2 國家作為局外人

 2 States as outsiders

😭😄🤣😀😃

以下是章節 〈2. States as Outsiders〉（國家作為局外人） 的條列式重點筆記與思考問題整理👇

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🧩 一、核心概念摘要

1️⃣ 基本論點（Introduction）

• 現代國際體系中的國家關係，往往呈現出 「建制者–局外人（Established–Outsider）」 的社會動力。

• 對某些國家的負面評價（如「落後」「流氓國家」）並非客觀事實，而是社會污名（stigma）。

• 國家在遭受戰敗或危機後，會在國內政策辯論中出現不同的「去污名策略」：

  • 模仿／同化（Assimilation）

  • 反抗／顛覆（Reversal）

  • 退縮／孤立（Isolation）

• 哪種策略會勝出，取決於當代國際秩序的「規範階層（socio-normative hierarchy）」。

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⚙️ 二、「建制者–局外人」權力動力（The established–outsider dynamic）

(1) 社會階序可在無物質差異下形成

• 艾里亞斯（Norbert Elias）研究英國小鎮 Winston Parva：

  • 兩群居民在種族、職業、收入等方面無差異。

  • 但「老居民」群體仍被視為「優越者」，壟斷聲望並貶低「新居民」。

• → 國際體系中同樣存在類似的非物質權力階序。

(2) 權力差異的根源：組織與凝聚力

• 權力不僅來自軍事或經濟資源，而來自「社會組織化程度」。

• 建制群體透過共享規範與自我認同建立內部凝聚力。

• 局外群體若缺乏共同規範，易被視為「無序」「不文明」。

(3) 羞恥與承認的社會性

• 建制者能使局外人感到羞恥，代表雙方共享同一價值體系。

• 「羞恥」即是社會連結的證據——它顯示被支配者已接受支配者的評價標準。

• → 國際體系中的「文明／野蠻」評價體系，正是這種共識化羞恥的表現。

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🧠 三、羞恥與社會邊界的範例（Grandmother–Himba metaphor）

• 作者以祖母與納米比亞 Himba 族女性 的例子說明：

  • 因兩者屬於不同文化體系，祖母無法以「羞恥」影響對方。

  • 羞恥感只有在共享社會規範的成員間才存在。

• → 前現代帝國（如奧斯曼、中國、印度）與歐洲的關係也如此：

  • 雙方互相知道對方存在，但沒有共通的規範體系。

  • 因此沒有真正的羞恥與模仿壓力。

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🌍 四、「現代性」帶來的轉折：從獨立到受恥（The modern turn）

• 十九世紀後，歐洲的「現代世界觀」成為普世規範，打破原本的文化邊界。

• 非歐洲國家開始接受歐洲制定的「文明標準」。

• 結果：

  • 他們開始內化自身的落後感；

  • 對西方的模仿與追趕，成為擺脫羞恥的方式。

• 「西方的崛起（Rise of the West）」不只是物質支配，更是一種心理與規範支配。

• → 非歐國家從此成為國際體系中的「局外人」。

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💭 五、污名在國際體系中的作用（Stigma in the international system）

(1) 社會污名的定義

• Goffman：社會會建立「正常」的屬性標準。
  → 若某行為者不符期待，即被「貶值」（tainted）。

• Bauman：污名的功能是固定他者身份，使其永遠成為被排除者。

• 作者主張：國家也會被污名化，如「未開化」「專制」「流氓國家」。

(2) 對「污名」概念的兩種反對聲

1. 現實主義反對：

   • 國家行為基於理性與實力，而非身份或評價。

   • 作者反駁：即使軍事實力的判斷，也被「社會認知」過濾（例如：誰被視為「負責任的核國家」取決於社會地位）。

2. 自由主義反對：

   • 認為描述如「民主」「理性」是客觀事實，非污名。

   • 作者指出：即使這些特徵可被量化，它們仍是社會建構的評價層級。

(3) 國際體系的例子

• 法國在1815年雖戰敗，但塔列朗以「恢復君主制」成功重獲大國地位。

• 英國1945年後仍被視為大國，靠的是文化地位與民主形象。

• 反之，奧斯曼帝國、蘇聯則被視為「病夫」「異端」。

• → 「權力」的社會性認可與污名化密不可分。

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📚 六、理論綜合與延伸

• 國家地位與認同不是中性的，而是經由社會評價制度維持。

• 污名驅動了國家行為，如改革、現代化、對抗或孤立主義。

• 「國際社會」的形成，其實是羞恥與認可的網絡化過程。

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❓七、思考問題

1. 羞恥與國家行為：

   • 被污名化的國家是否可能藉由「拒絕羞恥」而獲得新型政治自主？

   • 中國、俄羅斯或伊朗的「反西方敘事」是否正是這種逆轉策略？

2. 規範的權力：

   • 誰在定義「文明」「民主」「負責任」？

   • 當前的國際規範是否延續了歐洲中心主義的「建制者」地位？

3. 現代化的陷阱：

   • 「追趕現代」是否其實是接受羞恥邏輯？

   • 是否存在「不以西方為中心」的去污名化途徑？

4. 社會學–國際關係的橋接：

   • 艾里亞斯的社會理論能否補足現實主義或世界體系理論的盲點？

   • 「國際羞恥」是否能成為解釋外交行為的新變數？

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是否要我幫你整理成「可做成教學講義」或「理論分析筆記格式」（例如：概念表格＋理論對照＋應用範例）？那樣可快速對照像 Elias、Goffman、Wallerstein、Wendt 等人觀點。

😅😅🥴🥴😔

Much could be gained from a better understanding of the dynamics of established-outsider figurations and thus of the problems involved in the changing position of groups in relation to each other, of the rise of groups into the position of monopolistic establishment from which others are excluded, and the decline and fall from such a position to another where they themselves are, in some respects, outsiders.

Norbert Elias, Established and Outsiders

Introduction

In this chapter, I advance the argument that social relations between the states throughout the history of the modern international system have often resembled the “established-outsider” figuration outlined by Elias in his seminal work with the same title. I also demonstrate that negative assessments of states in the international system have never been value-neutral objective descriptions of reality, but are best thought of as “stigma” labels in the sociological sense. This, in turn, implies that the integration of the historically outsider states into the modern international system cannot be explained without the larger normative context of international stigmatization.

Stigmatized states are very much driven by that condition. At times when there is the opportunity to give new direction to state policy, such as the immediate aftermath of major defeat, the limited array of social strategies dealing with stigmatization are dominantly featured options in the domestic debates. The specific form those strategies take and which one ultimately gets picked is contingent on the features of the socio-normative hierarchy at a given time, but we may generally predict that strategies which satisfy the social-status cravings of his- torically stigmatized states will be both immediately preferred and easier to sustain in the long run.

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The established-outsider dynamic in the international system

There are several significant features of an “established-outsider” power dynamic, each presenting a challenge to the established wis- dom about power relations in the international system.

First of all, as Elias observed and described it, the “established and outsiders” dynamic is the most generic form of a societal hierarchy, one which, contrary to the predictions of materialist theories,1 may emerge even in situations where there is great over- lap between economic, physical, and even socio-cultural attributes between actors. In Elias’s Winston Parva study, for instance, there were “no differences in nationality, in ethnic descent, in ‘colour’ or ‘race’ between residents of the two areas; nor did they differ in their type of occupation, their income and educational levels – in a word, in their social class.”2 Nevertheless, there was a marked difference between the social power of the two groups: “one part thought of themselves as vastly superior to those of the Other,” and as a cor- ollary, this in-group was able to both monopolize privileges and at the same time make those who were excluded feel that they were socially inferior.

The cause of the power differential is the second salient fea- ture of the established-outsider dynamic. A higher degree of cohe- sion and organization among some of the members of society is all that is needed for power differentials to emerge. In Winston Parva, “one group was formed by old residents established in the neigh- bourhood for two or three generations and the other was a group of newcomers.”3 Elias observed that cohesion in the old village was the

1 For instance, according to Waltz, because international competition puts the units’ survival at risk, it follows that units cannot afford differentiation – the anarchic structure generates “like units.” Waltz does not even consider the possibility that a hierarchy may exist in such a situation; for him, the only way such a system can become hierarchical is through the creation of a formal authority structure, i.e. a world government. Theory of International Politics,

pp. 89–93. A similar materialist blind spot plagues the otherwise compelling accounts provided by World-System theory. For Wallerstein, the dominance of the European core is entirely reducible to economic dynamics and has nothing to do with cultural or political coherence. See Zolberg, “Review,” 260, and Skocpol, “Review,” 1085.

2 Elias and Scotson, Established and Outsiders, p. xvii.

3 Ibid.

 

principal cause of demarcation: “one could see here the limitations of any theory which explains power differentials only in terms of a monopolistic possession of non-human objects, such as weapons or means of production, and disregards figurational aspects of power differentials due purely to differences in the degree of organization of the human beings concerned.”4 In the Winston Parva study, the group of old residents had established among themselves “a common mode of living and a set of norms,”5 which led them to perceive the newcomers “as failing to observe these norms and restraints,”6 and as a result, anomic.7 Furthermore, as noted above, the “newcomers” in general agreed with these assessments and felt humiliated by their association with the “bad” neighborhood. This particular observa- tion of Elias should also raise questions about the early constructivist optimism8 about the benevolent effect of normative pressures in the international system.

The fact that the dominant group is able to produce feelings of shame among the members of the other group is the third notable feature of an “established-outsider” dynamic: the two groups share a common value system, and as such are best thought of as a society. After all, shame does not exist where there are no social bonds9 – it is as direct evidence of membership in a society as one could find. As Cooley noted, “the thing that moves us to pride or shame is not the mere mechanical reflection of ourselves, but an imputed senti- ment, the imagined effect of this reflection upon another’s mind.”10 Goffman also points out that embarrassment is a sign of abidance by socially prescribed behavior, not a deviance from it.11 Individuals who are not members of the same society and who do not share the same normative outlook cannot accurately conceive how they will be viewed by the other side.

In his study of stigma, Goffman remarks in passing that there is only one way for a stigmatized individual to escape untouched by

4 Ibid., p. xviii. 5 Ibid., p. xxii. 6 Ibid., p. xxiv.

7 Emile Durkheim described anomie as a state of relative normlessness. See Durkheim, Suicide.

8 E.g. Sikkink, “Transnational Politics,” 520.

9 For an overview of the concept of shame in social theory, see Scheff, “Shame and the Social Bond.”

10 Cooley, Human Nature, p. 184

11  Goffman, Interaction Ritual, p. 111.

 

his social failure: oblivion. Only a person “insulated by his alien- ation, protected by identity beliefs of his own, [may] feel that he is a full-fledged normal human being, and that we are the ones who are not quite human.”12 In effect, only a person who is not part of a society, and who therefore is aloof from its norms, can fully escape the shame that comes from being stigmatized as an inferior. For one to feel inferiority before another, one must have first accepted and internalized the normative standards that the other is using for evaluation.

Imagine my grandmother on a tourist trip to Kaokoland in north- ern Namibia, the territory of the Himba tribe. The Himba have so far remained insulated from norms that dictate nudity to be sinful, shameful, or “uncivilized,” and the Himba women go about their daily business topless. My grandmother, having lived her whole life at the intersection of Western and Muslim cultural norms, is a believer in the benefits of modernity, an advocate for modesty in dress, and has little to no awareness of the multiculturalist tolerance trends of the last decades. My grandmother would strongly disapprove of the Himba dress code. She would most likely want to convey her disapproval to the local women, in a misguided attempt to educate them. However, even if she got over the language barrier somehow, my grandmother’s comments would fall on deaf ears; she could no more shame the Himba women into covering up than they could con- vince her to shed her blouse. My grandmother’s views are irrelevant to the Himba women, as much as their views are irrelevant to her – they are not members of the same society, and neither party has to make any effort to see the world as the other sees it.

In the previous chapter, I argued that prior to the “long nineteenth century,”13 autonomous states “outside” Europe had a relationship with European states that was not unlike the relationship between my grandmother and the Himba women, with each side being vaguely aware of each other’s existence, but not shamed by the comparison. Whatever interaction existed would surely (and did) lead to judgment on each side, but would not have produced shame or pressures to

12 Goffman, Stigma, p. 6.

13 1789–1917, namely the period in which the modernist ontology discussed in the previous chapter became hegemonic. See Hobsbawn, The Age of Revolution; The Age of Capital; The Age of Empire.

