Epilogue
So where does all this theorizing leave us? One obvious conclusion is that theorists
interpret peoples’ motivations in numerous, often inconsistent ways. Whereas conflict theorists
argue that people oppose challenges to their ideological illusions, social constructionists
encourage people to embrace such challenges. Whereas functionalists claim that societies only
persist if people conform to social norms, risk theorists note that mindless conformity may
jeopardize a society’s survival. Whereas rational choice theorists presume that people act only in
their individual self-interests, critical theorists point out that these interests are manipulated
through advertisements, making people slaves to corporate interests rather than free agents of
their own self-interests. Whereas identity theorists describe human behavior as motivated to
meet others’ expectations, anti-essentialist theorists explain how these expectations can be
weakened through unintelligible demeanor that defies classification (into male versus female,
competent versus incompetent, etc.). Having not taken the introductory chapter to heart,
someone might exclaim at this point, “Since social scientists themselves cannot make up their
minds as to the motivations behind people’s behaviors, why should I believe any of them?”
Perhaps the easiest answer to this question is that it represents a misunderstanding of
what a theory is. The questioner has forgotten that theories are interpretive languages. In
particular, social scientific theories are languages for interpreting human behavior. If one’s
objective is knowing “which theory to believe” (i.e., which is true), it is time to again be
reminded that it is meaningless to speak of one language (e.g., Arabic) as being “more true” than
another (e.g., Japanese). Languages simply aid in the interpretation of phenomena. 1 They are
not truths or facts (and thus are called “theories” with good reason). Yet this does not imply that
1
At this point postmodernists like Baudrillard would take the position (not the fact) that no
phenomenon—no fact—exists independent of some theory.
1
phenomena lend themselves equally to one or another theoretical interpretation. At issue is not
whether a social theory applies universally to all human behavior; at issue are the behaviors to
which the theory applies.
Moreover, since scientific theories are constrained to be logically consistent, a theory’s
ambiguity lies not in the theorist’s words but in the lack of correspondence these words have
with the specific human behavior to which the theory is being applied. (In other words, do not
blame the theorist for your confusion. You may simply be unfamiliar with the social setting
about which she is writing.) Of course, this is precisely what makes study of a foreign language
so difficult in the classroom but much easier in a country where the language is expressed in
deeds as well as words. So let’s move from our classroom to other social settings in which our
theoretical languages correspond closely to the lives of natives whose motivations may differ
fundamentally from our own.
Most Americans think of themselves as Westerners, just like most European and
Scandinavian people. Well, think again. Take the concept of “fairness,” for example. 2
Fairness is of prime importance in Sweden and can be very specifically defined:
all should live well, but no one should have much more than anyone else does. In
the United States, by way of contrast, fairness does not normally refer to what one
has but to what opportunity one has. (Robinowitz and Carr 2001, p. 21)
Although the English word, “fair,” has been incorporated into German vernacular, its meaning
has more to do with honesty and social responsibility (ehrlichkeit) than following the rules. The
same holds for the Netherlands.
2
For a more extensive discussion, see chapter 5 (“Being FAIR: Another Key Anglo Value and Its
Cultural Underpinnings”) in Anna Wierzbicka’s (2006) book, English: Meaning and Culture
(Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press).
2
When quarrels break out during a game, parents in the US typically remind their
children to “play fair,” whereas Dutch parents remind them to “play honest”
(eerlijk spelen). The distinction here lies between parents’ emphases on “how”
versus “why” their children are playing. US parents are primarily concerned that
the game’s rules are followed, and that whoever wins or loses did so “fair and
square” (i.e., having followed the rules throughout). In this way US children are
taught not to be bad losers, whereas their Dutch counterparts are taught not to be
bad winners. (Roberts 2008, p. 89)
In European and Scandinavian caretaker states, the distribution of life’s rewards is relatively
equitable, leaving people less concerned with concrete goals than with the process of generating
the rewards enjoyed by all.
By setting up a system for making individuals’ goal-attainment less problematic, these
peoples come to see themselves less as competitors for existing rewards than as collaborators in
the production (during work hours) of a mutually beneficial life together. Unlike the US where
social reality is a field of opportunities (within which each competes for individual advantage),
here the shared reality is a system for bringing the needs of the disadvantaged into alignment
with everyone else. It is a world within which the functionalist depiction of society makes
sense—a world in which people value the functioning of their social system ahead of their
personal self-interest. Moreover, given these people’s insistence on a socially engineered
common destiny, risk theorists’ critiques find an audience in public servants (i.e., in those
making decisions that could potentially jeopardize the functioning of the system they are
entrusted to protect).
