Metaphysics of Paradigms in Political Science: …polisen.azurewebsites.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/...Political Science: Theories of Urban Unrest Michael Haas Many of the debates

Metaphysics of Paradigms inPolitical Science: Theories of

Urban Unrest

Michael Haas

Many of the debates among competing paradigms in political science areconcerned with peripheral elements rather than the basic assumptions of theparadigms. Since the major assumptions of any paradigm are rooted in meta-physical theories of the nature of reality, tests of one paradigm are likely to dealwith phenomena that may not be considered in another. The article outlinesthe main metaphysical theories —materialism, idealism, and dualism —thenproceeds to demonstrate that the primacy of matter versus ideas is central toparadigms of explanation in one area of political science, namely, theories ofurban unrest. A survey of competing theories highlights the metaphysical as-sumptions and methodological preferences of each contending paradigm. Thearticle argues that more attention should be paid to the metaphysical assump-tions of paradigms in order to sharpen the focus of the research agenda.

INTRODUCTION

When Rudolf Carnap suggested that social scientists shouldavoid metaphysical problems and seek to define key concepts interms of observable characteristics, he was writing at a time whenhe saw behavioristic experimental psychology as preferable to end-less efforts at theoretical speculation that would fail to advance hu-man knowledge because the conceptual discourse contained meta-physical words "devoid of meaning."1 Although his advice may wellhave served to steer social scientists into a more data-oriented ap-proach toward their craft, the implications of his disdain for meta-physical analysis have yet to be critiqued in specific terms. Empir-ical social scientists followed his advice in regard to eschewingmetaphysical discussion, but they were unable to avoid makingmetaphysical assumptions in their theories, as we shall see below.

There are many alternative reconstructions of the logic of sci-ence, and there is a healthy dissensus of how social science canbest advance.2 But one common trend is the desire among quanti-tatively oriented social scientists to build theories and to collectdata with a view to discarding various theories or finding some ofthem consistent with data. Often a particular phenomenon is thecenter of attention — urban unrest, for example. Data are assem-bled to determine whether the central phenomenon varies overtime and space. Other data are collected in an effort to accountfor variations in the central phenomenon, and a set of indepen-

520

THEORIES OF URBAN UNREST 521

dent variables is said to predict to the key dependent variable.However imperfectly, the data-level findings are somehow equiva-lenced hermeneutically to a theory-level language, and a theory isproclaimed to have been tested. As this rough scenario is repeatedmany times, the social sciences develop several alternative theo-ries. Advocates of the theories vie for acceptance of their ap-proach, thereby producing confusion about the state of knowledgein a particular field of study. Political science is no exception tothis regard.

Conceptual and theoretical babel, thus, are a major problem inthe social sciences today. Thomas Kuhn, a philosopher of sciencewho views midcentury social science's plethora of disparate theo-ries as something to be explained in macrohistorical terms,3 hasprovided more subtle advice than the earlier suggestions of thelogical positivists. While some philosophers prefer to use logic todissolve the mind-body question,4 a most questionable undertak-ing indeed,5 Kuhn prefers to meet the issue directly. The Carna-pian reconstruction of the logic of scientific inquiry, similarly, hasbeen upstaged by a more critical Kuhnian view of science as a so-cial and political process in which the pursuit of truth is seen asrather elusive. Although Kuhn has many critics,6 his main contri-bution has been to urge us to consider that the progress of scienceconsists in looking at "paradigms"7 and the social structure withinscience that permits some theories to survive while others fall intodisuse.

This essay is an effort to move one step beyond Kuhn, thoughclearly in the Kuhnian tradition. The aim is to explicate the na-ture of paradigmatic debates in political science in terms of as-sumptions as yet unspecified by any of the key theorists. Thesebasic assumptions comprise the metaphysical substructure of thetheories. As stated by William Bluhm more than a decade ago, so-cial science theory contains implicit metaphysical assumptions.8

Following Bluhm's suggestion, I have elsewhere demonstrated themetaphysical underpinnings of theories of international integra-tion.9 My purpose here is to unpack paradigms advanced by em-pirical scholars studying urban unrest into specific metaphysicalcomponents so that the general thesis can become more clearly es-tablished within political science.

What are the advantages of reopening the question ofmetaphysics that Carnap was so eager to avoid and Kuhn insistshave been at the root of paradigmatic controversies in the sciences

522 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

for a long, long time?10 First of all, a metaphysical analysis willclarify the most basic structure of existing paradigms, illuminatingthe precise meaning of the key concepts and propositions; theo-rists may thus learn to talk to each other about their approachesrather than past each other. If we know the metaphysical basis of atheory, we can also quickly separate fundamental from marginalpropositions of a particular paradigm, and we can appreciate au-thentic tests of a theory in contrast with studies that explore moremarginal propositions. In addition, we are able to determine gapsin the testing of existing paradigms if we discover that their propo-nents are not really collecting data appropriate for a complete testof basic assumptions and derivative propositions. We can morereadily construct critical tests of alternative paradigms in a singlestudy if we know the most basic elements to include. Discussionsabout alternative theories often become vitriolic when proponentsretreat into ideological camps, failing to appreciate the metaphysi-cal implications of their theories; a more sober level of discourse ispossible when researchers see the inner logic of theories. Ideolo-gies may indeed be the source of metaphysical bias in theories,but theory cannot be established scientifically until its metaphysi-cal assumptions have been tested in a manner acceptable to thecanons of science. Yet another benefit of focusing on metaphysi-cal assumptions is that an agenda for future research can moreeasily be designed when the underlying assumptions are in theforefront. These are some of the advantages of looking at meta-physical assumptions in theories of political science. No doubtthere are others as well.

