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Examines ideas of Daniel Kemmis (COMMUNITY & THE POLITICS OF PLACE) & others who argue for need for a sense of place to re-create American public life. Individualism v. community; myth of self-reliance, historical context.... More...
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Paper Abstract:
Examines ideas of Daniel Kemmis (COMMUNITY & THE POLITICS OF PLACE) & others who argue for need for a sense of place to re-create American public life. Individualism v. community; myth of self-reliance, historical context.
Paper Introduction:
Daniel Kemmis' Community and the Politics of Place presents a carefully reasoned, well ordered and convincingly supported case for the necessity of a sense of place in the re-creation of American public life. Kemmis contends that it is only when Americans adopt the idea of inhabitation--the concept of the cooperative identification of the common good by those who live in a particular place--that true public life can emerge. His arguments are convincing as far as they go. But they also raise many questions that, while they are, perhaps, beyond the scope of his book, are not easily answered. In part this is because his demonstrations are all related to life in Montana, with its special set of problems, and cannot always, as he acknowledges, be generalized to the rest of the country (though many times they can be). But other aspects of the problem of public life are too
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He provides two examples,approximately one hundred years apart, of the manner in which business (orcorporate or commercial) interests have fundamentally altered the nature ofpublic life in the United States. But this overlooks the central item that is left out of Kemmis'analysis--the problem of power. (199 ). The freedom of competition in the marketplace--the freedom fromgovernment constraint that lay at the heart of classic liberalism--was,like the general tendency of human beings to exclusively engage in thepursuit of their own interests, the underlying rationale for a proceduralgovernment such as Madison envisioned. ButElshtain also adds a dimension on which Kemmis only touches lightly, thatis, the transformation of individual opinions on such issues into rights.This is one of the most significant difficulties facing the development ofpublic life. Democracy on Trial. But they alsoraise many questions that, while they are, perhaps, beyond the scope of hisbook, are not easily answered. regarding the extent to which people think interms of a radical individualism. While Kemmis specificallyacknowledges, for example, the powers (persuasive and coercive) ofcorporations, the importance of cities as economic centers, and the factthat the 'colonialized' West has a unique set of circumstances, he fails toacknowledge, for example, the real power and the extent of the indifferenceof corporations, the range of social conflict in culturally lesshomogeneous sections of the nation, or the breakdown of socioculturalsystems such as the family and the education system. Habits of the Heart: Individualism andCommitment in American Life. Kemmis,citing Bellah et al., notes their finding that people may possess valuesthat are "deeply rooted in their backgrounds, their associations, the waythey lived" and may even be "deeply committed to the common good" in theirprivate or professional lives but still conceive of their values as havingbeen chosen by them "entirely on their own" and conceive of themselves as"being motivated by purely selfish considerations" (65). This is not to say that Kemmis is naive when he points out, forexample, that corporations "are allowed by the public to exist" because thepublic thought it could gain more than it would lose from their existence(Kemmis 129). basically found a somewhathopeful message in their discovery of the fact that people engage in"practices of commitment [which] define patterns of loyalty and obligationthat keep the community alive" and even though self-reliant individualismis "the first language of American moral life," this "second language" ofcommitment offered proof of people's inherent ability to act cooperativelyand for the common good (Bellah et al., 154). Elshtain, for example, alsoconcludes that compromise is essential to a democracy and quotes IsaiahBerlin who said that compromise "lies at the heart of things because youhave to accept that people are going to have different views, especially onthe most volatile matters and the most important issues" (62). The procedural republic favored by Madison was embodied in theConstitution and the cooperative public sphere envisioned by Jefferson fellby the wayside. The simplest way to raise this question is to use Kemmis' own exampleof the exercise of power by business interests. His arguments are convincing as far as they go. His primary example is the publichearing and the zero-sum arguments in which participants in such publicforums believe. The myth of self-reliance and individualism has been perverted, asBellah, Elshtain and Kemmis claim, by its separation from the idea ofcommunity and responsibility. Kemmis' arguments are sound as far as his examples goand contain many good ideas and a genuinely republican view of public life. Berkeley: U of California. He identifies the extentto which people are unable to work cooperatively because they are misled bytheir belief in this 'first language' of self-reliance but he does notquestion the extent to which such conflict serves the interests of thosewho wish to maintain the status quo in which there is little effectivepublic life in America. Kemmis cited the existenceof this "second language" in a similar fashion and saw the development ofpractices of public life as a matter of bringing people to the realizationof the practicality of placing the second language first. Kemmis demonstrates how thisbelief in the ultimate importance of personal, individual values blockstrue public life and produces stalemate in the few arenas where anysemblance of public life still exists. If, they argued, Montana's projects meritedinvestment capital would flow to them without such artificialreinforcement. As Elshtain notes, the original possessor of rights, asenvisioned by the Bill of Rights, was "a civic creature" located in civilsociety but rights were then "construed increasingly in individualisticterms [and] their civic dimensions withered on the vine (15). In anytype of civic dispute, therefore, the belief in the paramount importance ofindividual values results in "shrillness and indignation," in the blockingof opponents' initiatives (which carries over to other, unrelated,matters), and then in "the ever more frequent withdrawal of people from allpublic involvement" (Kemmis 62). In Kemmis' view this type ofregulation, the triumph of procedure over community, would have requiredcitizens "to have to act as if they were isolated selves, unencumbered byany sense of responsibility to one another" and they were, because of thelaws, "being forced into that mold whether it fit them or not" (57). Yet Kemmis himself does not seem to notice howthe divisions in American society are not only cultivated by the politicalparties that support business interests but are of a type that, havingmoral components to them, are easily incorporated into what Bellah et al.call "the first language of American moral life" (154). The second instance was the 1896 election in whichthe populist movement, led by candidate William Jennings Bryan, waseffectively eliminated by the campaign, mounted by Mark Hanna on behalf ofWilliam McKinley, in which immense amounts of money were collected and"were also used in a new and lasting way [that] set creative standards forthe twentieth century" (Kemmis 29-3 ). But the problem with Kemmis' analysis is, first, that the 'abortion-rights' individual and the 'gun-rights' individual who would winch eachothers' cars out of a Montana snowbank is the kind of example that ismisleading. In the state created by the Constitution the citizens were placed ata distance from the procedures whereby conflict was regulated and thenotion of the public resolution of problems, arrived at by participatingcitizens, was nowhere to be found. But the degree to which this notion ofindividualism is a tool of those in power, and of the vested interests whoeffected the last two major innovations that so adversely affected Americanpublic life, is not really questioned by Kemmis. In this life those who were engaged in obtaining the basicsof existence, and depended on their own efforts, developed the civicvirtues because they directly developed the sense of responsibility onwhich citizenship depended. In their view,"individuals would pursue their private ends, and the structure ofgovernment would balance those pursuits so cleverly that the highest goodwould emerge without anyone having bothered to will its existence" (Kemmis15). In Jefferson's republican vision of society public lifeconsisted of "the common choosing and willing of a common world" and this"common unity," or community, was the public sphere (Kemmis 15). Kemmis demonstrates, however, the ways in which public life can bereconstituted in the context of small communities. (1995). The place to begin, he argues, is place--developing waysin which people who live in specific places can make their adaptation totheir location inhabitory rather than incidental to their lives. Jefferson too believed that the apparently infinite amount of openspace available in America was important in a political context for he heldthat agriculture (which he thought would always be the nation's principalbusiness) was the best life for developing people educated in the idea ofcitizenship. InKemmis' view the citizens interested in reinvesting in Montana were trulyacting in the spirit of inhabitation and, out of a sense of responsibilityto each other and a recognition of the common good of those who lived inMontana, were attempting "to build an economy matched to its place" (7).The idea of a public stock company that invested locally was, however,opposed by those who, citing the Interstate Commerce Act, argued thatcapital markets were a business like any other and that by attempting tosubvert the normal course of investing, which was based on national trends,such a company interfered with other investment companies' ability to dobusiness as they wished. Sullivan, Ann Swidler,and Steven Tupton. But Kemmis does not adequately consider thepossibility that the entrenched interests that flourish in this setting arenot quite so susceptible to voluntary or even forced change as, in histheory, they must be. Issues such as abortion, flag-burning, gay peoplein the military, the protection of the family, and many others have beendeveloped repeatedly as distractions that keep the people polarized.Kemmis noted that Madison realized the importance of keeping people farapart and disconnected and that Hanna saw the importance of quashing aunified people's movement. He offers severalexamples of situations, specific to Missoula or to Montana as a whole, inwhich solutions were either worked out or could have been worked out if theparties involved had only reconceived their roles in public hearings or inthe voting booth. Kemmis' arguments in favor of a form of public life in whichthe common good is identified and worked toward via cooperation is soundand both the impositions of procedural government and the insistence on theultimate value of individual values militate against it. Kemmis traces the lack ofan appropriate public life back to the essential conflict between thosewho, like Thomas Jefferson, believed that a common good could be identifiedand arrived at by people working in cooperation and those who, like JamesMadison, held that people would pursue their own ends and that governmentsshould be in place specifically to supply a set of procedures that wouldkeep conflict in check and allow the common good to simply emerge. But Jefferson worried about thedisconnectedness of people whose livelihood depended solely, as he put it,on the "casualties and caprices of customers" with whom they had none ofthe social or moral ties that were the necessary antecedent of republicancooperation (quoted in Kemmis 21). Kemmis does not, ofcourse, pretend that his ideas are complete, easy, or soon to be realized.His emphasis on place, which leads him to concentrate on the region heknows best, produces convincing evidence that, at least on a small scale,the politics of inhabitation could be extremely effective if people onlysee the need for them. Daniel Kemmis' Community and the Politics of Place presents acarefully reasoned, well ordered and convincingly supported case for thenecessity of a sense of place in the re-creation of American public life.Kemmis contends that it is only when Americans adopt the idea ofinhabitation--the concept of the cooperative identification of the commongood by those who live in a particular place--that true public life canemerge. Other politicalscientists agree with this basic idea. P, Elshtain, Jean Bethke. Kemmis deploresthe extent to which "our language of individualism keeps us from naming andbuilding upon what we have in common" and recognizes that