Communitarianism and the Social Construction of Morality

Helen Haste, Ph.D.

Abstract

The emergent message of 'Communitarianism' is challenging the tradition of liberal rationalism that has sustained much recent research in moral development. This is much more than a matter of values; behind these two positions are very different ways of thinking about psychological and social processes. Liberal rationalists come out of a strongly cognitive, individualistic psychological tradition, while communitarians speak in the language of hermeneutics and social constructionism. This distinction underpins the values that each position espouses, for values arise, I argue, directly from psychological assumptions. This has profound implications for moral education. The communitarian worldview prescribes rather different approaches from that of liberal rationalism. If moral education is to succeed, we have to understand the developmental processes in which we are intervening, and if we wish to challenge alternative positions we must appreciate how their infrastructure sustains their rhetoric, and how this differs from where we stand. In this paper I discuss these issues, I offer a speculative blueprint for communitarian educational principles, and I consider its strengths and weaknesses.

Panics and Panaceas

We are assailed with horror stories and moral panics. As professionals, we are expected to respond with solutions - or at least, to endorse populist hand-wringing. The murder of British toddler James Bulger in 1993 by two ten year olds provoked intense discussions of 'moral collapse' and of the 'innate evil' of children. William Damon (1995) gloomily catalogues American adolescents' nihilism, egoism and derogation of faith. In more moderate tones, Charles Taylor (1991) talks of the 'three malaises of modernity'; individualism, alienation, and instrumentalism that lead to the disenchantment of the world.

A growing response to these 'crises' is that we should restore the communitarian values of responsibility to others, and foster motives that connect people with the community. Amitai Etzioni, dubbed 'the prophet of communitarianism', is described as 'selling a vision', and talks of 'an idea whose time has come' (Baxter, 1995; Etzioni, 1994, 1995). Manifestos for communitarianism are appearing (Tam, 1995). These explicitly contrast communitarian values with the ethics of liberal rationalism and autonomy which, it is claimed, have degenerated into the malaises Taylor describes.

But communitarianism has not just emerged as a 'solution' to moral problems; it goes much deeper, for it hooks into current questioning of the meaning of rationality and the Enlightenment heritage. Since the Romantic Movement, attacks on rationalist disengagement, individualism and instrumentalism s have targeted the separation of reason and affect, the atomism of a self severed from community, and belief in technological fixes. Recent versions include environmentalism, and critiques of the hegemony of science. 'Environmentalism' challenges the belief in mastery and control as a means of understanding our world, and advocates a holistic worldview and responsible awareness of our connections to other living things. Mary Midgley (1992) echoes Taylor's concern about rational instrumentalist claims that all problems have solutions, and that therefore the scientific model provides the only rational route to meaning. This is therefore a profoundly interesting debate of great importance. The debate has two strands; what are desirable values, and what is the model of psychological processes. The value confrontation is between freedom and autonomy on the one hand, and duty and responsibility on the other. The debate has sharpened our appreciation of how values are underpinned by beliefs about human nature. Charles Taylor (1989) distinguishes between advocacy and ontology - by ontology he means the factors recognised as relevant in accounting for social life; 'Taking an ontological position does not amount to advocating something, but at the same time the ontological does help to define the options which it is meaningful to support by advocacy.' (p 161)

The actual links between prescription and description, ontology and advocacy, become clear when we unpack values; the 'value' of autonomy, for example, rests on the belief that the individual is largely responsible - in the sense of being the main active agent - for constructing meaning. The moral discourses of liberal rationalism and communitarianism are embedded in very different conceptions of psychological processes - and these have profound implications for moral education.

