Table Of ContentCULTURE TROUBLES
For Emile
PATRICK CHABAL
JEAN-PASCAL DALOZ
Culture Troubles
Politics and the Interpretation
of Meaning
The University of Chicago Press
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd, London WC1B 3PL
© Patrick Chabal and Jean-Pascal Daloz, 2006
All rights reserved. Published 2006
Printed in India.
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ISBN: 0-226-10040-5 (cloth)
ISBN: 0-226-10041-3 (paper)
Cataloging-in-Publication data have been requested
from the Library of Congress.
@ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
CONTENTS
Preface page vii
INTRODUCTION
The Politics of Culture 1
Why comparative politics cannot handle culture 5
What is culture and how does it matter? 21
Parti. FRAMEWORK
Introduction 37
1. Critique of Grand Theory 41
The universalist fallacy 41
Red herrings 48
2. Working Assumptions 58
The implications of diversity 58
Against reductionism 66
3. Analytical Foundations 78
Understanding differences 78
Dead ends 85
Partit APPROACH
Introduction 94
4. Culture and Political Identity 98
How who we are matters to what we believe.... 99
....but do we do what we are? 110
5. Culture and Political Order 123
What power means in its local context 124
The political uses of culture 134
v
vi Contents
6. Culture and Political Change 147
The myth of timelessness 148
The Jury of modernity 159
Partlll. METHOD
Introduction 171
7. Thinking Inductively 175
The terrain 177
The analysis 186
8. Thinking Semiotically 198
Reading the evidence 199
Translation 211
Part IV. APPLICATION
Introduction 223
9. The Meanings of the State 226
Culture and states 226
States in mind 245
10. The Guises of Political Representation 269
An interpretative approach to representation 270
Ostentation, modesty and legitimacy: representation
in context 287
CONCLUSION
In Defence of Eclecticism 309
The illusions of paradigmatic ecumenism 310
The perennial dilemma of ethnocentrism or the problem
of reference 314
On the merit of conceptual and theoretical eclecticism 317
Bibliography 329
Index 381
PREFACE
There is clearly today renewed interest in cultural issues. From the
notion that we all live in multicultural and hybrid societies to the fear
of the so-called ‘clash of civilisations’, concerns about culture are
now ubiquitous. Yet there is little consensus either on what it actually
is or about what its influence on our lives might be. It seems that
culture matters, but how it matters is not clear. The question of the
relationship between culture and politics is even more opaque. Poli
ticians pay homage to the cultural heritage of their constituents while
attempting to manipulate cultural symbols for partisan purposes. Pol
itical scientists for their part range widely in their approach: from
those who reject the very notion of culture to those who view it
merely as instrument or ideology.
Both of us have worked in comparative politics for several decades
and we have felt increasingly frustrated by the inability of our dis
cipline to offer clearer insights into the relevance of culture for com
parative analysis. Our previous book Africa Works was an attempt to
use a cultural methodology that would make possible the task of ac
counting convincingly for the evolution of postcolonial African pol
itics. Although the book was well received and has now become a
standard reference on the subject, some reviewers suggested to us
that our approach raised theoretical questions, which deserved fuller
examination.
One critical line implied that to talk about the effects of culture on
politics was culturalist because it implied a determinist explanation of
behaviour—“culture drives politics”—and presumed a ‘hierarchy’ of
cultures—“West is best”. Another suggested that an explanation of
politics that incorporates culture is an implicit argument in favour of
‘identity politics’—that is again a determinist view in which agency
derives from putative notions of self. These were valid points for
debate and we concluded that there was now a need for systematic
discussion of theory and methodology.
vii
viii Preface
Culture Troubles is thus an attempt systematically to re-examine the
relationship between culture and politics. Although we are both
political scientists, we claim neither specialist knowledge in episte
mology nor an equally precise knowledge of all polities across the
globe. We have taken as our starting-point those social scientists
(including a large number of anthropologists) who have special know
ledge of that question, from either a theoretical or an empirical
standpoint. Our interests and expertise have combined well. Between
the two of us we have worked on a wide range of countries, from
Africa to East Asia by way of North America, Scandinavia and South
Asia. Patrick Chabal, who has special interest in questions of method,
identity and belief systems, had overall responsibility for the Intro
duction, Parts II and III.Jean-Pascal Daloz, who is a specialist on élites
and symbolic representations, took the lead in Parts I and IV as well as
the Conclusion.
