Just a quick, first thought.
Surely we are trying to understand just what is political community and if some notion of authority or legitimacy  or even sovereignty is invoked, there is no reason to assume that it is a plea for a centralized authority, or a statist vision in which there is no place for other associations or communities. There is such a thing as popular sovereignty too. Hanifi mentioned Benjamin, but one could turn also to Arendt (as she has been a continuous presence in our discussion) to remind ourself that the political contains within it both the possibility of consensus and conflict. If people come together to form a political unity that can appeal to some notion of common good, or public interest, they also live with conflict of interests and contest over power. One cannot remove conflict out of the political. 
Gurpreet 

----- Original Message -----
From: David Thunder <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Sat, 26 Jul 2014 21:55:33 +0530 (IST)
Subject: Re: Further suggestions for reframing our "political community" question

Sorry to send two messages back to back, but I found a very helpful 
quote by a Notre Dame theology professor, Jean Porter, which helps to 
give a necessary historical context for my suspicion of overly unified, 
"sovereignty-driven," statist, conceptions of legal and/or political 
authority, and the notion that there may be forms of communal authority 
that escape statist and sovereignty-based schemes. In this regard, I 
think it may be helpful to distinguish between two different tasks:

(1) the task of describing, as dispassionately as possible, the way in 
which political authority is actually typically constituted and 
exercised in modern Westphalian states and in our currently 
"post-Wesphalian," more globalized condition

(2) the task of constructing a plausible concept of political community 
and political authority which, while informed by current practices and 
conditions, is also flexible enough to articulate new possibilities, 
even possibilities that challenge or undermine the current status quo. 
This is something the normative theorist is going to be especially keen 
on, although even a more empirically-oriented theorist will probably 
want to anticipate a range of empirically possible types of community 
and non content himself exclusively with studying existing forms

As you have probably inferred by now, I am very much in camp no. 2 above 
- I am trying to conceive of political community in a way that leaves 
the door open to radical reforms of our current ways of getting along, 
including reforms that could see a dramatic change in the role of the 
state, and in the way political sovereignty is conceptualized and practiced.

One of the "mantras" of my contributions so far is the notion that 
authority, whether legal or political, may in certain cases have a much 
more diffuse, complex, overlapping, and dynamic character than a typical 
statist or even federalist picture might suggest. A statist picture 
would say, roughly, that legal and political authority are vested in the 
state and in the laws and representatives of the state. A federalist 
picture would say that legal and political authority are somehow 
distributed, in their entirety across a system of states or state-like 
entities (e.g. EU Parliament and Commission, EU member states). Both 
pictures seem to assume that the state or state-like entities, 
representing the interests of ordinary citizens, are the exclusive 
authoritative interpreters and/or enforcers of the law, and in some 
sense are the privileged overseers of the public interests of the 
community at large.

My response goes along two lines: first, I admit that to a large extent, 
the statist picture of authority does correspond to many of the 
practices current in Western and indeed non-Western societies. I suspect 
it is a simplified picture, but I think in many respects it does 
describe actual practices.

But second, even if this is so, current political practices need not 
define or exhaust what actually count as political communities, or what 
long- and short-term strategies are available to human communities for 
securing goods such as coordination, peace, security, and justice. 
Perhaps it is possible to constitute political authority and legal 
authority in more diffuse, less hierarchical ways than we tend to in 
modern nation-states. I am simply pleading for this possibility to be 
kept on the table, not endorsed as desirable or optimal. And in defense 
of this petition, lest I seem to be gesturing towards a wildly 
unrealizable idea, I have suggested that customary or communal laws have 
functioned historically to coordinate the common life of communities in 
the absence of control by a centralized political authority of the sort 
we take as paradigmatic today (e.g. the state or a state legislature). I 
am currently reading an interesting book that, while it ends up 
endorsing, more or less, a traditional conception of legal and political 
authority, recognizes that human communities can and have been governed 
by customary laws prior to forming representative lawmaking bodies. They 
had judges who adjudicated according to common law, the accumulated 
"wisdom" and customs of the community, independently and prior to any 
formal lawmaking body. I am not suggesting that we return to that model 
of political community; I am merely suggesting that it may help us to 
widen our frame of reference in terms of what we think a political 
community looks like, and to what extent it needs to be constituted by a 
single representative body. Here is the relevant quote from Jean Porter, 
Ministers of the Law: A Natural Law Theory of Legal Authority (2010):

"...in the European societies of the early Middle Ages, judicial 
functions and offices emerged before effective and generally recognized 
legislators. As the historian R.C. van Caenegem remarks, from the late 
ninth century until the beginning of the twelfth century, 'the European 
continent lived without legislation,' either civic or ecclesiastical, 
being governed in this period mostly by customary law. Yet disputes did 
arise, and these were adjudicated through what were recognizably 
settled, formal legal procedures. Far from it being the case that the 
office of judge is created by legislative authority, it appears that the 
judicial office is logically the more fundamental of the two: a 
recognizable legal system can emerge without a lawgiver, but that can be 
no such system without a judge...It is not the case that the common law 
is made up by the judge out of whole cloth, nor is it fashioned by the 
collective decisions of the courts operating independently of the 
societies in which they function. The customary law out of which common 
law emerges cannot be regarded as the product of any one individual, or 
even any one system within the polity; it represents the collective 
judgements and practices of the community taken as a whole. Yet in order 
for these customary practices to become usable as law, someone must 
articulate them in such a way as to give them both specificity and 
authoritative force" (260).

Thanks for your patience!

- David


> David Thunder <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
> 25 July 2014 11:17
> Thanks to Hanifi and Gurpreet for their helpful posts. Two quick 
> initial responses since those posts make reference to my previous 
> comments:
>
> HANIFI says:
>
> "...regarding David's point about international law: can we think of 
> positive law as something self-sustaining and self-imposing? 