 

assimilate. Interaction between independent states before modern- ity stopped short of convergence on the same normative standards.14 There was borrowing, but the act of borrowing was limited to the product borrowed. For instance, impaling prisoners was introduced to the Ottoman repertoire after interactions with Prince Voyvoda Vlad III of Romania (also known as Dracula) in the fifteenth cen- tury – but borrowing this technique convinced the Ottomans no more of the superiority of a Christian worldview than borrowing the phal- anx formation had convinced the Spartans to worship Persian gods. Cemil Aydın notes that, as late as the eighteenth century, “Ottoman scholars accepted some of the new mathematical and astronomical theories they learned from European books without feeling any need to advocate wholesale importation of the new science.”15 It was not until the articulation of the idea of a modern worldview that the social barriers between states, which had successfully insulated them from the judgments of others, came down. The secular, universal, totaliz- ing claims of modernity gradually washed over alternative visions of socio-political order.16

Previously, the surviving agrarian empires of pre-modernity were outside the Westphalian states system, and their insular identity and belief systems shielded them from being stigmatized by Europeans, just as France, for instance, was spared the same fate in its interac- tion with a more powerful Ottoman Empire in the fifteenth century. Afterwards, they became the first “outsiders” of the Westphalian states system. In other words, these states came to agree with the “established” members of the Westphalian system that they were inferior17 by internalizing the stigma of this developmental lag. In other words, the “Rise of the West” had the effect of creating an

14 “It was never the case, before Europe unified the globe, that relations between states or rulers that were members of different regional international systems could be conducted on the same moral and legal basis as relations within the system, for this basis was provided in part by principles that

were culturally particular and exclusive.” Bull and Watson, Expansion of International Society, p. 5 (emphasis mine). See also Bull, Anarchical Society, p. 14; Naff, “Ottoman Empire,” p. 144.

15  Aydın, Anti-Westernism in Asia, p. 17.

16 As Kingsbury notes, through this process, “Non-European forms of political organization that might have attained widespread legitimacy as alternatives to the European-style sovereign state were subordinated and delegitimized as global models.” See “Sovereignty and Inequality,” p. 74.

17 Elias and Scotson, Established and Outsiders, pp. xv–xvi.

 

international society of states where there was none before, yet the evidence for that society is not in participation by non-European actors in international conferences or treaties,18 but rather in the transformation of the self-images of these actors. The standard English School reading of the expansion of the European society of states glosses over these social dynamics. For instance, Bull states that “while non-European communities in some cases were incor- porated in the international system against their will, they have taken their places in international society because they themselves have sought the rights of membership of it and the protection of its rules.”19 While that willingness on the part of the non-European actors is certainly part of the story, what traditional accounts miss is the effect the internalization of a foreign worldview would have on the ontological security20 of these states. As discussed previously, ontological security first and foremost entails having a consistent sense of self and having that sense affirmed by others. As I will discuss below, the incorporation of the modern worldview created a rupture in the traditionally self-centered worldviews of agrarian empires and forced them to rearticulate their new state identities21 around the anxiety of “demonstrable” inferiority and the goal of catching up with the West by following its “standards.”

In this manner, after the nineteenth century the interactions between non-European states and the Westphalian core came to resemble the established-outsider figuration described by Elias.22 In other words, from this point onward, the actions of the non-European states which were part of the modern states system are best understood as actions of outsider states dealing with the stigma of being developmentally behind.

18 Bull, “Emergence of a Universal International Society,” p. 121.

19 Ibid.

20 See Laing, Divided Self, pp. 39–40, and Giddens, Consequences of Modernity, p. 92. For a defense of the applicability of this concept to state behavior, see Steele, Ontological Security, Introduction, and Mitzen, “Ontological Security,” 352–4.

21 The rearticulation of which was also demanded by the onset of the age of nationalism.

22 Elias and Scotson, Established and Outsiders, pp. xv–xvi.

 

Stigma in the international system

As Goffman points out, each society has its means of categorizing its members, “and the complement of attributes felt to be ordinary and natural for … each of these categories.”23 These attributes cre- ate anticipations about how various parties are supposed to act; they are, in effect, transformed into “normative expectations.”24 If evi- dence is presented that the actor in question possesses an attribute (or a number of attributes) which makes him different than what he is expected to be, that agent is “reduced in our minds from a whole and usual person to a tainted, discounted one.”25 An attribute that sets the agent apart in this manner is a stigma. The agents who do not possess a stigma are normals. Bauman adds that “the institution of stigma is eminently fit for the task of immobilizing the stranger in his identity of the excluded Other.”26 I contend that states which fall short of the normative ideals of international society at any given time can be (and have been) stigmatized – in other words, tainted and discounted, both in the minds of others and their own – in the same manner.

Let me anticipate a possible objection here to using the concept of stigmatization to describe relations between states: it may be con- tended that pointing out negative attributes is a form of truth telling, merely a description of objective reality. This argument may be made in two ways.

First, it may be argued that identity attributes of the states – i.e. the best candidates to qualify as stigma-like labels in international relations – are irrelevant to foreign policy decisions because such decisions are made by states, which are rational actors. For exam- ple, in the realist account27 of international relations, states deduce threat from material capabilities. Such assessments are supposed to be extrapolated from objective measures of empirical facts, such as size of the army, military equipment, natural resources, and wealth.

23 Goffman, Stigma, p. 2. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid.

26 Baumann, Modernity and Ambivalence, p. 68.

27 The realist literature which shares these basic materialist assumptions is too broad to cite here, but for an overview of the assumptions of the paradigm, see Waltz, Theory of International Politics, pp. 74–7; Doyle, Ways of

War and Peace, Part I; Wendt, Social Theory, pp. 96–113, or Keohane,

Neorealism and Its Critics.

 

Constructivists argue, however, that seemingly objective assessments of military capabilities are always filtered through an ideational prism.28 Even great power status is in part socially conferred.29 For instance, Levy counts the following among the operational indicators of a great power: “possession of a high level of power capabilities …; participation in international congresses …; de facto identification as a Great Power by an international conference or organization; admis- sion to a formal or informal organization of Powers; participation in Great Power guarantees, territorial compensation or partitions; and generally, treatment as a relative equal by other Great Powers.”30 All of the italicized operational indicators have something to do with commonly held perceptions of the international community, which is subject to change over time. As Hobson and Sharman point out, “states are not universally imbued with a pre-ordained knowledge of what makes a state a great power.”31 Talleyrand managed to reinstate France as a great power, despite Napoleon’s defeat, by arguing that it now had the right kind of government, i.e. monarchy.32 Austria in 1815 and Britain in 1945 were recognized as great powers because of their democratic experience and cultural status, despite the fact that they lacked raw power.33 Is it really plausible that it does not mat- ter whether a state is treated thusly or whether it receives the “Sick Man of Europe” attitude the Ottoman Empire got in the nineteenth century (or the diplomatic shunning of the Bolshevik government after the revolution, for that matter)? Social standards masquerad- ing as objective assessments create and perpetuate power hierarchies, and this is why the stigmatization framework is particularly apt for describing relations in the modern international system. Even today, in assessing threat, it matters whether nuclear weapons are held by Israel or Iran, India, or Pakistan.

This brings me to the second objection to thinking about assess- ments of states as stigma labels. This is the claim, which is closer

28 See, for instance, Wendt, Social Theory, pp. 130–8.

29 Suzuki, “Seeking ‘Legitimate’,” 3. Waltz also implicitly concedes this point when he suggests that we can rely on “common sense” to identify the great powers of an era. Theory of International Politics, p. 131.

30 Levy, “Historical Trends,” 279.

31 Hobson and Sharman, “Enduring Place,” 87.

32 Reus-Smit, Moral Purpose, pp. 136–7.

33  Simpson, Great Powers, p. 107.

 

to the liberal school of thought in IR,34 that even identity-based descriptions are based on objective assessments and, therefore, are not stigmas. In other words, Israel, even with nuclear weapons, is not a threat because it is an objectively democratic, economically developed, rationally managed country, and therefore can be trusted with the responsibility of managing nuclear weapons. The problem with that argument is that even if we were to concede for the sake of argument that labels such as “democratic” or “economically devel- oped” could be objectively affixed to a country’s description – which is doubtful at best – whether or not various attributes have a real existence has very little to do with the question of whether they are stigmas or status symbols. By pointing out the stigma-like properties of state assessments, my intention is not to claim that such descrip- tions are entirely constructed and have no resemblance to “reality.” In fact, studies of stigma emphasize just the opposite: the existence of a stigmatizing attribute is often very much observable and rather indisputable.35 However, a blind person is not blind because of his stigma; but neither is his blindness the cause of his stigma. It is the expectations of the society he lives in that define how such an attribute will be received. Stigmatizing attributes can run the gamut from very “real” physical “abnormalities” to the more obviously socially con- structed aspects of identity such as religious affiliation or ethnicity. That the latter kind of attribute is more evidently a product of our collective imaginings than of physically verifiable difference makes it no more or less stigmatizing. Socially constructed attributes of an actor “feel” as “real” as their material counterparts,36 and both types of attributes have no inherent value in and of themselves – whether they are perceived as normal or discrediting depends on larger social frameworks of value.

In Winston Parva, the newcomers were stigmatized despite the fact that both the newcomers and the members of the old establishment were fellow nationals, members of the same society. As discussed above, members of the old establishment were able to exclude and stigmatize “outsiders” because they had a higher degree of cohesion

34 See e.g. Slaughter, “International Law.”

35 Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, p. 67.

36 Even the empiricist Hume recognized this fact. See A Treatise of Human Nature, Part II, Section 1.

 

and organization. Stigmatization not only made the “outsiders” feel inferior, but also cut off their access to certain political, economic, and social privileges in the town. This point bears repeating: far from corresponding to some kind of inherent, objective cause of relative inferiority, stigma labels often are themselves enough to generate inferior conditions, which are then mistaken as a cause.37

The same dynamic has plagued the modern international system since its inception. The rise of the West created an objectively mea- surable power differential, but perhaps more significant38 was the fact that the states in the Westphalian core of the system had cohesion as a group39 whereas late-joiners to the international society did not. Furthermore, unlike in Winston Parva where the inhabitants were fellow nationals, initially no common culture existed between the late-joiners and the Westphalian core, which made stigmatization easier, if not more likely. Despite the fact that non-Western peoples had their own traditions and cultures, Europeans perceived them as “anomic”: at best, they were described as “semi-civilized,” but many were labeled as savages or as barbaric. The perception of anomie is the flipside of stigma, and vice versa. All undesirable characteristics of statehood and humanity were projected on the outsider states, just as was the case in Winston Parva, and as a result of their stigmatization, these states also came to see themselves as tainted by such character- istics. This dynamic in turn reinforced the power differential which had emerged as a consequence of the rise of the West, as described in Chapter 1.

The causal processes I have been hinting at until this point are structurally generated and not driven by any one particular actor. For a stigmatizing “established-outsider” dynamic to emerge in a social system, there does not have to be a deliberate master plan of oppression formulated with an eye on the monopolization of resources (although sometimes there are those as well). In fact, simple un-reflectiveness is often sufficient, and even if a politically correct awareness about

37 Goffman, Stigma, p. 6; Elias and Scotson, Established and Outsiders,

p. xxvi.

38 It is telling that the nineteenth-century Standard of Civilization had no explicit references to measurements of material strength.

39 This is essentially what is meant when it is argued in the English School literature that the European society of states was a Gemeinschaft society. See

e.g. Buzan, “From International System,” 333.

 

stigma labels were to emerge among some members of the in-group, the dynamics would persist as long as power relations remained con- stant. This is because social exclusion is a nearly inevitable side effect of one’s own quest for autonomy and meaning.40 What is unique about the modern international system is the fact that these dynamics have been elevated to the global level and that social hierarchies are now universal.

In social hierarchies, the resources being monopolized are not really the ends themselves; often the resources are more meaningful as evi- dence of one’s worth – just desserts, special identity, autonomy, and independence. What I have in mind here is Hegel’s discussion of the master–slave relationship.41 As Hegel pointed out, the self’s inability to secure certainty of its independent existence through satisfaction of material desires42 leads it to a struggle for recognition.43 Satisfying material desires is insufficient evidence of one’s autonomy because “consumption does not so much master objects as destroy them.”44 By consuming an object, we show that we are more powerful than the object, though we do get a brief confirmation of our independ- ent existence. But as soon as the moment of consumption is over, we need to consume more, which reminds us of our own corporeal- ity. Therefore, material objects are not enough to give the conscious self the validation it seeks: “If an external object is to provide more than fleeting self-certainty, it must somehow both be negated in its independence and yet continue to exist … And the only sort of thing which can ‘abdicat[e]’ its own claims to independence in this way is … another self-consciousness.”45 In seeking recognition, we want more than to exist as a physical being: we want our value, our awareness of ourselves, and to be affirmed by another.

In other words, the search for recognition is an extension of our desire for “positive freedom” (or vice versa).46 As Berlin explained it, “the ‘positive’ sense of the word ‘liberty’ derives from the wish on the part of the individual to be his own master.”47 This is separate from the notion of “negative freedom,” which entails simply the freedom

40 See also Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, p. 167.

41 Hegel, Phenomenology of the Spirit.

42 Ibid., pp. 104–10. 43 Ibid.

44 Markell, Bound by Recognition, p. 104. 45 Ibid.

46 See also Wendt, “Why a World State is Inevitable,” 511.

47  Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” p. 131.

