A Visit to the Slovak Foreign Policy Association, Continued

THE QUESTION PERIOD (draft)

To the credit of the Slovak Foreign Policy Association, they did allow a generous amount of time for discussion. I did not stay for the entire period because I just didn’t have the patience to hang around. However, as is usual in these situations, the discussion was illuminating.

One point that was made during the discussion period was that the United States government used to classify the KLA as a “terrorist organization”.

Dr. Lyon’s response to that remark was, quite simply, breath-taking. After a brief definition of terrorism as violence for political aims against non-combatants (or something similar) Lyon suggested that, with a few minor exceptions, the KLA did not engage in terrorism.

The problem with Lyon’s response is that it was too easy. If it was really so obvious that the KLA was not a terrorist organization, how did it ever happen that the USA mistakenly classified it as one? There’s a clear suggestion that the US policy of classifying this or that group as terrorist is not based on reality, but political expediency. One recalls the anthropologist Scott Atran’s article a
few years ago in
Science,(2003, “The Genesis of Suicide Terrorism”, 299) in which he pointed out that according to the US government’s definition of terrorism, the US government has engaged in terrorism.

And Lyon’s unwillingness to even consider the question why there was a change is an example of what I meant (in an earlier posting) by “arrogance” and shabby scholarly methodology. Only answering the questions that are easy and ignoring the difficult ones is not honest scholarship. It is the intellectual equivalent of bullying. But perhaps it is only in this forum, a public one, where time considerations forced Dr. Lyon to over-simplify.

I did not hang around to pose a question. In fact, I had no questions, only comments which I would have made had I been more patient.

I would have liked to have made three specific, but related, comments:

1. You’ve no right to talk about the ethnocentrism of Kossovans until you’ve done some comparative research about prejudice and out-group hostility in other countries. Until you’ve got some basis for comparison, your sincere impression that people in the region violate your American or Anglo rules for polite speech count for nothing in a serious scientific forum. Alternatively, they do count for something. They are a sort of anecdotal evidence, but they don’t deserve the weight you gave them in Bratislava. And, again, I say that this confidence that one’s unsupported or examined impressions were weighty and correct, deserves the label “arrogance”. Other possible labels are cultural insularity or imperialism.
(An antidote might be reading Wierbiczka’s recently published: English: Language and Culture.)

2. A second, related, comment concerns the claim that people in the region are “primitive”. Presumably their open vocalizations of negative attitudes about out-groups is part of the evidence. Other evidence was the fact that they have no symphony orchestra or opera. When the speaker expressed this point of view, I interrupted him to point out that before World War Two Germany certainly had such cultural institutions.

My point is (and should have been) plain: it’s no guarantee of culture in a moral sense--the sense relevant to discussion of how to create a multi-cultural and democratic society in Kosovo. I find it hard to believe that Dr. Lyon couldn’t understand my comment, but his response to me at the time seemed totally irrelevant and misleading, even sophistical.

Lyon’s response was to say that Germany had cabarets as well. I don’t have any idea what he meant by that. I have considered the possibility that his remark was intended as a “put-down”, to ridicule my comment. Whatever his intentions, he failed to address the serious point being made. However, in any case, his notion of which culture is and isn’t “primitive” will not, I suggest, stand careful examination.

The problem with Lyon’s naive approach is that it ignores a significant tradition in the social sciences which examines the emotional underpinnings of our moral attitudes, our ideas about justice and fairness.
And, that literature suggests that there is a universal sense of fairness, and it’s not in any way dependent upon the possession of high tech, let alone high culture. It’s not that everyone thinks exactly the same way. Rather, even people living in pre-industrial societies certainly have ideas about reciprocity and fairness, ideas with sufficient weight to be called upon in a serious attempt to negotiate between two parties in a dispute.

But Lyon has either never dipped into the relevant anthropology and economics, or has failed to appreciate its significance.

Recommended readings:
Chandra Sekhar Sripada and Stephen Stich, “A Framework for the Psychology of Norms”,
(esp. 294 ff, see references therein), in The Innate Mind (Oxford UP 2006), ed. Carruthers, Laurence, and Stich. Their specific interest is in punishment, but for our purposes, the point still holds good. The presence of moral emotions cross-culturally counts against swift diagnoses that one culture is “primitive”.

Another relevant book: Foundations of Human Sociality, ed. Henrich, Boyd, et al., (Oxford 2004)

A related additional, pragmatic, observation is that so long as Lyon regards other people as his cultural inferiors, it will be unlikely that he can actually assist them.