We have a model of what moral education would look like if it were based on liberal rationalist theories of morality and psychological processes - for that is the Kohlbergian world. At the present time, communitarian thinkers (of divers colours) are trying to define an agenda which may set the terms of reference for the next few decades. So far there are more principles than praxes on the table. I personally am an agnostic; I was trained within a liberal rationalist tradition, but have come to recognise the scientific appeal of the hermeneutic approach (Haste, 1993/4). My concern in this paper is that we understand what we are doing, and why. Communitarian critiques show us the areas of moral education that liberal rationalist theories have neglected or ignored. If we choose to fill these gaps, my mission is to make sure that we understand just how large is the chasm between the different worldviews, not only in terms of values but in terms of their psychological theories. So I am addressing the Editor's 'fifth question', about the key issues that confront moral education in the 21st century. What would 'communitarian' moral education look like? I shall present a blueprint, demonstrating the inevitable interweaving of values with psychological processes, and consider critiques, caveats and ambiguities.

The Debate I: liberal rationalism - ontology and advocacy

The liberal rationalist values of personal autonomy, individual rights and universalisable moral principles arose from the ideas of Locke in England and Kant in Prussia (Wren, 1996). John Rawls' Theory of Justice (1971) reinforced the Kantian dimensions of impartiality and respect for persons, most particularly by his heuristic device of arriving at the most 'just' method for distribution via the 'original position'; 'the parties are situated behind a veil of ignorance. They do not know how the various alternatives will affect their own particular case and they are obliged to evaluate principles solely on the basis of general considerations.' (Rawls, 1971, p. 136-7).

This epitomises interweaving a theory of morality with psychological processes. It presupposes certain goals - rational solutions based on generalisable principles, certain procedures - reasoning and judgement carried out by individual, autonomous beings who deliberately free themselves from social processes, and certain values - justice and a respect for persons, which primarily means a respect for their freedom, rights and autonomy. The goal of moral education is therefore to train young people to reason competently in making impartial and autonomous judgements.

Lawrence Kohlberg (1971) explicitly elaborated this interweaving when he claimed that his data justified the Rawlsian liberal perspective on rationality and universalisability. The sequence of moral stages showed 'universal ontogenetic trends towards the development of morality as it has been conceived by Western moral philosophers' (p 155) and the stages 'represent a universal inner logical order of moral concepts, not a universal order found in the educational practices of all cultures' (p 187). Kohlberg's theory has dominated moral development research for three decades, producing rich work . Reasoning is the primary focus of investigation; other activities normally within the commonsense discourse of 'morality' are largely subsumed under their relationship with reasoning. For example two highly individualistic themes direct the study of self, and especially the relationship between self and morality; the development of autonomy, and the organisation of moral concerns in one's personal identity. Morality and personal autonomy are fused, for 'development' is defined by progressively replacing reasoning based on convention and authority with autonomously derived principles of justice.

This liberal rationalist model of morality and selfhood is clearly embedded in Western conceptions of selfhood described by Clifford Geertz (1975): ' a bounded, unique, more or less integrated, motivational and cognitive universe, a dynamic centre of awareness, emotion, judgement and action, organised into a distinctive whole and set contrastively against other such wholes, and against a social and natural background'. The concept of a separate and ideally autonomous self owes much to the Cartesian separation of body and mind and Enlightenment belief in objectivity and value-neutrality. Along with faith in the unbounded potential of reason goes the belief that problems have solutions. Rationalist thinking about morality is deeply imbued with the presumption that people can become competent to attain the perfect moral resolution. A model of progressively autonomous moral reasoning development explicitly encapsulates this.

Carol Gilligan and others have argued that an ethic of justice fits supremely well with cognitive role-taking of the perspectives of all persons involved in the situation. It also rests on the concept of the self as inherently separate from other selves, in potential conflict and therefore needing recipes for balancing the interests of all parties, schemas for contracts and rules, and scenarios for achieving 'just' solutions (Gilligan, 1993). If however one conceptualises persons as interconnected, the logically necessary values are those which repair bridges and sustain harmony. An ethic of caring and responsibility follows more naturally from the concept of persons as connected.