> Perhaps Matyas and Tamas can further clarify this, but as far as I am 
> concerned, Tony Evans has made it clear that every international order 
> needs a global /hegemon/. According to this line of thought, 
> international law and particularly international human rights regime 
> need a global power to promote and protect them. Now then, if both 
> domestic and international law are enacted, protected, implemented and 
> promoted by a domestic or global hegemon (these hegemons can overlap 
> sometimes), can we talk of the authority of laws independent of the 
> sovereign domestic power and the global hegemon who enact or 
> approve, and then implement them? Living under the authority of law 
> does not necessarily mean that that law was enacted by neutral powers 
> or it was passed through the mechanisms that ensured the participation 
> of each and every member (citizens?) in a political community, or it 
> does not necessarily mean that the law is enacted in a way that it has 
> the approval or consent of every member. Therefore, living under the 
> authority of law, which is a long held argument, does not solve the 
> problem of sovereignty and sovereign oppression for me, which I have 
> to deal with while thinking of political community. I wonder if a very 
> crucial element in politics, that of sovereignty, should be addressed 
> more openly while debating political community."
>
> In attempting to decouple law and social order from the notion of a 
> single political community or a single "final authority," I am not 
> suggesting for a moment that the rules of international law, or even 
> customary law for that matter, are so "spontaneous" and universally 
> felt that they require no form of authority at all. Rather, I am 
> problematizing the notion that rule of law require a "final enforcer" 
> and cannot simply be an extension of customary rules (whose authority 
> is more or less the authority of acceptance by either all, most, or 
> the most influential members of a community, and the perception of 
> their reasonableness) or the application of international laws through 
> the consent of multiple political (and indeed commercial) powers. Law 
> can gain its effect from social recognition, even if there is not a 
> single clear ultimate enforcer. Enforcement mechanisms may be 
> contested even if particular rules are accepted as relevant and 
> binding - in this regard, think of how often we tend to imagine the 
> authority of medieval kings as completely hegemonic, when in fact 
> there were historical periods during which kings exercised a much less 
> hegemonic authority than the modern state, and simply could NOT change 
> the laws that governed the community of their subjects at will, since 
> many of those "laws" were more in the common mind than written down in 
> any place.
>
> If you want to say this was the hegemony of Christendom, fair enough, 
> but this is not the same as the hegemony of one person or power. If we 
> say that the sway of ideas over people's minds and behavior is a 
> "hegemon" than the concept starts to become quite slippery and seems 
> to encompass just about any dominant custom. While the notion of a 
> "hegemon" has some truth to it, I think this sort of language should 
> be used carefully and sparingly. What may appear as a "hegemon" may 
> well be a coincidence of many powers and authorities and their 
> interests in a single regime or set of rules, and it may even involve 
> the consent or acceptance of rules by many people who are NOT 
> particularly powerful. The trouble is, "hegemon" often connotes 
> oppression, and thus is often a normative category, whereas the 
> empirical coincidence of interests and powers does not yet establish 
> that we are dealing with "hegemonic" power in any normatively 
> problematic sense. Otherwise, a coincidence of powers and interests in 
> accepting just about any rule of justice would count as a "hegemonic" 
> exercise of power.
>
> Finally, I find the notion of sovereignty a modern and problematic 
> invention. It has a lot of grip on our imagination to be sure, but I 
> think it may not be especially helpful because it seems to set up 
> expectations that political communities will be maximally autonomous 
> or have some quasi-sacred collective dignity (historically, of course, 
> the notion of sovereignty can help explain much modern political 
> rhetoric and practice - I just mean to put in question whether it is a 
> good guiding concept for thinking about what a real political 
> community looks like). On the other hand, I do think the notion of 
> power and its connection with law and social order is vitally 
> important, and the ways in which power is exercised and validated on 
> behalf of communities, and limited on behalf of communities, is 
> certainly a vitally important part of the problem of living in 
> community with others.
>
> And now, to GURPREET's interesting and thoughtful post:
>
> "Now to the suggestions made by David in the last post: namely, that 
> we think of political community in terms of a 'family of goals' that 
> it pursues, such as, peace, defense of rule of law, justice, etc. I 
> don't want to dwell on the pros and cons of understanding something in 
> terms of its origin and cause or effects and functions performed, but 
> let me just mention my concerns and reservations.
>
> Goals, such as, peace and justice, appear deceptively clear and self 
> evident. One has only to look at what is happening in the Middle East 
> (or Far East, depending on where we are) to see that political 
> communities mean completely different things by peace; indeed one 
> wonders what the pursuit of peace implies and war may well be seen as 
> a mode of pursuing peace (Shira, the post you sent made this amply 
> clear to me; please share it with everyone).
>
> Besides, the list of goals with reference to which you (David) define 
> political community is precariously close to the list of human rights; 
> and if we were to use this criterion one can easily see just who would 
> and would not qualify as a political community.
>
> The issue, however, is not what is being included in the list of 
> goals, for we could always alter that. If one looks at the empirical 
> studies that were presented it seems to me that existing political 
> communities, and those aspiring to be recognised and seeking autonomy 
> or secession, wish to be perceived as sovereign, self determining 
> entities. I understand the anxieties raised by notions of sovereignty, 
> but it seems to be that there is no way of avoiding it, and we may 
> need to bring it into our discussion. Referring merely to authority or 
> legitimacy, or shared goals or way of life is neither enough nor 
> adequate. It does not allow us to make the distinctions we wish to 
> make between political community and other collectives, to take just 
> one example."
>
> Now, I do not see any of this as a decisive objection against the 
> discussion of goals and their relevance to what counts as a political 
> community. Gurpreet's concern, that goals may appear more evident than 
> they really are, is a concern that could be raised about many aspects 
> of political community, such as their structure and operation, the 
> rules that govern them, their scope and membership, and so forth, but 
> it does not mean we should stop trying to define these features of 
> community life. It just means we have to be careful not to 
> oversimplify or to present things as if they were more straightforward 
> than they really are. The fact that peace is used to justify war is 
> for me quite telling: it indicates to me that in the common mind, 
> peace is an essential goal of political community, and for that very 
> reason, even acts of violence need to be presented somehow as 
> conducing to peace (this is a rhetorical observation independent of 
> the merits of the Israeli argument in question).
