This thesis argues that the language of communitarianism was evident in the political narratives adopted by the SNP and Labour Party in Scotland during the period 1999 - 2011. It offers a critique of ...communitarian philosophy and analysis of the primarily implicit role that this branch of political thought played in shaping the ideas, policies and manifestos of both parties during the first twelve yeas in which a measure of legislative and executive power was devolved from London to Edinburgh. It contends that, whilst adopting divergent strategies, each was inspired by communitarian theories; albeit in rather different ways. Both however, took what may be perceived as a 'communitarian turn' in their respective political narratives, in order to cope with the distinct challenges that each faced.
In this wide-ranging interdisciplinary work, Paul W. Kahn argues that political order is founded not on contract but on sacrifice. Because liberalism is blind to sacrifice, it is unable to explain ...how the modern state has brought us to both the rule of law and the edge of nuclear annihilation. We can understand this modern condition only by recognizing that any political community, even a liberal one, is bound together by faith, love, and identity. Putting Liberalism in Its Place draws on philosophy, cultural theory, American constitutional law, religious and literary studies, and political psychology to advance political theory. It makes original contributions in all these fields. Not since Charles Taylor’s The Sources of the Self has there been such an ambitious and sweeping examination of the deep structure of the modern conception of the self.
Revisiting African philosophy's classic questions, D. A. Masolo advances
understandings of what it means to be human -- whether of African or other origin.
Masolo reframes indigenous knowledge as ...diversity: How are we to understand the
place and structure of consciousness? How does the everyday color the world we know?
Where are the boundaries between self and other, universal and particular, and
individual and community? From here, he takes a dramatic turn toward Africa's
current political situation and considers why individual rights and freedoms have
not been recognized, respected, demanded, or enforced. Masolo offers solutions for
containing socially destructive conduct and antisocial tendencies by engaging
community. His unique thinking about community and the role of the individual
extends African philosophy in new, global directions.
In this article the recent transformations of citizenship in the Netherlands are analysed in relation to a developing form of governmentality. We regard citizenship as a state regulated technique of ...in‐ and exclusion and a crucial instrument in the management of populations. Taking the Dutch contexts of immigration and integration as our case, we argue that cultural assimilationism and neo‐liberalism appear in a double helix: they combine to form a new governmental strategy we call neo‐liberal communitarianism. Neo‐liberal communitarianism is the underlying rationale of a population management that operates both in an individualizing (citizenship as individual participation and responsibility) and a de‐individualizing way (‘community’ at various aggregate and localized levels as frame of ‘integration’). It thus combines a communitarian care of a Dutch culturally grounded national community – conceived as traditionally‘enlightened’ and ‘liberal’– with a neo‐liberal emphasis on the individual's responsibility to achieve membership of that community. ‘Community’ is thereby selectively seen as mobilized and present (when immigrant integration is concerned) or as latently present and still in need of mobilization (when indigenous Dutch are concerned). Concomitantly, a repressive responsibilization and a facilitative responsibilization are aimed at these two governmentally differentiated populations.
This paper reflects on Bernard Matolino’s contribution to philosophy. For heuristic purposes, I stipulate a distinction between what we may call the negative and positive projects when considering a ...philosopher’s body of work. The ‘negative project’ of a philosopher’s work involves his critical engagement with the extant literature in his discipline. There will be leading thinkers, theories or even schools of thought at any given time and in any discipline. One of the ways the voice and perspectives of a thinker emerges is through critical interaction with these thinkers, theories and schools of thought. I describe this part of the researcher’s work as ‘negative’ largely because it involves criticism, revision or even outright rejection of certain ideas/views/arguments in the literature. The positive project of the philosopher’s work focuses on his own distinctive and novel contribution to the field. Beyond criticism, revisions and repudiation of others’ ideas/views, a philosopher might also want to posit their own ideas or theories in the discipline. A careful reading of Matolino’s work will reveal both dimensions, the negative and positive projects. The aim of this paper is to throw a spotlight on Matolino’s work by focusing on the negative project as his contribution to African philosophy (without suggesting that there is no positive project in his corpus in philosophy).
