Imagined Communities

Even though the 21st century is marking significant decline in barriers around the world, nation-ness is still the most universally legitimate value in the political life of our time.  To many people, nationalism is more important than the other ideologies such as communism, as we have seen the war between socialist countries, which all should be ally nations in theory.  Over the past two centuries, hundreds of millions of people died for the nation, the seemingly mystic conception.

Although political power of nationalism is quite strong, it’s philosophically notably poor and even incoherent; nationalism has no Hobbesses, Tocquevilles, Marxes, or Webbers. Some call nationalism the pathology of modern developmental history. In 1983, when nationalism had much intensive influence to the society, Benedict Anderson wrote “Imagined Communities” and defined what is the nationalism, where it came from and how it evolved.

Imagined community

Anderson defined the nation as an “imagined political community - and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign”.

It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion. In that sense, all communities larger than primordial villages of face-to-face contact are the product of imagination.

The nation is imagined as limited, because even the largest of them has finite boundaries, beyond which lie other nations. The nationality is by definition very exclusive one; even the most messianic nationalists do not dream of a day when all the member of the human race will join their nation.

The nation is imagined as sovereign, because the concept was born in an age in which Enlightenment and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the divinely-ordained (appointed), hierarchical dynastic realm. In other  words, the sovereignty of nation came to us to replace the old values, which were demolished after the Revolution.

The nations are communities, because they are always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each. Ultimately it is this fraternity that makes it possible for so many people to be willing to die for such limited imaginings.

Background of the rise of imagined community

The nationalism is the product of culture and modernity. Before modern era, there were other cultural forces that provided us with communities; the strongest one is religion and dynastic realm.

The mystic influence of religion was undermined after the technological advancement such as publishing technology, telescope, etc. The Revolution toppled down dynasties, considerably weakening the divinity of kings. After these events, fundamental cultural conceptions lost their axiomatic grip on human minds.

Printing technology and print-languages also laid the bases for national consciousness in three ways. First and foremost, they created unified fields of exchange and communication below Latin and above the spoken vernaculars. Second, print-capitalism gave a new fixity to language, which helped to build the image of antiquity so central to the subjective idea of the nation. Third, print-capitalism created languages-of-power; some printed languages gained particular power to form the imagined communities.

Three stages

The first nationalism was seen in United States and its struggle for independence. Anderson claimed that neither economic interest, Liberalism nor Enlightenment could create the imagined communities. He argued that cultural factors, notably pilgrim creole functionaries and provincial creole print-men, played the decisive historic role. 

The second wave of nationalism came under the name of official nationalisms inside Europe. The officinal nationalism – willed merger of nation and dynastic empire- is born to make the empire attractive by using national drag, i.e. the official nationalism is used to conceal the discrepancy between rising national awareness and dynastic realm. Thus, these nationalisms were historically impossible until after the appearance of popular linguistic-nationalisms, without which the nationalism did not gained the popularity allowing the empire to conceal its internal contradiction. The official nationalism, of course, was Barmecidal one; people in the colonized countries, e.g. Korean under Japan empire, had no way to achieve the position to administer Japanese government.

The final wave of nationalism was born after the end of two World Wars. By 1922, Habsburgs, Hohenzollerns, Romanovs and Ottomans empires were gone, and after the WWII, even Portuguese empire became the thing of the past. The legitimate international norm became the nation-state, generating the last wave of nationalisms mainly in Asia and Africa. Anderson argued that there are three fundamental reasons behind the rise of the last nationalism: first and foremost was the enormous increase in physical mobility thanks to the progress of transportation means, which made people possible to recognize their region as nation; second was imperial “Russification”, which governs colony nations through recruiting natives of the nations, the governance style that allowed people to image their communities better; third was the spread of modern style education in colonial countries, and the educated people became the central figures of nationalism movement.

Remarks

The book allowed me to have a bit more objective viewpoints on nationalism, which was always around me, raised me, and in some cases plagued me. The explanation that nationalism has cultural origin like religion and dynasty helped me to understand why so many people were willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of their nations; in some sense, the war for nationalism may be akin to religious wars that human beings carried out for many centuries.