A final comment points to research about emotions. Until you’ve got a base-line value for someone’s expressivity, you cannot measure how intense their emotions are. The point came out in a nice way when Amy Tan’s narrator in Joy Luck Club thought that her Italian neighbors were fighting and were likely to be killing each other. They weren’t; they were just being Italian.

A similar point concerns Lyon’s naive reactions to Balkan culture. He gave no indication that he had ever examined his own impressions to consider whether he approaches the world with a bias based upon his English mother tongue status ( an Anglo bias) and/or an American cultural bias. Comparative research in emotions makes it clear that you can’t tell whether someone is just talking or fighting unless you’ve considered the settings of your own language/culture and how they may differ from the speakers you overhear. (see Aneta Pavlenko, Emotions and Multilingualism, (Cambridge UP 2005)

The net result of my visit to the Slovak Foreign Policy Association was to increase my suspicion of so-called experts in foreign policy. I remember a Slovak biologist/philosopher friend once saying to me with a laugh that international politics just wasn’t a serious scientific subject. After witnessing Lyon’s performance, I am inclined to think my friend was right. But there is a further moral point to be made about how a pseudo-expertise is connected to political power. The bottom line is not argument, discussion, evidence, dialectic, but brute force. Those with the most nuclear weapons always win the “argument”.

A Visit to the Slovak Foreign Policy Association, Continued

THE QUESTION PERIOD (draft)

To the credit of the Slovak Foreign Policy Association, they did allow a generous amount of time for discussion. I did not stay for the entire period because I just didn’t have the patience to hang around. However, as is usual in these situations, the discussion was illuminating.

One point that was made during the discussion period was that the United States government used to classify the KLA as a “terrorist organization”.

Dr. Lyon’s response to that remark was, quite simply, breath-taking. After a brief definition of terrorism as violence for political aims against non-combatants (or something similar) Lyon suggested that, with a few minor exceptions, the KLA did not engage in terrorism.

The problem with Lyon’s response is that it was too easy. If it was really so obvious that the KLA was not a terrorist organization, how did it ever happen that the USA mistakenly classified it as one? There’s a clear suggestion that the US policy of classifying this or that group as terrorist is not based on reality, but political expediency. One recalls the anthropologist Scott Atran’s article a
few years ago in
Science,(2003, “The Genesis of Suicide Terrorism”, 299) in which he pointed out that according to the US government’s definition of terrorism, the US government has engaged in terrorism.

And Lyon’s unwillingness to even consider the question why there was a change is an example of what I meant (in an earlier posting) by “arrogance” and shabby scholarly methodology. Only answering the questions that are easy and ignoring the difficult ones is not honest scholarship. It is the intellectual equivalent of bullying. But perhaps it is only in this forum, a public one, where time considerations forced Dr. Lyon to over-simplify.

I did not hang around to pose a question. In fact, I had no questions, only comments which I would have made had I been more patient.

I would have liked to have made three specific, but related, comments:

1. You’ve no right to talk about the ethnocentrism of Kossovans until you’ve done some comparative research about prejudice and out-group hostility in other countries. Until you’ve got some basis for comparison, your sincere impression that people in the region violate your American or Anglo rules for polite speech count for nothing in a serious scientific forum. Alternatively, they do count for something. They are a sort of anecdotal evidence, but they don’t deserve the weight you gave them in Bratislava. And, again, I say that this confidence that one’s unsupported or examined impressions were weighty and correct, deserves the label “arrogance”. Other possible labels are cultural insularity or imperialism.
(An antidote might be reading Wierbiczka’s recently published: English: Language and Culture.)

2. A second, related, comment concerns the claim that people in the region are “primitive”. Presumably their open vocalizations of negative attitudes about out-groups is part of the evidence. Other evidence was the fact that they have no symphony orchestra or opera. When the speaker expressed this point of view, I interrupted him to point out that before World War Two Germany certainly had such cultural institutions.

My point is (and should have been) plain: it’s no guarantee of culture in a moral sense--the sense relevant to discussion of how to create a multi-cultural and democratic society in Kosovo. I find it hard to believe that Dr. Lyon couldn’t understand my comment, but his response to me at the time seemed totally irrelevant and misleading, even sophistical.

