Cultural Dilemmas

Progressives need to offer wider, deeper appeal

Cultural Dilemmas of Progressive Politics: Styles of Engagement Among Grassroots Activists, by Stephen Hart
(292 pp., $14 paperback, University of Chicago Press)

a book note from Gene TeSelle

[5-17-01]

This book starts with a problem: for thirty years people working for social justice, by adopting a cool style and a calculated strategy, have let the right seize the high ground of our religious and cultural traditions. His answer: progressives need to start doing what he calls "cultural work," paying attention not only to substance but to "style." Hart differentiates between the "constrained" style of rational argument and the "expansive" style that is more expressive of the values shared by most Americans. Like other observers, he notes that environmentalists are often the least "constrained," expressing "green values" and almost never cutting off discussion or narrowing its scope merely in order to get something accomplished.

It is not surprising to hear this from Hart. In an earlier book, What Does the Lord Require? (1992), he argued that Americans are likely to take more progressive stances when they "put on their religious hat" than when they do not. He remains optimistic about this on the basis of further sociological research, including his own. In this new book, for example, he cites evidence that hard-core support for the Religious Right agenda may be as small as 6 percent of the American public; traditional religious values have much that supports social justice, and "few Christians have much sympathy with inquisitors" (p. 224). So he is not afraid of the current "culture wars," and he is confident that progressives will win a battle that is fought out on the terrain of cultural and religious values.

He does not think, with Bellah and others in Habits of the Heart, that the country is becoming hopelessly individualistic, nor, with Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone, that there is a weakening of "civil society." (The main weakening that he sees is a bifurcation of the traditional advocacy organizations into some that are only national in scope and others that are only local. Since most people are far more involved in civil society than in politics, local participation is likely to do more good than an increase in bureaucratic and corporate attitudes.) Activists, he adds, are more likely to have a positive assessment of the people and of popular culture than many academics are, being in closer touch with them. His thesis, then, is that civil society is robust; it is the "decoupling" of widely held values from political life that needs to be reversed.

Hart engages in a detailed examination of two successful social movements - an Alinsky-style organization in Milwaukee called MICAH, and an Amnesty International chapter in Buffalo. Their successes, he thinks, come from permitting the use of a more "expansive" rhetoric. In the first case there is constant emphasis on the values held by the participating religious congregations and the tradition of civic participation; people are asked where they are hurting, what their self-interest is, and how they can speak for themselves. All of this is expressed "ritually" in the carefully scripted gatherings of the organization and in its public demonstrations, whose flyers resemble worship bulletins. In the second case, the Amnesty chapter is driven by the "transcendent" values of human rights, often reinforced by personal narratives of encounters with situations of injustice and especially with the victims.

Hart knows that inside both movements there are also "constraints" on discussion. Not all issues are aired, and decisions must be made about specific actions; these groups are seeking political change, after all. Too much "expansive discourse," Hart acknowledges, can create a politics that runs at "a very high ethical temperature" and becomes intolerant or engages in constant acts of "witness" (p. 227). But on the relative scale, he argues, there is a need for more expression of personal and group values, and a more "culturally engaged" approach to politics, he thinks, would be generally to the benefit of social justice.

When he moves toward a conclusion, perhaps his most interesting contribution is the positive spin he puts on post-modernism and its attention to "narratives." He is especially appreciative of Durkheim, who championed the political values of freedom and equality not in "Enlightenment" terms, as deliverances of universal reason concerning the isolated individual, but on a fully historical and cultural basis. Durkheim offered a "narrative" according to which human society gradually, even painfully, comes to discover individuality, learning in the process that individuality can be protected and nurtured only through mutuality and interdependence. There are many, in both the Enlightenment and the liberationist schools of thought, who assume that the rights of the human person are best served by limiting the scope of government or diminishing the role of cultural and religious traditions, as though we need merely to remove restraints and let human nature shine forth. But if the recognition of freedom and equality is a historical achievement, this also means that those values can be maintained only through continuing "cultural work," protecting and nurturing them through a robust public life that includes plenty of explicit debate about values, often at a passionate level that involves symbolic actions.

There are many on the left who fear that the emphasis of the last thirty years on "lifestyle issues" and "identity politics" has created disunity, while economic interests will serve to unify a wide range of constituencies. The disagreement is not limited to the left; conservatives, too, are divided between those who stress "traditional values" at all costs and those who are willing to compromise on issues like abortion and gay rights in order to gain more freedom for markets. The options can be laid out in a grid that looks like this:

Issues Addressed Modes of Political Engagement

Expansive Constrained

Cultural (A) Cultural radicalism (B) Negotiation of group interests by culturally defined groups

Economic (C) Morally based (D) Deal-making on concern with economic issues

The two extremes, A and D, are the most obvious possibilities; but the former seems too "hot" to many people, the latter too "cool." The others, B and C, involve a combination--either passionate substance and cool style, or passionate style and cool substance; and on reflection it seems that most successful political activity is characterized by one or both of these combinations. If there are dangers in unleashing religious passions or encouraging identity politics, many of those dangers are overcome in the very process of making clear distinctions like these, enabling us to act with better awareness of what is really going on.

--Gene TeSelle