Clifford and Habermas on Westernization of the World

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It is necessary to compare and to discuss James Clifford’s and Jurgen Habermas’ views about such statement that West is different from other societies around the world. In this context it is necessary to discuss some important issues such as: the difference of the interests of these authors, and thus the different reflection of their ideas, the role of different societies and their elites in the process of the Westernization and their influence on the distinctive features between the West and other societies, the influence of the politics on the given problem. After discussing these issues, it is necessary to make the conclusion about the relevance of both authors’ views to the modern world situation.

First of all it is necessary to discuss “The Predicament of Cultures” by James Clifford, especially its part named “Histories of the Tribal and the Modern”. Such term as the “Predicament of Culture” is actually a critical ethnography of the Western World in the way of its changing interactions and relations with other world societies. By the analysis of such cultural practices as: anthropology, experienced travel writing, scrupulous collecting, museum research work, and research of tribal art, James Clifford shows really authoritative valuations of other, totally different, ways of life that were regarded as contingent fictions. He shows that now they appeared under the active discussion in postcolonial contexts.

Clifford’s critique is indeed significant and relevant to the modern world situation connected with the entire westernization of the world and the role of the West in this process. These problems are represented in the discussion of such issues as: the concern about who actually can speak for any group’s, culture’s identity and for the authenticity; the discussion of inalienable elements and essential boundaries of certain cultures; the discussion of the influence of such meanings as “self” and “the other” in the process of clashing in the context of ethnography, travel, and also today interethnic interactions and relations.

For example, he says: “Similarly at MOMA the production of tribal “art” is entirely in the past. Turning up in the flea markets and museums of late nineteenth-century Europe, these objects are destined to be aesthetically redeemed, given new value in the object system of a generous modernism” (Clifford, p. 202).

It may be pointed out that, in the discussion of such issues as: ethnography, museums, also surrealism and well known emergent and significant tribal arts, James Clifford researches the “late-twentieth century predicament”, probes the facts of living at the same time within culture, between and after it.

Talking about Jurgen Habermas’ work named “The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere”, especially about its part “An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society” and the work “Legitimaion Crisis”, the author’s analysis of the public sphere’s certain social structures should be mentioned.

Habermas interprets the entire situation from the viewpoint of such issue, as the public sphere. Also he describes it in the contest of political issues themselves. He also says: “The truth relation of systematically produced conflicts of interest exists, in this case, not for the sociologist, but for the members of the action system under analysis. In contrast to systems analysis, then, critique is related to the consciousness of addressees susceptible of enlightenment.” (Habermas, p. 28).

His books show the development of bourgeois public circles in the period of the eighteenth – nineteenth centuries. The author shows its subsequent decadence.

Two transformative sociological stages organize Habermas’ viewpoint:

From the society with the monarchical and feudal status to the bourgeois public sphere with liberal concerns;
From the bourgeois public sphere with liberal concerns to the modern welfare state with social concerns.

Following Habermas’ viewpoint it might be pointed out that the first transition happens in such countries as England, France, Germany and the United States. In order to explain such change, he regards together such means as political, also social and cultural, and, of course, philosophical developments. A feudal society, which is monarchical, is not able to make any distinction between such issues as state and society, and such issues as public and private. It organizes its politics around some symbolic representation and a sort of status. So, it was replaced by a bourgeois order with the liberal and constitutional means.

Here may be seen the rise of a literary public sphere. The bourgeoisie learns in a certain time to reflect keenly and critically upon itself and, what is more important, upon its society. These goes alongside with the rise of just formed non-industrial capitalism and the political liberalism.

Also Habermas traces the way of transforming from the bourgeois public sphere with the liberal orders into the modern and educated mass society with its state of the public and social welfare. Starting in the early 1830s and until the beginning of the twentieth century some important issues take their shape; they are: a set of social and cultural, also political and philosophical resulting and developments. These issues actually succeeded the certain constellations previously marked by the sphere of the public named bourgeois.

The direct demarcation of the issues of the public and the private, the distinction between the state and the society, marked by the bourgeois public-sphere time gives possibilities for the development of reintegration and the connection of the state and the society in the context of the development of the state of the social and economic welfare.

In accordance with Habermas these can be explained as: “part of a larger dialectic, as political changes that lead to the disintegration of the bourgeois public sphere are done in order to save the liberal constitutional order in general” (Habermas, p. 67). In his work Habermas focuses on the certain effects of such issues as: the commercialization and the consumerization on the social and public sphere through the improvement of mass media, such issue as “public relations,” and also the consumer culture.

He points out that: “In liberal capitalism, class antagonism is shifted from the intersubjectivity of the life-world into the substratum of this world. Commodity fetishism is both a secularized residual ideology and the actually functioning steering principle of the economic system. Economic crises thus lose the character of fate accessible to self-reflection and acquire the objectivity of inexplicable, contingent, natural events. The ideological core has thus shifted to ground level.” (Habermas, p. 30).

He also points out the important and problematic effects of politics of the mass party on advisory and parliamentarian politics and also on the rational, as well as the critical debate, in the sphere of public relations. The author claims: “Stood or fell with the principle of universal access. A public sphere from which groups were ipso excluded was less than merely incomplete; it was not a public sphere at all” (Habermas, p. 85).

Talking about the relevance of books: “The Predicament of Cultures” by James Clifford, “The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere” and “Legitimaion Crisis” by Jurgen Habermas, on the modern world situation and the tendency of the Westernization, it is necessary to say that these books are really influential for scientists of sociology, political science, also media studies. But to my mind, Jurgen Habermas work is more relevant to the modern world situation connected with the Westernization and the difference of the West from the other world societies and cultures. This work reflects the role of the modern politics and their great influence on the given process. Nowadays the elites and their protégés in big politics control the certain issues that reflect on key differences between the West and other societies around the world and control the process of the Westernization.

Nevertheless, it is necessary to note that both of the mentioned works are equally important for historians of sociology and philosophy, now that Jurgen Habermas and James Clifford are indeed recognized as a valuable philosophers and scholars of the twentieth century.

Works Cited

Clifford, James. The Predicament of Cultures. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.

Habermas, Jurgen. Legitimaion Crisis. Duke: Duke University Press, 2000.

Habermas, Jurgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

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Clifford and Habermas on Westernization of the World

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