The Debate II: communitarian ontology and advocacy

Communitarian thinkers start from a very different psychological tradition. They emphasise the primacy of language and social interaction in the generation of meaning. Taylor argues that human life is 'fundamentally dialogic .... We become full human agents, capable of understanding ourselves, and hence defining an identity, through our acquisition of rich human languages of expression.' (1991 p 32). This aligns the communitarian ontological position with social constructionists like John Shotter (1993) and Rom HarrŽ (HarrŽ and Gillett, 1994) who argue that the primary human reality is face-to-face conversation.

If social interaction is the crucible of meaning, then the child learns about morality through discourse and through social practices, both explicit and implicit. The 'meaning' of something - including the meaning of our own identity and our morality - depends on what is comprehensible and recognised within our social community. Social beings create their identity through shared discourse and language (Shotter, 1993). Communities are multiple; we are members of many communities which each offer us identity, and personal meaning, and within each different elements and skills are salient. Cultural narratives, stories and traditions feed directly into our identity, signalling valued attributes and behaviours, and giving an explanation for our past and present. Crucially, we also recognise that these are shared by those whom we thus define as members of our community. A moral obligation can only have meaning within a social context. Richard Shweder describes taboos and practices found amongst rural Hindus in India which are quite morally meaningless to Americans, because they are associated with beliefs about pollution which are not shared (Shweder et al, 1987). However practices may be widely condemned, but for different reasons - believing that rape is wrong because it defiles the victim's purity, is very different from seeing it as wrong because treats her as an object rather than a person.

For communitarians the community's social functions are also a source of morality. Social order rests on people's interdependence, and society only functions if people recognise and act upon their community responsibilities. It works both ways; in order for the state to function, individuals must cooperate; in order for the individual to thrive (indeed to survive) the state must be effective.

These ontological positions reflect assumptions about what makes the system tick. Certain values follow from locating the individual primarily in social space, and in connection with others; we must educate the next generation to have a sense of community (an identity), a sense of obligation to the community (responsibilities) and the personal attributes needed for effective performance of those responsibilities. This means fostering values to do with the interpersonal, and the management of the social group and one's place within it. 'Autonomy' is deeply problematic. Rawls' concept of personhood has been attacked by communitarian critics (Bell, 1993). People simply are not solitary beings capable of 'autonomous reasoning' from behind a veil of ignorance, or in a state of suspended objectivity from one's cultural context . They are deeply social, embedded in culture and in social practices. It is meaningless to talk of people 'stepping outside' or 'transcending' their culture and time, however 'rational' they try to be. Therefore it is pointless to make autonomy an ideal either as a personal quality, or as a form of reasoning. Morality cannot be understood unless we take full account of the social, cultural and historical context.

The link between communitarian psychological theory and values becomes clear when we look at how the current 'moral crisis' in conceptualised. The most explicit critique is of the principle of individualism , whose roots go back to Enlightenment beliefs about disengaged rationality, and the struggle for individual freedom against community pressures (Taylor, 1991; Bell, 1993). Not only do communitarians see this as an ontologically unrealistic picture of human behaviour, as a value it is considered profoundly damaging.

Firstly, it leads to selfishness and egoism; the Enlightenment belief that one should take responsibility for oneself has degenerated into the belief that one is only responsible for oneself. Secondly, focus on the individual inevitably leads to atomism and fragmentation, a failure to see the individual as part of a whole, and the lack of subjective feeling of being part of something larger that would give the self meaning.

The third issue is tied to instrumental beliefs about problem-solving; that reason, if appropriately employed, can offer solutions to virtually anything. This entails a concept of control and mastery, and objectivity as the separation of the observer from that which is observed. It is also behind ultra-rationalised ways of thinking about human behaviour such as the cost-benefit terminology of 'economic man'.

This is communitarian ontology; what of advocacy? What prescriptions follow? Some writers advocate the re-establishment of communities that will act as guardians of order and as the source of individual identity. Etzioni said 'Communities gently chastise those who violate shared moral values and express approbation for those who abide by them' (1995). A British 'communitarian manifesto' - The Citizens Agenda (Tam, 1995) specifically targets democratic decision-making procedures and the forefronting of community needs and collective responsibilities.