Accordingly, the essay begins with a discussion of alternativetheories of metaphysics. It then discusses the famous "reports" onthe so-called causes of urban unrest in the United States of the1960's, one of the major areas of concern to political scientists.Next, the metaphysical assumptions of each major theory andschool of thought are explicated. In each case the causal theory as-sociated with each approach is noted. The essay concludes with afew suggestions on the agenda for future theory-building in politi-cal science.

METAPHYSICAL APPROACHES IN PHILOSOPHY

Metaphysics is the study of what is basic and underlying in thereal world. Ontology is the branch of metaphysics concerned with


what is real or unreal.11 The key ontological question, classicallyposed, is whether the mind controls the body, the body controlsthe mind, or whether there is some complex formula that explainswhy sometimes one controls the other or appears to do so. All the-ories in the natural and social sciences make metaphysical as-sumptions; were they to fail to do so, their formulations would beempty in content, for they would not refer to reality at all. For thenatural sciences, the terrain of inquiry has focused mostly on ma-terial substances, so metaphysical problems have presented fewparadoxes. For the social sciences, attitudes and ideologies are im-portant; material factors, such as communication flows and in-come levels, are often considered as causes of the ideas espousedby individuals, but sometimes ideas are regarded as the causes ofmaterial factors.

There are several alternative ontological views in metaphys-ics.12 If all of reality is basically matter (that is, material sub-stances of one kind or another), then the body is dominant overthe mind and attitudes are reducible to material substances; thisposition is known as metaphysical materialism. If ideas and percep-tions are the irreducible components of reality, then mind domi-nates body and material substances have no independent role toplay in a causal system. This second position is known as meta-physical idealism. Idealists believe that the world exists some howindependently of our conceptions of the world, or so they claim.But we may feel that it would appear common sense to combineboth positions into one. Metaphysical realism is the view that wecan reduce everything in the world to two basic elements — matterand ideas —but that the two elements are separate and distinct(Table 1).

As such philosophers like Mario Bunge and Richard Taylorpoint out, the commonsensical plausibility of realism turns out tobe more baffling than either idealism or materialism.13 Interaction-ism is the realist view that mind and body interact on each other,but this view begs the question as to how, in what manner and un-der which sets of circumstances the interaction moves from bodyto mind or mind to body. Parallelism is a realist theory in whichbody and mind do not have any impact upon each other yet runon parallel tracks throughout time and thus the naive observermay falsely infer that one track is causally linked to the other.


TABLE 1. THEORIES OF METAPHYSICS

Name of Theory

1. Monistic Theoriesa. Materialism

i. epiphenomenalistmaterialismii. physicalism

b. Idealismi. epiphenomenalistidealismii. mentalism

c. Double aspect theory2. Dualistic Theories

a. Interactionism

b. Parallelism

3. Other Theoriesa. Scepticismb. Positivism

Role of Ideas

secondaryabsent

primaryprimarysame as matter

primary and impactupon matter

primary but noimpact upon matter

role unknownrole unimportant

Role of Matter

primaryprimary

secondaryabsentsame as ideas

primary andimpact uponideasprimary but noimpact uponideas

role unknownroleunimportant

Lest the reader feel compelled to retreat to the simplicity of ma-terialism and idealism, there are alternative conceptions of bothpositions within philosophy as well. For idealists the basic phe-nomena are ideas and perceptions of reality; for materialists, mat-ter is the irreducible phenomenon. Idealists reduce matter to ideas(perceptions of matter). Materialists seek to reduce ideas to suchmaterial forms as movements of electrical impulses in the brain.In both theories there are two further possibilities—either the non-basic element has no existential property and thus is some sort ofillusion (nonphenomenon) or the nonbasic element is an epiphenome-non that appears superficially to have a separate existence but infact is correlated perfectly with the basic phenomenon. Epiphenom-enalist materialism is the view that the body acts on the mind to pro-duce perceptual consciousness, but not vice versa. In social sci-ence terms, an individual's income and material circumstancesproduce an awareness of class membership, according to epiphe-nomenalist materialism. Physicalism is the view that the mind isphysical in the first place, thus it is illogical to say that "body acts


on mind," since only body can act on body. But physicalism woulddeny an independent role to logic and thus to science. For idealiststhere is a similar epiphenomenalist idealism wherein the mind tells thebody what is going on, and a corresponding mentalism that pointsout the logical contradictions in such a statement if the universeconsists solely of ideas and perceptions. Often, mentalism is at-tacked on the ground that it is a kind of solipsism in which every-one has a private conception of reality, a sort of schizophrenia inwhich there can be no final arbiter on what is or is not real. Forthe epiphenomenal idealist, exposure to the attitudes and opinionsof one's culture provides the verbal labels for describing physicalreality and the norms that govern an individual's behavior.

Realism is a dualistic theory, that is, everything in the world isreduced to two basic components. The monistic theories discussedabove, materialism and idealism, reduce all of reality to one basicform. According to double aspect theory, we may combine dualismand monism in the view that there is basically one substance inthe world but that mind and body are two metaphysically equiva-lent though analytically distinct aspects of the same thing.

The reader who has come this far may have a sense of bewil-derment at metaphysics. How can we ever decide questions aboutthe relationship between mind and body, attitudes and behavior,or similar rephrasings of the basic metaphysical dichotomies aboutthe basic substance(s) of the real world? What evidence can helpus to resolve the dilemma?