>
> The notion that the absence of one or more of the goals we come up 
> with (whatever they happened to be) would disqualify a group from 
> being a political community seems a bit strange to me, because (a) the 
> fact that a community is actively pursuing a goal can be critically 
> important and even constitutive of its identity even if it has not yet 
> achieved the goal; and (b) I see political community as an analogical 
> concept, or one that can be instantiated more or less fully. I have no 
> problem with saying, for example, that a Nazi regime, to the extent 
> that it retains the traditional goals of political community, remains 
> a political community, whereas to the extent that it abandons or 
> violates those goals, it is a very defective political community. 
> Rights recognition seems to me a reasonable criterion to include in 
> the mix, at least if we are talking about basic rights (property, 
> bodily integrity, freedom of religion). For me it is not a bad thing 
> if we consider grave human rights violations to undermine the 
> conditions of political community (but of course, we can talk another 
> day about what counts as a grave rights violation!).
>
> Finally, Gurpreet echoes Hanifi's point regarding the importance and 
> relevance of sovereignty. Again, I would say that because of the 
> uneasiness of many with the language of sovereignty (and its 
> historical and philosophical roots), I would prefer to speak here of 
> something like "collective self-determination" or "political autonomy" 
> or something along those lines. I fully agree with Gurpreet that 
> neither authority nor shared goals and way of life are sufficient in a 
> discussion of political community without reference to collective 
> self-determination or communal autonomy. But by the same token, all 
> three - authority, goals, and collective self-determination - must be 
> attended to, in any full and adequate treatment of political 
> community. I would submit, however, that goals have a natural priority 
> to both authority and self-determination, in the sense that goals are 
> either (a) more foundational than authority and self-determination 
> (they render the latter intelligible), or (b) include authority and 
> self-determination, either as primary or "nested" goals. In other 
> words, community has a teleological or goal-governed structure, and 
> some goals are more fundamental than others. On this view, the 
> establishment of social authority may be one of the goals of a 
> community, either a proximate or final goal, and the same could be 
> said for collective self-determination.
>
> - David
>
> [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
> 24 July 2014 22:01
> Since everyone is agreed that we are not looking for complete 
> consensus, let me make three sets of observations with regard to the 
> debate so far, prior to Trevor's post. (Nice to have your 
> intervention, Trevor, But I had written my response by then though It 
> could not posted due to network problems.)
>
>
>
>
> 1) Our discussion began with Trevor's 'semantic suggestion'. The 
> papers in the Conference & Workshop problematised aspects of it when 
> they pointed, for instance, to the presence of groups (such as, Kurds) 
> who see themselves as a political community even though they have no 
> recognition from the International community and no formal structure 
> of authority; or those who have a structure of authority and 
> representation but legitimacy is drawn from pre-political social bonds 
> (Bolivia) or from non-legal networks (Jamaica). Then there were cases 
> that pointed to groups seeking greater autonomy and/or secession. - 
> new political communities within what was perceived to be a single 
> political community.
>
>
>
>
> Our posts and discussions have not seriously pursued questions of 
> these kinds that obviously problematise our initial understanding of 
> political community. I mention this because these empirical studies 
> raised, at least implicitly, important conceptual issues, and our 
> theorising could, and indeed should, take them into account.
>
>
>
>
> 2) Despite this we have had an interesting discussion. Although the 
> debate spoke of what is a political community, and thereby wished to 
> raise normative and theoretical issues, I felt that it could also be 
> seen as reflecting the diversity of positions that we actually have in 
> most political communities (certainly in the one I live in): a) those 
> who want the political community to reflect the values embodied in the 
> community ( the more primary form of association necessary for good 
> life; b) others who probably feel that the political community is as 
> good as its institutions. Therefore we need to focus on the 
> institutional structure, their functioning and effect; and c) those 
> who maintain that every bounded community engenders inclusions and 
> exclusions. It is from the vantage point of the latter (the 
> exclusions) that we seek to understand political community.
>
>
>
>
> These were fairly different theoretical and political positions, 
> though the difference is not, to my mind, intractable. One can 
> envision a discussion about institutions that looks at the rules 
> governing these institutions and ask - who sets up these rules, whom 
> do they favour, who is disadvantaged by them etc. So the issue of 
> inclusion and exclusion would inevitably be raised, thereby 
> questioning and jettisoning notions of cohesiveness or oneness that 
> may at times be associated with political community.
>
>
>
>
> 3) Now to the suggestions made by David in the last post: namely, that 
> we think of political community in terms of a 'family of goals' that 
> it pursues, such as, peace, defense of rule of law, justice, etc. I 
> don't want to dwell on the pros and cons of understanding something in 
> terms of its origin and cause or effects and functions performed, but 
> let me just mention my concerns and reservations.
>
>
>
>
> Goals, such as, peace and justice, appear deceptively clear and self 
> evident. One has only to look at what is happening in the Middle East 
> (or Far East, depending on where we are) to see that political 
> communities mean completely different things by peace; indeed one 
> wonders what the pursuit of peace implies and war may well be seen as 
> a mode of pursuing peace (Shira, the post you sent made this amply 
> clear to me; please share it with everyone).
>
>
>
>
> Besides, the list of goals with reference to which you (David) define 
> political community is precariously close to the list of human rights; 
> and if we were to use this criterion one can easily see just who would 
> and would not qualify as a political community.
>
>
>
>
> The issue, however, is not what is being included in the list of 
> goals, for we could always alter that. If one looks at the empirical 
> studies that were presented it seems to me that existing political 
> communities, and those aspiring to be recognised and seeking autonomy 
> or secession, wish to be perceived as sovereign, self determining 
> entities. I understand the anxieties raised by notions of sovereignty, 
> but it seems to be that there is no way of avoiding it, and we may 
> need to bring it into our discussion. Referring merely to authority or 
> legitimacy, or shared goals or way of life is neither enough nor 
> adequate. It does not allow us to make the distinctions we wish to 
> make between political community and other collectives, to take just 
> one example.