More self-consciously embedded in an analysis of the historical and psychological factors, and in many ways more radical because of this, are Charles Taylor (1991) and Daniel Bell (1993). Taylor argues for example that we must reconceptualise technology as serving human benevolent goals, rather than seeing it as an icon of the success of instrumental rationalism. Both Bell and Taylor get to the heart of psychological processes and the need for reflective awareness of the realities; that we recognise explicitly that we are social beings and that our moral and political concepts arise from shared meanings, rather than deluding ourselves that we are individuals reasoning a priori in isolation. 'We need to experience our lives as bound up with the good of the communities out of which our identity has been constituted' (Bell, 1993,p184)

Moral education; making it happen

My message has been that we must conceptually separate out issues of values from issues of psychological processes; it is not enough to have a set of values, we must understand how they can most effectively be inculcated. For moral education to succeed we must start not with the telos of values, but with recognising how we conceptualise the processes into which we wish to intervene. Unfortunately, moral education curricula tend to reflect an eclectic, essentially commonsense, 'moral' package, which rarely starts from an explicit theory of how development takes place .

The exception is programmes directly arising from Kohlberg's model, where we can see the dynamic relationship between ontology and advocacy . The emphasis on cognition led to two rather different types of educational programmes. In the 'Socratic' technique, challenges to existing schemas are facilitated through discussion and opportunities for reflection - mainly in a classroom context. Much more ambitious is the 'just community'. Whereas the Socratic method concentrates almost entirely on individual cognitive processes, the just community takes account of social practices - explicitly, that there is no point trying to stimulate individual cognition if all the behaviour, interactions and institutional structures surrounding the individual enact a lower stage of moral reasoning. The just communities had three agendas; to create a democratic environment, to foster social interaction and reflection that promoted cognitive stimulation, and to make sure that the consequences of the group's decisions were a real experience.

I am not aware of any explicitly 'communitarian' education agenda, only of general goals. I therefore start from first principles in writing a blueprint, and in doing so, I shall spell out explicitly how values interweave with assumptions about psychological processes. First, let us recap on the principles for consideration:
~ the theoretical presumption is that people are social beings who generate meaning through discourse and social interaction, and through cultural repertoires, stories and scripts transmitted by social practices and narratives.

It follows that:
~ the desirable goals are values that will promote engagement with the community, and the transcendence of egoism and narrow instrumentalism; these values foster an individual sense of meaning, and a stable community.

The procedures to attain the goals therefore must harness these social and psychological processes.

Five principles of moral education follow:

Learning through language and social practice means that values must be institutionalised and enacted as part of everyday life, so that they are experienced as taken for granted through action.
Fostering social identity means telling stories and narratives about the community and culture which give meaning to one's self, explanations for why things are as they are, and recognition that these stories and accounts are shared.
Feeling engaged with, and connected to, others means experiencing responsibility and caring, as giver and receiver, and making these explicit and normative.
Recognising that institutions and communities have multiple covert and overt agendas, and dealing with these, helps community members understand community processes, and fosters pluralist values
A self-conscious appreciation of the hermeneutic processes which generate meaning, gained by awareness of the community's norms, and reflection upon them, their evolution and their function; this makes social processes explicit, and by making them open, facilitates the conscious generation of new norms.

Presented briefly and baldly, these five principles may have an air of banality. How is it different from the good practices of any well-founded school? Are not all children already told the appropriate myths, encouraged to care, and to feel proud of their school? Alternatively, it may seem impossibly complex, that the implication of hermeneutic awareness is for five year olds to read Foucault. Neither is true; the point lies in recognising that social processes and language are the crucible where meaning and significance are negotiated, so it is through praxis, not precept, that morality is grounded. The emphasis shifts from rules to acts and explicit norms. By reflecting on social and linguistic practices, the individual understands not only why such practices have value, but how to change them. The radical implications of communitarianism lie in this hermeneutic awareness, not merely in a shift from a telos of autonomy to a telos of responsibility.

