[Peace-discuss] Coercive harmony at WEFT

[Alfred Kagan]

I appreciate Ricky's comment, especially the following parts:

> it is not disagreement or criticism or "the
> contentious" that is at issue in AWARE, it is jeering,
> shouting, etc., which is the opposite of open debate.
> In fact, it shuts people up, which is presumably its
> purpose.

> And I actually thought, as far as the WEFT meeting
> goes, people were extraordinarily well behaved under
> the tense circumstances and that this restraint was
> what allowed the debate to go on in a way that was as
> informative (at least in so far as people were willing
> to explain themselves), challenge the chair
> successfully on an issue that the majority felt was
> unjust in the proceedings, and ultimately vote not to
> recall Randall.

I strongly supported Randall last night.  i think a comparison of the 
current situations in AWARE and WEFT is quite instructive, and I think 
Ricky has captured it well.  Those who think apples are oranges have a 
very confused sense of taste.


On Sep 21, 2005, at 11:08 AM, Ricky Baldwin wrote:

> I very much like the quote below: "pull no punches
> when you criticize, but [...] do so without jeering".
> I believe it speaks directly to the controversy in
> AWARE, though much of what is below strays far afield:
> it is not disagreement or criticism or "the
> contentious" that is at issue in AWARE, it is jeering,
> shouting, etc., which is the opposite of open debate.
> In fact, it shuts people up, which is presumably its
> purpose.
>
> True, Americans in general do not like to disagree.
> But we often do it.  And it is certainly not the
> reason we do not have universal health care, etc.  Nor
> is it, by the way, the reason the AFL-CIO supported
> the Vietnam War or any such thing.  I think more
> likely the reason is that we ordinary folks are not so
> well organized as soem European countries, and that
> when we have been organized that organization has been
> brutally repressed.
>
> And I actually thought, as far as the WEFT meeting
> goes, people were extraordinarily well behaved under
> the tense circumstances and that this restraint was
> what allowed the debate to go on in a way that was as
> informative (at least in so far as people were willing
> to explain themselves), challenge the chair
> successfully on an issue that the majority felt was
> unjust in the proceedings, and ultimately vote not to
> recall Randall.  And if a few people expressed
> opinions that I think were wrong and maybe even in
> some cases ridiculous and fawning, well, isn't that,
> too, in the range of opinion that we allow?  What of
> it?  The debate was had, and I think Randall learned
> more about how others were reacting to his efforts --
> which will be invaluable to his future attempts to
> work with others at WEFT.
>
> My two cents, anyway,
> Ricky
>
>
> --- "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu> wrote:
>
>> The attempt to recall Randall from the WEFT Board of
>> Directors
>> (only part of the campaign against him at the sadly
>> ingrown
>> local station) fell short of the required two-thirds
>> majority,
>> but only by a few votes.  It was a disturbing
>> display, from
>> pathetic faculty members demanding to know if they
>> were going
>> to be sued to apparatchiks declaiming like Antony
>> that
>> Randall's accusers "are all honorable men."  I came
>> away
>> thinking as I have for a while that we were seeing
>> an example
>> of a more general phenomenon, one not unknown to
>> AWARE, that's
>> been given a name by Laura Nader.  It's a "movement
>> against
>> the contentious in anything."  Here's a note about
>> it that I
>> posted to a WEFT list.  --CGE
>>
>> ==============================
>>
>> To: wefta at lists.chambana.net
>>
>> [I thought the most interesting aspect of last
>> night's meeting
>> was provided by those who, noticing for the first
>> time that
>> someone being ridden out of town on a rail -- and
>> observing
>> substantial citizens preparing the tar and feathers
>> -- decide
>> to join the activity, because there's so much
>> citizen
>> involvement.  In this case, a small group who seem
>> to think
>> WEFT is theirs have mounted a campaign against
>> Randall Cotton
>> on the sole charge that he tried to get things done
>> at the
>> station -- and too many WEFTies were willing to go
>> along with
>> them.  This is a bad sign for the health of WEFT and
>> an
>> example of what anthropologist Laura Nader has
>> called
>> "coercive harmony."  She describes it as "basically
>> a movement
>> against the contentious in anything, and it has very
>> strange