 

from interference by others.48 Positive freedom requires not only that one is free from interference but also that one is a “somebody,” a “doer,”49 someone who can impose his will on the world, and who is sovereign in all senses of the word. The difference between negative and positive understandings of freedom matters more than it appears at first glance, and I will return to this distinction below.

Because each actor’s goal is to confirm his own sovereignty (or to achieve positive freedom for himself), the quest for recognition is mutually exclusive. Thus the quest for recognition takes the form of a “life-and-death struggle,”50 which either ends with one party dead or when one party surrenders. The defeated party confirms the sov- ereignty of the victor by recognizing him as the master; he becomes the slave.

Hegel argued that the master–slave relationship is ultimately unsta- ble because the master is recognized by someone who is not quite an agent himself: “What now really confronts him is not an independent consciousness, but a dependent one. He is, therefore, not certain of being-for-self as the truth of himself.”51 Such recognition is unfulfill- ing because it comes from someone who is not recognized as an equal or quite as human.52 Patchen Markell points out that the problem for Hegel lies in the asymmetry of the recognition relationship,53 an argu- ment used by recent Hegelian scholarship to recast Hegel both as a champion of the norm of equal recognition in societies and as a fore- caster of a future where such an equilibrium will be attained among diverse groups.54 According to Markell, however, Hegel had a much more radical point than calling for equal recognition:

[Hegel] suggests that the very desire that animates the struggle for recogni- tion is impossible to fulfill, that the “good” to which it is devoted is not really what we ought to be after; consequently, the asymmetry and thus the inadequacy of the relation of master and slave lies in the fact that only

48 The notion of “negative freedom” has a corollary in the discussions of “thin recognition.” See Wendt, “Why a World State Is Inevitable,” 511.

49  Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” pp. 131–2.

50 Hegel, Phenomenology of the Spirit, p. 114; see also Kojève, Introduction,

pp. 7–15.

51 Hegel, Phenomenology of the Spirit, p. 117.

52 See also Kojève, Introduction, p. 19.

53 Markell, Bound by Recognition, p. 106.

54 Ibid., p. 92.

 

one of the two parties has acknowledged this, admitted the impossibility of satisfying its own claims, and conceded its own dependence.55

Markell argues that despite the inherent instability of the master– slave relationship, such dynamics can persist for a very long time (or indefinitely) because while we can never fully achieve the kind of rec- ognition we essentially seek, the master status in the master–slave dynamic creates a very viable approximation of the self-as-it-would- be-if-it-really-were-positively-free image one desires:

The master–slave relation thus accommodates the contradiction between dependence and independence by spreading it out over social space, mak- ing one person bear the disproportionate weight of the fact of human dependence on the material world … These roles give substance to the social identities of “master” and “slave” and lend relative stability to the intersubjective world, making it possible for the master to experience his own status – like the slave’s – as a reflection of who he always already is, rather than as the political (and therefore fragile) effect of an ongoing prac- tice of subordination.56

In other words, in social figurations where one is recognized as less than the other, the ongoing interaction continuously creates and recreates the identities of the parties involved, which are then per- ceived as reflecting inherent, innate, and fixed characteristics. The slave becomes a natural slave;57 the master is the master because he deserves to be. More importantly, both parties recognize these roles as such.58

The same dynamic is observed by Elias in the Winston Parva study: “Just as established groups, as a matter of course, regard their superior power as a sign of their higher human value, so outsider groups, as long as the power differential is great and submission inescapable, emotionally experience their power inferiority as a sign of human inferiority.”59 Obviously, this is a more satisfying dynamic for the established group – i.e. “the master” – than it is for the outsiders,

55 Ibid., p. 108. 56 Ibid., p. 112.

57 Even a thinker as astute as Aristotle was fooled by this dynamic. Aristotle,

Politics, Book I.

58 Kojève, Introduction, p. 18.

59 Elias and Scotson, Established and Outsiders, p. xxvi.

 

because through this exclusion the members of the established group get an approximation of fully realized self-sovereignty, of positive lib- erty, in the form of the superior group image. To be fully sovereign as a human being, as a consciousness, is to be the master of one’s des- tiny – it requires the ability to make and impose one’s own rules on the world, to stand up against and defeat the vagaries of nature and one’s own appetite.60 From Plato61 to Rousseau,62 positive freedom, as fully realized agency, has been associated with rationality for this reason. As Plato recognized early on, it is very difficult to realize this ideal of positive freedom63.

However, once a relationship dynamic is created, one can feel as if one has achieved it (or gone a long way in achieving it) in comparison:64 “By refusing to risk his life in a fight for pure prestige, [the Slave] does not rise above the animals. Hence he considers himself as such, and as such is he considered by the Master … While the Slave still remains an ‘immediate,’ natural, ‘bestial’ being, the Master – as a result of his fight – is already human, ‘mediated.’”65 Yet, at the end of the day, being a master in the master–slave dynamic does not guarantee sov- ereignty over things or oneself. Humanity is not attained fully; the master in this dynamic still struggles to control his animalistic side. One cannot become positively free in the truest sense by asymmetric recognition alone; such recognition does not mediate against one’s inner desires, nor does it fully solve one’s relation to external nature (although it does mediate against it in the form of the slave’s servitude, expressed through natural work). So the master recognizes something is missing from his dominant position – in Kojève’s words, he is at an “existential impasse.”66 Unfortunately, there is not much the master can do to transcend this impasse.

It is easier to distinguish oneself from the slave than it is to truly overcome one’s own animalistic side, easier to project all bestial qualities onto the slave than it is to eradicate them from one’s own

60  Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” p. 132.

61  See e.g. Plato, The Republic, Book IX.

62 See e.g. Rousseau, Social Contract, Book I.

63 Plato, The Republic, Book IV–VII (and he did not believe such mastery against external nature was possible).

64 Plato is not immune to such trappings either. Plato, The Republic, Book IX.

65 Kojève, Introduction, p. 18.

66 Ibid., p. 19.

 

consciousness or to bring them under the control of one’s reason. Notice Elias’s observation that the outsiders are characterized as anomic, untrustworthy, undisciplined, lawless, dirty,67 and having loose morals.68 In other words, outsiders are perceived as being dom- inated by the animalistic side of human nature – they are supposed to be the ones who are ruled by appetite instead of reason, i.e. they are the ones who are not masters of their own destiny. In comparison, the existential impasse of the established, of the masters, becomes tolerable. By projecting all (or most) undesirable attributes as stigma properties onto the excluded outsider, the established group69 can create an image of relative sovereignty and simulate possessing a fuller, superior humanity.70

Why the emergence of the modern state projected stigmatization onto the international system

The importance of the group dynamic in Elias’s analysis should not be underestimated. In the Hegelian abstract construct, one self-con- sciousness meets another – the dynamic is set between two individu- als.71 However, it is telling that the master–slave figuration is most frequently employed in the analysis of communal relations, e.g. group rights. The master–slave relation usually takes group form because group cohesion allows for ordinary individuals to simulate sover- eignty without actually risking their lives. Average, or even weak, individuals get to enjoy recognition as “masters” by sharing in the group’s charisma.

67 Elias and Scotson, Established and Outsiders, p. 124.

68 Ibid., p. 125.

69 Or “the normals” of Goffman.

70 This is essentially the point Mitchell is making in his discussion of colonialism:

As with the example of the colonial city, by establishing a boundary that rigorously excludes the Oriental, the other, from the self, such a self acquires its apparent cleanliness, its purity, its uncorrupted and undivided identity.

Identity now appears no longer self-divided, no longer contingent, no longer something arranged out of differences; it appears instead as something self- formed, and original. (Colonising Egypt, p. 167)

71 Hegel, Phenomenology of the Spirit, pp. 104–10. However, it is worth noting that Hegel did not intend his analysis to be reductive to the individual unit.

 

Berlin also observed that the quest for positive freedom, for self-sovereignty, tended to become associated with group efforts: “Presently, the two selves [i.e. the rational and the animalistic] may be represented by something wider than the individual … as a social ‘whole’ of which the individual is an element or aspect: a tribe, a race, a church, a state, the great society of the living and the dead and the yet unborn.”72 Although Berlin does not point directly to this link, I think a strong case could be made that this fact (or at least its dominance) is a side effect of modernity.73 On balance, modernity has helped humanity along in its struggle for negative liberty, but has made it much more difficult for individuals to attain positive liberty. There may very well be a trade-off involved between the two under- standings of freedom.74

The modern view sees the state as Hobbes’s Leviathan, “the mortal god”75 with no stake in social conflicts, or as the very embodiment of rationality or pure objectivity in Hegelian terms. While it is appeal- ing to think of the modern state as a site of reconciliation, to do so is “to treat the state like a deus ex machina that appears from outside the social, which – by virtue of its sovereign elevation above the con- flicts of social life – can serve as a mediating institution.”76 Markell suggests instead that it is more realistic to think of the state “as one of the central objects of identification onto which persons displace, and through which they pursue, the desire for independent and mas- terful agency.”77 Furthermore, by designating social issues as “non- political,” political emancipation “disguises their status as forms of power and makes them more difficult to address politically.”78 The modern state promises political emancipation through the equal recognition of citizenship for all, but such recognition entails the

72  Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” p. 132.

73 Berlin indirectly recognizes this in the introduction to the essay: “there has, perhaps, been no time in modern history when so large a number of human beings, both in the East and West, have had their notions, and indeed their lives, so deeply altered, and in some cases violently upset, by fanatically held social and political doctrines.” Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,”

pp. 118–19.

74 See also Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, p. 69.

75 Hobbes, Leviathan, Introduction.

76 Markell, Bound by Recognition, p. 125.

77 Ibid. 78 Ibid., p. 128.

 

danger of entrenching existing social inequalities. Something similar is at work internationally – the notion of sovereign equality makes it very difficult to speak of social hierarchies in the international system as power relations, let alone combat them. Such depoliticization is not accidental, at either the domestic or the international level: it legiti- mates the hold on power certain groups have, and allows them to simulate self-sovereignty by comparison to others in what is supposed to be a framework of equal recognition.

There is another way that equal recognition undermines the quest for positive freedom. The modern man living under the rational Westphalian state is also the faceless, atomized individual, the cal- culator, and the rational consumer.79 While he gets equal recogni- tion from the state as accorded to the fellow members in his society, he gets that recognition not for his essence or even his accomplish- ments, but rather because he is a part of a large group – the nation or “the people.” It is the nation as the general will that justifies the existence of the modern state.80 Within the nation, the “individual” is one of many, a generic citizen; the distinctions between the “indi- vidual” and others are completely leveled and discarded as irrelevant (at least in theory).81 Bauman calls this the state administered univer- sal identity: “individuals have their self manipulated in order to erase differences between individuals, according to a planned, managed and rational set of state actions … The notion of the ‘social’ makes governmental interventions into the area of the personal appear both natural and rational.”82 In this manner, the “individual” is created by the modern nation state and therefore is perpetually bound to the state in his quest for recognition.83

79 Edmund Burke recognized and bemoaned this fact even before Marx: “the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators

has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever … All the pleasing illusions which made power gentle and obedience liberal … are to be dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason.” From Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790).

80 “Each of us places his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will … This public person … at present takes the name republic or body politic, which is called state by its members.” Rousseau, Social Contract, Book I, chapter 6.

81 “… as one we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole.” Ibid.

82 Best, “Review,” 312.

83 Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, p. 64: “National states promote ‘nativism’ and construe its subjects as ‘natives’. They laud and enforce the

 

There is also the fact that the road to equal recognition by the state and political emancipation ran through the modern realization that human nature is often and inevitably dominated by base instincts. Hobbes, who, in many ways, was the first thinker to explicitly reduce humanity to the desire to survive, was also perhaps the first to advo- cate a state that stood equidistant to citizens.84 In other words, the notion of equality requires, in some ways, the reduction of the society to its lowest common denominator. Whereas positive freedom and self- sovereignty requires overcoming one’s baser side, negative freedom, through equal recognition and protection, requires acknowledging it. As a result, while the emergence of nationalism and the nation state equalized the distribution of recognition within sovereign borders to a degree not seen before in history, these developments simultaneously brought about the loss of other types of “recognition” which were more conducive to achieving positive freedom.

This is why the very changes welcomed by Hegel as the march of reason were bemoaned by other observers of modernity – from Burke85 to Tönnies,86 from Tocqueville87 to Nietzsche88 – who did not share Hegel’s belief that the state could act as a substitute for, let alone improve upon, the individual quest for positive freedom.89 It is incred- ibly difficult to find deep meaning in life or to be positively free as the generic man. Tocqueville, who among the authors mentioned above was the most observant and also the most tolerant of what was lost in the transition to the modern age of democracy, was very much aware

ethnic, religious, linguistic, cultural homogeneity. They are engaged in incessant propaganda of shared attitudes. They preach the sense of common mission, common fate, common destiny.”