But what are the dangers? In considering any blueprint, we must take account not only of the 'ideal' outcome, but what could go wrong. Much of the critique of communitarian values is that the desired values may be misinterpreted, or misapplied. Liberal rationalist critics see the social dimensions of communitarian values as no different from restrictive conformity pressures. There is a tension between 'being responsive to the community' and being able to take responsibility for challenging the majority if necessary. If the 'group norms' of a community include even the 'gentle sanctions' that Etzioni describes, and there are no 'group norms' of efficacy and intervention to ensure individual rights, there would be a serious problem.

How might these critiques be met within the five agendas ? By spelling this out, we can see more clearly communitarian processes in action:

Institutional structures can enact oppressive social practices that foster conformity and passivity; indeed, some conservative writers argue that the school should 'set limits' to prepare the growing individual to accept authority in the wider world. But if teachers are trained to recognise the social processes involved in community building it should be possible to create institutions with explicit norms and practices of democracy and caring, and explicit mechanisms for countering inappropriate power relations.
Social identity seems the most problematic of communitarian issues; the 'stories and narratives' that give the individual a history, can so easily be interpreted in terms of ingroup versus outgroup. But the processes that create social identity are unavoidable; it is necessary to harness them to define culture and community in ways that do not create confrontation and exclusion. We should, for example, be able to tell a story about our country's past that gives us an identity without implying either the inferiority of foreigners or that our past has been blameless.
The dangers of connection and engagement are this may lead to partisanship governed by affective ties - putting one's family and friends first; but this can be countered by a community norm of fairness, and particularly, by fostering a sense of responsibility for all the people whom we recognise to be part of our diverse communities.
Making hidden agendas explicit might be seen as relativism, legitimating the undesirable as well as the desirable alternatives, but this is a way to help community members understand why there are competing stories, and also to appreciate, and therefore deal with, the power conflicts within a pluralist community.
A major critique of communitarian values is that if we throw out 'autonomy' as a goal of human development, whence go also impartiality and objectivity - and all we understand by 'justice'? The explication of social norms should counter this, building and reinforcing explicit norms of independence and justice, and the expectation - with recognition of its very paradox - that one should defend these against powerful group pressure.

Is this enough? 'Degraded' liberal rationalism has led - it is argued - to egoism and instrumentalism; 'degraded' communitarianism will lead - it is argued - to conformity, conventionalism, and even fascism. My purpose has been to point out that in the present scientific climate, the picture of psychological processes that underpins communitarianism is more persuasive. But much more work needs to be done on understanding the relationship between ontology and advocacy, lest we launch ourselves unthinkingly on the Zeitgeist tide.

Acknowledgements

This paper owes much to constructive disagreements with Gus Blasi, Bill Damon, Tom Wren and William Gosling.

Helen Haste is Reader in Psychology at the University of Bath, England. She has published extensively in the fields of moral, social and political reasoning development, citizenship and social-political activism. Her domains of interest also include gender, and metaphor. Her original theoretical position was within the cognitive-developmental approach, and her graduate work included a British replication of Kohlberg's original study. Latterly she has moved into a more social constructionist, cultural psychology, where she conceptualises the active individual making sense within a social and cultural context. Her publications include The Making of Morality, Wiley, 1983 (with Don Locke) ; Making Sense, the child's construction of the world Methuen, 1987, (with Jerome Bruner); The Development of Political Understanding Jossey Bass, 1992 (with Judith Torney-Purta), and The Sexual Metaphor , Harvard, 1994. She is Co-ordinator of MOSAIC, the Moral and Social Action Interdisciplinary Colloquium, an international network of scholars and practitioners in a wide range of disciplines.

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