Chapter 4

Chapter 4

The Communitarian Critique of Liberalism

Introduction

This chapter falls into two main parts. In the first we consider the

context of the present communitarian debate, and then offer a

characterisation of communitarianism. In the second we discuss the

affinity between communitarianism and some dominant themes and currents

in feminist theory and politics. IN the course of our analysis certain

problems with communitarianism as it is currently conceived in

political theory begin to emerge. The next chapter consists of a

critical discussion of communitarianism from a feminist perspective.

The Context of the Debate

We saw that liberalism as a political doctrine is difficult to

characterise accurately, because of the immense variety comprehended

within the tradition. The same problem applies to 'communitarianism',

but in an aggravated form. For communitarianism is not a tradition

which has been crystallised (no matter how ambiguously) in a political

movement or set of programmes. Indeed, it is very difficult to seer it

as a unified tradition at all. Communitarian themes appear in many

kinds of political thought from Aristotle to the present day. They

have formed a more or less important part of the thinking of authors

who take up opposed positions on the political spectrum: liberals,

feminists, marxists, conservatives, socialists, republicans, greens and

social democrats.

In recent debates, communitarianism has crystallised in the form of a

critique of liberalism – or, rather, a critique of the individualism

and the universalism which are central to recent liberal theory.

Communitarianism rejects liberal individualism in favour of a theory of

the social construction both of the self and of social reality –

culture, values, institutions and relations. Persons are fundamentally

connected, with each other and with the world they inhabit.

Communitarians also emphasise the importance of intersubjective,

collective or public goods. These two strands of communitarian thought

– social constructionism and value communitarianism – do not logically

entail one another, but typically run together. This critique of

liberalism is connected with a broader them of dissatisfaction with

modernity. [1]

These themes are not, however, unique to the position of those who

are identified as belonging in the communitarian camp. [2] The

substantive political vision that emerges from communitarianism has a

great deal in common with that which emerges from the work of the new

civic republicans, and theorists of the 'new public law'. [3] In the

realm of method, communitarianism resonates strongly with the

hermeneutic tradition, which has generated certain specific methods of

research in social science, and with the tradition of interpretivism in

legal theory. [4] Recent interventions into the liberalism-

communitarianism debate have begun to draw more explicitly on elements

of European philosophy, particularly the critical theory of the

Frankfurt School and Habermas's development of this into the conception

of communicative ethics. [5] Another current evident in the debate is

pragmatist philosophy, most clearly developed in the work of Richard

Rorty. [6] And the most important resonance for our purposes is with

the tradition of socialist and cultural feminism which has emerged as a

critique of and in political opposition to liberal feminism, in the

last twenty years. [7]

It should also be remarked at this stage that there is variation in

the extent to which communitarian thinkers construct a positive

alternative to the substantive political vision offered by the liberal

tradition. Sandel's work exemplifies the 'negative' nature of the

communitarian critique, consisting as it does in a series of rejections

of aspects of liberalism. [8] Of those we identify as communitarians

Walzer and Unger come closest to the construction of a positive

alternative to the famous recent individualist texts by writers such as

Rawls, Dworkin and Nozick. [9]

In substantive political terms communitarianism is indeterminate.

For example, Alasdair MacIntyre advocates an approach to ethics which

explicitly rejects the Enlightenment themes and methods. He locates

himself in the Aristotelian tradition, and can be read as a

conservative. [10] On the other hand, Roberto Unger's social

constructionism is accompanied by a commitment to visionary political

theory, to ideals of solidarity and the value of reciprocity, and to a

reinterpretation of modernism. This has been dubbed 'super-liberalism'

by Unger himself, yet it moves in many respects well beyond the kind of

liberalism Rorty or Rawls would be happy to defend. [11] It has, of

course, traditionally been taken that socialists are communitarians;

but the extent to which this must be so are contested. [12]

This variation in substantive political commitment underlines the

distinction drawn by Charles Taylor between the 'ontology' and the

'advocacy' aspects of social and political theory. [13] In Chapter 2 we

argued that there is a link between ontology and advocacy in this

sense; and we shall be taking this line in the analysis of

communitarianism that follows. Briefly, we shall argue that some

combinations of ontology and advocacy positions are more viable than

others, while some are so riven with tension as to be unviable if not

strictly illogical, furthermore, we shall continue to identify the ways

in which advocacy and ontology have in fact reinforced one another in

recent developments in liberal theory.

So, a wide variety of projects contribute to 'communitarianism'.

Further, most of the arguments made under the heading of

communitarianism have been made before (often long before). In this

case, we must obviously ask whether it is valid to treat

communitarianism as a distinctive position at all. We do consider that

the recent debates are distinctive, notwithstanding their complicated

provenance. They have arisen in a particular intellectual and

political context – not only when the weaknesses of liberal theory are

becoming inescapable, but when the ground for a resurgence of what we

might call romantic thought in political theory was extremely fertile.

Partly this probably a matter of sheer chronology. Immediately after

the Second World War the apparent dangers of nationalism and

collectivism were at the forefront of popular and academic

consciousness. Hence, political theories like those of Isaiah Berlin

and F.A.Hayek, which emphasise individual rights against the state and

society, were influential and set the agenda for political thought.
[14] The cold war had an obvious negative effect on the credibility in

mainstream political thought of Marxism, with its powerful anti-

individualist critique, its scepticism about rights and its emphasis on

the role of social structures. These factors were crucial inhibitors

of the development of any utopian conceptions of community. They also

militated against the success of critical analyses of the social

structures which protected human rights and equality (no matter how

oppressive these liberating social structures could also be said to

be).

The important place which the communitarian challenge to liberalism

has occupied in political theory of the last decade, can be attributed

in part to the fading of these historical experiences. It can also, as

we shall argue, be explained in terms of its resonance with the

resurgent uncertainties about modernity. [15] We now want to describe

and discuss this context, by surveying the currents in social and

political thought that we have identified as relevant and contributory

to communitarianism.

Civic Republicanism and the New Public Law It is in the literature

on civic republicanism and the ‘new public law’ that the link between

communitarian concerns and the critique of modernity is most apparent.

[16] This literature is instructive in reminding us that fear about the

degeneration of modern politics is not a phenomenon peculiar to the

last twenty years. The work of Hannah Arendt and John Dewey, to name

but two of the most influential contributors, raised similar issues,

and the recent republican movement has drawn explicitly and

productively on their ideas. [17]

The motivating idea informing the new republicanism is a sense of the

way in which our political life and our conception of citizenship have

become so diluted that the majority of the population feels alienated

from the political process and identifies only weakly with the

political society of which it is a part. The specific diagnosis

varies. Some are inclined to blame centralisation and the dominance of

representative as opposed to participatory forms of democracy. Others

point the finger at the idea that an adequate constitutional framework

can be understood in procedural as opposed to substantive terms. Some

point to the diffusion of governmental power into institutions which

lack accountability. Others deplore the ideological individualism and

selfishness of the prevailing culture and the decline of political

debate in non-state public forums. Many subscribe to some combination

of these ideas. The basic message, however, is clear: unless we can

revive the idea of a substantial common life, unless we can design

political (state and non-state) institutions which enable each of us to

feel empowered and involved as citizens, our society may disintegrate,

either literally or in the sense that it will be governable only by

authoritarian means.

