Benedict Dellot - Our Moral Palates

This is a nice overview of the work in moral social-psychology embraced by the RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce). Smells a bit like Spiral Dynamics in some places - it's also heavily reliant on Jonathan Haidt's recent work, which poses problems for me due to Haidt's conservative bias (which he denies, and thus the problem).

Our Moral Palates

September 1, 2012 by Benedict Dellot

Not long ago, I described 3 particular ‘meta concepts’ that are present or emerging in the RSA’s work. These were:

(i) Mental complexity and adult development – the notion that there exists a ‘hidden curriculum’ of mental tasks in life that require a certain level of mental complexity in order to navigate effectively. Central to this concept is the importance of how we know, not just what we know, and of taking things as object that were once subject.

(ii) Cultural theory – the notion that there are, to varying extents, four dominant cultures at play in the world: egalitarianism, hierarchicalism, individualism and fatalism. Proponents of this theory argue that efforts to tackle major challenges usually need to embrace and draw upon a mixture of all of these (except fatalism). This is particularly true of ‘wicked’ problems, which unlike ‘tame’ ones cannot be addressed through ‘elegant’ but blunt solutions e.g. using only hierarchical sanctions to combat crime or individualist incentives to overcome climate change.

(iii) Values modes – the notion that most people fall into 3 predominant value groups: settlers, prospectors and pioneers. Which type best defines you depends upon the extent to which you are ‘inner directed’ or ‘outer directed’. The lesson for policymakers is that policies and political messages need to be tailored to fit each group, otherwise efforts at changing behaviour may prove fruitless.

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, the reason why I’m trying to identify these broader concepts is because they help us to make sense of the world, acting in a way as umbrellas for all the other minor lessons and rules that seek to guide our day-to-day actions. To put it another way, the likes of cultural theory, mental complexity and values modes offer maps of life’s terrain, whereas tit bits of information and the latest research insights only give a narrow set of directions to where we want to go, some of which often appear to contradict the paths laid out by others.

Since posting that blog, I had a chance to read Jonathan Haidt’s new book, The Righteous Mind. This, I believe, may act as a contender for a 4^th spot in the guidebook of meta concepts. Haidt’s book is an extraordinarily rich account of the origins of moral psychology and a revealing exploration of how the different states of our moral minds are able to shape group behaviour and drive divisions in political and religious communities.

Trying to distil the book’s contents into a single line or two is an impossible task, but his central thesis can be broadly understand as follows: there exist in the world a variety of intrinsically-borne ‘moral matrices’ that have helped to bind people into successful groups, but which have also left us divided on lots of different issues. When Haidt talks about ‘moral matrices’, he is referring to the different assortment of ‘moral foundations’ – what might be colloquially termed as morals or values – that each individual or group has. To put it in simpler terms, Haidt draws parallels between moral foundations and taste receptors; just as everybody has different preferences of flavours, so too do they have their own distinctive moral palates.

Moral Foundations Theory, as it is formally known, identifies 6 particular moral foundations that make up our moral matrices, some of which are more prevalent than others. Each of these are summarised in the table below.

Drawing upon the data gathered on his research website YourMorals.org, Haidt argues that liberals tend to have moral matrices that are built with only 3 of the Foundations – Care, Fairness and Liberty – whereas conservatives have moral matrices that rest upon all 6. As a result of the sheer breadth of their moral palates, the messages and policies of conservatives are more likely to resonate with a wider segment of the population than are those of liberals (or liberatarians).

The Righteous Mind goes on to explore many issues in depth, but the Moral Foundations Theory alone is likely to have sizeable implications for the way in which we seek to pursue political, social and economic progress. We are already seeing, for instance, how the left are attempting to tap into people’s Fairness foundation receptors (a sensitivity for proportionality, not just equality). Think Labour’s recent internal debate about introducing conditionality within the welfare state. Conversely, witness how Mitt Romney’s speech to the GOP convention was littered with phrases that were intended to prompt people’s Care foundation (it will be interesting to see what comes out when Obama gives his own speech in a week or so’s time).

I imagine the Moral Foundations Theory could also be a useful resource beyond the world of political messaging and grand policy-making. For example, could it tell us anything about how to make behaviour change initiatives more effective? Or about how teaching methods could better support children with different moral dispositions?

Bookforum Omnivore - Why Marxism Is Making a Comeback

Another interesting set of links form Bookforum's Omnivore column (now appearing multiple times a day, instead of only three times), this time on the resurgence of Marxism in recent years.

Why Marxism is on the rise again

Jul 26 2012  

11:00AM

• A new issue of New Proposals: Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry is out. 
• From Triple C, Marx is back: A special issue on the importance of Marxist theory and research for critical communication studies today. 
• From The Utopian, Ron Tabor on Marxist philosophy (and part 2). 
• It is a paradox of Western Marxism that it insisted on its own geopolitical specificity — the West — and yet made its particularity a universal condition for the excluded Rest. 
•  From Green Left Weekly, who, or what, killed the US Socialist Workers Party? (and more).
• Stuart Jeffries on why Marxism is on the rise again. 
• From New Left Review, T. J. Clark supplies notes for a rethinking of left politics that would recognize the impasses of the present and the horrific legacies of the past, while abandoning the mirages of futurity (and a response).
• For a New Left International: An interview with Jason Chrysostomou and Michael Albert, founders of the International Organisation for a Participatory Society (and more).