84 Hobbes, Leviathan, chapter XVIII.

85 “On this scheme of things, a king is but a man, a queen is but a woman; a woman is but an animal, and animal not of the highest order.” Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, Paragraph 129.

86 Tönnies, Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, pp. 34, 44, 87, 216.

87 “… if the equality of conditions gives some resources to all the members of the community, it also prevents any of them from having resources of

great extent, which necessarily circumscribes their desires within somewhat narrow limits. Thus, among democratic nations, ambition is ardent and continual, but its aim is not habitually lofty; and life is generally spent

in eagerly coveting small objects that are within reach.” Tocqueville,

Democracy in America, vol. II.3, chapter 19.

88 Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, First Essay.

89 Of course, these commentators also disagreed among themselves as to what, if anything, could, or should, be done to combat these changes.

 

of this fact. He was willing to tolerate the loss of grand ambition, hero- ism, and genius because he believed this transformation was, on the one hand, unavoidable and, on the other, not without benefits: “if you hold it expedient to divert the moral and intellectual activity of man to the production of comfort and the promotion of general well-being; … if your object is not to stimulate the virtues of heroism, but the habits of peace; … if such be your desire, then equalize the conditions of men and establish democratic institutions.”90 In modern political thought, therefore, the exploration of the possibility of attaining positive, sub- stantive freedom is either completely ignored or concluded to be within the purview of the state. Thinkers who are still hopeful about the indi- vidual attaining full sovereignty, such as Rousseau91 and Hegel,92 end up arguing that such an outcome is possible only through the state. This is no accident – the trade-off that accompanies equal recognition of the mass age is that modern man is much smaller and less powerful than the best of his predecessors.93 Even Plato believed that how the city was run would have an effect94 on the chances of an individual to attain a just soul,95 and he believed this despite his attribution of such chances mostly to individual nature, as in the accident of birth. Modern think- ers, having conceded a man’s equality with other men, were even more bound to see the state as the stage of positive freedom.

To put it another way, with the emergence of the “last man” of egal- itarian modernity, the hope of attaining positive, substantive freedom has to either become a group endeavor or be abandoned.96 This hope is placed either in the nation (the general will) as Rousseau saw it, or in

90 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. II.

91 “… the acquisition in the civil state of moral liberty … alone makes man truly the master of himself. For to be driven by appetite alone is slavery, and obedience to the law one has prescribed for oneself is liberty.” Rousseau, Social Contract, Book I, chapter 8.

92 “… self-consciousness, by virtue of its disposition, has its substantial freedom in the state as its essence, its end, and the product of activity.” Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Section 3, §257.

93 Nietzsche, who is not satisfied with the solution offered by the state, called for the “last man” to be replaced by the Ubermensch.

94 Plato, The Republic, Book I.

95 Plato’s definition of a just soul is where reason rules over appetite with the help of the spirit. Plato, The Republic, Book V.

96 Lebow makes a similar argument in Cultural Theory about the link between modernity, the emergence of the individual, and the search for self-esteem on the international plane. See e.g. pp. 17–25.

 

the modern state as Hegel saw it. Equal recognition, which guarantees negative freedom for all citizens, is insufficient, thin recognition. The original desire for recognition that sets consciousness on a life-and- death struggle seeks an affirmation of the individual’s sovereignty, autonomy, and self-mastery. The desire for recognition is a craving for positive freedom, and a society or state which guarantees only negative freedom, a theoretical, abstract equality, does not quench the desire for substantive mastery. In fact, abstract egalitarianism and universalism make it very difficult, if not impossible, for individuals to attain positive freedom by themselves without the state: whatever they do, they cannot truly impose their will on the world – the state has the legitimate monopoly on authoritative force.97

Hence, a modern state that is not explicitly directed toward the attainment of positive freedom for its society will be unstable, because the guarantee of negative equality is not enough – human beings want more than that. They need meaning in their lives; they need a sub- stantive purpose. A state that does not promise to fulfill that purpose for its citizens is not a modern state, perhaps not a state at all: it is neither “actual” nor “rational.” This is why the modern state makes “progress” its business.98 To say that the state exists to serve its citi- zens is really to say that the state exists to help men satisfy their urges for positive freedom: through education, resources, social engineer- ing, etc.

However, as noted above, the state is not the objective, apolitical deus ex machina it is imagined to be. Its quest for equal recognition for all of its citizens often ends up privileging the self-image of the majority. Markell explains this problem with reference to the nineteenth-century emancipation of German Jews through their inclusion as equal citizens:

On the one hand, Jewishness (otherness) must be eradicated, in this case through a peaceful act of inclusion; on the other hand, in order for the consequent recognition of the sovereignty of the state to be more than

97 Weber, “Politics as a Vocation.”

98 Even John Stuart Mill, who was more skeptical of state power than most, recognized that the modern state has something to do with this end – in his view, the state can promote progress and civilization by staying out of its citizens’ affairs, and by keeping them out of each other’s social life. See Mill, On Liberty.

 

momentary and ephemeral, the institutions of the state must maintain a vigilant surveillance of the Jews to be sure that they are conforming to the terms of their emancipation – and such a surveillance requires that Jews be recognizable.99

Each state has its “others,” the presence of which perpetuates the dynamic described by Markell above, which means that the pro- ject of sovereignty remains an ongoing affair. Yet the state has to be legitimated despite its continuous failure to deliver upon its prom- ise to secure sovereignty. An interim solution to the problem of legitimation, therefore, is to move the simulation of mastery to the international domain. However, just as it is difficult for one individ- ual to achieve real sovereignty, and much easier for him to create a relationship dynamic with another individual to have the image of sovereignty mirrored back to him, such is also the case for states and nations. Therefore, it is no coincidence that in the nineteenth century the master–slave hierarchy was increasingly projected outside state borders in Europe – the group struggle for recognition, for positive freedom, is the essence of the age of nationalism. It is easier (and more realistic) for states to recreate the “master–slave” figuration within the international system, and to be recognized as masters of their own destiny relatively speaking than being objectively so.

In fact, the idea of nationhood (or its more generic version, a soci- ety which has achieved statehood) is very readily collapsible onto the master–slave figuration, because the idea that some people deserve recognition, whereas others do not, is built into the concept.100 As Bernard Yack points out:

If we raise people’s status by making them formally equal members of a community, then we are bound to make them somewhat more uncom- fortable than they used to be with the individuals who stand outside of that community … A touchy amour propre toward foreigners seems an

99 Markell, Bound by Recognition, p. 146. See also Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, where he points out that the closer German Jews came to assimilation, the more their Jewishness came into prominence.

100 In fact, as Bauman argues, the nation state “is designed primarily to deal with the problem of strangers not enemies.” Modernity and Ambivalance,

p. 63. Similar notions are to be found also in Simmel, e.g. in “The Stranger.”

 

inevitable accompaniment of the way in which nationalism satisfies “ … desire for status.”101

Yack makes these remarks in his review of Liah Greenfeld’s book Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity, in which Greenfeld argues that while Anglo-American nationalism is compatible with liberalism because it respects individuality, ethnic nationalisms – starting with Germany and Russia – followed a dangerous path because they were marked with ressentiment against their more advanced neighbors to the West. Yack rejects Greenfeld’s Anglo-American exceptionalism and argues that it is more fruitful to think of ressentiment as a feature of all nationalist formations, civil or ethnic.

Indeed, in making ressentiment a feature exclusively of only “back- ward,” “ethnic” nationalisms, Greenfeld misreads Nietzsche. When Nietzsche wrote about ressentiment and “slave morality,” he had in mind exactly the kind of societies that Greenfeld praises, i.e. lib- eral, egalitarian, and individualistic. Egalitarianism for Nietzsche is born out of ressentiment. The democratic man, “the last man,” is the product of ressentiment. Modernity is dominated by slave morality. The “slave” in Nietzsche’s argument is unable to achieve greatness on his own, and he resents those who can. He is not free in the posi- tive sense, so he rejects positive freedom:

While all noble morality grows out of a triumphant affirmation of one’s own self, slave morality from the start says “No” to what is “outside,” “other,” to “a not itself.” And this “No” is its creative act. This trans- formation of the glance which confers value – this necessary projection towards what is outer instead of back onto itself – that is inherent in ressen- timent. In order to arise, slave morality always requires first an opposing world, a world outside itself.102

In other words, the very act of creating an “Other” against which one defines oneself implies ressentiment. It is not only those at the losing end of comparison who are in thrall to this state, but anyone who is deriving self-knowledge from the comparative act. The positively free man does not need the negative category of the “Other” to know himself.103

101 Yack, “Review,” 178.

102 Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, First Essay.

103 In other words, the “master” in the Hegelian dialectic and the “noble man” of Nietzsche are not the same person. Nietzsche’s nobleman does not need the recognition of the “other” to achieve self-sovereignty.

 

The mediocre man, on the other hand, unable to achieve positive freedom, compensates for his lack of sovereignty by substituting his own “weak” morality for what is “good.” The mediocre man feels “good” in his righteousness – his power comes from the fact that the world recognizes his normative framework, and not from any objec- tive achievement of positive freedom. This new morality, according to Nietzsche, allows for the mediocre man to feel superior without being truly superior. Bauman quotes Sander Gilman who “wrote of the ‘conservative curse’ which hangs over the liberal project: ‘The more you are like me, the more I know the true value of my power, which you wish to share, and the more I am aware that you are but a shoddy counterfeit, an outsider.’”104 It is the relative superiority of “good” over “evil” which allows the mediocre man to get recognized as if he were “noble”:

It’s not a matter of fear. Rather it’s the fact that we have nothing more to fear from man, that the maggot “man” is in the foreground swarm- ing around, that the “tame man,” the hopelessly mediocre and unpleasant man, has already learned to feel that he is the goal, the pinnacle, the mean- ing of history, “the higher man,” – yes indeed, that he even has a certain right to feel that about himself, insofar as he feels separate from the excess of failed, sick, tired, spent people, who are nowadays beginning to make Europe stink, so that he feels at least relatively successful, at least still capa- ble of life, of at least saying “Yes” to life.105

In other words, the normative standards of modernity allow for aver- age members of modern societies to feel as if they are the pinnacles of history, as masters of their own destiny in comparison to those who do not live up to those standards.

By discussing Nietzsche in this manner, my goal is not to insinuate that the West suffers from a “slave morality” whereas the East is full of noble, great men who are being oppressed. Rather, I have invoked Nietzsche because of his observation that there is a dark side to the rhetoric of equal citizenship that pervades modern society. This is not to deny that there is an empowering aspect to the liberal values of equal recognition: “The message amounts to a standing invitation to all and

104 Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, p. 71; Gilman, Jewish Self-Hatred,

p. 2.

105 Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, First Essay.

 

everybody to take their fate in their own hands and make it as good as they can.”106 However, too often we focus on this promise and ignore what happens in practice, which is the manifestation of an inner con- tradiction in liberalism/egalitarianism/thin recognition: “to deform the problem of ‘de-estrangement’ … as the question of decency and industry of the stranger’s effort at assimilation-through-acculturation, is to reaffirm the inferiority, undesirability and out-of-placeness of the stranger’s form of life.”107 In other words, equal recognition within the modern state itself can be used to create a social hierarchy, by allow- ing mediocre members of society to feel a sense of smugness, a sense of superiority in comparison to the stigmatized foreigners outside and strangers nearby.108 The privileges offered by the modern state end up serving a function beyond whatever substantive value they offer to the citizen; they become the foundation for another comparative rubric that enables the citizen to simulate mastery, relatively speaking. This is more so the case for the members of the titular nation (if there is one) which controls the state, because their affiliation with the state is the most direct and unproblematic. They easily derive ontological security benefits from the recognition of the state, domestically and internationally. Inter-societal routines help the members of society to maintain identity coherence vis-à-vis others.109

However, it is not only the members of the titular nation, the class which dominates the state or the “normals” in the domestic society, who derive identity affirmation from their state’s international stand- ing. In fact, often the state’s simulated mastery of the world vis-à-vis other states and groups in international society is the only cushion of legitimacy it can offer the lowest members of its citizenry. The right of citizenship, beyond whatever degree of negative freedom it offers the individual, becomes a normative good in the service of satisfying the individual’s craving for positive freedom, for the simulation of positive recognition, precisely because it is not offered to others. Such others (non-citizens) can then be seen as something less than human,

106 Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, p. 69.

107 Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, p. 71

108 This is not to say that the entirety of the modern project of ordering and comparing is a sham masking ressentiment. However, it is also undeniable but a rather neglected aspect of modernity that the seemingly objective tool of scientific method has been used in this rather subjective manner.