David Hume's metaphysical scepticism is the position that insuf-ficient evidence exists to decide the question; the structure ofmetaphysical arguments is such that we either must observe meta-physical glue binding mind and body or else our speculation is"sophistry and illusion," as he insisted in a kind of brute empiri-cism that would deny the existence of anything not established by"experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and exist-ence."14 But the natural sciences have had to take unobserved phe-nomena into account during the twentieth century; intricate theo-ries and explicit assumptions have been developed in order to gobeyond Humeanism. Positivists go one step beyond Hume by de-nying that metaphysical speculation is worth the effort; since thereis no ultimate way for scientists to resolve the issue, the quest forthe correct metaphysical theory should be abandoned, or so theyargue while often urging a materialist metaphysics in practice, asindicated by the first sentence of this article.15

526 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS i

A moment's reflection demonstrates that political scientistsmake metaphysical assumptions all the time in their research. Ifwe do a survey of attitudes, we are assigning primacy to ideas andverbalized reports of nonattitudinal phenomena. If we analyzedata on percapita income, kilowatt-hour electricity production,unemployment rates, and rates of economic growth for countriesaround the world, we are operating within a paradigm that givesimportance to material phenomena. Studies that combine both at-titudes and physical attributes are cast in a realist paradigm, aswhen questions in a survey deal with attitudes as well as income,and when aggregate cross-national studies use national incomealong with multicountry survey data. Poorly designed attitudestudies and aggregate data analyses can be lopsided metaphysi-cally; they are quite often monistic in design. Studies conceived indualistic terms are able to answer more sophisticated metaphysicalquestions than those using a monistic design.

In short, political scientists have evidence relevant to metaphys-ical debates. It is therefore appropriate to take stock of our find-ings in the light of metaphysical alternatives. Such is the aim ofthe discussion below. We proceed by exploring one of the ongoingdebates in the field of political science, theories of urban unrest,followed by an overall assessment. Our metaphysical distinctionbetween idealism, materialism, and realism will be understood tocover the relative impact of ideational and material factors as ex-planations for variance in urban unrest. We will defer consider-ation of the more general relationship between matter and ideas tothe concluding section of the essay. As some of the theorists maybe surprised that they have been classified in a particular manner,I should note here that the pigeonholes are for the theories alone;a particular individual may espouse two different metaphysicalviews in two distinct paradigms. The basis for classification is two-fold. The text of the verbal theories provides one clue to the meta-physical assumptions of a theory — through definitions of key con-cepts. Since I am attempting to illustrate metaphysical dissensuswith reference to empirically tested theories, a second clue consistsof the nature of variables used in tests of a paradigm. Seldom dowe find any discrepancy between the two sources of classification,but more clarity is often obtained by examining the variables thanthe verbal statements of a theory, as we might expect in a socialscience so heavily influenced by Carnapian logical positivism. If atheorist defines concepts entirely as mental phenomena (such as


consciousness, ideas, opinions, perceptions, role orientations), wewill be able to give an idealist label to the theory. If the conceptsare all stated as material factors (such as levels of income, per-capita electricity production, trade flows), our classification willspecify the label materialism. We will then look at whether thetheorist connects mental with physical factors —and how.

URBAN UNREST

The Metaphysical Alternatives:Politics is generally assumed to be an arena in which conflicts

are resolved peacefully. When violence erupts, as Karl von Clau-sewitz suggests, politics is continued, though by different means.16

TABLE 2.

Theories of Urban Unrest

Name of Theory

Social Disor-ganizationTheory

Mass SocietyTheory

Relative Dep-rivation Theory

Marxism

Political Mobi-lization Theory

InstitutionalRacism Theory

StructuralViolence Theory

Proponent

Le BonParkMcCone ReportMoynihan ReportKornhauserSmelserKerner Report*BrintonDaviesGurrKerner recom-mendations*Marx

Lenin

SkolnickTillyGamsonCarmichaelHamiltonRyanGaltung

Metaphysical Assumption

epiphenomenalist idealismepiphenomenalist idealismepiphenomenalist idealismepiphenomenalist idealismparallelismparallelismparallelisminteractionisminteractionisminteractionism

interactionismepiphenomenalist material-ismepiphenomenalist material-ismmentalismmentalismmentalisminteractionisminteractionisminteractionismepiphenomenalistmaterialism

*The report has elements of two paradigms, having been put together by a het-erogeneous committee.


At several periods of American history riots have been linked toethnic factors. One such period occurred during the middle andlate 1960's, and it affected nearly every urban community in theUnited States. Various theories arose as to the origins of the vio-lence, and metaphysical assumptions guided research on the sub-ject (Table 2), although some theories ignored the axiom of vonClausewitz, as we shall see below.

Most definitions of "urban unrest" focus on materialist phenom-ena, notably acts of violence. To establish a theory as idealist ormaterialist, we need to look at the postulated causes of unrest.From a materialist perspective, the causes of physical violence arerooted in the objective conditions of poverty and inequality ofthose who riot. But some theorists, we find, believe that "urbanunrest" has its origins in mental phenomena — attitudes of aliena-tion, protest, frustration, and on role orientations. Metaphysicalrealists say that material conditions and attitudinal orientationsare both important in explaining the outbreak of urban violence;the exact connection between various causes and effects involvesseveral permutations of ideal and material factors. To review vari-ous theories, it will be useful, first of all, to examine the various"reports" that attracted so much public attention.

Reports on Urban Unrest in the 1960's:As we may recall, the Harlem riot of 1964 was not thought to

be a part of a larger pattern until midsummer 1965, when theWatts section of Los Angeles was aflame for six successive days. Inthe fall of 1965 the first of several reports on urban unrestemerged. Entitled The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, thereport was issued by the U.S. Department of Labor from a com-mittee chaired by Daniel Moynihan; the document was knownpopularly as the Moynihan Report. According to Moynihan, thecauses of problems for blacks are rooted in a fragile family struc-ture in which fathers are increasingly absent (although his dataactually shows that seventy-four percent of black families have fa-thers).17 Black society was suffering "deterioration," said Moyni-han, so unless the "damage is repaired, efforts to end discrimina-tion and poverty and injustice will come to little."18 Moynihan,who wanted a jobs program for blacks, argued that

even full employment would not provide the same economic stabil-ity that was clearly the basis of family stability for this group. Thereare other groups with different traditions . . . who can take a lot of


punishment without much impact on the family structure. But ur-ban Negroes cannot.19

Thus, Moynihan argues that there is a black culture differentfrom the culture of other groups, and even economic inputs intoblack society would not change the fundamental attitudes of blackpersons. Moynihan's metaphysics assigns primacy to "cultural" at-titudes, relegating material factors to the role of epiphenomenathat would improve only if attitudes could change. This is epiphe-nomenalist idealism.