>> bedfellows, from people with various psychiatric
>> therapy
>> movements, Christian fundamentalists, corporations
>> sick of
>> paying lawyers, activists who believe we should love
>> each
>> other ... coercive harmony [is] an ideology that
>> says if you
>> disagree, you should really keep your mouth shut."
>> Apparently
>> Randall didn't do that.  Here's a longer account of
>> what
>> WEFT's playing into.  --CGE]
>>
>>   July 13, 2001
>>   Harmony Coerced Is Freedom Denied
>>   By LAURA NADER
>>
>> We have heard a lot recently about the need for
>> consensus,
>> social harmony, and civility. At the end of the
>> presidential
>> election, for instance, both George W. Bush and Al
>> Gore spoke
>> of the importance of unity. But Americans need to
>> remember
>> that our country was founded by dissenters. We need
>> to be
>> reminded periodically of all the good that has come
>> from
>> outrage and indignation, and of what happens to
>> democracy when
>> people don't speak out.
>>
>> In "Seduced by Civility," a 1996 article in The
>> Nation,
>> Benjamin DeMott looks at the current state of
>> political
>> manners and the crisis of democratic values. He
>> points out
>> that in the 19th century, people who criticized
>> abolitionists
>> for being uncivil were the ones who were willing to
>> let
>> slavery continue. His conclusion is that we must
>> recognize
>> today's incivility for what it is: a justified
>> rejection of
>> the powers that be, who are more interested in
>> civility than
>> in poverty.
>>
>> I believe that indignation can make Americans
>> more-engaged
>> citizens -- and isn't that a basic purpose of most
>> colleges
>> and universities? I am appalled to hear young people
>> speak
>> positively about not being judgmental. (I'm sure
>> that when a
>> student said, in an evaluation of my course, "Dr.
>> Nader is a
>> pretty good professor, except she has opinions," the
>> remark
>> wasn't intended to be a compliment; nonetheless, I
>> took it as
>> one.)
>>
>> Many college students today were taught dispute
>> resolution in
>> elementary and secondary school, at the cost of
>> trading
>> justice for harmony. Often, what they remember is
>> that they
>> were silenced for the sake of civility. As
>> professors, we
>> ought to encourage our students to express their
>> opinions --
>> with outrage, when it is justified, as it often is.
>> It is our
>> duty to teach students the importance of protest
>> when our
>> society makes the unthinkable appear normal -- when
>> we dump
>> nuclear waste on American Indian reservations,
>> broaden the gap
>> between the haves and the have-nots even during a
>> time of
>> plenty, and give Ritalin to millions of American
>> children.
>>
>> Social scientists are taught to notice patterns that
>> regulate
>> speech or social life. Sometimes we follow such
>> patterns
>> through time and space, to see if we have stumbled
>> upon
>> something of social and cultural significance. In
>> The History
>> of Manners, Norbert Elias examined the links between
>> manners,
>> or etiquette, and social control. He was interested
>> in how
>> "civilizing processes," as he called them, take
>> place and how
>> they are interrelated with the organization of
>> Western
>> societies into states. He believed that the
>> standards for
>> human behavior gradually shift over the centuries
>> toward
>> greater restrictions. For example, he found that
>> people in
>> Western societies became less tolerant of spitting
>> in public
>> when they learned that the practice was acceptable
>> in the
>> non-Western societies they saw as less advanced.
>>
>> My interest in manners as a way of controlling
>> behavior came
>> from my work on village law among the Zapotec
>> Indians of
>> Oaxaca, Mexico. I found that the villagers I studied
>> were
>> highly litigious, yet valued harmony and compromise
>> in the
>> courtroom. I came to see their support of harmony as
>> part of a
>> strategy to preserve their autonomy. As long as the
>> village
>> kept its house in order, there was minimal
>> interference from
>> the Mexican government. Five hundred years of
>> colonization had
>> taught the villagers to use harmony for political
>> purposes.
>>
>> When I looked at legal reform in the United States,
>> I also
>> found harmony being used as a control, this time by
>> the
>> powerful. In the 1970's, something called
>> alternative dispute
>> resolution was born. It was a reform movement in
>> response to
>> the new cases (proponents of the movement called
>> them "garbage
>> cases") that were entering the courts after the
>> social turmoil
>> of the 1960's -- cases about civil rights,