This debate is tied to a particular political context - that is, the

contemporary United States of America. Not only are contributors

concerned with the design of democratic institutions, but they are

concerned with specific problems in the interpretation of the US

Constitution. This means that the debate has a quite concrete tone

which is in marked contrast to the abstractions we encounter in the

liberal-communitarian debate in political theory.

Interpretivism in legal theory This position also has a peculiarly

American dimension in the work of Dworkin, Fish, and many of the

writers associated with the ‘new public law’. [18] Here, law is

conceptualised as an interpretive practice, as opposed to a series of

laid down principles which can be straightforwardly discovered and

applied. So analogies can be drawn between legal and literary

interpretation. The hermeneutic tradition, which we discuss next, is

drawn on somewhat pragmatically by participants in the current debate.

Hermeneutics The hermeneutic tradition in social theory and social

science has stood in opposition to empiricism and positivism. [19]

Whereas empiricism takes it that social facts are to be observed and

described objectively by the scientist, the hermeneuticist stresses

that facts are constructed out of a process of interpretation. In this

process discourse (and metaphor particularly) are deeply implicated -

our perception and interpretation of the facts will be discursively

shaped. This means that methods of social science must be reflexive

(the scientist must scrutinise her own processes of interpretation),

and that social reality is itself understood as built out of the

interpretations of participants. [20]

Pragmatism Contemporary pragmatic philosophy, which again is

typically a product of the USA, resonates with the interpretivism and

social constructivism of the hermeneutic tradition. [21] Pragmatists

deny that reality, or the facts about reality, are straightforwardly

‘out there’ and knowable by us. Instead our concepts, and especially

our interests, shape our knowledge of and relationship with the world.

The work of John Dewey is particularly important here - especially in

the political thought produced by contemporary pragmatists. Rather

than speculating about the metaphysics of reality, philosophers should

discuss our immediate world, and our concerns - about education, about

political institutions and so on. For Dewey our reasons for doing what

we do lie in our practices, not in any objective truths about the

world.

Dewey’s work has been taken up in contrasting ways. The new

Republicans, as we have seen, emphasise the necessity of re-building

values which are positively assented to and which guide the actions of

all citizens. Richard Rorty’s pragmatic philosophy would view this

project as being far too authoritarian. Instead, Rorty’s scepticism

about truth leads him to argue that all values and practices are

contingent, and that we cannot fix these. That is to say, everything

is made, and is constantly being re-made. [22]

Critical Theory and Discourse Ethics The Frankfurt School developed

a series of theoretical and practical criticisms of capitalist society

which they saw as a false reality. These critical challenges were

intellectually important - they set out to reveal the ideological

functions of liberal individualism and the poverty of industrial life.

[23] But, as we discussed earlier, in the cold war era these assaults

on liberal institutions could not attain any dominant position, either

in the academy or in mainstream politics. However, more recently,

Jurgen Habermas’s communicative ethics has increasingly been drawn on

in developing models of active citizenship and democratic institutions.

Habermas moves on from earlier analyses of ideology to explore how

rational judgement - and therefore a rational political process - can

emerge when, and only when, communication between citizens is

undistorted. Undistorted communication is possible only when all

citizens have rights to speak, and are heard respectfully by others,

when we speak truthfully and relevantly, and without intention to

manipulate. [24]

Habermas’s work has been influential in the recent developments of

explicitly critical theories of politics - theories which attempt to

see how the world might be transformed (rather than devising detailed

blueprints and policy proposals). These theories in turn connect with

the communitarian principle that political theory is an interpretive

enterprise. Obviously, the emphasis on the ideal speech community

supports the classification of Habermas as a kind of communitarian. In

recent political theory, too, Habermas’s theory has been compared,

favourably, with Rawls’ conception of the original position. [25]

Feminism In previous chapters we have set out the main points of

contention and ambiguity within feminism, and discussed the main points

of the feminist critique of liberalism. The shortcomings of liberalism

from a feminist perspective point to the necessity for a coherent

feminist theory to include both social constructivism and a value

commitment to public goods and to human solidarity (rather than

individualism). Both of these enable and further the critical

understanding of gender relations and the possibilities for their

transformation. This conception of feminism is closer to what has been

labelled ‘socialist feminism’ than to other varieties. [26] It is also

close to what has been referred to as cultural feminism - where

‘cultural’ serves to emphasise that the explanation of women’s

subordination and the experience of femininity cannot be reduced to

biology, economics, psychic drives or irrationality, but is

institutionalised in values, practices and discourses. [27] There are

obvious parallels with communitarian themes here, and in turn the

insights from cultural feminism have undoubtedly made a prominent and

important contribution to the communitarian critique of liberalism.

Characterising Communitarianism

The variety of communitarian positions, and the complexity of the

related and background debates and traditions, obviously threatens to

muddy any attempt at critical or comparative analysis. We shall

therefore begin with a relatively simple model of communitarianism

which will serve to highlight some relevant problems and pave the way

for a more differentiated analysis later.

Social Constructionism

Communitarians reject the liberal view of the self, and develop a

theory of the social construction both of the self and of social

reality - culture, values, institutions and relations. This view

entails, of course, not only that conceptions of selfhood, personhood

and agency are socially produced and specific, but also that actual

persons are too. There is great variation between communitarian

writers as to how radically socially situated their conceptions of the

human self turn out to be, and hence between their different ideas

about the human capacity for self-reflection and agency. [28] However,

one idea common to all communitarians is that the self is situated and

embodied.

Sandel has set out a particularly vivid social constructionist theory

in his development of the strong notion of ‘constitutive

communitarianism’, which he contrasts with ‘sentimental’ or

‘instrumental’ communitarianism. [29] Sentimental communitarianism

recognises that a person might well desire to further the interests of

his or her community and other people generally, to promote values,

principles and cultures which achieve this end. In other words, the

individual might have altruistic impulses and sentiments.

‘Instrumental’ communitarianism is the view that utility will generally

be maximised by fostering altruism, community values or a collective

culture. This doctrine, which recommends that individuals should have

altruistic or other-oriented attachments, is, like the previous one,

compatible with the liberal theory of human nature and liberal

politics.