>
>
>
>
> There is also some cache in understanding the concept political 
> community in terms of what it adds to the discussion. In one of his 
> posts Matyas explained that CISRUL did not use the term people or 
> nation or state, for that matter. It chose to focus on political 
> community, suggesting that the latter displaced and supplemented what 
> was denoted through the other terms. This appears, to me, to be a 
> helpful way of thinking about a concept, its meaning and nature. We 
> might start our theoretical journey and understand what political 
> community is by differentiating such other concepts as, people, 
> nation, state, community.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Gurpreet Mahajan
> Centre for Political Studies
> School of Social Sciences
> Jawaharlal Nehru University
> New Delhi 110067
> India
>
>
>
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
>
>
>
>
> Since everyone is agreed that we are not looking for complete 
> consensus, let me make three sets of observations with regard to the 
> debate so far, prior to Trevor's post. (Nice to have your 
> intervention, Trevor, But I had written my response by then though It 
> could not posted due to network problems.)
>
> 1) Our discussion began with Trevor's 'semantic suggestion'. The 
> papers in the Conference & Workshop problematised aspects of it when 
> they pointed, for instance, to the presence of groups (such as, Kurds) 
> who see themselves as a political community even though they have no 
> recognition from the International community and no formal structure 
> of authority; or those who have a structure of authority and 
> representation but legitimacy is drawn from pre-political social bonds 
> (Bolivia) or from non-legal networks (Jamaica). Then there were cases 
> that pointed to groups seeking greater autonomy and/or secession. - 
> new political communities within what was perceived to be a single 
> political community.
>
> Our posts and discussions have not seriously pursued questions of 
> these kinds that obviously problematise our initial understanding of 
> political community. I mention this because these empirical studies 
> raised, at least implicitly, important conceptual issues, and our 
> theorising could, and indeed should, take them into account.
>
> 2) Despite this we have had an interesting discussion. Although the 
> debate spoke of what is a political community, and thereby wished to 
> raise normative and theoretical issues, I felt that it could also be 
> seen as reflecting the diversity of positions that we actually have in 
> most political communities (certainly in the one I live in): a) those 
> who want the political community to reflect the values embodied in the 
> community ( the more primary form of association necessary for good 
> life; b) others who probably feel that the political community is as 
> good as its institutions. Therefore we need to focus on the 
> institutional structure, their functioning and effect; and c) those 
> who maintain that every bounded community engenders inclusions and 
> exclusions. It is from the vantage point of the latter (the 
> exclusions) that we seek to understand political community.
>
> These were fairly different theoretical and political positions, 
> though the difference is not, to my mind, intractable. One can 
> envision a discussion about institutions that looks at the rules 
> governing these institutions and ask - who sets up these rules, whom 
> do they favour, who is disadvantaged by them etc. So the issue of 
> inclusion and exclusion would inevitably be raised, thereby 
> questioning and jettisoning notions of cohesiveness or oneness that 
> may at times be associated with political community.
>
> 3) Now to the suggestions made by David in the last post: namely, that 
> we think of political community in terms of a 'family of goals' that 
> it pursues, such as, peace, defense of rule of law, justice, etc. I 
> don't want to dwell on the pros and cons of understanding something in 
> terms of its origin and cause or effects and functions performed, but 
> let me just mention my concerns and reservations.
>
> Goals, such as, peace and justice, appear deceptively clear and self 
> evident. One has only to look at what is happening in the Middle East 
> (or Far East, depending on where we are) to see that political 
> communities mean completely different things by peace; indeed one 
> wonders what the pursuit of peace implies and war may well be seen as 
> a mode of pursuing peace (Shira, the post you sent made this amply 
> clear to me; please share it with everyone).
>
> Besides, the list of goals with reference to which you (David) define 
> political community is precariously close to the list of human rights; 
> and if we were to use this criterion one can easily see just who would 
> and would not qualify as a political community.
>
> The issue, however, is not what is being included in the list of 
> goals, for we could always alter that. If one looks at the empirical 
> studies that were presented it seems to me that existing political 
> communities, and those aspiring to be recognised and seeking autonomy 
> or secession, wish to be perceived as sovereign, self determining 
> entities. I understand the anxieties raised by notions of sovereignty, 
> but it seems to be that there is no way of avoiding it, and we may 
> need to bring it into our discussion. Referring merely to authority or 
> legitimacy, or shared goals or way of life is neither enough nor 
> adequate. It does not allow us to make the distinctions we wish to 
> make between political community and other collectives, to take just 
> one example.
>
> There is also some cache in understanding the concept political 
> community in terms of what it adds to the discussion. In one of his 
> posts Matyas explained that CISRUL did not use the term people or 
> nation or state, for that matter. It chose to focus on political 
> community, suggesting that the latter displaced and supplemented what 
> was denoted through the other terms. This appears, to me, to be a 
> helpful way of thinking about a concept, its meaning and nature. We 
> might start our theoretical journey and understand what political 
> community is by differentiating such other concepts as, people, 
> nation, state, community.
>
>
> Gurpreet Mahajan
> Centre for Political Studies
> School of Social Sciences
> Jawaharlal Nehru University
> New Delhi 110067
> India
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Dr Trevor R. Stack <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Sent: Wed, 23 Jul 2014 18:46:14 +0530 (IST)
> Subject: Further suggestions for reframing our "political community" 
> question
>
> Dear all
>
> I forgot to mention in my email two weeks ago that I was going on 
> holiday. Just got back to discover, to my delight, that there has been 
> lively debate on this email list. I hope the debate will continue in 
> the days, weeks and months to come, and I look forward to 
> contributions from the rest of you.