The second report, commissioned by California Governor Ed-mund Brown, Sr., to explain the Watts riot of 1965, was chairedby John McCone. The McCone Commission concluded that theriot was kept alive by "several gangs, with membership of youngmen ranging in ages from fourteen to thirty-five years."20 The ri-oters were typified, in short, as riffraff with inappropriatethoughts; material factors of the rioters were considered to be sec-ondary considerations. Thus, the McCone theory, clearly derivedfrom Gustave Le Bon's The Crowd,21 is one of epiphenomenalistidealism as well.

The third report was issued in 1968 by the National AdvisoryCommission on Civil Disorders; the chair was Illinois GovernorOtto Kerner. The Kerner Report presented evidence to refute thefindings of the McCone Commission: some of the better educatedif underemployed blacks were predominant among the rioters.22

The Kerner Report concluded that white institutions had createdand now maintain the ghettoes which were sites for the rioting ofthe 1960's, though the key recommendation was not to dismantlethe white power structure thus identified but rather to pump moremoney into the slums. The Kerner Commission recommendedthat the War on Poverty program should receive increased fund-ing. The metaphysics of the Kerner Report show the black rioteras a victim both of poverty (a material condition) and of prejudice(an attitudinal factor). The linkage between poverty and prejudiceis that institutionalized attitudes (barriers to equal opportunity)produce poverty, and poor persons riot when they become con-scious of their deprivation. As we shall see below, this was anamalgamation of two theories with metaphysically distinct as-sumptions, producing an appearance of realism.

A number of observers have found fault with the above reports.In all three reports attention is focused on blacks, who are said to


misbehave in various ways. As William Ryan notes in Blaming theVictim, blacks are regarded as prone to violence in the three re-ports because blacks are seen as "savage," somehow different fromother races and thus are somehow excused for otherwise unaccept-ably violent outbursts.23

As violence spread to include college campuses and to involvethe assassination of such political leaders as Martin Luther King,Jr., and Robert Kennedy, President Lyndon Johnson establishedyet another commission in June 1968. The National Commissionon the Causes and Prevention of Violence, chaired by MiltonEisenhower, established a series of task forces, which in turn pub-lished compilations of various sorts that took a wide spectrum ofopinion and knowledge into account. Two of the volumes were es-pecially useful from a social science perspective— The Ulitics of Pro-test by Jerome Skolnick and Violence in America, the latter a collec-tion of essays edited by task force directors Hugh Graham andTed Gurr.2* As the titles of the two volumes indicate, there was afundamental disagreement on the basic phenomenon under inves-tigation. For previous reports, as well as Graham and Gurr, thefocus of attention was on violence and its causes. To speak of vio-lence was to identify something "savage" (in Ryan's terms) thatneeded to be explained in nonpolitical terms. Attention to protest,however, meant to identify grievances and repression by those inauthority and thus to focus on the ideas in a dialogue that hadbeen partly successful through sit-ins, freedom marches, andother peaceful demonstrations and was taking on a new form.Similar to Ryan, Skolnick felt that the causes of urban violencewere attitudinal in part and that the tactics of violence were sig-nals to those in power "that concessions must be made or violencewill prevail."25 In short, Skolnick took seriously the rhetoric ofsuch figures as Stokely Carmichael, Martin Luther King, Jr.,Malcolm X and others,26 along with the Clausewitzian principle.The other reports conspicuously failed to analyze the nature of thepolitical demands from the black community.

The Theories:Our review of the literature, thus, will focus on a paradigmatic

dialectic. We may join Ryan by viewing the social science litera-ture on urban unrest in the context of a debate between advocatesof blaming-the-victim paradigms and proponents of the para-digms that fault the system of repression itself.


According to theories that blame the victim, the misfortunateare responsible for their own fate. The earliest blaming-the-victimtheory is known as social disorganization theory. As formulated byGustave Le Bon and developed by Robert Park,27 social disorganiza-tion theory argues that "deviant behavior" (presumably includingurban unrest and violence) may be explained as imperfect social-ization to the norms of society. The peculiarities and confusions ofthe immigrant or ghetto resident — notably, the apparent lack ofsocial norms, often known as "cultural deprivation" —are due toincomplete assimilation. The misconduct of the slumdweller isdue to "social marginality" or "social isolation." In other words, in-dividuals isolated from the "mainstream" act in a strange manner.Extrapolating to the phenomenon of urban unrest, social disor-ganization theory says that observable psychomotor behavior,called "deviant behavior," is linked to basic attitudes that areformed on the basis of the socioattitudinal proximity between theindividual and the dominant values of society. Park's theory en-couraged studies on the demographic correlations of "deviant be-havior," which tended to show that social isolation went hand-in-hand with social "misbehavior" and cultural "deprivation" ofslumdwellers.28 In short, a socioattitudinal property (social isola-tion) entails another attitude (incoherent social norms or culturaldeprivation), which results in various forms of behavior (known as"deviant"); violence, then, is a form of "deviant behavior" (Figurela).

One could hardly imagine a more classic presentation of epi-phenomenalist idealism. The independent variables are attitudes,and the dependent variable consists of physical behavior: behavioris explained by prior attitudes. Clearly the McCone and Moyni-han reports presuppose social disorganization theory. The factthat only twenty-four percent of black families are described insome detail in Moynihan's report, while seventy-six percent havenot "deteriorated" in his terms, is simply an inconvenient fact thatreceives little attention.