That said, something is still not clear to me. It is perhaps just because nationalism is too close to me – people tend to specialize what is around them. However, to me, nationalism seems to be more than what is imagined. The origins of religious group or dynastic realm may be the product of imagination in the first place (some may argue that God is just what is imagined, and some say He exists). On the other hands, some origins of nationalism, namely language, do exist, and there seems to be difference from other imagined communities. To me nation-ness is imagined community as well as something down-to-earth.

Reference

Benedict Anderson, “Imagined Communities” (new edition), First published by Verso 1983 and this edition published by Verso 2006. 

How to Do Things with Words

To the certain extent, every saying is doing, as every utterance is accompanied by certain sounds. However, some sayings include more doing than just utterance. For instance, if A says to B “you must go bed”, the saying is not only just making sounds but also including some forces to B. How should we understand these aspects in saying something?

John Langshaw Austin, one of the leading philosophers of the twentieth century, made lectures on the theme. The lecture series were delivered as the William James Lectures at Harvard University, entitled “How to Do Things with Words (originally ‘Words and Deeds’)”, and later published under the same title.

Performative Utterance

Austin argued that some utterances include some sort of performance. For example, if a man says “I do” in the course of the marriage ceremony, that “I do” means that “I would take this woman to be my lawful wedded wife”. Austin named these utterances and sentences “performative sentence” or “performative utterance”. Those performative utterances are accompanied by certain actions, such as making contracts, declaring some actions, forcing somebody to do something, etc.

Performative utterance is not about reporting truth or false, but could be the subject to public criticism and be the sources of unhappiness. Austin called those utterances “infelicity” (inappropriate saying), and listed six types of them. The types could applied all actions but not mutually exclusive. (page 14)

(1) There must exist an accepted conventional procedure having a certain conventional effect, that procedure to include the uttering of certain words by certain persons in certain circumstances

(2) The particular persons and circumstances in a given case must be appropriate for the invocation of the particular procedure invoked

(3) The procedure must be executed by all participants correctly

(4) The procedure must be executed by all participants completely

(5) The procedure is designed for use by persons having certain thoughts or feeelings, or for the inauguration of certain consequential conduct on the part of any participant, then a person participating in and so invoking the procedure must in fact have those thoughts or feelings, and the participants must intend so to conduct themselves

(6) The participants must actually so conduct themselves subsequently

Although performative utterances do not include reporting truthiness, the truthiness is deeply related to the infelicity accompanied by the utterance. Austin said that if the performative statement is happy, then (a) condition (1), (2) and (3) must be true and (b) the statement in itself is true. (I can hardly understand why saying truth must always be happy, though.)

Sentence Classification

Austin found it difficult to distinguish performative utterance from constative (descriptive) utterance. To try to solve the issues, Austin classified sayings into three categories:

A. Locutionary act

The act has meaning and further divided into three types:

- The phonetic act: merely the act of uttering certain noises

- The phatic act: the uttering of certain vocables or words, i.e. noises of certain types, belonging to certain vocabulary and grammar

- The rhetic act: the performance of an act of using those vocables with a certain definite sense and reference

For example, ‘He said “The cat is on the mat”’ is phatic act, and ‘He said that the cat was on the mat’ is rhetic act.

B. Illocutionary act

The act has a certain conventional force. The illocutionary acts include informing, ordering, warning, undertaking, etc.

Austin tries to distinguish five very general classes of illocutionary utterances, though he himself admitted that the classification is not perfect (page 151):

- Verdictives : giving of a verdict, an estimate, reckoning, or appraisal

- Exercitives: exercising of powers, rights, or influence

- Commisives: promising or undertaking, i.e. the act of committing something

- Behavitives: miscellaneous acts related to attitudes and social behavior

- Expositives: utterances that fit into argument or conversation

C. Prelocutionary act

The act achieves certain effects by saying something. The prelocutionary act includes convincing, persuading, deterring, surprising, leading, misleading, etc.

Remarks

A Korean proverb goes “Illness comes from mouth and disaster comes out of mouth (i.e. saying)”. Everyone knows that saying something is beyond just making voice, but to articulate the idea and distinguish locutionary utterance and illocutionaory one are mind boggling, as Austin showed to us.