While there has been much discussion in recent decades on the nature of social capital and its importance in online interactions, it is my contention that these discussions have been dominated by the ...American Communitarian tradition. In this article, I begin with an overview of American Communitarianism to identify the key elements therein that are found in contemporary theories of social capital. Following this, I expose some of the weaknesses of this tradition and apply Bourdieu's distinctive theoretical framework to online interactions to demonstrate the fecundity of Bourdieu's sociological perspective when applied to contemporary online interactions. To do this, I examine interactions online that involve 'internet memes', as digital inhabitants themselves colloquially define them. It is my contention that an agonistic model, rather than a communitarian one, best describes the online interactions of digital inhabitants.
With the collapse of European socialism in the late 1980s, ascendancy of the liberal capitalist democracy and individual self-interest became prevalent in the West. In contrast, many polities in ...Asia, both by tradition and choice, have explicitly adopted communitarianism as a national ideology, for example Confucianism in Korea, Hong Kong and Japan, Islam in Malaysia and the Panca Sila in Indonesia. Here, communitarianism arguably informs public policies and political practices and the concept of the 'social' in terms of responsibilities and collective welfare is preserved. Communitarian Politics in Asia examines instances in southeast and east Asian countries where communitarianism is both articulated as national ideology and embedded as the ethos of social life and assesses the relative merits of a set of practices in their respective local political context. The book not only augments existing international debate on liberalism and communitarianism but also provides empirical examples of communitarian political practices that will substantiate and/or refute conceptual points, such as redistributive justice and costs to individuals, in this ongoing debate.
Chua Beng Huat is Professor of Sociology at the National University of Singapore.
How not to Understand Community Balogun, Babalola Joseph
Conatus - journal of philosophy,
06/2023, Volume:
8, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Robert Bellah’s article “Community Properly Understood…” is critical of the conventional conception of community as a product of consensus established by shared values and goals among people of ...common social reality. The need for such a critical approach is arguably encouraged by the rather imprecise deployment of the notion of community in the vast communitarian literature, a deployment which truly raises issues of concern over what the term ‘community’ really means. Bellah’s article is one of the numerous responses to this quest. This paper challenges Bellah’s view on community and offers some arguments to demonstrate why his conception of community may not be adequate. While the uniqueness of his argument is not in doubt, the paper argues that Bellah commits a straw man fallacy by conflating a normative question, “what ought we to do to achieve a working and progressive community?” with the descriptive question, “what is community?” The paper argues that an adequate conception of community must be such that its conception is acceptable to both the liberals and the communitarians. To achieve this, the paper introduces the notion of shared spaces to the conceptualization of the concept of community, and thereby arrives at the definition of community in terms with which both sides of the debate can relate. The paper concludes that with an appropriate concept of community, it would be obvious, contrary to the popular opinion, that liberals and communitarians are both committed to the survival of the community, and that they only differ in their respective approaches to achieving this common goal.
How not to Understand Community Babalola Joseph Balogun
Conatus - journal of philosophy,
06/2023, Volume:
8, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Robert Bellah’s article “Community Properly Understood…” is critical of the conventional conception of community as a product of consensus established by shared values and goals among people of ...common social reality. The need for such a critical approach is arguably encouraged by the rather imprecise deployment of the notion of community in the vast communitarian literature, a deployment which truly raises issues of concern over what the term ‘community’ really means. Bellah’s article is one of the numerous responses to this quest. This paper challenges Bellah’s view on community and offers some arguments to demonstrate why his conception of community may not be adequate. While the uniqueness of his argument is not in doubt, the paper argues that Bellah commits a straw man fallacy by conflating a normative question, “what ought we to do to achieve a working and progressive community?” with the descriptive question, “what is community?” The paper argues that an adequate conception of community must be such that its conception is acceptable to both the liberals and the communitarians. To achieve this, the paper introduces the notion of shared spaces to the conceptualization of the concept of community, and thereby arrives at the definition of community in terms with which both sides of the debate can relate. The paper concludes that with an appropriate concept of community, it would be obvious, contrary to the popular opinion, that liberals and communitarians are both committed to the survival of the community, and that they only differ in their respective approaches to achieving this common goal.
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