But we know better. Thanks to the pioneering participant ob-servation fieldwork of William Foote White, the ghetto life de-picted in Street Corner Society was not "disorganized."29 The myth offailure to have a coherent set of social norms was exploded byWhite's account of life in a ghetto. As White reported, a complexsystem of social norms did exist in the Italian slums of Boston.

FIG

UR

E 1

Cau

sal

Mod

els

of T

heor

ies

of U

rban

Unr

est.

*

(a)

Soci

al D

isor

gani

zati

on T

heor

y

soci

alis

olat

ion

cult

ural

depr

ivat

ion

DE

VIA

NT

BE

HA

VIO

R

(b)

Mas

s So

ciet

y T

heor

y

SO

CIA

LC

HA

NG

E

AT

OM

IZA

TIO

N

alie

nati

on

PLU

RA

LIS

TIC

INST

ITU

TIO

NS

host

ility

VIO

LE

NC

E

(c)

Rel

ativ

e D

epri

vati

on T

heor

y

EC

ON

OM

ICD

EP

RIV

AT

ION

perc

epti

onof

val

ue g

appo

litic

iza-

tion

of g

apV

IOL

EN

TA

CT

S

(d)

Mar

xist

Exp

loit

atio

n T

heor

y

EX

PL

OIT

AT

ION

BO

UR

GE

OIS

IMP

RO

VE

ME

NT

PR

OL

ET

AR

IAN

MO

BIL

IZA

TIO

NR

EV

OL

UT

ION

-A

RY

AC

TS

H O GO

revo

luti

onar

yco

nsci

ousn

ess

(e)

Polit

ical

Mob

iliz

atio

n T

heor

y

grou

p se

eks

to i

ncre

ase

reso

urce

s—

mob

iliz

atio

nof

sup

port

for

grou

p

resi

stan

ceby

oth

ergr

oup(

s)V

IOL

EN

CE

[V)

Inst

itut

iona

l R

acis

m T

heor

y

EC

ON

OM

ICD

EP

RIV

A-

TIO

N

DIS

CR

IMI-

NA

TIO

N

belie

f in

Am

. cr

eed

prot

est

—E

LIT

ER

EP

RE

SS

ION

none

lite

indi

gnat

ion

LO

OT

ING

THEORIES OF UR]

(g)

Str

uctu

ral

Vio

lenc

e T

heor

y

UN

EV

EN

RE

SO

UR

CE

DIS

TR

IBU

TIO

N

ST

RU

CT

UR

AL

VIO

LE

NC

E(I

NJU

ST

ICE

)

EL

ITE

PH

YS

I-C

AL

VIO

LE

NC

EN

ON

EL

ITE

PE

R-

SO

NA

L V

IOL

EN

CE

elite

men

tal

viol

ence

none

lite

ver

-ba

l pr

otes

t

'Mat

eria

l fa

ctor

s ar

e ca

pita

lize

d; i

deal

fac

tors

are

in lo

wer

cas

e le

tter

s.


But the content of the norms happened to differ from those of thedominant value system of the larger Anglo society.

Theories of social disorganization are now considered passe.They were often replaced by theories of mass society, as developedoriginally by Emile Durkheim, and more recently explicated bysuch scholars as Arthur Kornhauser and Neil Smelser.30 ForKornhauser, explanations of collective social behavior —violent ornonviolent —must take both attitudinal and physical phenomenainto account:

Mass society is objectively the atomized society, and subjectively thealienated population. Therefore, mass society is a system in whichthere is high availability of a population for mobilization by elites.31

Mass society thus entails a twofold gap between elites and masses.In totalitarian states dominant institutions and values are seen ascarefully controlled by the elite subculture. Other subcultures,with their own institutions and value systems are viewed as threatsto elite dominance. Elites reward those who follow the elite wayand punish those adhering to other value systems until the latterare "atomized" (lack intermediate institutions) and "alienated"(lack a sense of community identity). In nontotalitarian societythe same factors can occur as well; rapid social change tears thefabric of a once close-knit society, as family members move awayfrom hometowns to seek employment, abandoning traditionalchurch affiliations and friendships in the process. If newcomers donot reestablish group ties, even when they are free to do so in plu-ralistic societies, they are available for mobilization by Hitlers tocommit acts of violence. Kornhauser appears to imply that massbehavior can be either the responsibility of elites who hold toomuch power or masses who fail to take advantage of their freedomin pluralistic societies to form intermediate institutions for assert-ing political demands in legitimate institutional channels.

For Smelser, "hostile outbursts" occur because of the presence of"strain," such as "conflicts of interest . . . and differences in val-ues."32 Strain is viewed as a structural property of a system and isroughly equivalent to what Kornhauser identifies as "rapid socialchange." Agencies of political control, according to Smelser, canpreclude violence —but not hostility —when they are as powerfulas they are in totalitarian societies, and government closes downchannels for expressing grievances. In more permissive societies


hostility and violent outbursts result when political institutions donot allow parties in dispute to communicate. Smelser also stressesthe role of leaders who foment hostile outbursts, and his formula-tion notes that violence results when those who act on the basis ofa "generalized belief (an ideology encoding their alienation) over-simplify the complexities of politics and seek direct action. Hence,we have yet another blaming-the-victim theory.

Thus, in mass society theory a material condition (socialchange) affects individuals in two ways —an attitudinal condition(alienation) and a physical condition (atomization) result from theuncoupling of traditional institutions. Either atomization or alien-ation can serve as an antecedent of an attitude (hostility) or aform of behavior (violent outbursts), with political and social insti-tutions playing an intervening role in the process (Figure lb). Themetaphysical view is parallelism, as the connection between aliena-tion and atomization is unspecified, and either condition canresult in unrest or violence.

