater mission for humans than uniting humans")
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