Against this, Sandel argues that communitarianism is not optional: we

cannot conceptualise the individual apart from his or her community,

its practices, cultures and values. The community constitutes the

person. Social processes and institutions, the family, churches,

political and educational systems, shape the infant into a social being

who experiences emotion, who desires, who has understanding of and

attitudes towards the social world and her place in it. Indeed, in

this regard, although psychoanalytic accounts of human drives and

desires as originating in the family drama are themselves social

constructionist, and psychoanalytic thought has been one of the most

influential movements in constructionist social thought this century,

it might be argued that it is inadequately social. For it takes too

little account of the extent to which different social arrangements

might fundamentally alter the plot and cast of characters of the drama,

and thereby alter the drives and desires human beings have.
Contemporary political theory provides many versions of strong,

constitutive communitarianism. [30] The idea of human consciousness and

identity as contextual and intersubjective is, of course, not new. [31]

But in the contemporary literature distinctive implications are being

drawn for politics from a social constructionist metaphysics of

personhood and empirical facts about human existence. Contrary to the

liberal arguments, many communitarians assert or imply that their

approach to the social construction of human nature and identity leads

naturally if not necessarily into both a constructionist approach to

political and moral value, and a substantive notion of political value

which gives a central place to what we shall call for the moment public

goods.

If persons develop their identities in a social context, and in the

context of prevailing social values, it is nonetheless also the case

that they act upon the world in constructive ways. Social contexts are

themselves historically contingent, socially constructed and subject to

change. There is thus an easy although not a necessary move to be made

from one constructionist thesis to the other: that is, from the

socially constructed and contingent nature of ethical and political

values. The multi-directional causal movements between the world,

agents and values once again raise questions about freedom and agency.

[32] For the moment we need merely to note the importance of this in

communitarian, as compared with liberal, thought.

On the strongest communitarian view there simply is no a-historical,

transcendent reality to be grasped in the sphere of value or anywhere

else. This of course raises the issue of relativism. At one end of a

spectrum of responses to this issue is Rorty’s radical pragmatism.

This rejects the very charge of relativism as misplaced. The

impossibility of a ‘view from nowhere’, and the infinity of possible

viewpoints should lead us to reject the very idea of meta-narratives

(by which Rorty means second-order theories - theories which purport to

ground first-order claims) or truth claims. So far as there is any

truth to be had it is that of the inevitability of perspectivalism,

which is to say that our knowledge of reality is contingent upon our

point of view. [33] This is not to say that there is no place for

visionary, critical or utopian political thought. This should simply

be recognised, however, as an exercise in imagination and persuasion,

not grounded in any independent validating practice or set of criteria.

[34] At the other end of the spectrum is Taylor’s interpretive approach

which, whilst it recognises moral and political argument as being

historically and socially grounded, does not abandon the notion of

independent criteria which enable us to identify errors,

irrationalities, or incoherences, in our evaluative positions. [35]

Taylor’s position leaves open the possibility of what in some real

sense counts as moral progress or regress, whilst maintaining an

important place for the human construction of values. On this kind of

view, neither ‘objectivism’ nor ‘subjectivism’ is the appropriate

posture for ethics, which is conceived instead in interpretivist terms.

Value Communitarianism

In the second major strand of communitarian thought the kinds of

values which tend to be the object of visionary communitarian politics

are emphasised. Concomitantly, the lack of these in other political

theories, especially liberalism, attracts critical attention.

Communitarian discussion often speaks rather indiscriminately of

collective goods, community values, the value of ‘community’, and even

public virtues. We want to make several distinctions here, which are

not made clear in the literature we are discussing. [36]

‘Community values’ can be taken as referring to both what kind of

values are at issue, and whose values they are: where they proceed

from, their status and identity. This latter aspect is more properly a

part of social constructionism than of value communitarianism. It is

simply the claim, already discussed, that values themselves necessarily

proceed from and belong to particular communities, and are created and

validated by community practices. In this sense, even the most

individualistic and egoistic values (such as those of nineteenth

century capitalism) are community values, and do not, contrary to

liberal capitalist theory, proceed naturally from universal human

nature and rationality.

Distinct from this is the communitarian emphasis on the importance of

what we shall call intersubjective, collective or public goods: value-

communitarian proper. Clearly, a commitment to such collective goods

can be made without espousing a social constructionist stance. But in

the work of many communitarian authors the two themes run together.

Social constructionism’s ontological claims, along with empirical facts

about human interdependence, are assumed to have some substantive

political implications. A vision of humans as primarily social beings

conduces to putting the emphasis on values which express the mutually

supportive aspects of human life. This in turn conduces to the

promotion of cultural practices and institutions which recognise,

reaffirm and develop the communal and mutually supportive aspects of

human life to the top of the political agenda. Thus reciprocity,

solidarity, fraternity and community itself take the place of the

liberal priorities such as fulfilment of individual rights and respect

for individual freedom in the sphere of political value.

Here a further distinction must be made between collective values and

public goods. Reciprocity, solidarity and community all exemplify what

we call collective values. These are values which can only be realised

in the context of a communal life in which members share a certain

threshold recognition of both mutual dependence and each others'

humanity and moral claims. They cannot be enjoyed by individuals as

such – each persons enjoyment depends on others' enjoyment. These

values, in other words, depend on a threshold recognition of

'intersubjectivity', although the degree to which this is taken to be

so (and what exactly is meant by intersubjectivity) turns out to be a

matter of fundamental political importance. Public goods are rather

different. They are institutional, and the link between them and

collective values is that a commitment to these kinds of collective

framework values would typically engender a political practice which

realised a range of public goods in the sense of facilities and

practices designed to help members of the community to develop their

common and hence their personal lives.

Public goods would therefore encompass a range of things from

concrete institutions such as sports and cultural facilities through

education systems and political institutions, to practices such as

honour systems and offices. But among goods legitimately thought of as

public there are important differences in terms of whether they

represent goods which are conceptually collective or intersubjective –

goods such as conversation, democratic debate, or humour – or those

which are not. Some, such as national security, should instead be

thought of as realising the cumulative interests of individual members

of the community – as aggregative rather than collective. Furthermore,

whether we think of some public goods as collective or cumulative

depends on our political conception of them. For example, education is

a public good which can be seen in either way, with substantive

political differences hinging on the perspective. To what extent, for

example, do we see the value of education in terms of its inculcation

in its subjects of a common life, tradition or culture? This is

important, because it will affect whether we think that public goods

can be given an adequate place within liberal theory, on the basis of

Sandel's instrumental or sentimental communitarianism.