The Kerner Report subscribes to mass society theory, despite achapter anachronistically entitled "Unemployment, Family Struc-ture, and Social Disorganization." But the recommendations ofthe Kerner Report did not deal with the institutions responsiblefor alienation and atomization. The fact that so many rioters werealienated but not atomized, as they were members of civil rightsorganizations and held regular jobs, is one of those uncomfortablefacts that is swept under the verbal rug provided by mass societytheorists, who in turn provide formulations that often lack speci-ficity for systematic tests. The Kerner Report, which recom-mended that more funds be channeled into the ghettos, was rely-ing on yet another theory — economic deprivation theory.

Ted Gurr, one of the coauthors of a compilation of studies thatemerged from the Eisenhower Commission, indeed champions aform of economic deprivation theory.33 A simple version of thistheory would tell us that the impetus to riot is a function of thedegree of economic deprivation. But this might not immediatelyexplain why rioting took place in the 1960's rather than in the1970's, when economic conditions in urban ghettos had grownworse. Accordingly, Gurr advanced a theory of relative deprivation in-stead, based on observations by Crane Brinton and James Daviesthat violence results when areas of increasing prosperity are fol-lowed by a period of economic decline, a theory found in the writ-ings of Alexis de Tocqueville.34 Brinton claimed evidence for an


era of economic downturn after an era of rising expectations inthe case of the English, American, French, and Russian revolu-tions. An increasing gap between levels of aspiration and levels ofsatisfaction is central to the theory of Davies, which Gurr soughtto test, though most studies have found little support for Davies'stheory.35 Clearly, the Kerner Report accepted relative deprivationtheory in light of recommendations to increase funding to War onPoverty programs.

Gurr's theory may be unpacked as follows (Figure lc). The de-pendent variable is a physical property, "magnitude of violence."The casual sequence is "a perception of relative deprivation, thedevelopment of discontent, [then] politicization of that discontent,and finally . . . violent action."36 The intensity of violent action, inturn, is a function of how much attitudinal support and physicalforce that elites and counterelites bring to bear in their politiciza-tion of the conflict. "Relative deprivation" is defined as a percep-tion that there is a "discrepancy between [material] value expecta-tions and . . . value capabilities."37

As Gurr notes, his theory has "both psychological and societal"elements.38 Clearly, his theory is interactionist. When materialconditions change (values increase or decrease), and attitudes (ex-pectations of material conditions) do not go in the same direction,a personal attitude (perception of relative deprivation) leads theindividual to a political attitude (discontent), and then a materialcondition (violent action) occurs. As individuals expect more butdo not receive more, they experience deprivation in a relativesense; as they receive less but do not reduce their material expec-tations, they also feel relative deprivation. One of Gurr's examplesof expectations in the role of antecedents is the period of the1960's: he notes that black power movements imparted increasedvalue expectations but material conditions for blacks lagged be-hind these heightened expectations.39 He predicts that if "blacksdo develop a substantial measure of institutional support and re-sources in the ghettos . . . the likely long-range effect is a reduc-tion of deprivation."40 Resources were subsequently allocated tothe ghettos, but deprivation was not substantially reduced; vio-lence decreased, though Ryan points out that the gap between ex-pectations (increased black enrollment in higher education) andattainments (employment in professional-managerial jobs) actu-ally widened in the 1970's.41 In a more recent study Gurr refineshis model, but the use of such concepts as "stress" and "strain"


places the new formulation more into the mass society camp andattitude variables are left out.42

We cannot, of course, ignore the Marxist theory of economic ex-ploitation. Marx wrote Capital in part to refute Rodbertus's claim(similar to that of de Tocqueville) in Die Handelskrisen und die Hy-pothekennoth der Grundbesitzer (1858) that worker unrest increases inperiods of economic decline. One of Marx's interpreters argues in-stead that "crises are always preceded by a period in which wagesrise generally and the working classes actually get a larger share ofthe annual product expected for consumption."43 For Marx, ascapitalism develops to the fullest, its internal contradictions in-crease; efforts to continue extracting a surplus value continuallyrun into the fact that workers paid proletarian wages cannot con-sume all that is produced. Workers are more likely to become con-scious of exploitation in good times, when it becomes clear thatthe lion's share of the benefits of prosperity belong to the capital-ist, whereas in hard times the capitalists and proletariat sufferalike, an explanation consistent with the contrast between the tur-bulent 1960's and quiescent 1970's.

For Marx, worker unrest was defined materialistically as revo-lutionary activity, including strikes. Material conditions (near-poverty status for workers alongside prosperity for capitalists) pro-voke worker unrest, mediated by an attitudinal element (classconsciousness). His metaphysics was epiphenomenalist material-ism (Figure Id). He did acknowledge that ideas play a role, butthe inexorable stages of history did not allow ideas to have an in-dependent role. Vladimir Lenin, noting that higher wages"bribed" the upper proletariat and thus reduced their revolution-ary consciousness, had no alternative but to revise Marx to assigna more central role to the revolutionary vanguard,44 but onceagain he insisted that Marxist theory was materialist and ideaswere of epiphenomenal significance. Revolutionary leaders, betterattuned to material realities than the ordinary worker, merelyawaken the latter to the existence of objective economic condi-tions. For a contemporary Marxist, Herbert Aptheker, the riots ofthe 1960's were evidence that the exploited masses were participat-ing in revolutionary acts that were more political and economicthan racial in nature.45 But attitudinal data show that reformistideology prevailed among the rioters, who were more middle classin occupation and in group memberships.46

If economic deprivation is at the root of urban unrest, we can

538 ' THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

see that theories of social disorganization and mass society arerather naive. But if reformist attitudes are the dominant drivingforces of urban unrest, regardless of objective or subjective depri-vation, we must look at other theorists.

