Now here is a book I am going to go out and buy right away, based on the review by Malcolm Gladwell review in this week's New Yorker: Charles Tilly, Why? Princeton University Press, 2006.
I should preface this by saying that I have long enjoyed Tilly's work, stretching back to The Formation of National States in Western Europe, through to his marvelous article, "War Making and State Making as Organized Crime," and his audacious macro-historical-sociological-political analyses like that in Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1992. Even though I am a Chinese politics guy, I have a soft spot for Tilly books.
That being said, I was happy to read Gladwell's review. Not only did it suggest that Tilly was challenging the straight-laced, positivist, rationalist mainstream of American social science by suggesting that techinical explanations of social phenomenon are not necessarily superior to other sorts of reasoning or story-telling, but, in doing so he is inadvertently (at least I think this is inadvertent) opening a door for someone like me to argue that a Confucian-inflected world view might yield important insights into how people create and understand explanations. And that's what I will briefly do below the jump.
Here's a shorter Gladwell on Tilly:
In Tilly’s view, we rely on four general categories of reasons. The first is what he calls conventions—conventionally accepted explanations. Tilly would call “Don’t be a tattletale” a convention. The second is stories, and what distinguishes a story ...is a very specific account of cause and effect.....
Then there are codes, which are high-level conventions, formulas that invoke sometimes recondite procedural rules and categories. If a loan officer turns you down for a mortgage, the reason he gives has to do with your inability to conform to a prescribed standard of creditworthiness. Finally, there are technical accounts: stories informed by specialized knowledge and authority.....Tilly argues that we make two common errors when it comes to understanding reasons. The first is to assume that some kinds of reasons are always better than others—that there is a hierarchy of reasons, with conventions (the least sophisticated) at the bottom and technical accounts at the top. That’s wrong, Tilly says: each type of reason has its own role.
Tilly’s second point flows from the first, and it’s that the reasons people give aren’t a function of their character—that is, there aren’t people who always favor technical accounts and people who always favor stories. Rather, reasons arise out of situations and roles.....
I was trained, as a social scientist, to believe that there is a hierarchy of reasons and that technical explanations - the ones that we rationalist social scientists create - are superior. Conventions and story telling are mere common sense (a dirty word for positivists) and anecdote.
For many, Tilly's view will come as no surprise. But, for me, it is a refreshing reminder of the complexity of human thought and practice. Yes, technical social science tells us something, but it does not tell us everything and it may not be able to tell us what we need to know about certain things - always a good point to keep in mind.
Where is Confucius in all of this? If we think in normative-philosophical terms and not in sociological terms (I say this because I was talking with a sociologist of Korea yesterday who said, when thinking of social structures, it is virtually impossible to separate Confucianism from patriarchy, something that, philosophically, must be done if Confucian thought is to be made relevant in a modern context), Confucianism is a particular kind of communitarianism. That is, a modern Confucianism would generally agree with these kind of communitarian claims:
...methodological claims about the importance of tradition and social context for moral and political reasoning, ontological or metaphysical claims about the social nature of the self, and normative claims about the value of community.
The particularity of Confucianism comes with its insistence that the most important social contexts are those based upon our closet loving relationships: our families, our dearest friends, our most trusted companions. Confucianism does not move first to larger-scale social formations, like "nation" or "state" or "ethnic group", for ethical standards. It works from the inside out: ethical action is predicated on continual fulfillment of our most immediate familial and social duties.
The connection with Tilly, then, is that a Confucian perspective would agree that how we understand the world (what we might take as a good reason or justification for some action) and how we act in the world (what reasons we, ourselves, give for our actions) is shaped by our social context. Our choice of language or mode of reason-making (i.e. story-telling v. technical explanation) will depend upon what kind of situation we are confronting and what social purpose we are pursuing. Gladwell gets at this quite nicely when he says:
...The husband who uses a story to explain his unhappiness to his wife—“Ever since I got my new job, I feel like I’ve just been so busy that I haven’t had time for us”—is attempting to salvage the relationship. But when he wants out of the marriage, he’ll say, “It’s not you—it’s me.” He switches to a convention. As his wife realizes, it’s not the content of what he has said that matters. It’s his shift from the kind of reason-giving that signals commitment to the kind that signals disengagement. Marriages thrive on stories. They die on conventions.
This has a Confucian ring to it: our duty to cultivate our marital commitments requires that we take the time to give full and detailed story-telling reasons to our spouses when we explain what we do or want to do. Unthinking conventional responses are, in a sense, irresponsible. And a legalistic code-like response would be remote and cold. How we explain ourselves - our speech and style - should be shaped by social context and purpose.
It makes me think of Chapter 10 of the Analects, where Confucius is described as acting in very particular ways, based upon circumstance and intention. Here is one passage:
In his native village, Confucius was simple and sincere, as if he couldn't speak. But at court or ancestral temple, though always cautious and reverent, he spoke openly and easily.
At court, speaking to lower officials, he was forthright. Speaking with higher officials, he was diplomatic. And speaking with the sovereign, he was wary - wary and self-assured. (10.1)
It may sound like Confucius is acting and speaking inconsistently or insincerely. But, as Tilly reminds us, how we speak, how we present reasons, depends upon our audience, our context, and our aims. There is no one right way to explain that will fit all situations, there is no singular and supreme rationality; rather, there is a complex weave of human interaction that must be assessed and engaged and diversely articulated.
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