>
> For now, here’s my own initial response to some of what has been said:
>
> I’m pleased to see that, despite some moments of friction, there is 
> real interest in sustaining this conversation. This is not to be taken 
> for granted, especially in UK academia, where despite nods to 
> inter-disciplinarity, the bulk of conversation still seems to occur 
> within disciplines and usually sub-fields within them. So I continue 
> to believe this is a valuable project. Another reason why there are 
> few conversations of this nature is that it’s difficult to sustain 
> such a conversation, for reasons of concepts and methods, as well as 
> politics. It’s possible that we have underestimated such difficulties 
> at CISRUL, and it’s important to be realistic about them and to 
> address them head-on. Hence the importance of the debate about 
> methodology and I agree with Matyas (and Rivke who said this at The 
> Burn) that this is crucial. We have been working through questions of 
> methodology from the outset of the project. For example, the CfP did 
> so by a) mapping out conceptually what we are interested in, and b) 
> posing a series of empirical and normative questions about the topic, 
> once conceptualised. In my introduction to the workshop, I also 
> explained that we were framing “political community” in a way that was 
> broad enough to accommodate diverse positions while narrow enough to 
> be sure we were talking about something. But it’s possible that we 
> haven’t addressed these issues as directly and explicitly as we might 
> have done. Specifically Matyas has proposed that we address the 
> (complex) relation of normative and empirical, and I believe this 
> would be very useful indeed. In fact, I suspect we could provide 
> pointers for more effective debates across the humanities and social 
> sciences.
>
> Because this kind of conversation is so difficult, it requires a good 
> deal of commitment and of patience on all sides -- more than is 
> usually necessary for intra-disciplinary debates. Sometimes one or 
> other of these have been wanting. It’s also important to accept that 
> the most likely answer to “why aren’t we talking about X or Y?” is 
> because the person hasn’t raised or adequately explained X or Y issue, 
> or invited someone else to do so. In a group as diverse as this, it 
> makes little sense to wait for someone else to take our side. But 
> we’re still talking, which must be a good sign. By “we” I mean not 
> just the CISRUL regulars at Aberdeen (some of whom were at the 
> workshop) but all who have come to our workshops and have joined in 
> debate.
>
> It should also be obvious that we’re not merely an inter-disciplinary 
> group. Most scholars in the humanities and social sciences, even when 
> engaging with other disciplines, seem to prefer those who have broadly 
> similar politics to them. In my part of the university, there are 
> clusters of “critical” scholars of particular shades and colours, and 
> I have often been at conferences where a “critical” consensus is 
> assumed. It seems clear to me, at least, that no one in the CISRUL 
> group seriously expects others to share their politics. But it might 
> also be useful to discuss more explicitly how our politics figures in 
> our conversation, rather than having them swilling around in the 
> background.
>
> One way forward might be to attempt to rework our “political 
> community” concept to accommodate some (though not all) of the 
> comments made during the event and online. I’ve made an initial, 
> sketchy attempt in the attached document. Note the following:
>
> 1. I acknowledge that the “political” of “political community” is not 
> meant to encompass everything that can be described as “political”. It 
> seems obvious to me as an anthropologist that all communities have had 
> a political dimension or sphere. I also accept that the distinction of 
> “political” and “non-political” (for example “religious”) may itself 
> be in a certain sense “political”. But I think it’s not unreasonable 
> to specify that our use of “political” of “political community” is 
> simply referring to the authority claim.
>
> 2. I believe we need to clarify further what we mean by “institution”. 
> This, I believe, is another important stumbling block. I’m not quite 
> sure how to do this yet – all I’ve done is insert “institution (in a 
> broad sense)” in the third paragraph. But I think part of the 
> disagreement between Matyas, Andrea and Ajay concerns what each 
> understands (or thinks each other understands) by “institution”. We 
> agreed to use “structures of authority” instead of “institution” in 
> the CfP but I feel this just sidestepped the issue, which is why I’ve 
> put “institution” back in for now. Finding a more accommodating way to 
> use the term “institution” may well help us to move forward, avoiding 
> kneejerk responses on each side.
>
> 3. I’m suggesting we drop the language of vertical and horizontal, 
> which has proved a stumbling block in that “horizontal” seems to evoke 
> “equality” among community members. This was inadvertent and I agree 
> we should not assume this. In fact James Holston argued in a 2009 
> workshop that citizenship – an important language of membership in 
> political community – has typically served to legitimate inequality. 
> Equality is in my view a question to be asked of political community, 
> rather than a starting assumption. Note that I’ve also “demoted” 
> mutual obligation to the fourth paragraph, for the time being, because 
> it hasn’t been central to our discussions (though maybe it should be).
>
> Finally, I’m alluding in the penultimate paragraph to some of the 
> arguments made at the workshop and online. With regard to the 
> empirical claims, you’ve read David’s recent post, in which he sets 
> out a kind of alternative hypothesis for political community in the 
> contemporary world (as well as making an interesting distinction 
> between understanding political community in terms of structure and of 
> goals). But I think it would be helpful to quote Matyas’s reply to 
> David’s original message to him (due to a misunderstanding it was not 
> posted) in which he advanced his own hypothesis about the (empirical) 
> direction of political community in the contemporary world:
> “I would say that problems of community are increasingly political in 
> a globalised world. Practices of governance (especially in the name of 
> a democratically legitimised government and even human rights) affect 
> communities more than ever... Moreover, globalisation means the 
> increasing relevance of international relations for all communities - 
> and international relations have a normative framing that is 
> politically constructed. I think this is evidently manifested in the 
> ever-growing engagement of local communities with international norms 
> (international human rights law, indigenous rights, claims of 
> self-determination, accusations of genocide, etc.). Moreover, 
> globalisation actually increases the significance of political 
> authority (exercised by states). The world order, we should not 
> forget, is not international but cosmopolitan [actually I think Matyas 
> meant to write “not cosmopolitan but international”]. As Pogge 
> convincingly argued (in his World Poverty and Human Rights) that 
> globalisation makes it easier for powerful states to rig the terms of 
> cooperation to their favour. (Oxfam would also agree.) Organising 
> communal life is facing increasing political challenges, and it leads 
> to an increasing politicisation of all forms of communal life.”
>
> I look forward to reading responses to all this, including from those 
> of you have been quieter!
>
> All the best
>
> Trevor
>
>
> The University of Aberdeen is a charity registered in Scotland, No 
> SC013683.
> Tha Oilthigh Obar Dheathain na charthannas clàraichte ann an Alba, 
> Àir. SC013683.