The fact makes me think of the ideas which are very vaguely shared by everyone but not verbalized yet. One of philosophy is to define and explains that sort of ideas, and in that sense, even now there are a lot to be done. To articulate vague concepts is what I’m tring to do in my Japanese blog.

Reference

John L. Austin, “How to Do Things with Words”, (Second Edition , William James Lectures), Harvard University Press, 1 Sep 1975

Studies in the Way of Words

There is often a gap between words and their meaning. For instance, when we say “he is at an investment bank”, there could be many meanings: the saying may mean that he works for an investment bank, he just visited an investment bank, he was just there to wait for someone, etc. To make a conversation work, we need a condition by which we can specify the specific meaning of the saying.

Principle and Maxims for complete communication

Paul Grice formalized the theory about relationship between saying and meaning in his book “Studies in the Way of Words”. He argued that if saying (p) is to be strictly tied to its meaning (q), i.e. q=f(p), the saying needs to satisfy the following rules:

• Cooperative Principle: Make your conversational contribution such that it is required by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged
• Maxim 1 (Quantity): (1) make your contribution as informative as is required; (2) Do not make your contribution more informative than is required
• Maxim 2 (Quantity): (1) do not say what you believe to be false; (2) do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence
• Maxim 3 (Relation): be relevant
• Maxim 4 (Manner): (1) avoid obscurity of expression; (2) avoid ambiguity; (3) be brief; (4) be orderly

Grice argued that when one satisfies the rules above, one will be able to convey his or her idea using words without any confusions.

Role of implicature

However, what we usually observe is that we are following the Cooperative Principle but maxims. In other words, although we try to cooperate for getting mutual understanding, we do not fully follow the specific rules (maxims). Even in that case, we have few issues in our communication. Why?

Thus Grice came up with the theory of implicature. Implicature is his own terminology, as he believed that the word implication is close but not perfect to articulate his idea. Implicature works such that people in communication ties the saying to the appropriate meaning, through using their knowledge and information about the situation.

For example let’s think about the following conversation:

A: I lost my key.

B: I guess I saw it on the table over there.

In this conversation, what A truly means is not the fact that he/she lost his key; what he/wants to ask is something like “do you know where my key is?”. Also, what B truly means is also like “I think the key is on the table over there.”. Both saying is violating maxims in conversation, but their communication works without any serious issues. Grice explains what it is possible as follows:

“A man who, by (in, when) saying (or making as if to say) that p has implicated that q, may be said to have conversationally implicated that q, provided that (1) he is to be presumed to be observing the conversational maxims, or at least the Cooperative Principle; (2) the supposition that he is aware that, or thinks that, q is required in order to make his saying or making as if to say p (or doing so in those terms) consistent with this presumption; and (3) the speaker thinks (and would expect the hearer to think that the speaker thinks) that it is within the competence of the hearer to work out, or grasp intuitively, that the supposition mentioned in(2) is required. “ (“Studies in the Way of Words", p31)

In some sense, the thought process of implicature is akin to a weak form of proof by contradiction, or a sort of abduction (see my previous post http://taejunomics.blogspot.jp/2011/12/abduction.html).

According to Grice, there are two sorts of implicature. One is the conversational implicature, the implicature that is coming from conversation and thus based on the ability of people in conversation. In other words, some conversational implicatures are applicable to specific people only.

Another is the conventional implicature, which requires more general and conventional ideas held among people and requires no conversation. For instance, the following would be conventional implicature:

“She is poor but happy”.

The sentence implicates that, generally speaking, to be poor is incompatible with happiness.

The difference between conventional implicature and conversational implicature is fuzzy. Most of conventional implicatures were originally conversational implicatures. The birth or transition of common sense determines the difference.

Remarks

The book was hard to read but quite interesting. The theory of implicature suggests that we are using very efficient conversational skill in our daily life. For example, the scope that conversational implicature covers in family conversation is especially huge, because family members have shared much time and have had common knowledge. We can shorten our family conversation because of our ability to use conversational implicature.

