understanding the rules of hospitality
“.. that what makes conversation democratic is not free, equal, and spontaneous expression but equal access to the floor, equal participation in setting the ground rules for discussion, and a set of ground rules designed to encourage pertinent speaking, attentive listening, appropriate simplifications, and widely apportioned speaking rights.”
From Michael Schudson, “Why Conversation is Not the Soul of Democracy,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 14 (1997), 297-300
A(nother) great piece by Michael Schudson, although its title might be a bit misleading. I’d say he’s not necessarily arguing against conversation, but making sure we don’t take its role in democracy for granted. As the quote shows, he insists that for conversation to play an important role in democracy, it has to be worked hard for – there is nothing spontaneous about quality conversation.
I do wonder though – is any conversation that does not necessarily have all the ideal requirements Schudson sets out any less democratic? (equal access to the floor, equal participation in setting the ground rules, attentive listening, etc) We might want to think about what a minimum threshold could be for democratic conversation to be considered as such.
James Bohman stresses the importance of such an exercise. Thinking about what would constitute a minimum threshold for a political system to be considered democratic, just and free from domination, he coins the idea of a “democratic minimum”: the capability to initiate deliberation and thus democratic decision-making processes. But as we see from the above, even Bohman’s absolute minimum requirement to be able to initiate deliberation is not a simple or straightfoward matter.
In practice, no conversation is ever equal, whether it comes to access to the floor, or having a part in determing the rules of conversation. Starting with the simple choice of language. Growing up as a son of Hong Kong immigrant parents in Amsterdam, the Netherlands – I learned the lesson of how undemocratic conversation can be, especially in multicultural societies. Conversations in public were always an away game for me. And again, being an international student in grad school in the United States, I don’t have the luxury of enjoying a home game during discussions and conversations. What often aggravates this is that the opposite side often presumes conversation is equal, unaware that there is a home/away game difference. And therefore not quite capable to “listen to silences”. These are soft, rather than hard, constraints on speech – but unlike hard measures like censorship, they are also harder to spot and less visible. Not only are they undemocratic, to the untrained eye, it is also invisible that they are undemocratic.
What to do? Here Roger Silverstone’s idea of hospitality is useful. Instead of imagining a talk being conducted out in an equal and open field, hospitality signals to us that conversation takes place in the particularity of someone’s home, with a host and a guest. The host, out of hospitality, aware that this is home, becomes temporarily the servant of the guest, in order to make the guest comfortable. What we see here is a situation where the one holding the power, being aware of it, temporarily makes an effort to subvert the power relationship with the other, in order to create a situation where a democratic conversation can take place.
What I am thinking hard about: while the notion of hospitality is universal, the rules of hospitality are not. Each place, each group and each culture has its own specific rules of what constitutes hospitality. What we need in this current day and age is a way of making these rules of hospitality, these protocols, be able to talk to each other, to be interoperable. Ideas, suggestions, known examples and experiments in the broadest sense are welcome.
Super smart. I follow the imbalance of conversation point to the end. Communication is constituted more by gaps than content (e.g. “The Gaps of Which Communication is Made,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication, v11 n2 p117-40 Jun 1994). Thinking about democratic minimums may be a good place to start: It seems to me that a “minimum” may still constitute a high bar in certain environments–that to entrance to a democratic forum is often via undemocratic means. To initiate deliberation is also to referee, to regulate, to select a script, protocol, or procedure for conversation. At core, I think the promise of hospitality may have many of the same problems and potentials of a supposedly universal liberal and democratic values. That is, who sets the protocol for the conversation for establishing the interoperability/generativity protocols? Kids crying… more later.
I suppose the conundrum we face is why Democracy as it is interpreted in any form equal say, hospitality, host, Republic, Westminster system, Communist system all claim to be Democratic yet continue to fail to live up to expectations. With Democracies we have seen millions of dead and maimed from wars, extremes of poverty and wealth – you know the story.
The important question is not how can we make Democracies more relevant to the masses but understand what is it actually for and why it continues to fail us in whatever form we reimage it in.
What is the underlying philosophy which drives our policy processes from conception to initiation to completion?
As has been pointed out on this site equal input into a decision making process is an unattainable goal as each person has a different view on what equality means on every possible issue confronting humanity.
We try to address this by creating access to policy processes via interest groups only to find out they are at times, given the nature of humanity, stacked with the like minded and not representative of the general population. Even then it is argued some individuals or groups should be more equal than others.
Nothing appears to work no matter how hard we try to include others of a different persuasion. They just end up white anting the process wasting resources and time.
Democracies in their currant form will continue to throw up the Hitler’s and Stalin’s etc. Why? It has nothing to do with the ability to enable more to have access to the decision making process it is for what purpose this decision making process was created and perpetuated.
The answer is in the nature of our hierarchical framework business, political and personal. Although diminishing accountability is an aspect mostly referred to the most critical facet is diminishing contradictability. The further away a citizen is from a superimposed hierarchy position, no matter how knowledgeable, expert or capable of averting catastrophe, the less able a citizen is to influence decisions emanating from that position.
This form in itself is not the reason for Democracies failure, nor any of the other forms we have tried for policy processes, it is the reason for it’s existence, the underlying philosophy which currently drives each of us in our daily toil, in almost every social context, which is a continuing cause of human beings inability to achieve outcomes which we desperately at times need.
Until it is realised what the real issue is and what philosophical change is required so we humans do not continue killing each other in the millions as well as slowly destroy our planet humans are destined to repeat their mistakes.