> Stack, Dr Trevor R. <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
> 23 July 2014 15:16
>
> Dear all
>
> I forgot to mention in my email two weeks ago that I was going on 
> holiday. Just got back to discover, to my delight, that there has been 
> lively debate on this email list. I hope the debate will continue in 
> the days, weeks and months to come, and I look forward to 
> contributions from the rest of you.
>
> For now, here’s my own initial response to /some/ of what has been said:
>
> I’m pleased to see that, despite some moments of friction, there is 
> real interest in sustaining this conversation. This is not to be taken 
> for granted, especially in UK academia, where despite nods to 
> inter-disciplinarity, the bulk of conversation still seems to occur 
> within disciplines and usually sub-fields within them. So I continue 
> to believe this is a valuable project. Another reason why there are 
> few conversations of this nature is that it’s /difficult/ to sustain 
> such a conversation, for reasons of concepts and methods, as well as 
> politics. It’s possible that we have underestimated such difficulties 
> at CISRUL, and it’s important to be realistic about them and to 
> address them head-on. Hence the importance of the debate about 
> methodology and I agree with Matyas (and Rivke who said this at The 
> Burn) that this is crucial. We have been working through questions of 
> methodology from the outset of the project. For example, the CfP did 
> so by a) mapping out conceptually what we are interested in, and b) 
> posing a series of empirical and normative questions about the topic, 
> once conceptualised. In my introduction to the workshop, I also 
> explained that we were framing “political community” in a way that was 
> broad enough to accommodate diverse positions while narrow enough to 
> be sure we were talking about /something/. But it’s possible that we 
> haven’t addressed these issues as directly and explicitly as we might 
> have done. Specifically Matyas has proposed that we address the 
> (complex) relation of normative and empirical, and I believe this 
> would be very useful indeed. In fact, I suspect we could provide 
> pointers for more effective debates across the humanities and social 
> sciences.
>
> Because this kind of conversation is so difficult, it requires a good 
> deal of commitment and of patience on all sides -- more than is 
> usually necessary for intra-disciplinary debates. Sometimes one or 
> other of these have been wanting. It’s also important to accept that 
> the most likely answer to “why aren’t we talking about X or Y?” is 
> because the person hasn’t raised or adequately explained X or Y issue, 
> or invited someone else to do so. In a group as diverse as this, it 
> makes little sense to wait for someone else to take our side. But 
> we’re still talking, which must be a good sign. By “we” I mean not 
> just the CISRUL regulars at Aberdeen (some of whom were at the 
> workshop) but all who have come to our workshops and have joined in 
> debate.
>
> It should also be obvious that we’re not merely an inter-disciplinary 
> group. Most scholars in the humanities and social sciences, even when 
> engaging with other disciplines, seem to prefer those who have broadly 
> similar politics to them. In my part of the university, there are 
> clusters of “critical” scholars of particular shades and colours, and 
> I have often been at conferences where a “critical” consensus is 
> assumed. It seems clear to me, at least, that no one in the CISRUL 
> group seriously expects others to share their politics. But it might 
> also be useful to discuss more explicitly how our politics figures in 
> our conversation, rather than having them swilling around in the 
> background.
>
> One way forward might be to attempt to rework our “political 
> community” concept to accommodate some (though not all) of the 
> comments made during the event and online. I’ve made an initial, 
> sketchy attempt in the attached document. Note the following:
>
> 1. I acknowledge that the “political” of “political community” is not 
> meant to encompass everything that can be described as “political”. It 
> seems obvious to me as an anthropologist that all communities have had 
> a political dimension or sphere. I also accept that the distinction of 
> “political” and “non-political” (for example “religious”) may itself 
> be in a certain sense “political”. But I think it’s not unreasonable 
> to specify that our use of “political” of “political community” is 
> simply referring to the authority claim.
>
> 2. I believe we need to clarify further what we mean by “institution”. 
> This, I believe, is another important stumbling block. I’m not quite 
> sure how to do this yet – all I’ve done is insert “institution (in a 
> broad sense)” in the third paragraph. But I think part of the 
> disagreement between Matyas, Andrea and Ajay concerns what each 
> understands (or thinks each other understands) by “institution”. We 
> agreed to use “structures of authority” instead of “institution” in 
> the CfP but I feel this just sidestepped the issue, which is why I’ve 
> put “institution” back in for now. Finding a more accommodating way to 
> use the term “institution” may well help us to move forward, avoiding 
> kneejerk responses on each side.
>
> 3. I’m suggesting we drop the language of vertical and horizontal, 
> which has proved a stumbling block in that “horizontal” seems to evoke 
> “equality” among community members. This was inadvertent and I agree 
> we should not assume this. In fact James Holston argued in a 2009 
> workshop that citizenship – an important language of membership in 
> political community – has typically served to legitimate /in/equality. 
> Equality is in my view a question to be asked of political community, 
> rather than a starting assumption. Note that I’ve also “demoted” 
> mutual obligation to the fourth paragraph, for the time being, because 
> it hasn’t been central to our discussions (though maybe it should be).
>
> Finally, I’m alluding in the penultimate paragraph to some of the 
> arguments made at the workshop and online. With regard to the 
> /empirical/ claims, you’ve read David’s recent post, in which he sets 
> out a kind of alternative hypothesis for political community in the 
> contemporary world (as well as making an interesting distinction 
> between understanding political community in terms of structure and of 
> goals). But I think it would be helpful to quote Matyas’s reply to 
> David’s original message to him (due to a misunderstanding it was not 
> posted) in which he advanced his own hypothesis about the (empirical) 
> direction of political community in the contemporary world:
>
> “I would say that problems of community are increasingly political in 
> a globalised world. Practices of governance (especially in the name of 
> a democratically legitimised government and even human rights) affect 
> communities more than ever... Moreover, globalisation means the 
> increasing relevance of international relations for all communities - 
> and international relations have a normative framing that is 
> politically constructed. I think this is evidently manifested in the 
> ever-growing engagement of local communities with international norms 
> (international human rights law, indigenous rights, claims of 
> self-determination, accusations of genocide, etc.). Moreover, 
> globalisation actually increases the significance of political 
> authority (exercised by states). The world order, we should not 
> forget, is not international but cosmopolitan [actually I think Matyas 
> meant to write “not cosmopolitan but international”]. As Pogge 
> convincingly argued (in his World Poverty and Human Rights) that 
> globalisation makes it easier for powerful states to rig the terms of 
> cooperation to their favour. (Oxfam would also agree.) Organising 
> communal life is facing increasing political challenges, and it leads 
> to an increasing politicisation of all forms of communal life.”