Lyon’s response was to say that Germany had cabarets as well. I don’t have any idea what he meant by that. I have considered the possibility that his remark was intended as a “put-down”, to ridicule my comment. Whatever his intentions, he failed to address the serious point being made. However, in any case, his notion of which culture is and isn’t “primitive” will not, I suggest, stand careful examination.

The problem with Lyon’s naive approach is that it ignores a significant tradition in the social sciences which examines the emotional underpinnings of our moral attitudes, our ideas about justice and fairness.
And, that literature suggests that there is a universal sense of fairness, and it’s not in any way dependent upon the possession of high tech, let alone high culture. It’s not that everyone thinks exactly the same way. Rather, even people living in pre-industrial societies certainly have ideas about reciprocity and fairness, ideas with sufficient weight to be called upon in a serious attempt to negotiate between two parties in a dispute.

But Lyon has either never dipped into the relevant anthropology and economics, or has failed to appreciate its significance.

Recommended readings:
Chandra Sekhar Sripada and Stephen Stich, “A Framework for the Psychology of Norms”,
(esp. 294 ff, see references therein), in The Innate Mind (Oxford UP 2006), ed. Carruthers, Laurence, and Stich. Their specific interest is in punishment, but for our purposes, the point still holds good. The presence of moral emotions cross-culturally counts against swift diagnoses that one culture is “primitive”.

Another relevant book: Foundations of Human Sociality, ed. Henrich, Boyd, et al., (Oxford 2004)

A related additional, pragmatic, observation is that so long as Lyon regards other people as his cultural inferiors, it will be unlikely that he can actually assist them.

A final comment points to research about emotions. Until you’ve got a base-line value for someone’s expressivity, you cannot measure how intense their emotions are. The point came out in a nice way when Amy Tan’s narrator in Joy Luck Club thought that her Italian neighbors were fighting and were likely to be killing each other. They weren’t; they were just being Italian.

A similar point concerns Lyon’s naive reactions to Balkan culture. He gave no indication that he had ever examined his own impressions to consider whether he approaches the world with a bias based upon his English mother tongue status ( an Anglo bias) and/or an American cultural bias. Comparative research in emotions makes it clear that you can’t tell whether someone is just talking or fighting unless you’ve considered the settings of your own language/culture and how they may differ from the speakers you overhear. (see Aneta Pavlenko, Emotions and Multilingualism, (Cambridge UP 2005)

The net result of my visit to the Slovak Foreign Policy Association was to increase my suspicion of so-called experts in foreign policy. I remember a Slovak biologist/philosopher friend once saying to me with a laugh that international politics just wasn’t a serious scientific subject. After witnessing Lyon’s performance, I am inclined to think my friend was right. But there is a further moral point to be made about how a pseudo-expertise is connected to political power. The bottom line is not argument, discussion, evidence, dialectic, but brute force. Those with the most nuclear weapons always win the “argument”.

A recent visit to the Slovak Foreign Policy Association

THE ARROGANT AMERICAN



Brief Remarks about James Lyon’s Remarks about Kosovo in Bratislava, May 23, 2007


Yesterday I had the dubious pleasure of hearing an amazing speech about American imperalism in Kosovo.

Of course, that’s not what the speaker explicitly said. His speech was about American imperialism in the same way that mating displays are about sex. That’s what their goal is not what their participants are thinking about.

The sub-text of the talk was that the “International Community”, which is apparently a code word for the EU and the United States, are doing their best to bring democracy and multi-culturalism to Kosovo. The noble International Community and the kind United States, however, are having problems because the evil Russians want to get involved.

This is a very serious problem. During discussion the speaker explained that the people there are just so “primitive”--a word he used more than once.

He also remarked upon the frequency with which people in Kossovo make extremely blunt negative remarks about opposing groups. That was, apparently, part of the evidence for their “primitive” nature, and also evidence that the poor International Community led by the United States had such a hard job.

The whole talk was ridiculous. The notion that an American scholar purports to speak for civilization and tolerance is just not credible. The United States is not a successful multi-cultural society. In addition to the old history of racism against African-Americans, there is the new prejudice against Hispanics. (Or is it new? What would Thoreau say?)

Further, the speaker’s notion of what is and is not “primitive” cannot stand up to careful examination.

The deep ethnocentrism characteristic of the region is not a unique trait. One should do a study of what Americans today are saying about Muslims. One might also do some research about how soldiers in Iraq refer to the local population.