Another complication in thinking about public goods should be

mentioned here, as it will be important to our argument later. Public

goods are defined as those from the consumption or enjoyment of which

other persons cannot be excluded – so fresh air, street lighting,

public transport and road cleaning services all count. But some public

goods are not quite as public as that – club goods are those shared

goods from the consumption or enjoyment of which other members of the

club cannot be excluded. Crucially, one has to be a member of 'the

club' to secure enjoyment of them. Public transport could be defined

as a club good if it is so expensive that some people cannot afford it;

street lighting could be defined as a club good if some people cannot

be, for one reason or another, out on the streets after dare. [38]

Party and Policy Commitments Value communitarianism, and

particularly the commitment to collective values, has of course been a

central feature of Marxist or socialist politics. However, at the

level of abstraction at which it can plausibly be linked with social

constructionism, its substantive political implications are very weak.

Social constructionism militates in favour of value-communitarianism,

but it tells us little about the kinds of collective values or public

goods which we should espouse or develop. It may militate in favour of

reciprocity or solidarity, but how should these be interpreted, and

through what kinds of institutions should they be realised? This

indeterminacy can easily be seen by reflecting on the range of theories

in which value-communitarianism and social constructivism – together or

separately – have found a place.

Value communitarianism, for example, has recently formed the basis

for Sandel's critique of liberalism's impoverished conception of our

common life and for Walzer's discussion of communal provision. [38] It

engenders Unger's emphasis on community, and the place accorded by

Rorty (notwithstanding his liberal commitments) to the value of

solidarity. [39] It is an important theme in feminist thought, for

example, in the 'ethic of care' suggested by Gilligan and others. [40]

Each of these theories occupies a position towards the left of the

political spectrum. Significantly, though, forms of value

communitarianism have been central to conservative visions such as

Devlin's view that each society is entitled, and indeed obliged, to

enforce its own morality. [41]

Some communitarian theory is best seen as a reinterpretation of and

renewal of commitment to liberalism. Rorty's radical pragmatist social

constructionism, for example, is accompanied by a clear identification

with liberal politics. Paradoxically he also espouses the view that

the traditional framework of political philosophy – the commitment to

the objectivity of reality, the universalism of truth and value – must

be abandoned, thereby attempting to pull apart liberalism and

modernity. [42] Another strategy is exemplified by Sandel, who develops

what we might call an immanent critique of liberalism. He argues that

if theorists like Dworkin and Rawls are to realise their professed

ideals they must embrace social constructionism. [43] In their most

recent work Taylor and Walzer clearly identify themselves as liberals.

[44]

The new civic republicans analyse the shortcomings of a primarily

procedural understanding of the normative framework for constitutional

arguments which has predominated in liberal legal theory. They argue

instead for a more substantive conception of the common good and civic

virtue, and for a broader conception of politics as involving the

selection of values. This leads in turn to an enriched conception of

active citizenship as a basic component of the human good, ideally

realised through public dialogue and participation. The expanded

public or political sphere becomes one in which we realise our good as

citizens in the recreation or recollection of a shared normative

context for our common life. This theory is difficult to locate on the

traditional left-right spectrum. It can be seen as conservative in the

sense of advocating a return to older, pre-modern political forms and

values. On the other hand it shares a great deal with many socialist

political visions.

In civic republicanism we have a good example of the links between a

focus on collective values and public goods and a refusal to draw an

absolute distinction between the right and the good. In contrast to

the liberal priority of the right over the good, in which the former

only is the business of politics, the communitarian recognition of the

importance of common life and collective provision sits uneasily with

the notion of justice as the primary virtue of social institutions and

the sole concern of the state. If the good for individuals is

intrinsically linked to that of the collective, a rigid separation of

the right from the good is inappropriate and even incoherent. There is

a parallel link between a rejection of the separation of the right from

the good and social constructionism. Once we see human identity and

value as produced and grounded in specific social contexts, traditions

and ways of life, the politically relevant realm of life becomes

extremely wide. The implications in terms of weakening liberal

distinctions between public and private are obvious. We should also

note that acceptance of an expanded political sphere with politics

encompassing debates about the good, sits unhappily with the kind of

division between reason and emotion, the rational and the affective,

which characterises liberal thought. Once we see values as being

things which are reasoned about, we are clearly employing a notion

broader than that of instrumental reason.

Again we must note the diversity of communitarian and liberal

positions. Sandel and Taylor, possibly the most sympathetic of the

communitarians to some aspects of liberal values and conceptions of

agency, are nonetheless the most forthright critics of the separation

of the right from the good. Conversely the separation is weakened, if

not abandoned, in Raz's avowedly liberal theory, which rejects the idea

of the state's neutrality as between conceptions of the good. As our

discussion in Chapter 2 began to reveal, recent developments in liberal

theory have responded positively to aspects of the communitarian

critique in ways which have blurred the lines between liberal and

communitarian approaches.
Rawls' recent work makes significant moves towards social

constructionism, and at least pays lip service to value

communitarianism by arguing that justice as fairness is compatible with

collective as much as with individualist conceptions of the good. [45]

On the other hand, he does not develop a full account of collective

values or public goods, nor does he in any way weaken his commitment to

the separation of the right and the good. Rawls argues that his

position is compatible with civic republicanism, which he defines as

seeing active citizenship as simply a necessary means of realising

liberal democratic values. This he distinguishes from civic humanism,

which sees active citizenship as part of the good for human beings, and

hence with which justice as fairness is incompatible. We have already

set out our view that these developments in Rawls' position give rise

to internal tensions which it is not clear that his theory can resolve.

But we should note that Rorty, included in our discussion of

communitarianism because of the central role a radical form of social

constructionism plays in his work, defends Rawls's current position as

a distinctively liberal one which is justified in maintaining the

separation of the right and the good, and dismisses communitarianism as

unrealistic neo-romanticism. [46]

Dworkin, too, has identified himself as a constructionist and gives a

central place to the idea of community in his recent work. However,

the idea of constructionism he develops finds its roots in the common

acceptance of the liberal idea that each individual has a right to

equal respect and concern from his (sic) fellow citizens. [47] Hence,

even in his most recent affirmation of the importance of community,

Dworkin's is still a position in which the value of community is

ultimately driven by and dependent on its value for individuals. It

also embraces a paradoxically traditionalist, backward-looking (and

hence potentially conservative) conception of the community. [48]

Kymlicka intends to push liberalism in a somewhat value communitarian

direction. He, however, disagrees with Sandel's reading of Rawls, and

defends Rawls' ability to satisfactorily accommodate a concept of

cultural membership. If Kymlicka were right the communitarian critique

of the priority of the right over the good would be undermined. [49]

However, Kymlicka does not meet the communitarian case. For him,

cultural membership is an individual right.