This book has been many years in the making and would not have
been possible without the support, help and encouragement of a
large number of colleagues and friends. Of these we mention only a
few: Peter Burke and Yann Fauchois, who took an interest in the
project from its inception; Michael Dwyer, who saw the potential
of the book right away, and Farzana Shaikh, who provided detailed
comments on several drafts. Patrick Chabal acknowledges the sup
port of his colleagues at King’s College London and the opportu
nities offered by his institution for sabbatical leave, including one at
the University of Basel where he advanced writing of this book. He
also offers collective thanks to the members of the Africa-Europe
Group for Interdisciplinary Studies (AEGIS), who have made it
possible for him to keep up lively intellectual contacts across Europe
over the past decade. Jean-Pascal Daloz is grateful to his home insti
tution, the CERVL (Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Bordeaux), and to
the Universities of Uppsala and Oslo for facilitating his research. Both
authors express their gratitude to Emil Udhammar for organising in
Uppsala the first public presentation of the book.
P. C.
J.-P. D.
INTRODUCTION
THE POLITICS OF CULTURE
‘To see ourselves as others see us can be eye-opening. To see others as
sharing a nature with ourselves is the merest decency. But it is from thé far
more difficult achievement of seeing ourselves amongst others, as a local
example of the forms human life has locally taken, a case among cases, a
world among worlds, that the largeness of mind, without which objectivity
is self-congratulation and tolerance a sham, comes.’1
Understanding politics in settings other than our own has always
been a perilous exercise. Comparing the politically significant actions
of men and women across the globe is even more fraught. Only
the naïf, the zealot or the foolhardy engages in such an enterprise
without sustained forethought. There is so much that can be misun
derstood; so much that is habitually misunderstood—as appears
obvious from the most cursory reading of what the foreign press has
to say about us. What our own people write of others seems, some
how, to be less distorted, less wrong. There may well be merit in com
paring the quality of journalism in varying countries of the world,
probably to comfort ourselves further in the belief that ‘we’ are rather
more unbiased than ‘they’. However, the question continues to nag:
how can we be sure? By what reference point do we compare?
Of course scholars profess devotion to more stringent canons of
objectivity and write, accordingly—at least one hopes so. Political
analysts employ methods that minimise the risk of shallow com
parison. They make plain their assumptions. They justify the use of
the concepts they deploy. They explain why they use particular theo
retical frameworks. They give good reasons for the comparisons they
undertake. They are open about the limitations of their investi-
1 C. Geertz, 1983,‘Introduction’in C. Geertz, Local Knowledge:farther essays in inter
pretive anthropology, p. 16.
1
2 Introduction
gâtions. Yet for all that the attempts to explain the politics of‘others’,
and even more to compare them to ‘ours’ remain, more often than
not, unconvincing. Frequently such accounts amount to superficial,
or even facile, statements, when not tautologies. If‘others’ do what
they do because they are not ‘us’, then there is little gained by the
explanation. Stated in this stark form, the charge may appear inac
curate, or perhaps unfair. But is it?
To take, first, a simple and relatively frivolous example, it is not
clear at all that political scientists have provided convincing expla
nations as to why in Europe sexual indiscretions have such divergent
consequences for elected politicians. The cliché is that the Protestant
North is more repressed and will tolerate no foible while the Catho
lic South is more lax and will easily excuse roguish behaviour.2 That
is common sense; but how reliable is common sense for political
comparison? Is there not more to it than seems on the surface to be
the case, such as important distinctions between a more rigid Cal
vinism and a more tolerant Lutheranism? Perhaps the more relevant
explanation of the differences lies in local perceptions of elected
officials, or of politicians tout court, rather than of sexual behaviour
per se. What if that which may appear to be a similar peccadillo is
actually seen to carry vastly dissimilar political connotations: a flaw in
one country, an asset in another? It would follow that a superficial
emphasis on the difference between two cases in this respect only ob
scures the more significant conclusion that politicians everywhere
seek to display the qualities that may strengthen their position.
However, let us look at a more difficult instance: the use of extreme
violence in politics. A Sri Lankan woman suicide bomber kills Rajiv
Gandhi. Palestinian youth blow themselves up deliberately to take
the lives of Israeli civilians. A Saudi engineer working in Germany
chooses to fly a passenger plane into the World Trade Center. Is there
a good explanation for deeds that to us in the West appear so partic
ularly ‘evil’? Can one meaningfully compare such disparate acts of
carnage with other forms of political protest? Are we witnessing a
‘clash of civilisations’3 between people who willingly use their own
2 The cliché as presented here applies to males. It might be argued that the reverse is
true for women: the North is more liberated and free; the South more conven
tional and constraining.
3 The reference here is, of course, to S. Huntington, 1996, The Clash of Civilizations
and the Remaking of World Order. We shall return to this author, not just because his
