Legitimacy

Ethnographic and Theoretical Insights

Italo Pardo, Giuliana B. Prato, Italo Pardo, Giuliana B. Prato

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9783319962375
• eBook ISBN:
  9783319962382
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Social Sciences

Global in scope, this original and thought-provoking collection applies new theory on legitimacy and legitimation to urban life. An informed reflection on this comparatively new topic in anthropology in relation to morality, action, law, politics and governance is both timely and innovative, especially as worldwide discontent among ordinary people grows. The ethnographically-based analyses offered here range from banking to neighbourhoods, from poverty to political action at the grassroots. They recognize the growing gap between the rulers and the ruled with particular attention to the morality of what is right as opposed to what is legal. This book is a unique contribution to social theory, fostering discussion across the many boundaries of anthropological and sociological studies.

© The Author(s) 2019

Italo Pardo and Giuliana B. Prato (eds.)LegitimacyPalgrave Studies in Urban Anthropologyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96238-2_1

Begin Abstract

1. Ethnographies of Legitimacy: Methodological and Theoretical Insights

Italo Pardo¹ and Giuliana B. Prato¹

(1)

School of Anthropology and Conservation, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, UK

Italo Pardo (Corresponding author)

Email: [email protected]

Giuliana B. Prato

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

Legitimacy, legitimation and the attendant ramifications are complex and highly problematic issues with which philosophers have been long concerned. In recent times, however, while mainstream reasoning has ossified, the ‘official’ philosophy of science has remained, as Martin Heidegger (1962) would say, as little philosophical as possible. Instead of asking questions of legitimacy, perhaps in order to survive in the age of legitimacy crisis, it tends to content itself with general description, abstract analysis and elucidation. Clearly, a dispassionate analysis of what happens on the ground is badly needed.

The ethnographic study of these issues is a relatively recent but promising development. Pioneered in the mid-1990s by a small group of scholars (Pardo 1995, 1996 and contributors in Pardo ed. 2000), anthropological reflection on the issues raised by the complex dynamics of legitimacy and legitimation—of ordinary people’s morality and actions ; of the law, its production and application ; of politics and governance —has gradually grown into a sophisticated debate (Pardo ed. 2004; Pardo and Prato eds 2011 and 2018). Anthropologists, qualitative sociologists, economists and jurists have contributed to the empirically grounded analysis of the ramifications of conflicting moralities , the corresponding ideas of legitimacy and the attendant ambiguities (Pardo 2000a).

In this field, we need to thread carefully. As Prato points out in her chapter, we need to understand Max Weber’s theory of legitimacy in its complexity (1978 [1922]). We also need to be mindful of the unsolicited measure of perspectivism in it, probably traceable to the broader problem of a prejudicial view identified by some (Eisen 1978) with the Puritanical schema, and in his definition of morality and rational conduct (Brubaker 1992; Pardo 1996: Chap. 7 and 2000a: 4). We need to acknowledge fully the culturally specific economics of ‘strong continuous interaction’ between material and non-material aspects of existence in the ways people define their motives, make choices and interact with others (Pardo 1996: 11 ff.). And we need to understand, with Weber , that the authority to rule depends on recognition of rulers’ legitimacy across society (Pardo 2000b).

As today, the ‘fundamental accord’ between the ruling élite and the rest of society so accurately theorized by Gaetano Filangieri (1783–1788) appears to be both more needed and more chimerical than ever, the question arises: how much more governance failure before legitimacy is withdrawn and, consequently, democracy is jeopardized? This question needs urgent answers, for worldwide governance and the law are seen to fail—in some cases comprehensively—the democratic contract (Birnbaum et al. 1978; Stankiewicz 1980), as they fail to meet the challenge posed by the need to establish a working relationship between formal law and people’s cultural requirements (Aristotle 1962: 4.5).

In its 2010 Report on ‘The State’s Legitimacy’, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) identified four sources of legitimacy. They are ‘Input or process legitimacy, which is tied to agreed rules or procedure; output or performance legitimacy, defined in relation to the effectiveness and quality of public goods and services; shared beliefs, including a sense of political community and beliefs shaped by religion, traditions and “charismatic” leaders; and international legitimacy, i.e. recognitions of the state’s external sovereignty and legitimacy’ (OECD 2010: 9). This might be a little too wordy, but it does make interesting points. Echoing Weber’s analysis, the Report claims that these different sources interact and that no state relies on a single source. At its core, it reminds us directly of Pardo’s anthropology of legitimacy (2000a; see also Pardo and Prato 2011), as it argues that the international community should pay ‘much more attention to aspects of legitimacy that derive from people’s shared beliefs and traditions, and how these play out in a specific political and social context’ (OECD 2010: 10).