109 Mitzen, “Ontological Security,” 352.

 

less than people, making one feel more sovereign in comparison, how- ever lowly one’s standing may be in domestic society.

To sum up thus far, modern statehood creates its own paradox. The universal citizenship and equal recognition the state offers all members of the nation promises negative freedom for all, but makes the attainment of positive freedom through individual effort increas- ingly difficult.110 By guaranteeing that no citizen of the state will be legally recognized as superior to another citizen, it closes one ancient avenue111 for the expression (or simulation) of positive freedom: mas- tery over one’s environment, including members of one’s society. By distributing formal recognition equally, the modern state in a way demands that if one is to rise, all are to rise with him, and if all can- not rise, neither can the individual. This makes sovereign recognition much more of a group issue than it was in the past. And in separating the “nation” from foreigners, and in positing that the members of the nation uniquely deserve recognition, the modern state offers a quick fix for a group that demands positive recognition as masters of their own destiny.112

The modern state is supposed to achieve positive freedom for all of its citizens. But the goal of positive freedom for all is incredibly dif- ficult to attain in absolute terms, and in any case it is a goal with a long-term horizon. Simulating its attainment in relative terms is eas- ier and immediately available, because the modern state already has an irrational discriminating mechanism against foreigners, who are, by definition, less deserving of recognition. In exercising this mech- anism, the modern state actually embodies a principle that contra- dicts its rationality, but while doing so creates the impression that it is closer to achieving positive freedom, which is the very embodiment of rationality. In this way, the modern state, the very thing that made positive recognition primarily a group endeavor, comes to be seen as the embodiment of humanity, rationality, and sovereignty, of positive freedom, precisely when it is not.

110 See e.g. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. II.2, chapter 8.

111 Other avenues remain: for instance, economic success or political engagement. Nevertheless, this is a loss, and the fact that it was a loss was observed by many nineteenth-century political thinkers, as was discussed above.

112 This is not unlike Hegel’s argument that conflict among states can unite subjectivity and objectivity. Hegel, “German Constitution,” pp. 15–20.

 

However, while the citizen–foreigner distinction goes some way in satisfying demands for positive recognition, it is not enough by itself because the mastery can be simulated only if the “slave” is also a party to the recognition dynamic. In other words, a world where each party defines the other simply as a foreigner does not satisfy the group ideal for positive freedom. For such demands to be met at a satisfac- tory level, the foreigner also has to recognize himself as somehow less deserving of recognition, as something less than human.

This is achieved in an international context the same way as it was in Winston Parva: “One group can effectively stigmatize another only as long as it is well established in positions of power from which the stigmatized group is excluded. As long as that is the case, the stigma of collective disgrace attached to the outsiders can be made to stick.”113 At a certain level of abstraction, there is not much of a difference between the dynamics sustained by the “old village” in Winston Parva and those perpetuated by the European society of states in the inter- national system in the nineteenth century. The developments ushering in modernity also gave birth to the concept of “civilization” or the “civilized world.” In other words, the group dynamic necessary for the simulation of mastery was thus carried onto the international stage.

Established-outsider dynamic on the international stage

The established-outsider dynamic did not disappear when the nineteenth-century Standard of Civilization was abandoned in the twentieth century. In one form or another, it has persisted. However, it is worth noting that the trend, at least formally, is from exclusivity toward increasing inclusivity and pluralism.

This can be explained by reference to two factors. First, modernity is an ontology based in rationality, and as such there is an inher- ent pull toward an objective, universal language of modern norms.114 In other words, normative criteria for the evaluation of actors come to be expressed in increasingly individualist, rationalist, merit-based terms.115 This is true in both domestic and international society.

113 Elias and Scotson, Established and Outsiders, p. xx.

114 The World Polity school in sociology offers the most comprehensive studies of this trend.

115 Once again, Hegel may be cited for support – but this is a trend noted by all observers of modernity.

 

However, sociologists have long observed that “the long run tendency for collectivist criteria of exclusion to be replaced by individualist cri- teria represents a modification of the legal and political foundation of exploitation rather than its elimination.”116 This relates directly to the second underlying cause of this trend.

As noted above, the more asymmetrical the recognition relationship, the less satisfying it is for the dominant group. If the “slave” is merely a “thing,” the slave’s recognition does not offer much to the “master.” This is why it is sometimes argued that only relationships of equal rec- ognition can be stable in the long run;117 but another way to think about it is that the dominant groups have some incentive to grant recognition to inferior groups if they can, at the same time, maintain their position of power. I have pointed out above that formal recognition of equality has a tendency to create precisely that dynamic: equal citizenship or the principle of sovereign equality leaves entrenched social hierarchies in place while de-politicizing them. Therefore, it is not surprising that the normative trend internationally has been in the same direction as it was domestically: formal equality is granted because it is always accompa- nied by the relegation of social struggles out of the political sphere.118 This is not to discount entirely the substantive gains that accompany the granting of such rights as sovereign equality – formal rights, for what- ever reason they are established, have an empowering effect as well. My point simply is that the story does not end with formal recognition.

This trend toward inclusivity was becoming evident by the end of the nineteenth century, during which time the Standard of Civilization became increasingly secularized and de-Europeanized.119 Japan and the South American states embraced the Standard of Civilization, and civilized states came to be defined as “those entities that accorded basic rights to their citizens and aliens, boasted an organized bureauc- racy, adhered to international law and possessed capacity to enter into diplomatic relations.”120 The developments during World War I,

116 Murphy, “Weberian Closure,” 25.

117 See e.g. Wendt, “Why a World State is Inevitable.”

118 As Kingsbury notes in “Sovereignty and Inequality,” p. 84, “it is all too evident that the high twentieth-century commitment to virtually universal formal equality of states in the sovereignty model has not resolved many of the underlying problems.”

119 Simpson, Great Powers, pp. 256–7.

120 Ibid., p. 256. See also Gong, Standard of “Civilisation”, pp. 14, 24.

 

however, threw the civilized status of Germany and Russia into ques- tion, raising doubts about using Christianity as implicit shorthand for civilization.121 In the meantime, the break-up of agrarian empires in Eastern Europe forced the Western powers to articulate a more inclusive framework for deciding which groups were entitled to self- determination.122

The interwar period: the West vs. Zealots and Herodians

Arnold Toynbee’s123 works about Greece and Turkey are quite illumi- nating in terms of the prevailing mindset of this period vis-à-vis out- sider states that had recently joined the international society. In The Western Question in Greece and Turkey (1923), Toynbee argues that the Turks are unfairly stigmatized, whereas the Greeks are unfairly spoiled:

When you have made a spoilt-child of the Greek, it is no good rounding on him as an impostor; and when you have used the Turk as a whipping boy, you do not heal the stripes that you have inflicted by congratulating him on his fortitude … In both cases, the evil that we have done them exceeds, and will probably outlive, the good.124

On the one hand, Toynbee is critical of his Western counterparts’ prejudicial attitudes toward non-Western states, observing that “the non-Western societies are oppressed by our chilly shadow, while we are resentful when they assert their individuality. This is partly what arouses our animus against the Turks and the Russians.”125 Yet at

121 Simpson, Great Powers, p. 237:

At first, Christianity was the test of “good breeding”. Wheaton’s Elements of International Law, published in 1836 and translated into Chinese in 1864, characterised international law as Christian, civilised and European and marked out the standard to which Asian empires had to aspire if they were to be admitted to the international legal community. Later civilisation became the key term.

122 Wallerstein, “World-System after the Cold War,” 2.

123 Both Fukuyama and Huntington count Toynbee among the few who shaped early-twentieth-century thought about world affairs (along with Spengler, Pareto, and Sorokin).

124  Toynbee, Western Question, p. 348.

125 Ibid., p. 362.

 

the same time, even Toynbee cannot avoid a degree of paternalism toward the subjects of his study.

Toynbee provides compelling evidence for the argument I am advancing here: that the Western core of the international society in effect stigmatized outsider states. In fact, just four years after he lauded the Turks for having authentic souls and characters in compar- ison to the Greeks who were trying to pass themselves off according to the expectations in Europe,126 Toynbee wrote a book devoted solely to Turkey, where he praised Turkish efforts for adapting to Western civilization: “Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that everything in contemporary Turkey which has life in itself or interest for a foreign observer can be traced back to some Western stimulus and will be found to be a reaction against Western influence when not an emana- tion from it.”127 He concluded by remarking that Turkey is a forerun- ner of changes to come in the rest of the world because the issues facing Turkey are confronted by all Eastern peoples: “Everywhere these peoples stand at the parting of the ways, with the choice of entering the camp of the Zealots or the camp of the Herodians. They can no longer remain neutral; for the West, in its restless activity, will not let them alone.”128 What Toynbee recognized here was the fact that by the end of World War I, the future for Eastern peoples had been reduced to two options: embrace the Western normative standards, or reject them entirely; the same options available to a stigmatized individual in domestic society (attempt to survive among normals or retire to one’s own community). Rejection is not at all the same thing as aloofness.

Furthermore, by the interwar years, it had become rather com- monplace to assume that there was one and only one trajectory for civilization. Or rather, the main change from nineteenth-century assumptions, which espoused the same general idea, was that non- Christian or non-European peoples129 could, theoretically, join the

126 It could be argued that the Greeks at this time were engaged in a different form of stigma-response; in order not to be treated as outsiders, they were passing as the idealized heirs of Plato and Aristotle. Toynbee describes the disappointment of Westerners in finding out that the reality on the ground did not match the image.

127 Toynbee, Turkey, p. 3.  128 Ibid., p. 300.

129 For instance, Gong notes that “the 1928 fourth edition of International Law still records that some non-European countries were ‘certainly civilized states … however, their civilization had not yet reached that condition

 

civilized world,130 though this had to be done by progressing through certain fixed stages. This notion is clearly expressed in the League of Nations mandate system,131 which had replaced the categories of the Standard of Civilization with more progressive, temporal language.132 In the discussions about the mandate system from this period, there is an almost evangelical tone that replicated (rather than replaced) the imperialist attitudes of the nineteenth century. In fact, a number of commentators compare the League to the British Empire, and found hope for its success in that fact. Here is but one example from 1930:

In the last ten years, and largely as a result of the World War and the part played by the British Empire in the World War, we have found this solution

which was necessary to enable their Governments and their population in every respect to understand, and carry out, the rules of International Law.’” Standard of “Civilisation”, p. 83.

130 To contemporary eyes, the change seems minor. However, when we recall that it was only in 1860 that Asa Gray wrote the following in his review of Darwin’s Evolution of the Species, the modification of the early twentieth century seems almost revolutionary:

The prospect of the future, accordingly, is on the whole pleasant and encouraging. It is only the backward glance, the gaze up the long vista of the past, that reveals anything alarming. Here the lines converge as they recede into the geological ages, and point to conclusions which, upon the theory, are inevitable, but by no means welcome. The very first step backwards makes the Negro and the Hottentot our blood-relations; – not that reason or Scripture objects to that, though pride may. (italic added)

131 See, for instance, Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations:

Certain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish empire have reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognized subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone. The wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory.

Other peoples, especially those of Central Africa, are at such a stage that the Mandatory must be responsible for the administration of the territory under conditions which will guarantee freedom of conscience and religion, subject only to the maintenance of public order and morals, the prohibition of abuses such as the slave trade, the arms traffic and the liquor traffic, and the prevention of the establishment of fortifications or military and naval bases and of military training of the natives for other than police purposes and the defense of territory, and will also secure equal opportunities for the trade and commerce of other Members of the League. (Italics added)

132 Watson perhaps overstates this fact in Evolution of International Society,

p. 284.

 

which was absent in the eighteenth century. We found it, and if we are wise people we shall go into the future with this talisman of what is called Dominion status, and we shall keep one-fourth of the human race together in perpetual peace and friendship, pursuing ideals of liberty and progress, and helping in building up a new world. Is not that something? Oppressed by the weight of these ideas, men’s characters and minds develop slowly. Growth is arrested and social conditions become static. Hence the fact that Asia, the home of civilisation, is also a place where civilisation has scarcely advanced for thousands of years, and has now begun to move only in response to an impulse received from Europe.133

As exemplified by this passage, the dichotomies of this period hardly need restating: East was static, despotic, and had not moved for thou- sands of years, whereas the West was dynamic, progressive, modern, and the pinnacle of civilization. The only way out of backwardness was to emulate the West, to advance through the same stages the West had already gone through. The East was only now coming to this profound realization, thanks to the impetus from the West. The Soviet model was hardly an alternative to this recipe: “Leninism, which posed itself as the radical opponent of Wilsonianism, was in fact its avatar … The construction of socialism was economic devel- opment of the Third World clothed in more radical verbiage.”134 Both the right-wing and left-wing ideologies of this time were teleological, and therefore hierarchical.