I suggest that until one does so, one hasn’t got the right to suggest that there is an especial problem in Kosovo with out-group intolerance. Certainly, one has no right to pontificate about who is and who is not civilized/"primitive".

Additionally, there is today a powerful research program in the social sciences today which suggests that our basic emotions are universal. This leads one to suspect that Americans are no less capable of out-group hostility (including negative language) than are the residents of Kosovo.

The speaker’s methodology was, at various points shabby.

Of course, the true story is that the US wants to make Kosovo safe for US companies. It wants to open up a market. (See Plavsic’s article below.) Kosovo is today a US-EU colony. And the speaker was trying to convince the audience that this is a good thing.

As if the history of the United States was not a long list of violence used to achieve political and financial goals.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

www.zmag.org

“The KosovoQuestion” by Dragan Plavsic, March 20, 2007

APPENDIX; THE DIRTY DETAILS

I believe that Professor Lyon gave us the official (US gov’t) but not universally accepted history of the area. For example, he mentioned that the “Rambouillet Talks” “broke down”--”as you are aware”. Well, I am not aware of that. I’ve heard at least two diagnoses of what happened, one the official one which Lyon followed, and an alternative one.

I wish to emphasize Lyon’s rhetoric. He said that the “international community took a decision” in Kosovo. Apparently that means the US and countries which follow the US.

Interestingly enough he remarked that even to this day the Serbs won’t admit that they used state terror against the Albanians. Curious. Has the US government admitted to any of the terror it has used? Against, let us say, the Palestinians today--through its agents in Israel and Lebanon? Or, against Nicaragua? Or the attack on civilians in World War Two? etc. etc. The kettle is calling the pot black.

Mr. Lyon spoke of what “We” control, and the need for this first-person plural entity to maintain control.

E.g., [If] “..the international community wants to maintain control...”

He warned of the danger of “unilateral action”.

(To understand this one needs to see Plavsic’s discussion of a Kosovan Anti-Colonial Movement)

He spoke of the fear of “unsupervised independence”.

These comments seem to agree with Plavsic’s analysis: the US an EU want to keep Kosovo a colony. MAKING THE WORLD SAFE FOR AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN INVESTORS; TO HELL WITH DEMOCRACY

And WHAT IF an additional super-power had wanted the US to remain a British colony?

More comments to follow about how Professor Lyon dealt with questions.

THE QUESTION PERIOD

I hope to return to this post some time in the near future. I apologize for typo's and inelegancies.

Childish Gossip

My title is no bit of exaggeration.

Children at the school where I was previously employed have been spreading the following rumor:

Mr. X (ME) was fired by the director because he had an "anti-Korean" blog.

So, just to make things clear.
this blog has nothing negative to say about Koreans or Korea.

It does contain fundamental criticism of the managers at Inequality Schools and it contains criticism of capitalism.

A second, but related point:


A colleague recently said:

You and I both had a personality conflict with the old Director, and that's why she decided not to renew our contracts.

My colleague was possibly being a bit diplomatic. But, I do not accept the above description. My description would be:

The previous Director was extremely dogmatic and narrow-minded. She was also incapable of reading at a professional level--to judge by her reaction when I photocopied a chapter of a linguistics book for her... and she returned it with the comment that she couldn't understand it....
And that dogmatic individual insisted that teaching follow a certain standardized format. I was not willing to follow her demand that my teaching follow her format because it seemed to be uninspiring, uninspired, and not likely to get the most of the literature in question, and not likely to develop critical thinking skills or imagination in the students.

as I informed the management when I gave notice, I believe the institution is un-democratic and opposed to creativity and the free exchange of ideas.

As Slovaks say, a fish rots from the head down.....

may day

it is worth recalling that people died so we could have the eight-hour work day. It is also worth noting that for many of us the eight-hour work day has been eroded...

But today I want to say a few words about the insidious nature of capitalist propaganda

My sources are comments by my mother and students. The basic thought is: you cannot complain about a consumer product Any complaint is your fault--either because you didn't do consumer research (my mother's idea) or because you were cheap and bought a low quality product (my students' idea).

This is pernicious. It is a way to prevent any criticism of corporations or businesses.

Why, for example, should a cotton t-shirt have scratchy labels sewn into it?
Why, for example, must computers come with software packages that don't include such necessities as word processing?
Obviously, that's a necessity for me, but the general point remains.

Capitalism does not always produce more choices, as, in theory it is supposed to.

Of course, that's a polite way of saying that capitalism actually narrows our choices....