The point of noting all this variety is to underline the importance

of recognising that our models of communitarianism and liberalism

provide a framework for examining some central questions of and debates

within contemporary political and social theory, and are not means of

attaching rigid labels to particular writers.

Communitarianism and the Status of Political Theory

Finally, we must consider what is widely held to be a methodological

implication of the social constructionist aspect of communitarian

thought. This is its entailment of an 'interpretivist' approach to

political and social theory. The social construction of human identity

and value suggests that there is no transcendent, objective viewpoint

from which the theorist can speak. She speaks, rather, from within a

culture, and from the standpoint of certain intellectual, political and

affective commitments. According to this approach, the boundaries

between subjective and objective, between descriptive and prescriptive

aspects of political theory begin to blur.

We can illustrate the point with an example. In conventional

political theoretical terms, the communitarian critique of liberalism

has both descriptive and prescriptive aspects. On the one hand,

liberalism is criticised as being untrue as a description of human

beings and societies. Communitarians argue that people are socially

constructed in particular political and cultural contexts; are embedded

in networks of social relations. If liberal individualism has any

validity, according to communitarian constructionism, it is because

social constructionism is true: the liberal individual is a social

product. On the other hand, at least some forms of communitarianism

(those committed to value-communitarianism as well as constructionism)

propose a normative theory. We must put in place the kinds of social

institutions, practices, policies, norms and values which will bring

proper community life about. The strongest versions of

communitarianism are engaged in advocacy as well as ontology, and

though the former is not straightforwardly entailed by the latter, the

two are linked.

This way of looking at communitarian theory, however, makes two

methodological and epistemological assumptions which are questioned, to

a greater or lesser extent, by the interpretive approach. In the first

place, the idea that communitarianism makes descriptive claims implies

a quasi-scientific appeal to the 'facts of the matter' about human

nature. Second, the normative aspects of value communitarian

prescription could be understood as claiming some kind of objective or

universal truth or validity. But beyond the framework truth claim

about the validity of social constructionism itself, the espousal of a

thoroughly constructionist position seems to entail the deconstruction

of each of these projects. The only 'fact of the matter' about human

nature is its openness and contingency. And since values are similarly

contingent, there is no Archimedean point from which to prescribe with

any kind of objectivity or universal validity about either political or

ethical values. The idea of social theory as interpretive seeks to

capture the sense in which its judgements are inevitably grounded (not

transcendent) and are context dependent. [50]

Once again, we have to be aware of the variety of views on this

subject among communitarians. At one extreme, Rorty rejects the idea

of truth and objective knowledge in such a way as to render the very

category of 'interpretation' uninteresting. On his view, there simply

is nothing in which interpretation could be grounded, other than

contingent selves, conceived as networks of belief and desire, and

their practices. Hence he applauds Rawls' assertion that metaphysical

conceptions of selfhood are irrelevant to political theory. [51] For

Rorty, as for the later Rawls, political theory is independent of both

philosophy and social theory: it is simply the project of explicating

the grounds for consensus about political arrangements in particular

societies. [52] Other theorists would rejoin that the very insight that

all judgement is socially grounded reveals precisely that the

conceptions of human nature and personhood inevitably inform,

implicitly if not explicitly, theories such as Rawls', are of

substantive and political rather than only metaphysical significance.

At the other end of the spectrum, Taylor wants to push an

interpretive approach as far towards a realist epistemology as possible

without losing sight of the idea that all claims and judgements are

inevitably historically and socially grounded. For him, the idea of

social and political theory as interpretive therefore represents an

adequate recognition of constructionism whilst avoiding the dangerous

slide into total relativism. [53] Similarly, for Habermas, the dialogic

process of undistorted communication constructs value, but according to

conversational constraints which are not themselves contingent

(although on Benhabib's reading they must themselves be subject to

critical assessment). Walzer sits between the radical pragmatists and

the minimalist objectivists with his notion of limited necessity of

critical distance. [55]

The possibility of treading an acceptable path between what might be

characterised as 'modernist' and 'post-modernist' approaches here will

be a major concern of the following chapters. In the meantime it is

important merely to note the shared constructionist communitarian

rejection of the universalist, transcendental view of political theory.

On the interpretivist view which seems to be shared in some form by all

communitarians, a political theory's analysis of society, like its

critique of the 'descriptive' inadequacies of any other political

theory, are informed by the historical, social and political position

which the theorist occupies. Our ideas of what should and could be are

rooted in our experience of what is, and could be seen as a

'recollective imagination' of what might have been. [56] Similarly, the

theorist's utopias are grounded in her interpretation of the culture

within which she lives and works. The ideas of 'representing the world

as it is' and of 'speaking from nowhere' become deeply problematic,

just as the distinction between 'is' and 'ought' becomes blurred.

The Feminist Attraction to Communitarianism

Feminist politics, as we have tried to make clear, is not a simple

object of analysis. There have been significant divisions between the

liberal feminists who have spearheaded the legislative reform process

we discussed in Chapter 3, and a wide variety of feminist groups and

campaigns which have taken up a broadly counter-cultural position, from

which they have tried to challenge orthodox conceptions of the

political process while bringing about social change. There have been

tensions and problems of political strategy – about whether to run

single-issue campaigns or broad ones, whether to try to organise

nationally or to concentrate on local activism, about what kind of

organisation can both be politically successful and distinctively

feminist. [57]

In the remainder of this chapter we want to examine the ways in which

feminist politics must be to some degree communitarian politics. We

think that liberal feminists, too, must be committed to some extent to

communitarian ideas. This is in light of the undoubted limits to

liberalism we explored in Chapter 3. It is also because, as we shall

go on to argue, the logic of feminist demands entails the recognition

of social groups, of socially constructed identities and structures

which can be altered. This suggests the need for the further

recognition that purely rational argument will be inadequate, on its

own, to bring about political change. Furthermore, in a society in

which women do not enjoy fully fledged citizenship status, successful

feminist political action relies on community based political

organisation.

Community Politics In practical political terms, for many activists

the current wave of feminism was born out of dissatisfaction with

socialist and left parties and organisations generally. This

dissatisfaction developed into a dissatisfaction with the theories and

programmes of socialism and the left. Women's experience in left

politics led them to see authoritarianism and hierarchy in what

traditional political activists understood as perfectly innocent and

taken for granted political practices and arrangements. Good examples

include committee procedures, policy making processes, and the division

of labour in political organisations.

In subsequent developments in feminist politics there has been an

emphatic aversion to hierarchical and authoritarian organisation.

There has also been an aversion to rigid divisions of labour.