>
> I look forward to reading responses to all this, including from those 
> of you have been quieter!
>
> All the best
>
> Trevor
>
>
>
> The University of Aberdeen is a charity registered in Scotland, No 
> SC013683.
> Tha Oilthigh Obar Dheathain na charthannas clàraichte ann an Alba, 
> Àir. SC013683.
> David Thunder <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
> 18 July 2014 16:53
> Dear all,
>
> I too appreciated Marc's intervention, and have found Matyas's 
> followup below quite illuminating. Hopefully I can contribute 
> something here on these methodological and substantive questions 
> surrounding the theme of political community, in part motivated by the 
> debate as it has unfolded. Some of my own tentative conclusions, for now:
>
> 1. Abstract Vs. Concrete Claims?
> In general, distinctions between "abstract" and more focused inquiry 
> are not always terribly helpful. I think all inquiry is theory-laden, 
> though some is more theoretically explicit than others. Theorists can 
> seem more "abstract" at times because they highlight big ideas that 
> are in play in our discussions, ideas that are not always made 
> explicit. Whether they are unhelpfully abstract, on the other hand, or 
> excessively vague, or off the point, is quite another question. The 
> goals or values many believe ought to be served by political 
> community, such as peace and justice, are necessarily abstract in 
> character. But this is unavoidable and should not in and of itself put 
> a cloud of suspicion over them. I am skeptical that any candid framing 
> of the question of political community can avoid these sorts of concepts.
>
> 2. Political Community as a Community Oriented Toward Certain Goals?
> I wholeheartedly agree that the concept of "political community" is 
> more a question than a definitive answer. My suggestions about 
> defining political community more in terms of its goals (e.g. public 
> order, collective action, solving coordination problems, embodying a 
> system of justice, defending the material interests of group members, 
> protecting conditions under which members can live decent lives) than 
> in terms of its exact structure (whether top-down or egalitarian or a 
> mix of the two) was geared precisely toward ensuring the "political 
> community" managed to be a meaningful term yet did not settle a range 
> of issues about which we could reasonable disagree.
>
> I have gradually become convinced by our discussions that there is 
> some real value to using the term "political" because it has useful 
> historical and philosophical baggage, pointing our attention to a more 
> ambitious or far-reaching form of community that tries to establish 
> conditions for living well in general, not just conditions for this or 
> that aspect of life. My hypothesis is that one could agree to at least 
> a "family" of goals of political community, stated quite broadly, even 
> while disagreeing about (a) how to interpret those goals in detail; 
> and (b) the precise instruments and structures through which such 
> goals might be achieved. In short, to speak of political community is 
> not to speak of one particular regime or one particular social 
> structure, but to speak of a group of people engaged in a shared way 
> of life oriented toward certain fundamental goals (peace, common 
> defense, rule of law, justice, a social environment that permits a 
> decent way of life, etc.). Perhaps something general could also be 
> said about the structures of political communities oriented toward 
> such goals (e.g. representation, public rules with sanctions, etc.).
>
> Honestly, I am open to other formulations of the question, as long as 
> they are sufficiently open-ended that they permit differing 
> interpretations of the concept and practice of political community, 
> and are not tied to certain controversial and arguably reductive and 
> highly instrumental (even if dominant) ways of conceptualizing the 
> political (e.g. monopoly on legitimate coercion as the defining 
> feature of political community).
>
> 3. Political Community as an Analogical Concept?
> I have another suggestion for dealing with a problem I have been 
> bringing up but has not gotten much "traction" in our discussion 
> (perhaps not everyone sees it as a problem, though Marc gestures 
> toward it in his mention of semi-autonomous communities): the problem 
> of the pluriform nature of modern societies, the fact that various 
> forms of public order and coordination emanate from many different 
> centers, whether corporations, nations, cities, international bodies, 
> subnational regions (witness Basque country, Catalunia, Navarra in 
> Spain), universities, churches, or a host of other associations. This 
> dense web of overlapping associations, some of which do in fact 
> undertake and share certain political functions like representation, 
> governance, and legal adjudication, could put in question the notion 
> that we are dealing with unified "polities" in the traditional sense, 
> or that "political community" really is something we can ever 
> accurately speak of in the singular, so to speak, as if it was 
> constituted by one fixed population with one ruling center or one 
> jurisdiction, that carries out all or most of the traditional 
> political functions.
>
> One way to deal with this potential challenge to the notion of 
> political community is to admit that we are dealing initially with an 
> analogical, not a univocal concept. That is to say, there is a "focal 
> sense" of political community, in which one stable association is 
> governed by a single jurisdiction and oriented to a single set of 
> shared goals, but this "focal sense" may be extended, by analogy to 
> less centralized or unified forms of political community. It may turn 
> out that eventually, the traditional "focal sense" of political 
> community hardly exists at all in practice, but that does not remove 
> its heuristic value, as a starting-point for reflection. For some this 
> may seem like a far-fetched or highly "theoretical" concern but I 
> think keeping in mind the analogical character of the concept of 
> political community can help guard against the danger of assuming it 
> is a highly centralized or unified phenomenon. In other words, I want 
> to suggest that the very notion of political community is not univocal 
> (having only one fixed meaning) but analogical, having a core meaning 
> that can be extrapolated across a family of similar entities. This 
> analogical character could be very important if we discover that what 
> we may consider the "core" concept of political community does not 
> correspond in fact to any real community in the world we live in, but 
> is instantiated to various degrees in a wide spectrum of entities that 
> make up the modern world and together, with greater or lesser success, 
> deliver the "goods" we may be seeking from political communities.