This means recognizing not only that legitimacy—its sources and the attendant processes of legitimation—is an extremely complex ‘category’ but also that its contours may change over time alongside changes in people’s values and moral expectations. It has happened, instead, that abetted and aided by national and international pressures that—however unsolicited—threaten to grow, the earlier-mentioned failures have often generated malignant changes in the law that deeply pollute individual and associated life. As Aristotle warned, it might not be wise to pass lightly from old laws to new laws. Rightly, he believed that this would be a sure way of weakening the ‘inner essence of Law’ (1962: 5.8), which can have dire, unforeseen consequences. In the present global climate, as poverty increases, multiplies and spreads across the unprivileged social board, ‘natural’ solidarity withers and predatory values spread, as do abuse and corruption. So, day by day, these ‘dire consequences’ appear less unforeseeable. We do not mean to labour the point, but it seems to us as obvious as urgent that they and their causes need to be understood—empirically.

While staying healthily suspicious of abstract thinking, one does not need to obsess about fieldwork to recognize that credible answers can only be inspired by the in-depth knowledge of the reality on the ground (Pardo and Prato 2017). This volume is a modest contribution to a ten-year project that is developing through intensive meetings and publications on the empirical and theoretical complexities of these processes.¹ It should be read as a coherent collective endeavour to demonstrate the epistemological significance of ethnographic knowledge gained, classically, through long-term field research to our understanding of the growing gap between the rulers and the ruled, a gap which in many cases has dangerously grown into a chasm.

Back in 2016, we thought that in the current global situation the application of the ideas articulated in the cited literature might stimulate a robust exchange of ideas, that it might help to develop further an ethnographically based reflection on this thorny topic. So, we worked out an intellectual programme and applied for funding to organize a full-time six-day workshop on Erosions of Legitimacy and Urban Futures: Ethnographic Research Matters, which took place the following September in a secluded Sicilian venue , Italy.²

We invited 12 fellow anthropologists and qualitative sociologists at different stages of their careers from across the world, who specialize in urban research. Mindful of the pitfalls of narrow empiricism and unjustified abstraction (Leach 1977: xvi ff.; Harris 1986: Chap. 1), they share our commitment to an ethnographically based analysis. Empirically cognizant of the difference that often exists between what people say and what they do in their private and public lives, of the apparently contradictory Aristotelian ideal of the law as an impersonal, emotionally neutral and intrinsically wise entity and of the continuing significance of the concept of the superiority of the moral law to the written law (Aristotle 1962: 3.16), we wanted to attract descriptive analyses of actions—legal and not-strictly legal—that at grassroots level may be regarded as legitimate and of policies and rulers’ actions that do not break the law but may be regarded as illegitimate. From fieldwork experience, we knew that much is often worked out at local social and cultural levels, regardless of official views. Would this play out comparatively?

Having pointed out that people do not necessarily regard as legitimate what is convenient or as illegitimate what is not convenient (Pardo 1995, 2000a), we also asked that attention should be paid to the impact—economic, social and political—of these actions, of the criminalization of behaviours that are regarded as legitimate at the grassroots and of the legalization of actions that are regarded as reprehensible and illegitimate in the broader society. Throughout the workshop, engaged debate based on comparative reflection benefited from regionally diversified ethnographic knowledge from East Africa, Canada, Europe, the Far East, India, Latin America, the Middle East and the USA, and helped to chart new theoretical directions on ‘legitimacy and urban governance’ as a locus of ethnographic research that matters to our urban futures (Prato 2009; Prato and Pardo 2013; Hannerz 2015; Pardo et al. eds 2015; Pels 2015; Krase and DeSena 2016).

As the papers were circulated the previous June and read in advance, we all brought to the workshop the major points in our analysis. Benefiting from participants’ wide-ranging ethnographic and analytical field and from their different experiences and skil...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Ethnographies of Legitimacy: Methodological and Theoretical Insights
• 2. On the Legitimacy of Democratic Representation: Two Case Studies from Europe
• 3. Governance Without Legitimacy: An Italian Conundrum of Democracy
• 4. Legitimating Poverty: The Minimum Guaranteed Income Pilot Case
• 5. Legal but Not Legitimate: The Changing Practices of Financial Citizenship in Turkey
• 6. Changing Contours of Legitimacy in Neighbourhoods: Reflections from a Town in North Kerala
• 7. Privatization of Urban Governance and Legitimacy Disputes in a Social Housing Megaproject in Soacha, Colombia
• 8. Undermining Governmental Legitimacy at the Grass Roots: The Role of Inflated Expectations of Community Accountability
• 9. Detachment and Commitment to Legitimacy: The Case of Viger Square in Montreal
• 10. In or Out? Emerging Urban Practices of Citizenship in East Africa
• 11. Citizenship and Legitimacy: Kolkata’s Anglo-Indian Experiences
• 12. Conflicting Loyalties and Legitimate Illegality in Urban South Lebanon
• 13. Morality and Legitimacy in the Sewŏl Protest in South Korea
• 14. Romani Political Participation and Legitimization of Power Relations in the Czech Republic
• Back Matter