even if commonvalues underlie the veneer of individualist values professed by peoplethere can be no true public life if we do not develop conscious ways of"drawing upon the capacity of practices to make values objective andpublic" (66; 82). But to imply that unless corporations learn the kind ofcitizen-like behavior that should be expected of them they can be subjectedto unwanted control by the people is to underestimate either thepracticality and power of corporations (based on a few examples ofenlightened self-interest) or the ability of the people to change thebalance of power. Kemmis calls for a return to the ideal form of republicanism, derivedfrom the words res public or "public thing" which is the public spherethat, in Hannah Arendt's words, "gathers us together and yet prevents ourfalling all over each other" (quoted in Kemmis 5). and Kemmis saw the inherent tension between individualism andcommitment as healthy and as a means of "helping to keep both individualand community vital and self-critical" (Bellah et al. One example is a stock company designed to reinvestlocally generated capital in the region--which folded because of regulatorydifficulties imposed by the federal government whose regulations are basedon the notion that the investors in such a company must "act as if theywere strangers to one another" (57). As Madison putit, "extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties andinterests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will havea common motive to invade the rights of other citizens" (quoted in Kemmis17). Community and the Politics of Place. But American societyand government have cut the people off from this republican approach andrendered public life ineffective or nonexistent. (1985). Another important difference in the federalist and republican notionswas the republican belief that government worked best on a small scale,i.e., a society in which there are not too many conflicting views toprevent the people's arrival at a conception of the common good. But other aspects of the problemof public life are too easily glossed over. Classic liberalism "does not acknowledge communal values" since"the individuality of values is the very basis of identity in liberalthought, a basis the communal conception of value destroys" (Roberto Unger,quoted in Kemmis 6 ). The first instance is the triumph of thefederalists in establishing a procedural government that acknowledged thefundamental nature of competition and implicitly adhered to Adam Smith'snotion of the invisible hand that would regulate the market withoutinterference of any but the broadest sort--and applied this concept topublic life as well. It acknowledges deep differences among individuals and pointsout how people can still feel a sense of responsibility toward others wholive in their community. But thefederalists held that it was preferable to carry on the public businesswithout the attempt to create any common world. It was, however, "no accident," as Kemmis notes, that federalistideas were promoted by those "who were centrally interested in creatingoptimal conditions for an expanding commercial and industrial economy"(15). (He also omitssome of the stickiest problems--such as racism--from his considerationsbecause, perhaps, they do not figure largely in the place he will use ashis example or, perhaps, because they are too complex for his brief essay.) It is true, of course, that the belief in individualism as the ultimateAmerican value is behind this polarization and that this belief wasfostered by the classical liberalism underlying the federalist positionthat triumphed in deciding how American government would be constituted.But Kemmis, and perhaps the authors themselves, tend to under-read thefindings of Bellah et al. Both of these large-scaleinitiatives by business interests have become permanent, dominant featuresof American political life. Works Cited Bellah, Robert N., Richard Madsen, William M. They may also be susceptible to gradual grass-roots implementation. In Kemmis' argument American individualism, which is subject to theprocedural "system of rules and concepts of rights to regulate theinteraction of individuals," has been institutionalized by the Constitutionand by most of the actions of government, and other supporters of theprocedural system, ever since (Kemmis 56). Thefederalists, however, welcomed the idea of a limitless frontier as a hedgeagainst tyranny, specifically the tyranny of the majority. Rather than seeing a hearing as an arena in whichparticipants must listen to each other and work toward a solution throughcompromise and attempting to identify the common good, American citizens"have given that responsibility over to 'the process'" (Kemmis 56). The highest value was placed on thisindividualism -- which was not at all conducive to cooperation. 154). The procedural government insteadtended to encourage aggressive individualism which would be restrained,when necessary, by government. Both Bellah etal. But this worry was dismissed by thosewho held that human beings simply did not work willingly on cooperativelines. Norman:U of Oklahoma P. New York:Basic, Kemmis, Daniel. His point is valid to a degree, but what it failsto address is the issue of why deeply held views on such matters polarizeAmerican society to such an extraordinary extent today. Buthe does not carry his analysis on to the broader implications of thecurrent state of individualism and disconnectedness which, on the basis ofhis arguments about how the country reached this point, would seem to belogical points for his consideration. But Kemmisfails to calculate fully the implications of the fact that "badindividualism," as Elshtain puts it, "requires the greater management,control, and concentration of political and economic power to keep usbounded in our little kingdoms of one" (14). Thus the question arises whether there is nota third initiative in place--one hundred years after the last. In part this is because his demonstrationsare all related to life in Montana, with its special set of problems, andcannot always, as he acknowledges, be generalized to the rest of thecountry (though many times they can be). Clearly the idea was a good one and clearly the vested interests'identification with the procedural form of government is demonstrated bythis example. Even Elshtain sees this typeof control as a drawback for those who would exert the power to effect suchan end. Bellah et al. This is because he tends to avoid the question ofpower--who possesses it and what can be and has been done with it.
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