>
> 4. Positive Theorizing vs. the Hermeneutic of Suspicion: A False 
> Dichotomy?
> Concerning Ajay's and Matya's difference of opinion on the role of 
> ideology in the study of community, I am inclined to think that the 
> difference between them is over-blown, that one can engage in standard 
> "liberal theory" institutional analysis, and the discussion of 
> standard liberal rights and obligations, without constantly labouring 
> under a "hermeneutic of suspicion"; and then one confronts whatever 
> critiques come one's way, as best one can, and makes whatever 
> adjustments or caveats one must make in the original theory. There is 
> a moment for constructive theorizing, and a moment for entertaining 
> the "hermeneutic of suspicion." A good theorist will entertain both 
> moments but need not be wholeheartedly involved in both at all times. 
> Of course notions of political community will often be used for 
> self-serving and dishonest purposes, or will be used to simply prop up 
> existing power structures with little or no regard to their objective 
> legitimacy. This is to be expected. But this, in itself, does not 
> threaten the enterprise of positive theorizing. It simply puts it 
> under caution that it ought to be careful not to render entirely 
> unproblematic, concepts that we know can serve as a cloak for 
> rationalization of power and injustice, or for ideological 
> manipulation. The danger of abuse and manipulation does not 
> delegitimize a theory or concept, anymore than the danger of abuse and 
> manipulation delegitimizes the practice of law.
>
> Thanks for your patience! Hopefully we are moving toward greater 
> clarity. I for one have learnt a good deal from our email exchanges so 
> far.
>
> All the best,
>
> David
>
>
>
> Mátyás Bódig <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
> 18 July 2014 13:27
> Dear All,
>
> I would like to thank Marc for his intervention. It is really helpful. 
> It offers a chance to move the conversation along – perhaps with the 
> help of those not invested so heavily in theory.
>
> First, there is need for some housekeeping. I would like to reiterate 
> that the suggested focus on ‘democracy’ is not the implication of a 
> conceptual point. It is emphatically not claimed that only a 
> democratic polity can be a ‘political’ community. The suggestion was 
> that, with this particular cohort of scholars, reflecting on democracy 
> may offer a way to move towards more specific agendas about political 
> communities. Andrea has bones to pick with the politics of 
> contemporary democratization theory (and I am with him on that point), 
> and much of the empirical research that people relied in the workshop 
> and the summer school concern countries (Bolivia, Brazil, India, 
> Mexico, Poland, Turkey etc. – last year, we also had Argentina, Israel 
> and Somaliland) that are facing exciting questions about finding the 
> framework for democratic institutions and public life that is fit for 
> the distinct combinations of smaller communities that live together 
> there. (Importantly, as Marc points out, in almost all these 
> countries, we find ‘societies with multiple, semi-autonomous 
> communities.’) Of course, I acknowledge that possibility this might 
> not be the best way to focus our conversations (although I do not 
> remember anyone addressing non-democratic political communities in any 
> detail over the past two years at CISRUL events).
>
> Now, to the main point… Marc is right that ‘political community’ is 
> not an answer to any particular question. It is a conceptual device 
> that we can use to formulate our questions (empirical and normative), 
> as well as to make sense of the answer we get from each other. That 
> actually explains the contestation (even anxiety) around the concept: 
> it reflects intellectual struggles to define the parameters of the 
> discursive field where our discussions may take place. Theorists fret 
> about this stuff all the time, and they are very competitive people 
> (even though they are not always honest about this)…
> It is not just that it would be hard to avoid some contestation about 
> conceptual issues – we positively encouraged them. We always strive to 
> facilitate this kind of contestation with our conceptual strategy at 
> CISRUL. Actually, I have touched upon a related point earlier (in 
> response to Andrea’s post). For the focus of the workshop last year 
> and this June, we chose a concept (‘political community’) that is not 
> commonly used by most people, and that sounds quite artificial for 
> most academics. The upside was that such a concept carries slightly 
> less baggage than some others that would have been readily available 
> (polity, nation, people, etc.). We had more freedom to tailor our 
> conceptual strategies to the concrete epistemic needs of the scholars 
> who take part in our conversations. They had more to debate about. (A 
> reflection of how we made use of that freedom is that the provisional 
> definition Trevor put together has considerable originality to it – 
> not that I can claim much credit for it.)
>
> As to issues of methodology, I do not mean that we need some common 
> methodological perspective. Actually, that would be damaging to the 
> intellectual vitality of our discussions. What I claim is that holding 
> an interdisciplinary conversation together raises a recurrent 
> methodological challenge, and we have to keep reflecting on it. It 
> forces us into moving back and forth between methodological and 
> substantive points. Actually, Marc’s post contains a pretty coherent 
> response to the methodological challenge that is quite adequate at 
> this stage of our conversations. ‘Theoretically informed empiricists 
> should be asking empirical questions about political communities and 
> empirically informed theoreticians should be addressing the normative 
> questions. (…) [W]e bring to bear the diverse methodologies of our 
> disciplines and interdisciplinary fields on the same questions.’ Yes, 
> something like this was the idea…
> Let me be just a bit more specific about the way the stage was set for 
> our conversations when the workshops were designed. We chose the 
> concept of 'political community' to channel interdisciplinary 
> dialogue. In the first phase, we needed a preliminary sense of what we 
> were talking about: an object of reflection that the concept can 
> designate. So, we developed a crude outline of conceptual parameters. 
> Then, we entered a more complicated process in which those parameters 
> are being rearranged in an interdisciplinary dialogue (that draws 
> heavily on relevant empirical research in a broad variety of countries 
> and communities). In this process, the preliminary definition was 
> reworked many times. Crucially, the end point towards which we are 
> moving (assuming that this conversation will come to an end at some 
> point in the future) is not a common concept of 'political community.' 
> Rather, the expected result is that, for each of us separately, our 
> thinking on political community and related issues becomes more 
> reflective, and we become better able to deal with other disciplinary 
> perspectives that our relevant for our respective research projects. 
> We become more relevant to each other as discussants because we 
> understand our differences better, and those differences keep 
> challenging us.
>
> Best,
> Mátyás