3
Well then, what about people in Asian countries like Japan, China, Malaysia, and India?
Of course, it would be a gross oversimplification to argue that all people from Southeast Asia
think alike, just (as I have argued) as it would not be legitimate to argue that all “Westerners”
have the same motivations. Yet it would be equally illegitimate to characterize my argument in
the last two paragraphs as having denied the existence of socially responsible collaborators in the
US or of egoistic agents in Scandinavia. At issue in this travelogue is not the denial of
exceptional cases but the characterization of “the default person” in these societies. Instead, my
argument is that for interactions to proceed smoothly in a society so populous that numerous
daily interactions are among strangers, members of the society will require a default
understanding of how one interprets a new person (as agent, collaborator, persona, follower).
Goffman (1974, p. 21) referred to such reality-defining starting points as “primary frameworks.”
In this case the initial reality is one of “what a person really is,” at least at the outset of a
relationship. This said, I now return to a characterization of the Southeast Asian primary
framework of essentialist personhood—a framework prior to the establishment of alternative
personal attributions that could evolve beyond this default understanding.
When Asian young people come to the US for graduate study, they typically find
themselves incapable of making friends among their American classmates. All they hear from
them are encouragement and complements: Where is the advice, the criticism, the ridicule?
Americans always politely accept whatever you do. Moreover, it is comical how easy they are to
please. Even a student can easily make a US professor happy by complementing him/her as a
teacher.
The previous paragraph’s depiction should not be misconstrued as suggesting that
Southeast Asians are arrogant and mean spirited. Instead, my argument is that these people
4
generally seek out judgments from those more prestigious, and thus wiser and more discerning
than themselves. They come from a world in which their every action is evaluated by observers,
each of whom is ranked along a prestige hierarchy. The more prestigious an observer, the more
biting the critique—the most painful of which consists of politely ignoring one’s actions. Thus,
for example, a lowly student might be pleased by a professor’s subtle (i.e., not dismissingly
polite) complement. But a professor who is pleased by a student’s complement? This is at best,
puzzling; at worst, ridiculous.
Like Goffman’s actors, the motivation throughout is to provide one’s audience with a
convincing performance of what one is: parent, daughter, student, etc. One’s motivation is to
continuously retain one’s intelligibility as the embodiment of a particular identity in the eyes of
observers more prestigious than oneself. Friends are “safe observers” whose constructive
criticisms assist one in this effort.
In the US people have a saying, “A friend is many things, but a critic is not one of
them.” In contrast, the Chinese refer to such noncritical people as “meat and
drink friends,” who are no friends at all.… As the Korean Zen master, Seung
Sahn, allegedly said, “The one who praises you is a thief. The one who criticizes
you is your true friend.” (Roberts 2008, pp. 112-3)
Whereas in the US friends offer encouragement to make agents’ goals seem more achievable, in
Southeast Asian societies friends make criticisms to (constructively) reduce the intelligibility of
personae’s performances. Returning to my objective of locating social settings relevant to this
book’s readings, note that such Southeast Asian acts of friendship have noteworthy parallels with
anti-essentialists’ strategies for making stigmatized identities unintelligible to others (e.g., in
5
Ridgeway’s modification of performance expectations, Collins’s reevaluation of scholarly
epistemologies, and Butler’s contestation of performative practices).
Finally, let’s consider social dynamics typical of the Islamic world. Traveling from the
US to Southeast Asia, “the default person” switched from an agent (an object-oriented
subjectivity) to a persona (an observed objectivity). In each case, social reality consists of a field
of objects—respectively, of sought-after goals or of persons’ embodiments. Now imagine a
world not of objects but of articulations. Traveling from Scandinavia to Pakistan, “the default
person” switches from a collaborator (an articulating subjectivity) to a follower (an ongoing
articulation). Although social reality is a normative system in each case, only the collaborator
may articulate an alternative normative order (e.g., sadomasochistic recreation after work hours)
to the one shared by other members of society. In contrast, the follower is forever interpreted
according to a single, universal doctrine.
At the present time, the very notion of a secular jurisdiction and authority—of a
so-to-speak unsanctified part of life that lies outside the scope of religious law and
those who uphold it—is seen as an impiety, indeed as the ultimate betrayal of
Islam. The righting of this wrong is the principal aim of Islamic revolutionaries
and, in general, of those described as Islamic fundamentalists. (Lewis 1988, p. 3)
Since they cannot choose their language (or system) of articulation, they are themselves ongoing
articulations in accordance with this doctrine. In brief, followers are not speakers but speech, as
it were.