According to political mobilization theory, ghetto dwellers engagein violence not because they are isolated from American culturebut because they lack political power: they understand all too wellhow the American system operates, and they know that throughthe acquisition of political power they can hope to alleviate eco-nomic disparities within nonghetto America. This was the centralthesis of the Skolnick volume; other scholars have argued the samepoint under such labels as the "new ghetto man" and "pro-riot ide-ology."47 If urban unrest is a reaction to socioeconomic injusticeand a resistance to the brainwashing that elite elements try to im-pose upon blacks and others to delude them into believing thatthey are being treated fairly by all institutions of American soci-ety, then we must attend to interests and political strategies bywhich groups pursue their interests.

Patterned after the utilitarian theory of John Stuart Mill, themobilization theory developed by Charles Tilly and others*8 as-sumes that groups pursue their own interests with whatever re-sources they possess; groups with the most resources are domi-nant, so each group seeks first to mobilize its fullest potentialities,then to seize power. Violence is a tool in this struggle, used bothby elites and counterelites, just as von Clausewitz had said allalong. Tilly argues that the determinants of collective action are"violations of established rights, the mobilization levels of differentcontenders for power, [and] the current costs of different forms ofaction," while the determinants of violent outcomes to collectiveaction are "the presence or absence of counterdemonstrators, thetactics of repressive forces, [and] the length of time during whichopposing parties are in direct contact."49 At the end of each list,Tilly places "and so on," to indicate some ambiguity. Unrest oc-curs if groups seek more resources; violence results if one resistsanother in pursuing mutually incompatible objectives.

The metaphysics of mobilization theory may be characterizedas mentalism (Figure le), since attitudes (desires for more re-sources, mobilization of support from group members and othergroups, as well as the opposition from other groups) are the soledeterminants of behavior. Downtrodden groups seek more re-sources to overcome mistreatment because they want a larger


share of the pie; rich groups want to maintain their larger slice.The poor use protest violence to make their point, and the elitescounter with repressive violence. For a group to gain more re-sources, it must organize and mobilize, seeking coalitions withother groups; elites use the apparatus of the state to organize andmobilize on their own behalf. As William Gamson says, instead ofthe "duality of [social mobilization theory's] extremist politics and[mass society theory's] pluralist politics, there is simply politics."50

But the theory is so general that it makes few predictions; in at-tempting to explain everything, it does not answer why somegroups get the urge for more resources or why one group choosesto resist another.

Mobilization theory is related to the theory of institutional racism,which was articulated so eloquently by Stokely Carmichael, Wil-liam Ryan, and others that the Kerner Report paid lip service toits thesis in its assertion that white racism has been responsible forthe conditions of blacks in the United States. The perspective ofinstitutional racism is that many policies, practices, and proce-dures of current institutions were designed a long time ago to dis-criminate against ghetto dwellers and in favor of middle classwhites. Even though current decision-makers may claim that theyharbor no racial prejudice, they nevertheless operate institutionsthat have built-in discriminatory methods of operations and thusare practicing racism just the same. Requiring a high school di-ploma to qualify for unskilled jobs in North Carolina, for exam-ple, works to the detriment of blacks because they graduate fromhigh school at a lower rate than whites in that state.51 Institutionalracism is also evident when white police unjustly harass Watts res-idents in a manner that would make white communities in LosAngeles indignant. Indeed, Ryan was able to show that nearly allof the riots mentioned in the Kerner Report were triggered by justthis type of police brutality.52

Ryan's theory of institutional racism conceives of unrest as apsychomotor act of rioting or looting. Unrest occurs when an eco-nomically deprived group believes that its plight is the result of in-justice—that is, violations of the American creed. As GunnarMyrdal argued in 1943, the concept of the American creed waswell known to blacks and whites alike, and it was also true thatblacks were fully aware that whites did not practice the creed.53

Blacks have chosen to articulate their perspective through a dia-logue of protest in the rhetoric of the American creed, only to be


met all too often with further repression. Ryan reports that "al-most every disturbance [in the rioting of the 1960's] is initiated bypolice action that the [ghetto] community finds offensive and in-tolerable. . . . The predominant focus of violence by residents isagainst property . . . [in] a primitive form of redistribution ofwealth."54

The picture that emerges is that poorer whites, some of whichare employed as police officers, particularly seek to prevent poorerblacks from rising in society. As white businesses want to run effi-ciently but do not want to run counter to social trends, they em-ploy less efficient whites but derive lower profits than if they hiredmore efficient blacks through programs of affirmative action. Pro-tests, then, can be used to remove the resistance to affirmativeaction, wherein the stress is supposed to be on qualificationsrather than connections or race-biased personnel policies, proce-dures, and practices in job selection. White police may be particu-larly resentful of affirmative action; as representatives of theirstrata in society, police act out what their comrades would pre-sumably do in their place. The findings of the Kerner Report areconsistent with the theory of institutional racism; as already notedabove, "rioters" first suffered employment discrimination, andtheir efforts at verbal protest preceded their arrests in the more vi-olent confrontations.

The metaphysical interactionism of the theory of institutionalracism sees material factors (economic deprivation) at the rootof the problem (figure If). Those who are economically deprivedaccept an attitude (belief in the American creed) yet suffer materi-ally (through discrimination), so they carry out a verbal campaign(protest) to motivate white society to live up to the Americancreed by eliminating the unequal treatment of blacks. Sometimesprotest works, sometimes not. When the response to protest ismaterial repression by elites (further unequal treatment, policebrutality, and the like), the black community becomes so indig-nant that it retaliates against white society through material acts(burnings, looting, rioting). Of course, Myrdal's assumption thatAmericans have a consensus for a procedural American creed inwhich rights are accorded minorities has been questioned by suchresearchers as Samuel Stouffer in Communism, Conformity, and CivilLiberties.55