Practically this translates into a commitment to the constant scrutiny

of habits and established ways of doing things in organisations, and

the relations between members to see whether power is becoming

sedimented. The basis for and the success of these practices is a

matter of dispute. Some commentators, for example, have interpreted

them as a sign that feminists are pursuing a (chimerical) harmonious

equality and have an unreasonable aversion to power as such. [58] Anne

Phillips argues that the commitment to equal participation has often

had the effect of forging a false (and effectively authoritarian)

consensus. [59] Where this happens, of course, splintering or the

disintegration of groups is a probability. [60] But equally, feminist

politics has many successes of help-lines, campaigning groups and other

enterprises in which conflict which would be straightforwardly

suppressed in conventional organisations is dealt with more openly.

This is not, of course, to say that in such groups all is equal

sweetness and light. But this is not an argument for suppressing

conflict by the institutionalisation of hierarchies, standing orders,

points of order and all the conventional means – rather it is an

argument for finding more constructive ways of practising conflict.

The aversion to hierarchy and a fixed division of labour is connected

with women's refusal to try set up feminist political parties.

Feminism is seen by political sociologists as a social movement, and as

such as a very different kind of political organisation from a party.

It is fair to say that feminists have adopted this stance self-

consciously. [61] This stance is connected with the distinctive

conception of politics developed by feminists – especially the

challenge to 'public-private' distinctions and the insistence that

changes in mundane practices can count as political changes.

Specifically, feminist activists are critical of the two dominant

models of social and political change, that is marxist revolution and

liberal reform. (We are aware that at the time of writing it is

becoming more and more odd to count Marxist revolution among the

dominant models! Nevertheless, these are the two models feminists have

had to negotiate with in the last twenty years).

We discussed the feminist unhappiness with liberal reform in Chapter

3. The marxist theory of revolution is of the seizure of power by a

conscious acting class who are irremediably oppressed by and alienated

from the dominant class. There are several reasons why this model is

unsatisfactory for feminism. First, the history of marxist revolutions

is sadly a dismal one, and many radicals are suspicious that the

marxist overthrow of power structures can only result in the immediate

erection of new, equally monolithic, ones. Second, there are obvious

problems with the incorporation of specifically feminist struggles into

the class struggle. [62] Third, apart from the obvious difference in
the strategic position of women vis-a-vis men and the marxian

proletariat vis-a-vis the bourgeoisie (that is, many women live with

men), there is doubt (among marxists themselves too, of course) that

the means of production – or indeed any one set of goods or phenomena –

hold the key to power in a society. A clear theoretical upshot of

feminist experience is the view that the possibilities for revolution

lie in living our utopias in the here and now. In this connection,

personal struggles for a transformation in sexual relations are

relevant – feminists are clear that alteration of our desires and

behaviours is possible now. These personal struggles entail concerted

attacks on social norms, institutional rules, cultural discourses,

laws; and, of course, they bring women into collision with men and each

other.

These rejections locate feminism, on the face of it, in much the same

spot as communitarianism. But there is a further clear affinity

between community. Feminist political campaigns have centred on

childcare, rape, battering, norms of heterosexuality, the

representations of women in popular culture and pornography, women's

health. When women first tried to raise these issues in traditional

political fora they met with blank incredulity. Of course, many women

have persisted with the result that there has been accommodation of

feminist concerns in some of the political parties, in unions, and

institutions of government. [63] But where there have successes in

traditional politics it is certainly by virtue of links with

alternative, community based, feminist projects such as rape crisis

centres, refuges, community health campaigns, pickets against sex shops

and so on.
On the whole feminist have opted for community as opposed to national

or regional organisation. Loose affiliations and umbrella groups do

exist at national and international levels. And, of course, the nation

state is a relevant category when feminists organise internationally –

it makes some sense to take of British, Chilean and Zimbabwean

feminists. [64] But it is an outcome of feminist theory and practice

that the community (although loosely and problematically defined) is

the proper locus of politics. Feminist scepticism about strategies of

legislative reform – which necessitate national organisation, and

specifically organisation in the capital – is obviously relevant here.

[65]

The ideal of community also has an attractive ring to it, given

feminist concern to transform models of association developed and

utilised in conventional politics. The traditional family, for

example, constructed as a 'haven in a heartless world' in capitalist

theory, as the realm of personal freedom in liberal theory, has for the

most part been identified in feminist theory and practice as the

location of much of women's misery, and a significant source of and

context for sexual violence. [66] The state, from a critical feminist

perspective, is potentially oppressive as well as inefficient, and has

failed to deliver the means of women's liberation. By contrast,

'community' conjures up a vision of secure and committed networks of

people, to an extent like-minded, rooted in a geographical area,

offering fluidity and flexibility, unconstrained by biological kinship

or marriage.

Beyond these considerations in favour of the ideal of community, and

the strategic and theoretical considerations in favour of political

organisation at the community level, feminist politics also requires a

specifically communitarian analysis in many respects. The argument is

that neither liberalism, nor marxism nor social democracy in its

dominant European form, can deliver the solutions to problems of

childcare, sexual violence, the ideologies of popular culture and

pornography, or the legal regulation of sexuality and gender.

Anti-individualism Feminism is a project for the transformation of

relations between the sexes. This means that any feminist (including

anyone who considers herself to be a liberal feminist) must accept that

these relations could be transformed, and that involves accepting that

dominant definitions and practices of masculinity and femininity are

not absolutely fixed, either biologically or metaphysically, but are

socially constructed. The very idea of social construction threatens

any crystal clear distinction, such as that played on in much liberal

theory, between the individual and the society. In liberal thought

this clear distinction is connected, as we discussed in chapter two,

with the definition of rationality as self-interested instrumentality,

and the perception of society as unavoidably a threat to the

individual. As Taylor has put it, the communitarian target is a shift

in the burden of justification which emerged with a certain

enlightenment conception of the individual, whereby personhood itself

became the moral source, and the community, formerly taken for granted

as a social necessity, became reconstructed as a threat to individual

autonomy. [67]

The social construction of gender, of sexual practice and so on,

turns our theoretical attention immediately to the realm of meaning and

value. In communitarian and in feminist thought an intersubjective

conception of the self feeds into an intersubjective conception of

value. In a somewhat romantic vision, the pooling of talents and

sharing of responsibility is assumed to be justifiable, instead of seen

as the trammelling of individual rights. The ideal of human autonomy

is understood in a way which dissolves the liberal dichotomy between

individualism and solidarity. Self fulfilment and the social good are

seen as working in the same rather than in different directions.

Communitarianism is committed, too, to the significance of traditions

and practices in building up cultures, and this analysis finds a deep

echo in feminist politics. The liberal conception of 'sexism', as a

particular set of attitudes, and a particular way of treating women and

men, is found to be inadequate. Feminist analysis is based on women's

practical experience of the power of rules, structures, taken for

granted ways of doing things. Feminists have experienced the

transformation of taken for granted practices and the painful building

of alternatives in their own political organisations. The way things

are done in groups, meetings and campaigns is problematised. The rules

which govern group processes are subject to scrutiny and argument. For

example, in many feminist groups 'honesty' as a central political

commitment is valued, as is acceptance of other people's experience,

equality of participation and access to the floor, supportive listening

and so on.