These are the types of persons described by conflict theorists—persons motivated via
Marx’s fetishism, Althusser’s interpolation, or Bourdieu’s illusio. Accordingly, conflict
6
typically results when motivations divert from doctrinal norms. Yet not only must such
“corrective violence” be done in normatively accepted ways, it must also succeed.
After nearly thirty years, the son of (a) murdered man killed his father’s killer
while the old man was lying, helpless and immobile, in a hospital bed. This act,
which led to the permanent exile of the killer, was much praised by the Pukhtun
men. (Lindholm 1982, p. 77)
In Pakistan’s Swat Valley retribution may take years. 3 Yet their doctrine of familial honor is
timeless.
As in US and Southeast Asian societies, the meaning of friendship also reveals much
about Islamic societies:
(F)riendships among doctrinists are usually asymmetric ones in which a powerful
follower persuades less powerful followers that it would be unjust for them to
punish a third party under the more powerful follower’s protection. Like the
essentialist whose ridicule risks laughter from someone of higher prestige, the
doctrinist’s rule-implementations risk opposition from someone more powerful.
Thus powerful doctrinists “keep the peace” through friendly warnings that they
are PERMITTED NOT to implement rules that remain unopposed. (Roberts 2008, pp.
139-140)
At stake in these potential conflicts is whose interpretation is finally accepted. If a powerful
patriarch provides a convincing (doctrinal) justification for others to make peace, social
constructionists would argue that such rhetoric serves merely to quell alternative interpretations
of the dispute at hand. For Bakhtin it reflects the centripetal force of poetics; for Baudrillard it is
3
If ye punish, then punish with the like of that wherewith ye were afflicted. But if ye endure
patiently, verily is it better for the patient. (Qur'ān XVI: 126)
7
classic neorealism; and for Edwards, Ashmore, and Potter it is the rhetoric of no rhetoric. And
so the constructionist interpretation of doctrinal rhetoric is as blasphemous in the Islamic world
as the anti-essentialist depiction of essentialist performativity is unintelligible in Southeast Asia.
Such nondoctrinal interpretation would be as unimaginable for the follower as would be
nonperformative embodiment to a persona.
With luck our travelogue will have left you without a theoretical “home” (i.e., with a
recognition that theoretical languages are more appropriate to some social settings than others).
Very broadly speaking (and relative to each other), rational choice theory accounts for much US
behavior, functionalism accounts for much Scandinavian and West European behavior, identity
theories account for much Southeast Asian behavior, and conflict theory accounts for much of
Islamic fundamentalists’ behaviors. Thus the issue is not which theory is best, but which is most
appropriate to the social setting at hand. Restricted relativisms afford some guidance in this
regard via Simmel’s distinct explanations of people’s simultaneous needs for individualization
and socialization, Foucault’s distinct historical illustrations of the dialectics of power and
knowledge, and Žižek’s accounts of the distinct cognitive dynamics underlying Lacan’s four
discourses.
Let me conclude with some advice for the student who, after having diligently read all of
this book’s theoretical arguments, still holds faithfully to a single universalistic perspective. I am
referring here to anyone who still believes that people’s intentions are always for “personal selfinterest,” “common welfare,” “acceptable identity-performances,” “doctrinal purity,” or some
other universal motivation—a belief that one or more facts exist independent of theories. You
see, when armed with such an indisputable truth, one might believe oneself able to compare
some of this book’s theories in terms of their distance from (or proximity to) this truth. Although
8
doing this is ill-advised and might even yield a failing grade, rest assured: You will not get a
failing grade if you leave the course with your belief intact.
This said, my gentle request to you is to think back to an undergraduate or high school
speech class in which you were required to argue a position with which you personally
disagreed. Most likely you did not change your position after having given your speech.
Likewise, to do well in a contemporary theory course you must ignore any personal belief you
may have regarding the existence of facts independent of a theory about these facts.
Accordingly, you are asked not to argue for the superiority of one theory relative to another.
This is the academic equivalent of the US government’s “don’t ask; don’t tell” policy. As long
as you keep your theoretical universalism out of your theoretical writing, your instructor will not
rule your theoretical universalism as sufficient cause for a failing grade. (It’s a promise.)
Mastery of contemporary theories calls for a command of the grammars (i.e., the axiomatic
rules) underlying their theoretical languages—grammars that are simply different, maybe
contradictory, but never better or worse than each other. Demonstrate this, and you will have
done well—no matter what your personal beliefs about the theories may be.
9