Applying Kahan to Kahan

I believe Dan Kahan is doing excellent work in blending social psychology and law.  In particular, I find myself deeply in sympathy with his proposal that judicial resolutions of culturally contested matters be done if posssible in a way that affirms the worth of different cultural stances rather than judicially taking sides with one position over another.

In that spirit, a proposal: Kahan over the years has called the stance that more or less corresponds to modern conservatism "hierarchical individualism."  I believe that's a term that's likely to provoke in many conservatives exactly the sense of science being used in a biased, culturally partisan fashion that Kahan is concerned about.  How about "meritocratic individualism" or "desert-oriented" individualism?  Either term works better than "hierarchical" as one that conservatives are likely to accept as a self-description.   If Kahan wants to emphasize a traditionalist component in conservatism as opposed to liberalism, then "traditionalist individualism" would work fine, I believe.

I suspect part of the problem here is that Kahan has kept the same terms for cultural stances for years, even as his view of conservatism has become less negative over time (and/or his concern about both sides respecting the other has increased).

Compare "hierarchical individualism" with its more than faintly pejorative associations to "egalitarian communitariansm,"  the term Kahan usually uses for the stance similar to modern liberalism.   If you wanted to emphasize the culturally modernizing side of liberalism, you might pick another name, like "modernizing communitarianism (or egalitarianism)."  But the label Kahan uses (like the alternative labels) is not likely to be seen as pejorative, and corresponds pretty well, I believe, to the self-understanding of liberals in a way that "hierarchical individualism" does not, or so I believe, for conservatives. 

 

 

Comments

[dmk38]

I see what you are saying -- so what would be better? maybe should go for "type 1, 2, 3, 4"? But is it possible, too, that chafing at terms "hierarchy" & "individualism" reflects a kind of secular (as it were) cultural trend that is depleting our stock of those dispositions in our collective life? Wildavsky & Douglas both (in separate writings) worried about this, at lest w/ respect to "hierarchy." And they didn't balk at calling hierarchy "hierarchy." (BTW, I find myself drawn to many aspects of "individualism" -- I think the classical liberal is more EI than EC). Anyway, "conservativism" definitely effaces the added nuance & texture of the Douglas-Wildvasky 2-dimensional scheme

[Wayne Eastman]

Thank you very much dmk for an excellent comment!

My intuition is that conservatives are fine with "individualist" but not with "hierarchical." I like dmk's point about Douglas and Wildavsky, but my sense is that the term for better or worse is currently roughly parallel in the U.S. to what "socialism" is for the egalitarian side, in that both terms are likely to be employed by critics of the stance rather than advocates of it.

I strongly agree with dmk's point about valuable complexity in the two-dimensional classification being effaced when a simple liberal-conservative polarity is used.

[abercrombie outlet]

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