That is, the collective nature of feminist discourse and practice is

acknowledged. This is politically important. Many jokes and

complaints are made about feminists who try to make changes in other,

more conventional, groups of which they are members – such as altering

how the furniture is arranged in the room, challenging sexist language,

questioning how meetings are chaired and so on. [68] But the degree of

discomfort and even moral outrage revealed by these jokes and

complaints is testimony to how very untrivial these matters are.

Social and political power is at stake. Democracy can be enhanced if

standards of communication are raised. An ideal speech community

relies on a particular arrangement of the chairs! Yet in many fora

discourses and practices are taken for granted, so settled that their

disruption is unthinkable (and profoundly disturbing when it does

occur) and their collective and conventional nature is concealed.

Practices and discourses are constitutive of political and social

reality. They are the stuff out of which positive and progressive

relations, institutions and actions are built as well as being the

stuff of oppressive social phenomena like rape, sexual harassment and

inequality in parenting and childrearing. This explains why these

things are not susceptible of easy alteration or reform. They are

rooted in taken for granted definitions and norms, in settled social

identities, maintained in ingrained habits and in the routine exercise

of power. But it is the essence of feminist politics that these

practices might be altered.

Communitarian Values The ideals of solidarity and reciprocity

fostered by value communitarianism resonate with significant themes in

feminist ethic and politics – themes which stress mutuality,

interdependence, collective values of sharing, responsibility and care.

[69] Those caring for children, for example, need baby-sitting circles

and trusted others who will meet children from school. In

communitarian theory our relations to others and our affective ties are

incorporated in the political realm in a way which is welcome to

feminists. Both social constructionism and value communitarianism push

us towards just the contextualised, concretised model of rationality

and reflection presupposed by this approach to ethics. That is, our

affective ties and embodied experience feed into our ethical and

rational decisions.

Similarly, feminist politics cannot proceed without a commitment to

public goods. Campaigns for women's safety call for adequate street

lighting and safe public transport. Children need nurseries and

playgrounds, safe streets, clean air. Of course, it has been argued

recently that market mechanisms, rather than public provision as such,

can take care of such needs perfectly well. This argument is obviously

rather difficult to put in the cases of clean air and safe streets.

Leaving that aside, it will be useful to look at a more plausible

candidate for market provision: the example of childcare. It is argued

by some liberals that parents should make economic decisions about

whether to stay at home and care for children, or buy nursery space,

the services of nannies and so on. That is, women are free to make

choices, and this is seen as compatible with feminist aspirations. We

argue that this 'liberal capitalist feminism' is fundamentally flawed.

[70] To begin with, all childcare, whether done by isolated and

disadvantaged biological parents, by professional nannies, or by carers

who are able to participate in local community networks, definitely

calls for and relies on sharing and reciprocity (if a child is not to

be fatally neglected when its carer falls ill, for example). So the

standard categories of a political theory, such as liberalism, which

fails to put these kinds of values at its centre, are already wanting.
Even beyond the provision of childcare, the practice of parenting

requires public goods proper. The thoroughgoing capitalist feminist

would argue that women should make individual contracts with men for

support while they mother. But anyone who comes out of the

conventional labour market for the period of time required to look

after children is thereafter disadvantaged in that market. This

disadvantage must be made good – by training or other forms of

compensation – and this requires the provision of public goods. The

theorist who rejects public goods at the outset has two alternatives.

Either women's bargain with men must be for a lifetime, which is to say

the current discourse and practice of marriage remains intact. This

cannot by any stretch of the definition of terms count as a feminist

solution. Or there will be a systematically disadvantaged group in the

labour market – which is in contravention of free market theory (the

'capitalist' half of capitalist feminism). This argument also holds,

of course, in the case where sometimes men and sometimes women take on

the full time parenting role. For there would still be a

systematically disadvantaged group in the labour market, namely parents

and carers. Of course, a further alternative is that women and men, or

groups of committed parents, share childcare. But this cannot be done

without fundamental alterations in the labour market – to conventional

career structures, with respect to the remuneration and conditions of

part time work and so on – which cannot be accommodated within existing

capitalist discourse and practice. The political values and

institutions needed to generate and maintain such collective solutions,

in other words, also seem to gesture towards communitarianism.

The embodied subject Communitarianism issues in a political theory

which recognises the embodied nature of human subjectivity. Feminists

have long argued that the disembodied conception of human selfhood is

implicitly male. Liberal individualism abstracts away from the body –

humanity is not determined by one's bodily characteristics. Of course,

the progressive and humane implications of this are not to be

underestimated in a world in which disabled people have been denied

human rights in many societies, and in which skin colour and other

indicators of 'race' are signals for oppression and violence. However,

the downside of this progressive philosophy is that a pretence is

maintained that the body is not at issue, while in fact male (and

indeed white, and able-bodied) bodily experience is taken for granted,

so that other bodily experiences are constructed as problematic,

abnormal, or out with the realm of politics. As our discussion of

sexual harassment showed, male sexuality as constructed in modern

western culture is taken for granted, and women's experience of this

and protests against it considered bizarre and inappropriate. Women's

bodily experience in particular, because it is not identical to men's,

is construed as a barrier to citizenship and to ethical reason. Strong

social currents as well as concrete institutional practices prevent it

from being straightforwardly admitted to the realm of political

discussion. Menstruation, pregnancy, lactation, menopause and so on

define women as abnormal.

In rejecting the liberal dualisms of mind and body, rationality and

emotion, communitarianism resonates with feminist politics, which are

of course concerned to construct social relations and institutions

within which women are normal and full members, notwithstanding

menstruation, pregnancy, lactation and menopause. Concomitantly,

feminist politics also is concerned to clarify and establish the

political implications of male bodily matters – such as sexual desire,

hypertension, and businessmen's lunches! That is to say that bodily

experience and the bodily aspects of practices are politically and

ethically relevant and subject to critique.

Public/private dichotomies Communitarianism also opens up the

possibility of either abandoning or radically weakening the liberal

distinction between public and private spheres. Social groups, not

just individuals, or the monolithic state and society, which confront

the liberal individual, can be accommodated as a central category in

communitarianism. If the individual, state, desires, values and

practices are all social products, the metaphysical basis for the

liberal distinction between the public and private spheres is weakened.