After World War II: modernity and economic development

By the time World War II had come and gone, the emphasis of interna- tional norms had shifted135 to the economic sector.136 This was a culmi- nation of certain trends that had their roots in nineteenth-century social thought.137 In a 1966 article, authors Nettl and Robertson observe that

133 Smuts, “British Empire,” 144.

134 Wallerstein, “World-System after the Cold War,” 2.

135 Gong notes that “the holocausts of the Second World War and the threat of nuclear destruction further changed the meaning of ‘civilized’ and ‘uncivilized.’” Standard of “Civilisation”, p. 87.

136 See e.g. Mitchell, Rule of Experts, p. 4.

137 In more ways than one: Watson argues that even though the post-World War II international society was dominated by the United States and Russia, two actors “outside the original Europe,” “they and their allies agreed that the

 

even though analyses of change were anchored in the notion of progress since the earliest periods of industrialization in the West, it was “not until Marx that an attempt was made to create a formal synthesis between industrialization and social change in one coherent process.”138 Before Marx, the emphasis in analyses of economic change was very much on the prominent role and autonomy of the individual: “There was in fact very little specific social analysis – and even less general recognition – of any conception of industrializing societies.”139 Nineteenth-century thought brought an impressive array of thinkers – from Hegel to Marx to Durkheim to Weber – who mounted serious challenges to reduction- ist analyses of society. It was probably no accident that the individualist analyses of social change tended to emanate from England, where the state had played a less explicit role in capitalist development, whereas the emphasis on structural analysis had a definite German accent.140 In later industrializing countries such as Prussia, the role the state would have to play in attaining “positive freedom” had become rather obvious by the nineteenth century.141

However, among the nineteenth-century thinkers who challenged individualist notions of progress, Marx stood alone in placing eco- nomics and materialism front and center in his analysis of social history. Furthermore, the second half of the nineteenth century was also marked by the increasing fragmentation of social sciences. As a result, initially Marx’s materialist explanation for all social phe- nomena did not make many inroads outside of his ideological follow- ing.142 Therefore, it was not until the Great Depression that economics

rules and practices of the previous period should remain provisionally in force with minor changes.” Evolution of International Society, p. 289.

138 Nettl and Robertson, “Industrialization, Development and Modernization,” 275.

139 Ibid.

140 See Lebow’s discussion of Heeren, Clausewitz, Ranke, and Treitschke and their views on the state in Cultural Theory, p. 10.

141 There was an economic angle to this as well. As Stavrianos notes, the Second Industrial Revolution all but eliminated small family businesses. The capital investment needed for most modern plants was so huge that it was beyond the means of most individual investors – this is why the state became the primary vehicle for industrialization in most of the globe from this point onward. British capitalists were spared this necessity to some degree thanks to the cartels operating on accrued capital from the First Industrial Revolution and the profits generated overseas. See Stavrianos, Global Rift, p. 258.

142 Nettl and Robertson, “Industrialization, Development and Modernization,” 276.

 

grabbed the mantle of dominance among the social sciences, and “by the time of World War II, the primacy of economics was firmly estab- lished both in terms of policy formation and in the great influx of economists into positions of power and influence.”143 This influence became critical after the end of World War II, when every problem facing those countries ravaged by war and the newly independent colonies seemed to have an economic answer. The dominance of the economic field was also reflected in the newly created United Nations, which defined its agenda mostly around the new problem of “under- development.” As Nettl and Robertson observe:

Thus, far from regarding the post-war aspirations for economic develop- ment as a natural consequence of a given situation, they can be seen as the consequence of externally generated inducements of a rather special kind, which were framed and channeled in particular directions for rea- sons which did not necessarily have very much to do with the felt needs or value systems of the deprived societies. (A clear distinction has here to be drawn between the autonomously generated idea or value of indepen- dence – and its obverse, imperialism – and the induced one of underdevel- opment or atimia). This leads directly to the notion of the existence of an international system of stratification, with its own and currently somewhat indeterminate value system … 144

In other words, while the focus of normative standards shifted to economics, social stratification remained a fact of the system. In the passage above, Nettl and Robertson draw our attention to the fact that “underdevelopment” is a socially generated category that did not exist prior to World War II. As we saw above, before World War II, the same “underdeveloped” countries were described as being at lower stages of the civilization trajectory. Before that, in the nine- teenth century, the same countries were considered frozen in time as “barbaric” or as “semi-civilized” entities.

The dominance of economics in stigma standards post-World War II had the consequences predicted above. On the one hand, because the focus on economic development implied a more “objec- tive” metric, post-World War II restructuring of international society turned out to be more inclusive – even prior enemies such as Germany

143 Ibid. 144 Ibid., 277.

 

and Japan, and illiberal states such as Spain and Argentina, were retained in the fold despite initial protestations by some circles dur- ing the San Francisco negotiations.145 As Ian Clark points out, the postwar order was intended as “a form of social and economic ‘pro- tection’ for the bloc of Western states that found itself exposed to the vagaries and inconveniences of the increasingly open political ‘market’ of the global state system.”146 Furthermore, the economic emphasis on “development” helped make the decolonization process relatively painless,147 as it gave “‘national liberation movements’ … hope for the future.”148

On the other hand, however, the new objective, economic rubric carried strong echoes of the older value systems.149 While discussions of “civilization” were now mostly passé, the “modernization the- ory” behind the concept of “development” and “underdevelopment” also held that there were certain stages a country had to progress through.150 The emphasis on development instead of civilization did give lower-ranking (outsider) countries something more concrete to work with in theory, but like the idea of civilization, the concept of modern development was also abstracted entirely from the Western experience. Francis Fukuyama remarks that modernization the- ory can be thought of as the last product of the nineteenth-century universal history tradition because it posited that “industrial devel- opment followed a coherent pattern of growth, and would in time produce certain uniform social and political structures across dif- ferent countries and cultures.”151 The implication was that “only the West’s political development represents a valid model.”152 Even Samuel Huntington, hardly the poster child for sensitivity about social strati- fication, observed that modernization theory was an old tale in new disguise: “These categories were, of course, the latest manifestation

145 Simpson, Great Powers, pp. 264–8.

146 Clark, “Another ‘Double Movement’,” p. 238.

147 As Blaney and Inayatullah rightly point out, “it is important to remember that modernization theory develops as a postcolonial theory – in part

a response to the emergence of newly independent states.” Problem of Difference, p. 96.

148  Simpson, Great Powers, p. 268.

149 See also Dallmayr, Beyond Orientalism, pp. 149–50.

150 See e.g. Huntington, “Political Modernization”; Tipps, “Modernization Theory.”

151 Fukuyama, End of History, p. 68. 152 Ibid.

 

of a Great Dichotomy between more primitive and more advanced societies which has been a common feature of Western social thought for the past one hundred years.”153 The modernization framework of developmental stages is best described as a stigma theory because these views were underlined by the assumption that “development” was an individual state problem and not a systemic issue.

In fact, despite the dominant emphasis on economics, the con- cepts of modernity/backwardness and/or development/underdevelop- ment were used as catch-all categories for all sorts of shortcomings attributed to “outsider” states. Backward/agricultural societies were supposed to be marked by differential stratification, simple occupa- tion roles, ascriptive norm patterns, and limited mobility; whereas modern/industrial societies were characterized by egalitarianism, complex occupations, universal norms, and high social mobility.154 The view from the Soviet Bloc was no different. Wallerstein points out that Stalin’s stages of development could easily be substituted for Rostow’s and that “Stalinist bureaucrats and Western experts com- peted for which one could be the most efficacious Saint-Simonian.”155 As Huntington notes, the common belief among modernization theo- rists was that “the essential difference between modern and tradi- tional society … lies in the greater control which modern man has over his natural and social environment,”156 and the Marxist model shared the same belief. Therefore, it is not hard to see how postwar international norms once again reproduced the simulation of sover- eignty by attributing to the “outsider” states a lack of control over the natural environments that they had to overcome. In comparison, the “established” states seemed positively in control of their own fates.

After the Cold War: governance

Most scholars date the next normative shift in the international sys- tem to the end of the Cold War, but it can be argued that the devel- opments of the 1970s and 1980s also had something to do with the displacement of economics from the limelight. By the 1970s, it was

153  Huntington, “The Change,” 285.

154 Ibid., 286. Huntington is discussing the modernization theories of Parsons, Shils, and Sutton here.

155 Wallerstein, “Development of the Concept of Development,” 111.

156  Huntington, “The Change,” 286.

 

becoming obvious that “development” for the “Third World” could not follow the prescribed stages of progress. As a result, both the Dependency School and Wallerstein’s World-System theory chal- lenged modernization theory. However, both of these approaches still emphasized economic factors above all else. In the meantime, the economic dominance of the “established” countries was challenged through efforts such as the call for a “New International Economic Order.”157 While ultimately unsuccessful, these calls did indicate a growing skepticism of the dominant international stigma theory of developmental stages.

The oil crises and the subsequent collapse of the economies of many “developing” countries in the 1980s also contributed to the general malaise about economic solutions to international inequal- ity. However, in the 1980s, this disillusionment was tempered (or delayed) by the heavily promoted prescription from the “core” that the North–South problem was one rooted in economic approach and not in any structural power disparity. The forced neoliberal lessons158 from the relative success of East Asian economies were also aided, at least temporarily, by the collapse of the Soviet Union. “The End of History” as proclaimed by Francis Fukuyama was supposed to mean that state-centered approaches to development were discredited once and for all.

Democratic governance159 became the normative buzzword of the 1990s. The shift described above from “developmental” stages to neoliberal economic approaches as the proposed solution to economic disparity helped along a normative return to socio-political/cultural litmus tests. Some observers contended that, as a result, “the East– West divide with its two superpowers has been replaced by a division between North and South,”160 but the obituary for the East–West divide was also premature. It is much more reasonable to argue that the bifurcated division of previous periods has been replaced by one single, global social hierarchy, in which the Western core dominates according to all normative metrics.

157 See e.g. Bhagwati, New International Economic Order; Cox, “Ideologies and the NIEO.”

158 Clark, “Another ‘Double Movement’.”

159  Simpson, Great Powers, p. 281.

160 Castles, “Nation and Empire,” 203.

 

Ian Clark argues that the period after the Cold War did not usher in any new substantive principles and that it is better understood “as an important stage in the advancement of this ‘double movement’ towards a more overtly normative style of international society, as defined by the core states within it.”161 He sees the legitimizing principles of the post-Cold War order as a “revised” Standard of Civilization.162 These legitimizing principles were: “principles of multilateralism and a commitment to a global economy; a collectivization of security; and adherence to a set of liberal rights values.”163 Thus construed, this new Standard of Civilization helped integrate the former communist countries of Eastern Europe to the core of international society.

Clark is not the only author to recognize that international hier- archies persist in the post-Cold War system in new guises. Goldgeier and McFaul argue that the new international order can be analyzed as the “tale of two worlds.” In their story, the core is secure, wealthy, and democratic, whereas the periphery is dependent, unpredictable,164 and conflict-prone.165 Wallerstein also observes166 similar trends and predicts further polarization between the core and the periphery.167 Blaney and Inayatullah argue that “the landscape of world politics” in the post-Cold War era is best understood “in terms of a binary that recycles the content of modernization theory into a new, international form: between a zone of peace, democracy and a separate zone of anar- chy, turmoil, authoritarianism, and (optimistically) development.”168 This binary perpetuates the same social divisions of the past, with “the cultural conceptions of Western liberals … constructed as nor- mal or natural in relation to today’s ‘barbarians.’”169

161 Clark, “Another ‘Double Movement’,” p. 238.

162 See also Kingsbury, “Sovereignty and Inequality,” p. 90.

163 Clark, “Another ‘Double Movement’,” p. 238.

164 Goldgeier and McFaul, “Tale of Two Worlds,” 469.

165 Iver Neumann criticizes a book by Holm and Sorensen in the same vein for distinguishing between “zones of peace” versus “zones of conflict”: “There is a teleological quality to this categorization that betrays the main idea that, although premodern, modern, and postmodern states can coexist, these are also developmental stages.” See “Review,” 351.

166 Wallerstein, “World-System after the Cold War,” 5.

167 Also see Hurrell and Woods, Inequality, p. 1.

168 Blaney and Inayatullah, Problem of Difference, p. 116, citing Singer and Wildavsky, Real World Order, pp. 1–3, and Russett, Controlling the Sword,

p. 120.

