What does it mean to study "economic culture"?
Our institute's agenda is relatively simple. We study the
relationship between social-economic change and culture. By culture we
mean beliefs, values and lifestyles. We cover a broad range of issues,
and we work very internationally. I'm fanatical about very few things,
but one of them is the usefulness and importance of cross-national
studies. Even if one is interested only in one's own society, which is
one's prerogative, one can understand that society much better by
comparing it with others.
Clearly one of the most interesting questions in such an
investigation is the relationship between capitalism and democracy. In
some of the center's literature one can find these claims: "Capitalist
development is a necessary prerequisite of democracy," and "The
marketplace is a stalking horse of democracy." Could you explain the
argument behind those claims?
It has been true in Western societies and it seems to be
true elsewhere that you do not find democratic systems apart from
capitalism, or apart from a market economy, if you prefer that term.
The relationship doesn't work symmetrically: there are capitalist
societies that are not democratic. But we don't have an example of a
democratic society existing in a socialist economy--which is the only
real alternative to capitalism in the modern world. So I think one can
say on empirical grounds--not because of some philosophical
principle--that you can't have democracy unless you have a market
economy.
Now the more interesting question is, Why? I don't think there's a
tremendous mystery here. The modern state, even the modern democratic
state, is enormously powerful. If to all the enormous power that the
state has anyway you add the power to run the economy, which is what
socialism empirically means, the tendency toward creating some sort of
totalitarianism becomes extremely strong. And then the individual has
no escape from the reach of the state.
In a market economy, however, the individual has some possibility of
escaping from the power of the state. Let's say you're a politically
suspect figure and have just been fired from a government job. With a
market economy there's always the possibility that you can be hired in
your uncle's factory out in the provinces. It's along those lines one
has to think of the relationship between the economic system and
democracy.
The market appears to be a necessary but not sufficient
condition of democracy. Do you also see the capitalist marketplace
generating forces that propel a society toward democracy?
This question is, of course, acutely raised these days by
the case of China. I don't think we know the answer. Let me say again
that the relationship is asymmetrical: there's no democracy without a
market economy, but you can have a market economy without democracy.
If you say simply that pressures toward democracy are created by the
market, I would say yes. Even in a society as tightly controlled as
Singapore's, the market creates certain forces which perhaps in the
long run may lead to democracy. The market creates a middle class, for
example, which sooner or later becomes politically uppity. The middle
class doesn't like to be regulated, so it creates institutions which
have a certain independence. And businesses need security of contract
and some notion of property rights, so they generate a judiciary which
is at least somewhat separate from the government. Private associations
and a stock exchange emerge, and there is a need for public
accountants. So I think you can argue, along these lines, that
capitalism introduces certain institutional forces which put
counterpressure on a really all-embracing dictatorial state.
But whether those forces inexorably lead to democracy is another
question. On that point I would be cautious. Some people think that as
the Chinese economy becomes more and more capitalistic it will
inevitably become more democratic. Hence the Wall Street Journal
takes the position that the best way to open up China politically is to
have as many capitalist dealings with it as possible. I think this is
far from certain. It may turn out to be true, it may not.
It appears that with the much-touted globalization of the
economy and the global movement of capital, Americans are moving into a
new kind of economic culture of their own. Is that true?
There's no question that we have an increasingly integrated
world economy, and that this has very serious implications, socially
and politically. We also have a cultural phenomenon: the emergence of a
global culture, or of cultural globalization.
We recently studied a concrete example of this in the U.S. when we
examined the role of business in the racial integration of Atlanta.
Businesses, led by Coca-Cola, played a very positive role in moving
Atlanta from being a rigidly segregated city, dominated by a small
white elite, to being a city with a significant group of black
political leaders. The fact that the business community wanted Atlanta
to be a player in the global economy was very helpful in this move.
Business leaders wanted Atlanta to be thought of as a new global city,
not a magnolia-scented Old South city. This was reflected in their
slogan, "Atlanta, the city too busy to hate."