If human subjectivity is in an important sense a product of, for

example, the family, rather than vice versa, the public/private

distinction loses its integrity. Individual identity, desire and value

all become objects of political critique, challenge and social

transformation. In other words the scope of the political realm is

enormously increased in a way which echoes the feminist slogan 'the

personal is political'.

We discussed in Chapter 3 the way the theoretical and practical

public/private distinction is of crucial significance in feminist

politics – especially in marriage relations, domestic violence, sexual

violence more generally, and, of course, the relations between parents

or carers and children. We discussed there the power of the feminist

argument that the pretence that the private realm is unregulated is

ideological. If police do not intervene on a woman's behalf in a case

of domestic battering, that is precisely equivalent to an intervention

of the state (on the man's side). The state of affairs in which police
policy is 'non-intervention' is a direct result of marriage law and

associated practices.

This argument is connected with arguments that personal matters are

political. After all, sexuality and domestic relations are exemplary

personal matters. So are decisions about consumption – for example,

consumption of pornography. Feminist analysis insists upon the

political relevance of these matters (although not, is important to

note, on the invariable appropriateness of state regulation). This is

both on grounds of the interdependence argument (that private

oppression leads to public disadvantage), and because the definitions

of such matters as private can themselves be shown to be disingenuous.

For the analysis which defines pornography as a matter of private

preference in one breath constructs it as a matter of public rights to

free expression in the next. Thus both sides of the public-private,

political-personal divide are manipulated in ways which exclude certain

arguments.

This analysis of the personal and the political is also revealed in

certain aspects of feminist political organisation. Women's movement

members have tended to speak for themselves and to decline to speak for

or on behalf or the organisation as a whole, or for other members.

This is connected with the rejection of hierarchy, and of conventional

models of representation, which we discussed earlier. It has also been

a frankly counter-cultural strategy for upsetting journalists, police

officers, magistrates and other representatives of 'the Establishment'.

[71] But it also underlines the idea that as individuals we are

political beings, and that our individual social lives are genuinely
political – we don't need a party or a tight organisation to validate

our political speech and action.

The blurring of a particular conception of public and private is, of

course, further advanced by the rejection of the priority of the right

over the good. Another implication here is a weakening of the

opposition between reason and emotion central to pre-modern and

enlightenment thought alike. If we can be rational in our choices of

the good and of values, affectivity becomes a part of, rather than

oppositional to, rational thought, choice and action. Hence one common

way of marginalising women, particularly in political terms – their

identification with emotion, and the view that they are defective in

terms of reason – is undermined. On the one hand, the ideal of the

purely rational man is shown to be a fiction; on the other, the emotion

that women are identified with (at the moment, to their detriment) is

shown to be an indispensable factor in ethical life.

Finally, as well as challenging clear distinctions between public and

private, feminists, like communitarians, have been sceptical of the

coherence of liberal conceptions of 'the public' as a body of people.

The public, in liberal thought, is made up of the body of citizens and

members of society. This is understood as a mass of individuals each

of whom has the same relation with the state. Further, they have

formally equal relations with each other – they are able to enter into

economic and other social exchanges in which their legal rights are

equally protected. [72] As we have seen in what has gone before

feminists argue that this picture of formal equality systematically

conceals substantive, structural inequality and difference. So-called

public goods, for example, may be unavailable to some because of their

membership of a group or community (like an ethnic group) which makes

an effective difference to their identity as members of 'the public'.

Interpretivism The development of an interpretivist model of

political theory, along with the blurring of the

prescription/description divide, also chimes with many currents in

feminist theory. To begin with, this methodology rules out of court

the idea of an objectivity valid, natural political order (which just

happens to issue in a highly gendered world). That is, perspectivalism

or constructionism in knowledge is systematically connected with the

idea that reality itself if socially constructed. Feminists, perhaps

more than any other political and intellectual movement, have had

plenty of reason to be suspicious of 'objective' scientific facts. On

some accounts, the job of feminism must be straightforwardly to correct

bias, and substitute for partial knowledge the whole truth. This is

the 'add women and stir' strategy in social science. [73] But most

feminist researchers would accept that the very idea of objective facts

in this traditional sense is problematic and that feminists are not

well advised to pretend that their version of reality is the final one.

The principle that the standpoint from which knowledge is constructed

must be made clear in any presentation of that knowledge is widely

accepted. [74]

More than this, though, some theorists have recently argued that the

standpoint of the oppressed should be privileged in our interpretive

processes. In one version, this is a matter of political strategy –

the presumption is that the perspective of the oppressed is the correct

one from which to judge a practice or law. [75] There are also stronger

versions of this kind of argument. One concentrates on skills and

knowledge. It is argued that oppressed persons know much more about

the world than those who oppress. Think how much more highly developed

than her husband's a woman's social skills must be if she is in the

kind of marriage in which his comforts are paramount. She and he rely

on her implicitly understanding his mood and anticipating his wishes.

This is a matter of power, not a matter of gender. The same is true of

other oppressed people. For example, it has often been observed that

slaves (as for example in the southern states of America) depended for

their physical survival on reacting precisely to the mood of overseers.

[76]

Another argument concentrates on the reality different people

inhabit. Women, who typically are the ones who look after children and

other people's bodily needs, are in a much better position to

understand reality than a person (man) who has never, for example,

cleaned a lavatory and who can play the part of a purely rational,

disembodied subject. [77] This argument puts a sociological gloss on

liberal values. Transcendence of our embodied state is a role that

some people can play. Given the sociological facts about the division

of labour some men can, it seems, play it without even realising they

are playing a role; for they are effectively able not to know the work

that goes into reproducing their bodies daily – cooking for it,

cleaning it and cleaning up after it, clothing it. Thus, such people's

knowledge of the world is fatally flawed.

These arguments also overturn the traditional emphasis on the need

for disinterestedness, detachment and objectivity if genuine knowledge

is to be attained. All knowledge is the upshot of interpretation from

some standpoint or another. Traditionally, knowledge from the

'objective' standpoint has been privileged. Now that judgement is

challenged, and the argument put that knowledge derives from the

embodied, socially concrete, position should be privileged. We do not

have to accept this reversal of traditional conceptions of what sort of

knowledge is best. But we do, it seems, have to accept that producers

of knowledge should be reflexive and honest about the standpoint from

which their knowledge is produced. If this standpoint is concealed or

erased then the knowledge is the less valid.

Conclusion We have now laid out the affinities between

communitarianism and feminism. Indeed, in many ways the relationship

is closer than an affinity, for feminist arguments against liberalism

have been an important ingredient in the development of the

communitarian critique. We have, however, already begun to hint at

some weaknesses in the communitarian literature – notably its blurring

of some important distinctions in the area of public goods and

collective values. We now turn to a more critical assessment of

communitarianism, to see whether the affinity is really one which

feminists should be concerned to foster.