169 Ibid., p. 117.

 

To sum up, a specific normative framework marks each major period in the history of the international system. These normative frameworks point to several things. First of all, they are indicators of an asymmetric power dynamic between countries similar to that observed by Elias in Winston Parva; namely countries that we may call “the established” (the core) and countries that we may call “the outsiders” (the semi-periphery and the periphery). The normative frameworks always represent values that are abstracted from the existing attributes of “the established,” but at the same time repre- sent an idealization of those qualities. In other words, by holding the outsiders to an ideal standard and thereby guaranteeing that they will fall short, the established feel secure in their approxima- tion of the desirable attributes. For instance, irregularities in elec- tion processes in the periphery are perceived to be a much more serious problem compared to similar incidents in Western democra- cies. A similar distortion happens in regard to security issues – the current perception in the West is that peripheral regions are more vulnerable to terrorist violence.170 Terrorist attacks of any scale out- side the core set off a frenzy of canceled tourist reservations for many months ahead, whereas hardly anyone thinks twice of pass- ing through New York City or London weeks after major terrorist incidents.171

The same stigmatizing result is also achieved by projecting all unwanted, but somewhat desirable or intriguing, characteristics on the outsider states. Such an attitude was especially evident in the nineteenth-century standards of civilization. The East was supposed to be static, despotic, and uncivilized, but also decadent and libidi- nous. However, a version of this attitude has made a comeback along with the rise of multicultural trends in the West. The Western tourist of the present day holds locals outside the core responsible for satisfy- ing her in her search for “authenticity” and comes away disappointed any time she encounters “imitations” of Western comforts, as if not being Eastern/Southern enough was a moral failing on the part of the locals. At any given point in time, then, there are international

170 See Bankoff, “Regions of Risk.”

171 In fact, in most public recounts of major terrorist attacks since 9/11, attacks in places such as Jordan and Indonesia are left off the list, as if the terrorist attacks there were not as extraordinary as events in London or Madrid.

 

anti-norms, which once affixed to the description of a country, dis- play the properties of stigma labels. In the next section, I will discuss how the presence of such stigma labels associated with outsider status affect the behavior of states.

How stigma labels shape behavior

Possessing attributes that could be stigmatized has several conse- quences for any actor. First, normals perceive the stigmatized actor as something less than human. Because he is perceived as such, he is subjected to “varieties of discrimination,” which “reduce his life- chances.”172 Second, as Goffman argues, in such situations, the dis- criminating behavior is often backed by a “stigma-theory,” which is an ideology constructed by the normals “to explain … inferiority and account for the danger [the stigmatized agent] represents, some- times rationalizing an animosity based on other differences.”173 As discussed above, other imperfections are imputed to the individ- ual with stigma, and sometimes such imperfections may have the characteristic of “desirable but undesired attributes.”174 If the stig- matized person becomes defensive about his stigma, his response is usually understood as a “direct expression of his defect” and “hence a justification of the way we treat him.”175 In other words, the stigmatized individual is caught in a bind. To challenge the stigma only reinforces his association with it; on the other hand, to not challenge it amounts to embracing that association.

This situation creates an existential dilemma for the stigmatized actor because he himself is not free of the standards being used to judge him. As a member of the society that stigmatizes him, he is

intimately alive to what others see as his failing, inevitably causing him, if only for moments, to agree that he does indeed fall short of what he really ought to be … Shame becomes a central possibility, arising from the individual’s perception of one of his own attributes as being a defiling thing to possess, and one he can readily see himself as not possessing.176

172 Goffman, Stigma, p. 5. 173 Ibid. 174 Ibid.

175 Ibid., p. 6. 176 Ibid., p. 7.

 

To put it another way, an actor who has internalized the normative standards of the society he is a member of cannot escape stigmatiza- tion even if he isolates himself or rejects those standards as unfair. Once he has internalized these standards, the subsequent choices of isolation or rejection are as much a response to the stigma as embrac- ing the stigma would be.

Therefore, once internalization has occurred – in individuals this usually happens through childhood socialization – the stigma becomes the driving force of the agent’s behavior. As Goffman points out, the central feature of the stigmatized agent’s situation in life is a question of “acceptance”: “Those who have dealings with him fail to accord him the respect and regard which the uncontaminated aspects of his social identity have led them to anticipate extending, and have led him to anticipate receiving; he echoes this denial by finding that some of his own attributes warrant it.”177 In other words, the stigma- tized agent deals with two kinds of “acceptance” issues: one that he requires from the wider society and the other that he requires from himself. The two are intimately related, however; without equal rec- ognition from the wider society he may not be able to accept himself, and without accepting himself, he may be forced to live the dissonant life of the “discreditable.”178

Once a stigma is internalized, there is no escape from it; all subse- quent actions are a product of this original condition. A stigmatized state, much like the stigmatized individual, faces additional social constraints, such as a decrease in social stature and an uncertain ontological environment. Its subsequent strategies are, therefore, best understood as mechanisms for coping with such social constraints.

The two most realistic choices for a stigmatized actor are either to attempt normalcy or to embrace one’s stigma. Within each choice, there are also two alternatives. Normalcy can be attempted by fixing one’s discrediting characteristics – Goffman’s example for this is the person who has plastic surgery to eradicate a physical disfiguration or someone who devotes private effort to excel in areas ordinarily closed to one with such a shortcoming.179 Or one may attempt normalcy by “passing.” With individuals the choice between overt corrections or passing is usually determined by the quality of the stigmatizing

177 Ibid., p. 8. 178 Ibid. 179 Ibid., p. 10.

 

attribute – if it is immediately noticeable, passing may not be an avail- able strategy. This implies that stigma categories that have less of a correspondence to physical reality are more conducive to the “pass- ing” strategy. The obvious example is racial categories which are per- ceived to be dichotomous descriptions of one physical dimension – say skin color – but are in reality catch-all labels for a cluster of vari- ables ranging from skin color to socio-economics. Such a cluster of variables creates a lot of fuzziness around the demarcation and opens up the “passing” option for many individuals who possess attributes from both sides of the divide.

The analogy to states is not as tortured as one would imagine. Obviously, states do not have the option of leaving their neighborhood and creating a new identity elsewhere. Therefore, the first option of trying to overcome stigma labels by taking direct, corrective action is the dominant strategy for states. Nevertheless, there are historical examples of behavior similar to “passing” on the international level. For instance, in the example of Greece at the turn of the twentieth century, as discussed by Toynbee (see above, pp. 84–5), we see shades of “passing,” a strategy that was replicated by many East European states later in that century. In the case of countries, “passing” is usu- ally accomplished by sweeping under the rug certain historical periods of dissimilarity with the core and constructing a national identity that is centered on a period of common lineage. So the Greeks, for instance, treated the 500-year-old Ottoman “interruption” as irrelevant to their national identity formation (except as an “Other”), thereby forging a link with Europe through the Ancient Greek heritage. The East European countries had a similar approach to their communist past after the fall of the Iron Curtain. One may call this the ugly duck- ling approach to “passing” – the potentially stigmatizing attributes are treated not so much as something to be fixed, but rather as external inauthentic impositions that can easily be shed. Underneath it all, the ugly duckling is actually one of the beautiful swans, inherently entitled to swim in the best pond at the country club.

Leaving the “passing” issue aside, which is not really an option for countries that cannot mount a plausible claim to a common herit- age with the core, the more viable option for a country which wants to overcome its stigmatization is “correction.” However, as Goffman warns us, this is only a half-way solution even when it is success- ful: “Where such repair is possible, what often results is not the

 

acquisition of fully normal status, but a transformation of self from someone with a particular blemish into someone with a record of hav- ing corrected a particular blemish.”180 This is an obstacle to autonomy in several ways: the taint of once having the discreditable attribute remains (hinting at the possibility that one can easily fall back); a sense of inauthenticity (externally imposed and internally felt) per- sists, which threatens ontological security; and resources which may otherwise be utilized are directed to the ultimately fruitless goal of correcting the “stigma.” As Bauman notes, “the stranger cannot cease to be a stranger. The best he can be is a former stranger, ‘a friend on approval’ and permanently on trial, a person vigilantly watched and constantly under pressure to be someone else than he is.”181

On the flip side, there is also the possibility that a state can embrace its stigma. Goffman outlines two such approaches: on the one hand, “the person with a shameful differentness can break with what is called reality, and obstinately attempt to employ an unconventional interpretation of the character of his social identity.”182 On the other, “he may also see the trials he has suffered as a blessing in disguise.”183 The Soviet Union embraced the mantle of “Easternness” as a way of claiming a leadership position outside the core – this would be the former strategy, shared by present-day Iran. In other words, when states employ this strategy, they claim to reject the dominant norms of the international system and substitute their own version of “reality.” The latter strategy of seeing past stigma as a “blessing” is employed at times by countries such as present-day Turkey and Japan, who often claim to be a “bridge” between the East and the West.

Goffman argues that the precise timing of when one acquires a stigma (or learns of the existence of one’s stigmatizing attribute) is crucial in shaping the subsequent response of the actor. In other words, there is a difference between the responses of those who are raised with the awareness of their disadvantageous situation and those who learn later in life that they are stigmatized. Goffman further distinguishes among those in the latter group: some learn late in life that they have always been discreditable, which involves “a radical

180 Ibid., pp. 9–10.

181 Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, p. 72.

182 Goffman, Stigma, p. 10.

183 Ibid., p. 11.

 

reorganization of [the] view of [the] past”184 and others become stig- matized as a result of joining a new community and when they “must learn a second way of being that is felt by those around them to be the real and valid one.”185 The main difference in response has to do with whether the actor’s identity is built around the fact of stigma, or if stigma is later attached to an already formed (or semi-formed) identity.186 Actors in the latter group display a more tenuous identifi- cation with others who share the stigma, and are more likely to try to manage their stigma instead.187

The timing of the stigmatization makes a difference in the interna- tional system as well. Countries with colonial pasts mostly articulated their national identities after the stigmatization of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Countries that were not colonized, how- ever, are more similar to individuals who acquire stigma after adult- hood. Awareness of stigma comes after the country has cultivated an institutional character, a world-vision, and a certain habitus of its own. This is what sets countries like Turkey, Japan, and Russia apart from the rest of the “East.”

States, habitus, and stigma

I have been arguing thus far that state identities, just like individual identities, can very much be tainted by stigmas. Stigmatization shapes the long-term state strategies in the international system, just as the presence of a stigmatizing attribute ends up framing a person’s long- term attitude toward survival in society. Yet states are not people,188 and they do not have a “psychological make-up,” so what precisely is the mechanism through which a stigma label may affect state behavior?

It is possible to circumvent this question by arguing that once the state response to social constraints has been formulated we can treat states as individual persons as far as their international actions are concerned. This point applies to strategies and motivations of a social nature as much as it applies to strategies based on material capability.

184 Ibid., p. 34. 185 Ibid., p. 35.

186 Obviously, identity formation is an ongoing process.

187  Goffman, Stigma, pp. 92–5.

188 In “State as a Person,” Wendt considers the possibility that states may be thought to have a collective consciousness similar to other superorganisms such as beehives. He finds the argument difficult to square with physicalism,

 

The argument will work just as well if we simply treat states “as if” they are persons. Realists treat states as unitary actors who care only about their physical security, and therefore do not extend the “as if” treatment to social relations. However, the physical security assump- tion is no less problematic than assumptions regarding more “social” aspects of state behavior: “Physical security assumes that states have something like ‘bodies’ that can die.”189 In other words, any IR theory that treats states as unitary actors inevitably requires heuristic leaps. Therefore, there is no reason why the personification of statehood should stop with an application of Hobbesian state-of-nature theory about self-help.

There is another way of conceptualizing how stigma may affect state identity, and that is through the concept of habitus. I discussed above how perceptions of normality and stigma may affect a group’s charisma and self-image. Such understandings become incorporated into the habitus of the group’s members. An individual’s habitus is “an active residue or sediment of his past that functions within his present, shaping his perception, thought, and action and thereby molding social practice in a regular way. It consists in dispositions, schemas, forms of know-how and competence, all of which function below the level of consciousness.”190 The habitus of an individual does not fix the individual’s response to a particular situation in a functionalist way, but does affect the boundaries of an individual’s perception of the situation: “social agents are like players in a game” and “habituses predispose agents to act in particular ways without reducing them to cultural dopes or inhibiting their strategic capacities.”191 Furthermore, for Bourdieu and other sociologists who have worked on the concept,

but points out that we often do refer “to states ‘as if’ they have emotions and therefore conscious,” 313. One way of conceiving the consciousness of the state would be as state subjectivity and memory, constituted by narratives.

If states had collective consciousness, it would follow that they feel various human emotions associated with the act of recognition, such as humiliation and loss of self-esteem. For an extended discussion of this issue, see also Ringmar, “On the Ontological Status”; Hall, “Getting Emotional”; Wight “State Agency”; Neumann, “Beware of Organicism”; Jackson, “Hegel’s House.”

189 Mitzen, “Ontological Security,” 351.

190  Crossley, “The Phenomenological Habitus,” 83, quoting Bourdieu,

Distinction, p. 466.