Well, it didn't exactly work out that way. The city still has
serious racial and social problems. But the effort was relatively
successful. It certainly helped create a big and flourishing black
middle class. There was a rather dramatic change in economic culture
which most of us would probably regard in a positive light.
The negative side to globalization is that it wipes out entire
economic systems and in doing so wipes out the accompanying culture.
When certain branches of the economy become obsolete, as in the case of
the steel industry, not only do jobs disappear, which is obviously a
terrible social hardship, but certain cultures also disappear.
The increased mobility of jobs and capital would seem to
exacerbate another trend that worries observers of American life: the
weakening of civil society. People seem less inclined these days to
commit themselves to local forms of community--voluntary associations,
church groups--that tradititionally have formed the fabric of our
culture. Do you share those concerns?
I would share those concerns if I shared the empirical
assumptions behind them. But I'm a little skeptical. The best-known
argument of this sort is made by Robert Putnam in his article "Bowling
Alone." I'm sure Putnam is right that there's been a decline in certain
kinds of organizations like bowling leagues. But people participate in
communities in other ways. Two studies have come out of our institute
that are relevant to this question. One is Nancy Ammerman's book Congregations and Community,
which concludes that at least as far as organized religion is
concerned, Putnam's thesis doesn't seem very plausible. People are very
active participants in congregations.
The other study of ours is by Robert Wuthnow, who talks about
"porous institutions." It's true that people don't participate in
organizations the way they used to--they participate in less organized
ways and move from one to another. But that doesn't mean they don't
participate or that there's been a decline in social capital.
Certainly there are some factors that Putnam looks at which are
realistic. Many civic organizations were once run by middle-class
women--married women who didn't work and had time to do volunteer work.
With more and more women in the labor force, the population of
volunteers has shrunk. But again I would say that it's the mode of
participation that has changed, not the fact of participation.
In some ways you started the discussion about the health of
civil society two decades ago when you and Richard John Neuhaus wrote To Empower People,
which highlighted the importance of "mediating structures"--by which
you meant institutions like schools, labor unions and churches.
Yes, the concept of mediating structures or intermediating
institutions covers more or less the same ground as civil society. I
would say with regard both to civil society and to mediating structures
that one should not romanticize these. Perhaps when Richard Neuhaus and
I wrote that little book over 20 years ago we were romanticizing a
little bit. Some intermediate structures are good for social order and
for meaningful lives and some are bad.
Take the Ku Klux Klan, for example. Strictly speaking, it's a
mediating structure. But you wouldn't want to say it's a good thing.
The same could be said about civil society. Some kinds of civil society
can be dreadful. You have to ask about the values that animate the
institutions of civil society.
The analogy that occurred to me fairly recently is to cholesterol.
Doctors used to think that cholesterol was bad for you--period. Then
they began to distinguish between good and bad cholesterol. I think we
have to distinguish between good and bad mediating structures. That
means examining the values these institutions foster. If they foster
racial hatred, then they're like bad cholesterol. If they foster
dialogue between different groups, cohesion, value transmission, then
they're good cholesterol.
Related to the concern about civil society is a concern
about a rampant individualism in the U.S., the prevalence of an
"autonomous" self. Some commentators fear that Americans have lost the
ability to commit themselves to causes or institutions that take people
beyond the ideal of individual preference. This concern has given rise
to the communitarian movement in political thought. What is your view
of the situation?
One has to consider what is correct about this analysis and
what is doubtful. What is correct is that modern Western societies are
more individualistic than either premodern Western societies or
societies in other parts of the world. It's correct that you can have
an excess of individualism, whereby people have no social ties
whatsoever except perhaps to their immediate family and have no sense
of the common good or obligations to the larger community. And it's
certainly true that if there are too many of such people, the result is
bad for society.
But the assumption made by Robert Bellah and to some extent most of
the people who call themselves communitarians is that community in
America has been falling apart. Which takes us back to Putnam's thesis,
which I think is empirically questionable. It's amazing to what extent
Americans do in fact participate in every kind of community you can
imagine--and give money and time and so on. The people Bellah
interviewed in his own book, Habits of the Heart, seem to
indicate this, though Bellah interprets their remarks in terms of
anomie and desperate aloneness. In fact, many of them are engaged in
communal activities of one sort or another.