>> environmental and
>> consumer rights, Native American and gender issues,
>> and so
>> forth. The movement favored compromise over
>> adversarial
>> procedures, harmony over social justice. Its
>> mandatory
>> mediation and binding arbitration cost us our right
>> to sue. It
>> was a war against the contentious.
>>
>> Since the 1970's, alternative dispute resolution has
>> gone
>> beyond the law, creeping into our schools, places of
>> work,
>> hospitals, and homes. Tracking the spread of such
>> coercive
>> harmony is not easy. Because it has permeated
>> society over
>> time, most people come to take it for granted or
>> assume it is
>> benign. Conversely, conflicts and disagreement have
>> come to
>> seem bad, to be avoided at all costs. I once
>> received a note
>> from a lumber activist thanking me for coining the
>> term
>> "coercive harmony." It had enabled her to recognize
>> the
>> repression of environmental activism under the
>> banner of
>> consensus and "win-win" solutions in the Clinton
>> administration's policy on logging.
>>
>> Coercive harmony has often accompanied large-scale
>> social
>> movements, including Western colonialism, Christian
>> missionary
>> work, and globalization. Historians like Jerold
>> Auerbach, at
>> Wellesley College, postulate that in the United
>> States, the
>> use of harmony as a form of social regulation by the
>> government occurs in cycles. Conflict -- for
>> example, during
>> the Civil War and the protests of the 1960's -- gets
>> out of
>> control, harmony is imposed, and after a time of
>> calm, dissent
>> erupts again.
>>
>> Europeans today are less concerned about harmony
>> than
>> Americans are. During last year's presidential
>> campaign, many
>> Europeans wondered why the candidates did not seem
>> to know how
>> to debate. One reason is that Americans consider it
>> bad
>> manners to be contentious. In fact, the
>> anthropologist Paul
>> Bohannan notes that Americans have two categories of
>> behavior:
>> polite and rude. The British, he says, add a third:
>> civil,
>> meaning that you pull no punches when you criticize,
>> but that
>> you do so without jeering. As he puts it, an
>> American has to
>> be your close friend before giving you anything but
>> praise
>> when he reviews your manuscript. The British don't
>> make that
>> kind of mistake; they understand that you really
>> want to know
>> the weak points before publication.
>>
>> The use of coercive harmony in the United States has
>> led us to
>> confuse all criticism with carping and being
>> negative. We
>> don't share the Europeans' zest for controversy. As
>> Robin
>> Lakoff, a linguist at the University of California
>> at
>> Berkeley, says, we want to be perceived as nice. And
>> we put up
>> with circumstances that Europeans would consider
>> outrageous --
>> for example, the absence of universal health care,
>> or the fact
>> that fewer than 52 percent of eligible voters cast
>> ballots in
>> the last election.
>>
>> What should be unacceptable has come to strike us as
>> so normal
>> that when we hear someone speaking frankly, we are
>> startled.
>> Not long ago, in an appearance on The NewsHour With
>> Jim
>> Lehrer, Frank Wolak, an economics professor at
>> Stanford
>> University, whitewashed the role of the utilities in
>> the
>> California energy crisis. Not surprising. What did
>> seem
>> surprising was the comment that followed from Bruce
>> Brugmann,
>> editor of The San Francisco Bay Guardian, who said
>> that the
>> professor should be working for the utilities rather
>> than
>> Stanford.
>>
>> Coercive harmony can stifle dissent for a while. But
>> if
>> dissent is too tightly bottled up, it will explode
>> -- as
>> happened in the 1960's riots in Watts, Newark, and
>> other
>> places. And the explosions don't all come from
>> members of
>> ethnic minorities: Witness the Oklahoma City bombing
>> in 1995.
>>
>> Academics should not be party to establishing an
>> ideology of
>> consensus on our increasingly corporatized campuses.
>> Instead,
>> we have a duty to investigate the dangers of
>> coercive harmony,
>> and to expose repression when it poses as consensus.
>>
>>
>> Laura Nader is a professor of anthropology at the
>> University
>> of California at Berkeley.
>>
>> http://chronicle.com Section: The Chronicle Review
>> Page: B13
>> Copyright © 2001 by The Chronicle of Higher
>> Education
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Al Kagan
African Studies Bibliographer and Professor of Library Administration
University of Illinois Library
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