The idea may play an important role in designing artificial intelligence. Programming machine intelligence based on implicature thinking is far difficult than doing one based on the Cooperative Principles and the associated maxims. However, as our conversational style is firmly connected to implicature, it would be vital to design the program in that way.

Reference:

Paul Grice, “Studies in the Way of Words”, Harvard University Press; Reprint edition, 1991/4/1

Opportunities

These days, I have more opportunities to be members of various communities. I should admit that I've been quite critical of these communities until recently, as the member selection process seems to be quite arbitrary, opaque and nepotistic. Besides, I cannot imagine that my heros/heroins would actively participate the communities like this. If they had time to attend the sessions of the communities, they would spend that time for those who need help.

However, just recently I realized that I may be too narrow-minded. Now the question became much more simple:

You have a certain goal that you wanna accomplish. Would those opportunities be helpful to make you close to the goal in the long run? Make best use of the opportunities if the answer is yes, and abstain from being involved in it if the answer is no.

Slightly off the topic though, there is another consideration. I know I am far from the representative of my generation, but people from other countries would see me like that. These days I feel some obligation to perform well in many conferences, because otherwise people in other countries would undervalue our generation, the situation that is quite unfair. That is one of the reasons why I started to learn English.

The Logic of Collective Action

Mancur Olson noted as follows despite the common idea in those days:

“It is not in fact true that the idea that group will act in their self-interest follows logically from the premise of rational and self-interested behavior. … Indeed, unless the number of individuals in a group is quite small, or unless there is coercion or some other special device to make individuals act in their interest, rational, self-interested individuals will not act to achieve their common or group interests.“

Olson’s book, “The Logic of Collective Action”, was the first book which treated this issue of free riders. In this book, Olson formalized his main idea by using simple mathematics.

The source of the problem is that public goods are equally allocated to all individuals, regardless of their contribution to the collective action. Let’s say a political party composed of N people aims to achieve some political goal. In that case, an individual who belongs to the party has two choices: (1) to positively participate the party movement by paying cost C, thus increasing the party’s gain by T, and his gain by T/N or (2) to just look at the party movement and pay no cost.

Under the circumstances, as N becomes larger, the marginal contribution of individual cost to the gain becomes smaller, and thus individuals tend not to act to achieve their common interest. This is the reason why we have free riders. The larger the group, the farther it will fall short of providing an optimal amount of a collective good.

Free riders are everywhere. They can be seen all collective actions, from political activities to employees action in gigantic corporations. John James has done empirical work regarding collective actions and found that in a variety of institutions, “action taking” groups and subgroups tended to be much smaller than “non-action taking” groups and subgroups. According to his study, the average size of the “action taking” subgroups was 6.5 members, whereas the average size of the “non-action taking” subgroups was 14 members. The other studies show that small groups are more efficient and viable than large ones.

As the principle shows, the key to prevent individuals from being free riders is to (1) make the size of the group small, (2) coerce individuals to follow their common goal (that is why many labor unions have compulsory membership, as written in chapter 3), or (3) come up with special device. Regarding the point (3), Olson suggests “Byproduct theory” to explain why many people join organizations. There could be byproduct (other than the main purpose) that the attendants gain when they participate the collective action.

Remarks

As a founder of an NGO, I have experienced free riders many times. Although the issue and its solution are not new to me, the book reminds me of the ways I came up with to deal with free riders.

Facing the free rider problem, our NGO introduced “team system” in which the members organize small groups and tackle a fraction of problems. This indeed worked, but we had undesirable byproduct - sectionalism, which lessened overall performance of the organization. After then we modified the team system so that it would be more flexible – now members more flexibly switch the team to join.

We also have tried to come up with the special device to avoid free riders. Sharing the mission and cultivate social capital among participants work to the certain extent. In some cases, mission works as a byproduct which incentivizes the members: feeling that he or she is following mission of an organization can be the motivation for members to positively participate the collective action. Another device we came up with is social capital. Perhaps feeling of being connected alone could motivate the members to join the group action. This idea explains why people try to upload their photo and texts without receiving any financial benefits.

Reference:

Mancur Olson Jr., “The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups, Second printing with new preface and appendix”, Harvard Economic Studies, 1971