I don't think Americans are all that individualistic. Tocqueville
understood that Americans are fundamentally associational--that this is
the genius of American life. He also saw that the negative side of
associational life is conformism. Americans are much more conformist
than, for example, the French or the Italians. Which is hardly a sign
that we are hyperindividualistic.
I wrote a commentary about two years on "furtive smokers" and what
they tell us about American conformism. Though about one-fourth of
American adults smoke, they've offered virtually no resistance to the
antismoking campaign. Like obedient subjects of the emperor, smokers
now stand shivering in the cold to smoke their cigarettes. That's not
the sign of an individualistic culture. Its the behavior of a highly
conformist and authority-prone culture. (The authority in this case is
not that of the state but the peer group, or public opinion.
One of the issues that you've written about over the years is
secularization. Scholarly opinion has gone through some changes on this
topic. What is your sense of whether and how secularization is taking
place?
I think what I and most other sociologists of religion
wrote in the 1960s about secularization was a mistake. Our underlying
argument was that secularization and modernity go hand in hand. With
more modernization comes more secularization. It wasn't a crazy theory.
There was some evidence for it. But I think it's basically wrong. Most
of the world today is certainly not secular. It's very religious. So is
the U.S. The one exception to this is Western Europe. One of the most
interesting questions in the sociology of religion today is not, How do
you explain fundamentalism in Iran? but, Why is Western Europe
different?
The other exception to the falsification of the secularization
thesis is the existence around the world of a thin layer of
humanistically educated people--a cultural elite. I was recently a
consultant on a study of 11 countries that examined what we called
"normative conflicts"--basic conflicts about philosophical and moral
issues. We found in most countries a fundamental conflict between the
elite culture and the rest of the population. Many of the populist
movements around the world are born out of a resentment against that
elite. Because that elite is so secular, the protests take religious
forms. This is true throughout the Islamic world, it's true in India,
it's true in Israel, and I think it's true in the U.S.
One can't understand the Christian Right and similar movements
unless one sees them as reactive--they're reacting to what they call
secular humanism. Whether "secular humanism" is the right term or not,
these people are reacting to an elite culture. Here again, the U.S. is
very similar to much of the world.
Do you see any signs that the U.S. is moving toward the Western European style of secularization?
If the cultural elite has its way, the U.S. will be much
more like Europe. On church-state matters, the federal courts, since
the decision on prayer in the public schools, have been moving in what
broadly speaking is the French direction--moving toward a government
that is antiseptically free of religious symbols rather than simply a
government that doesn't favor any particular religious group. Insofar
as that view has sedimented itself in public education, the media and
therapeutic centers, then I would say there are Europeanizing
pressures. But in the U.S., unlike any Western European country, there
is enormous popular resistance to this trend, especially from
evangelical Christians, who after all comprise about 40 million or so,
which is a lot of people. Whether that resistance will eventually
weaken or not, I can't predict.
In your own writings you've made it clear that you are a
member of that elite at least in the sense that certain theological
certitudes are not open to you. You have placed yourself in the
tradition of liberal theology that looks for "signals of
transcendence," to use the term you employed in A Rumor of Angels. How do your read those signals today?
I haven't changed my theological position, really, since I wrote A Rumor of Angels.
In my early youth I was sort of a neo-orthodox fanatic of a Lutheran
variety. I don't think I was a fanatic in a personally disagreeable
way, but intellectually I was. And then I got out of that. Since Rumor of Angels the only reasonable way I can describe myself theologically is as part of a liberal Protestant tradition.
My most recent book--Redeeming Laughter, about the comic in human life--takes up directly from where I ended in A Rumor of Angels,
referring to humor as one of the signals of transcendence. I think it's
a very important signal. To talk of signals of transcendence betrays a
liberal position, for it excludes almost by definition any kind of
orthodox certainty. If you are certain in terms of the object of your
religious belief, you don't need any signals--you've already got the
whole shebang. This is the only position I've found it possible to hold
with intellectual honesty, and I doubt that is going to change.