191 Ibid., 84.

 

no habitus can ever be an isolated, individual creation: “Since the history of the individual is never anything other than a certain speci- fication of the collective history of his class or group, each individual system of dispositions may be seen as a structural variant of all other group or class habitus, expressing the difference between the trajecto- ries and positions inside or outside the class.”192 Elias also associates habitus with the larger group: in his seminal work, The Germans, he builds an entire explanatory framework around this concept. In that work, it becomes clear that, for Elias, the “national” group is espe- cially instrumental in shaping individual habituses:193 “The fortunes of a nation become crystallized in institutions which are responsible for ensuring that the most different people of a society acquire the same characteristics, possess the same national habitus.”194 For Elias, common language is an obvious example of such an institution.

There is an implication even from this first example195 that the state must be instrumental in shaping the “national habitus.” In fact, Elias goes on to immediately bemoan the fact that “it is not yet common practice today to link the current social and national habitus of a nation to its so-called ‘history’, and especially to the state formation process it has experienced.”196 To argue that it should be otherwise is not to push for an essentialist or functionalist understanding of his- tory, but to realize that certain group-understandings (independent of their veracity even at the time they were formed) can get reproduced (almost) ad infinitum and inform present-day behavior. This is espe- cially the case in modernity, in the nation-state era.197

Obviously, not every reaction to past events leaves indelible marks on the national habitus: generally speaking, significant events influ- encing state formation have a greater impact on shaping the national

192 Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory, p. 86.

193 Elias’s use of this term pre-dates Bourdieu, but the two approaches are not contradictory. Elias seems to use this term to imply a “second nature” or “embodied social learning.” Dunning and Mennell, “Preface,” p. ix.

194 Elias, The Germans, p. 18.

195 Elias does not point out this link explicitly in reference to this example, but it is well documented that a common language, at least in the way we understand the term today, very much presumes a common state. See Connor, “Illusions of Homogeneity.”

196 Elias, The Germans, p. 19.

197 The same argument is captured by the concept of ontological security discussed earlier.

 

habitus than later developments. State formation, or modern state formation, is what makes the conceptualization of the nation possible in the first place. Therefore, state formation may be thought of as a rough equivalent to childhood socialization. In his discussion of the Germans, Elias points to four peculiarities of state formation which to him seem to be of particular significance in understanding the German habitus: (1) the “middle” position of the Germanic-speaking peoples between people who spoke Latin derivations and people who spoke Slavonic languages; (2) the difficulty of living in the shadow of a greater past; (3) discontinuities in the German state formation; (4) the fact that the unification of Germany was achieved through military and not peaceful means (which consolidated the elevated status of the military and bureaucratic nobility over the bourgeois middle class).

It is not the purpose of this book to analyze the national habituses of Turkey, Japan, or Russia, but the arguments I have presented thus far can easily be read into the framework Elias provides. In other words, there are two commonalities between the national habituses of these three former empires: (1) the experience of stigmatization as a result of comparative “backwardness” from the onset of modern state forma- tion; and (2) the difficulty of living in the shadow of a greater past.198 Of course, there are also differences: Japan’s geography, for instance, sets it apart from both Turkey and Russia. Russia’s Christian heritage sets it apart from Turkey and Japan. The Ottoman Empire’s trauma as a result of being “double-crossed” by Christian millets sets Turkey apart from both Russia and Japan (which have specific traumas of their own). Yet as far as state identity from a systemic perspective is concerned, the two similarities I have pointed out have been the most determinative.

Explaining strategy selection

While the concept of national habitus goes a long way to explain a shared sense of stigmatization shaping the worldview of the decision-makers and the population, analyses of strategy selection are

198 Elias argues that “it is a proven fact that the members of states and other social units which have lost their claim to a position of highest rank … often require a long time, even centuries, to come to terms with this changed situation and consequent lowering of their self-esteem.” The Germans, p. 19.

 

complicated by the fact that state identity is always contested at the domestic level.

Domestic contestation over state interests can be explained in ref- erence to three fields of struggle: political, economic (material), and social (cultural).199 Economic and social fields generate their own form of capital and classes, and politics is the sphere where the inter- ests that have their sources in these other fields clash. At times, the economic struggle will dominate the domestic field of politics, and in those cases the state will play off classes against war factions in other states. At other times, the divisions in society will be over social capi- tal, and the identity of the state may even be at stake. During those times, the state elite will play off social strata (or status groups)200 within domestic society against classes or war factions and other states.201

I cannot offer a universal theory of domestic contestation versus state autonomy within the scope of this book. What I can do instead is to point out that there may be certain contexts in which the inter- national strategy of the state will be contested primarily within the domestic socio-cultural sphere as opposed to the economic sphere. In those contexts, the societal divisions over understandings of state identity will be more determinative of the outcome than economic bases. I propose that major defeat of the state in the international sys- tem and/or state breakdown create exactly the type of context where the struggles within the social sphere to define the state’s identity would be elevated to special prominence in the political sphere. In a general sense, state identity is always contested at the domestic level. There are always groups within any society who are not satisfied with the way state goals or normative ideals are defined. However, certain cataclysmic events such as military defeat and/or state breakdown create particularly acute dynamics of contestation because they sap the legitimacy of the traditional order.

199 I am simplifying Bourdieu’s distinction here by following disciplinary convention: he distinguished between social, cultural, and symbolic fields.

200 Social status groups and economic classes often overlap, but they are not one and the same. High levels of education, for instance, give individuals access to social capital which may be exchanged with economic capital.

201 Even this dichotomy is false because both of these struggles are ongoing and ever-present. Nevertheless, for purposes of social analysis we may bracket one off while we focus on the other.

 

A state’s ability to compete and command respect in the inter- national system depends on how closely its domestic norms align with the normative ideal of the system at a given period. Stigmatization is obviously an obstacle to respect and equal treatment. If that is the case, it would follow that the prestige of the state in the international system depends at least in part on how well the state negotiates the social constraints of the system. The sovereignty project of the state in some sense depends on satisfying the expectations stemming from the national status. Therefore, we can conclude that whichever group emerges from the period of readjustment following military defeat will sustain its legitimacy to the degree that it delivers on this promise, which in turn is predicated on the social norms of the international system.202

I argued above that there are two broad strategies available to a state dealing with international stigmatization: attempting nor- malcy (either by passing or by correction) or embracing the stigma (by reinterpreting normative reality in general or the value of the stigma in particular as a “blessing in disguise”). To put it in the other terminology I have been employing thus far, such a state can attempt to join the “established” or accept that it will remain an outsider in the system.

We may deduce from the above discussion that several factors influ- ence an agent’s response to stigmatization: the past of the stigmatized actor (habitus), the imagination of the actor, the present-day ability of the actor, and the larger normative framework. Let’s take each in turn. The habitus has a bearing on the issue because those who have had power in the past are more likely to resent the loss of it. It is possible to read Nietzsche as arguing that the man of ressentiment is someone who is physically weak but nevertheless lusts for political supremacy because he feels entitled to it.203 The slave revolt in morality does not originate with the slaves; it originates with priests who had a supreme position in society (and continue to feel entitled to it) but were defeated by the brute force of the nobles. The attitude of the slave is different than that of the priests: “not at all used to positing values himself, he also attached no more value to himself than his masters attached

202 See also Wendt, Social Theory, pp. 235–7.

203 Reginster, “Nietzsche on Ressentiment.”

 

to him.”204 The slave is thus resigned to a worthless (or, we may say, stigmatized) way of life. Unlike the slave, who benefits from a value system organized around the feeling of ressentiment but is not crea- tive enough to invent it, the priestly originator of ressentiment values is someone who is used to exercising power, but has now lost that power to someone who is physically stronger.

Among states, countries (and titular nations within those coun- tries) which are used to being masters of their own domain are more likely to suffer doubly from defeat. First, they suffer like everybody else from the immediate threat to physical security which inevita- bly accompanies the loss of empire and military defeat. Yet, the real suffering is in the other, more social aspects of corporate identity. Especially jeopardized is the state’s ontological security. The transi- tion from being a threat to being a loser, by definition, impinges on the desire to have a stable social identity in the system. Relationship routines are damaged or broken. This threat to ontological security does not sit well with the national interest in “collective self-esteem.” We can assume, therefore, that the more powerful and/or prestigious the state before defeat and imperial collapse, the longer it will take to readjust to the new international environment.

The past matters in another way – if enough common historical affinity exists between the defeated and the victors, the stigmatized and the normals, defeat may become the opportunity to reclaim that common ground to reconstruct a new identity narrative. As discussed earlier, one strategy available to (some) new regimes is to “pass” by claiming stigmatization to be an aberration caused by the previous regime and not something attached to the nation itself. “Passing” is not that different than “correction”; or rather the difference is a mat- ter of degree not substance. Both strategies involve emulation of the normative standards as opposed to a rejection of them. In domestic society, actors who pass are those whose different or discreditable attributes are not immediately known – in other words, they are those people who look and behave in ways similar enough to the normals. States which are similar enough to the established – in geography, religion, race, etc. – have also tried strategies similar to passing.

Such affinity works another way, however. If, for some reason (generally stemming from the condition of the normative hierarchy),

204 Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, p. 261.

 

passing is not attempted or fails to achieve the desired outcome, such frustrated actors are more likely to attempt ressentiment or simple rejection strategies. Just as Moses was initially a member of the Pharaoh’s household, states which have a higher affinity to the core (the outsiders among the insiders) are more likely to take up the plight of the stigmatized as a cause. By doing so, they benefit from the very stratification that they purport to fight – the same normative order which ranks them lower than the established also makes them a leader among the stigmatized outsiders.

Therefore, the flexibility of the larger normative framework in terms of the promise of upward mobility also makes a difference in strategy selection. As long as we are on the subject of ressentiment, we may also invoke Scheler’s description of the arriviste, who “vigor- ously pursues the goods and stations in life which are associated with the values possessed by the noble, but he does not pursue these goods for their intrinsic worth.”205 Instead, the arriviste is concerned with “being more highly esteemed than others.”206 The arriviste is a social climber: “He must unceasingly construct a sense of his worth through comparisons with others. Feelings of self-satisfaction are accumulated through looking down upon those he has surpassed, but these feelings are impermanent.”207 According to Scheler, what separates the man of ressentiment from the arriviste is a sense of impotence. The strat- egy of the arriviste is built on the belief that one can rise through the ranks by taking corrective action. If there is no upward mobility in the hierarchy, or if for whatever reason the closure criteria is defined in such a way that the actor has no hope of gaining entry, the arriviste strategy becomes unsustainable.

The imagination of the actor also matters to some degree if the choice is between living with the way things are versus rejecting the reality of the situation. To put it in state-centric terms, it matters whether an alternative value system is available through which the defeat can be recast as something other than defeat, a moral victory even. This is what ressentiment value systems achieve – weakness, i.e. stigma, becomes a blessing. While ressentiment values, as Nietzsche warned us, are not real, substantive values, but rather inversions or negations

205 Morelli, “Ressentiment and Rationality.”

206 Ibid. 207 Ibid.

 

of existing value demands, it still makes a difference whether they can be articulated as a coherent ideology (as in, say, present forms of Islamic fundamentalism). A child who stomps off the playground in anger will have few followers, if any, and only for a short time, if at all; a child who convinces himself and others that the playground itself is dirty and undesirable can maintain that stance for much longer.

The present-day resources of the actor also matter, but to a limited degree. Both passing and correction – i.e. the arriviste strategies – require some material resources, and so does leading a priestly charge of ressentiment against the established. We can speculate that resources make a difference at the extreme ends: without resources, no strategy can be attempted, and one is relegated to the slave pos- ition in the typology; with great resources one can maintain a strat- egy of rejection even without ideological justification. The greater the material performance of the state, the less is the need to emu- late the dominant norm or to avoid stigmatization because domestic legitimacy can also be attained to some degree by delivering concrete material results. In the middle, once chosen, both the arriviste and the priestly strategies are equally sustainable (keeping all other fac- tors constant) because they tend to generate their own resources: the former gives access to privileges and rights (to the degree it is suc- cessful), the latter elevates one’s position among the stigmatized and the excluded.

To sum up, the two broad strategies available to outsider states are: embrace the international normative order and deal with the problem of stigma by casting it as an endogenous problem, or reject the international normative order and deal with the problem of stigma as an exogenous challenge. Passing and correction are strategies which are variations of the first option. Ressentiment and rejection are variations of the latter. If any middle ground exists, it is in what we may call, for lack of a better term, the arriviste priesthood option: the strategy of the actor who seeks esteem by not challenging the established normative order but act- ing as a gatekeeper and disseminator for it. In any outsider coun- try, groups favoring each of these options are always present, but after cataclysmic events which throw state identity into question, such groups come to dominate national debates. Depending on the larger international context and current conditions of the country

 

(as outlined above), which one of these responses is going to be more attractive to the domestic population varies. In the follow- ing chapters, I will demonstrate how this dynamic played out in the specific cases of Turkey after World War I, Japan after World War II, and Russia after the Cold War.