Jonathan S. Davies - Why Hierarchy Won't Go Away: Understanding the Limits of 'Horizontalism'

When people reach the communal stage of development, which values consensus and human bonds (the Green Stage in SDi and AQAL), there tends to be an allergy to hierarchies of any kind, but especially those that include power differentials. We see this most recently in the various iterations of the Occupy Movement - a rejection of structure and hierarchy, which likely explains their lack of success in making any substantive change.

But as Jonathan Davies argues in this article, hierarchies won't go away, no matter how much people try to impose horizontal structures, which seems particularly true in the business world. Davies believes, working from Gramsci's theory of the integral state, that an "element of hierarchy is the pre-condition of effective solidarity and democratic accountability."

Why Hierarchy Won't Go Away: Understanding the Limits of 'Horizontalism'

Jonathan S. Davies
De Montfort University, UK

May 25, 2012

Abstract:
This short paper was produced as a Research Briefing for Leicester Business School in May 2012. It explores the rise of 'horizontalism' as a hegemonic world view and then discusses its limits, applying Gramsci's theory of the integral state. The paper suggests that the concept of a 'governance genome' maybe helpful for understanding how governing institutions embody multiple modes of coordination in many variable configurations, simultaneously hierarchy, market and network. It concludes that the resistance movements influenced by horizontalism should not feel threatened by hierarchy. The concept can be wrongly conflated with domination, and an element of hierarchy is the pre-condition of effective solidarity and democratic accountability. 

Full Citation:

Davies, JS. (May 25, 2012). Why Hierarchy Won't Go Away: Understanding the Limits of 'Horizontalism'  Social Science Research Network: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2066812 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2066812

Here is a short section of the paper that describes the rise of horizontalism in Western Culture - a movement that began in earnest in the 1960s but has roots all the way back to the 1800s and groups like the Transcendentalists, the poet Walt Whitman, and the efforts to free the slaves and give women the vote.

The Rise of Horizontalism
Horizontalist ideology began its rise to prominence in the 1960s, when capitalists, riding the wave of the technological revolution, started re-describing their activities in the language of networks. Contemporary capitalism celebrates qualities such as autonomy, spontaneity, multi-tasking, conviviality, team-working, openness to others and sensitivity to difference – all characteristics associated with the good networker. For major international organisations including the World Bank, the IMF, the OECD, the United Nations and European Union, networking has also become one of the cardinal principles of ‘good governance’.

Recognizing public disaffection with representative democracy and the ‘dead hand’ of bureaucracy in public services, governments too have sought to become more flexible and responsive through networking. As David Wilson highlighted in a previous Research Briefing, the idea of networks has been especially influential in local governance, where officials across much of the world, and not only in democracies, seek to build collaborative institutions; state-civil society partnerships inspired by the idea that on-going direct cooperation with citizens is both more democratic and more efficient than a representative system where councillors or mayors simply receive a mandate (of sorts) every few years and then assume they have sufficient power and legitimacy to govern. Governments today believe they must network with citizens, businesses and civil society groups, if they are to get anything done.

If the network is a crucial medium of political and economic power, it is also the central organising principle for many of those resisting cuts and austerity. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri depict a world where networked power, ‘Empire’, confronts its nemesis in the form of networked resistance, the ‘Multitude’. The Economics Editor of BBC Newsnight, Paul Mason, has written movingly and evocatively of how the ideas and technologies of networking inspire and organise protestors, from the scenes in Tahrir Square during the Arab Spring to the anti-capitalist protests of the Occupy Wall Street Movement. OWS is passionate in its commitment to horizontalism. Its antipathy to hierarchy is certainly well-grounded, deriving from both the experience of neoliberal authoritarianism today and the historical errors of the left: from the lumbering bureaucracies of the Labour Party and trade unions to the unspeakable dictatorships of Stalin and Mao. OWS therefore prides itself on transcending hierarchy, maximising democratic participation and perhaps even exemplifying or ‘prefiguring’ the way we might run a post-neoliberal, or even post-capitalist society. For OWS, networking is the most democratic and effective medium of resistance and also the raison d’etre of a new society transformed from the bottom-up.

The network is thus claimed by natural and social scientists, corporations, governments and citizens, by those wielding power and those opposing them. It is used variously to diagnose, analyse, prescribe and envision the world in the 21st century. In the social sciences, its influence extends throughout the core disciplines of economics, politics, sociology and geography and well beyond. Yet, despite overwhelming consensus about the reality and virtues of the network society, my research has been dedicated to critiquing it and, in essence, trying to prove it wrong. There is now a growing body of academic work coming round to the idea that, despite the immense power of the ideology of networks it neither describes the world adequately, nor serves as a blueprint for transforming it.

 You can download the PDF at the SSRN page.