How does the comic send a signal of transcendence?
The comic is a kind of island experience. For example, if I
now told you a joke or you told me a joke, we would immediately signal
to one another that this is not to be taken seriously. We'll say, "This
is a joke --have you heard the latest?" Or we may even signal it with
our body language. And then we laugh, and for the moment the serious
world is suspended. And then we say, "But now, seriously..." and we go
back to our so-called serious business.
The clown shows this island experience very well. Nothing can happen
to the clown. He always gets up again. He is hit over the head, it
doesn't hurt him. He has a pratfall, he jumps up again. He's magically
invulnerable. We know that that's not the real world. The clown comedy
appears as an island of safety and well-being in a world that we know
very well is neither safe nor conducive in the end to our well-being.
Now that experience has a strange similarity to religion. Religious
experience is also an enclave.
A purely secular interpretation of reality would say, as many people
have said, that this island experience of the comic is psychologically
healthy (it's good for people to laugh), but that ultimately it's not
serious. It's an escape. In Freudian terms, it's based on illusion
(something Freud also said about religion).
In the perspective of religious faith there is what I call in the
book an epistemological reversal. The invulnerability of the clown is a
symbol of a promised future in which, indeed, there will be no
pain--which is the fundamental promise of any religious concept of
redemption. In the perspective of faith, the comic is a symbol of a
redeemed state of human being. It is, therefore, of great theological
significance.
Can you move from this island experience of the comic toward some constructive notion of belief?
Well, I'm not suggesting one should build a theological
system on the clown, though it's a tempting idea. I don't know if one
can go much further than what I have said.
How do you, as a theological liberal, view the "postliberal"
movement among mainline or liberal Protestants--the movement to recover
their theological identity and reimmerse themselves in the tradition
and in the particular language and narrative of scripture?
The problem with liberal Protestantism in America is not
that it has not been orthodox enough, but that it has lost a lot of
religious substance. It has lost this in two different ways: one is
through the psychologizing of religion, whereby the church becomes
basically a therapeutic agency, and the other through the politicizing
of religion, whereby the church becomes an agent of change, a political
institution. Whatever the merits or demerits of either therapeutic or
political activity, for religion these moves constitute digging your
own grave, because there are other ways to get therapy and there are
other ways to engage in politics.
I don't think it follows that what is needed is a return to
orthodoxy. Some people seem to gravitate from one fundamentalism to
another, from some kind of secular fundamentalism into a religious
fundamentalism or the other way around, which is not very helpful. The
history of Protestantism has shown that real faith, which has to do
with God and Christ and redemption and resurrection and sin and
forgiveness, is not just a psychological or a political activity, and
also that you can have real faith without being in some sort of narrow
orthodox mold. That is the challenge to liberal Protestantism.
Schleiermacher has always been a theological model not so much in
the content of his thought as in his basic approach to faith, which is
a very rational, historically oriented approach within a tradition,
with the understanding that one cannot simply swallow the tradition but
has to enter into a reasonable dialogue with it. In one of my books I
call this the "heretical imperative"--you have to choose. No tradition
can be taken for granted any more. To pretend that it can is, in most
cases, a self-delusion.
Schleiermacher was lucky in that he still had a church with a strong
religious substance with which he could enter into dialogue. In liberal
Protestantism in America we are not so lucky. There is nothing much
there to enter into dialogue with.
Another way of putting it is to say that the modern challenge is how to live with uncertainty.
The basic fault lines today are not between people with different
beliefs but between people who hold these beliefs with an element of
uncertainty and people who hold these beliefs with a pretense of
certitude. There is a middle ground between fanaticism and relativism.
I can convey values to my children without pretending a fanatical
certitude about them. And you can build a community with people who are
neither fanatics nor relativists.
My colleague Adam Seligman uses the term "epistemological modesty."
Epistemological modesty means that you believe certain things, but
you're modest about these claims. You can be a believer and yet say,
I'm not really sure. I think that is a fundamental fault line. I'm
inclined to define theological liberalism in terms of being on one side
of this fault line rather than in terms of any specific beliefs.