If the theory of institutional racism seems less general thanmany of those considered above, a remedy is available. Our final


theorist, Johan Galtung, conceptualizes institutional repressionmore generically as structural violence. His formulation begins withthe statement that "violence is present when human beings are be-ing influenced so that their actual somatic and mental realizationsare below their potential realizations."56 He then distinguishes du-alistically between physical and psychological violence, betweendirect (personal) and indirect (structural) violence. Physical vio-lence is direct. Structural violence exists because those in author-ity "try to preserve the status quo so well geared to protect theirinterests"57 by restricting human potentialities and by permittingsocial injustice to persist. Direct violence kills quickly, but indirectstructural violence — such as when an affluent society has plenty offood yet some in the society are undernourished because they can-not purchase or get access to food —kills, too, but more slowly.Galtung's theory emerges as the one best supported empirical the-sis in Douglas Hibbs's cross-national study, Mass Political Violence.58

Structural violence embodies four characteristics —exploitation,fragmentation, marginalization, and penetration. Elites maintaindominance by exploiting labor (asymmetrically distributing thebenefits of labor), by penetrating nonelites (preventing the latterfrom having autonomy), by fragmenting interaction (atomizingunderdogs), and by marginalizing (creating second-class citizens).Should nonelites seek to object to liberate themselves through vi-iolence or nonviolence, the response from elites will be furtherstructural violence. Metaphysically, a material factor (uneven dis-tribution of resources) is the main antecedent condition. To main-tain the asymmetry of elite dominance, elites must pursue a policy(social injustice), inflicting mental as well as physical violence onnonelites. Nonelites then respond to social injustice through verbalas well as physical protest, whereupon elites apply physicalcountermeasures (physical or psychological violence), and theresult is more structural violence (either physical or psychologi-cal). The result is epiphenomenalist materialism, as ideas play asecondary role in a struggle for power (figure lg).

By implication we may argue that Galtung sees black protest asa response both to excessive physical abuse of minority citizens bypolice and to unjust laws, policies, practices, and procedures of in-stitutions. Galtung's notion of structural violence, hence, sub-sumes the concept of institutional racism into what we might calla generic theory of institutional discrimination, though of coursehe prefers the label "structural violence theory." If his theory is cor-


rect, however, we would expect a lot more nonelite violence in to-talitarian countries.

As urban rioting died down after the 1960's, concern for theo-ries of urban unrest has subsided. The theories of institutionalracism and structural violence claim to be the most inclusive per-spectives today, thanks to their focus both on violence and protestconceptions of urban unrest. But the return to blaming-the-victimin the era of President Ronald Reagan reflects a disenchantmentwith the pursuit of equality. Insofar as the practical consequencesof affirmative action appears to be that one or several successivegenerations of whites must permit large percentages of minoritiesto have jobs and positions at colleges that they would rather havefor themselves (whether qualified or not), many whites resist re-forms in institutional procedures that might reduce structural vio-lence.59

CONCLUSION

We have reviewed several paradigms that focus on urban un-rest. Differences over definition and key concepts are glaring, aswe move from one paradigm to another. Most theorists are wellaware that various approaches exist, but they persist in clinging toone among several alternatives. How do we rise above this myo-pia?

In the first section of this essay six objectives of a metaphysicalanalysis of paradigms are set forth. The first objective, clarifyingthe implicit assumptions of the various paradigms of political sci-ence, has been accomplished above, though the diagrams in Fig-ure 1 are simplified for this presentation to provide a startingpoint. Discussion at a metaphysical level can be a discourse inwhich theorists will speak to each other, however much they mayprefer to hide behind obscure formulations. Debates may now bedirected at how to refute or to support the basic premises of oneor another paradigm. As we show that all theories make meta-physical assumptions, the need to test the most fundamental as-sumptions should be placed as a top priority for future theorybuilding.

Secondly, we urge researchers to include both attitudinal-per-ceptual and behavioral-material variables so that they can deter-mine the relative impact of the two sets of factors (and theoreticalexplanations) before moving to subsidiary questions within each


paradigm. An interactionist theory appears best suited at separat-ing fundamental from marginal propositions in initial theorybuilding and theory testing, as it does not seek to explain away therole of either attitudinal or material elements, as in the case ofMarxist and political mobilization theories in particular.

Thirdly, we have found a number of glaring instances wheretheorists have failed to test their own paradigms in full. The inher-ent bias in the concept of "cultural deprivation" in social disorgani-zation theory was unmasked when Whyte went into a slum inBoston to find out what others had assumed before him. Smelser'sliterary theory of mass society stands in sharp contrast with thecareful quantitative presentation of Kornhauser's version of masssociety theory. Gurr and coauthors test relative deprivation theorywithout including attitudes. Marx, who developed some of theearly canons of social science theory testing, needs to be updatedby those pursuing more modern social science methods. Politicalmobilization theory has too many "and so on" references. Eachlinkage in the theory of institutional racism is based on data butthe entire structure of linkages has yet to be tested as a causal sys-tem of relationships. Structural violence theory has been testedonly in part; attitudinal variables need to be specified.

In regard to our fourth objective, helping to construct criticaltests of theories, we have identified some important exceptions tomany of the predictions of the paradigms in the literature. Thefact that only one in four black children lacks a father is embar-rassing to social disorganization theory, which expects most so-called isolated minorities to be deprived. The fact that rioters arealienated but not atomized requires a revision of mass society the-ory. Gurr's predictions of the 1970's, based on relative deprivationtheory, were for more violence until expectations were scaleddown to the level of attainments in black America, yet violencesubsided and expectations remained high. The role of revolution-ary consciousness is downplayed by Marx, as he wished to be astrict metaphysical materialist, and Aptheker accordingly mistookblack protest, articulated primarily by middle class blacks, as evi-dence of revolutionary ferment. Political mobilization theory,which insists that all violence results from a calculus of self-inter-est, seems easy to refute. Suicide is the most obvious example.The theory of institutional racism assumes that there is a wide-spread acceptance of the American creed, an assumption ques-tioned by students of civil liberties. Structural violence theory pos-


tulates that violence is a response to social injustice, so thequiescence of citizens of the Soviet Union is an anomaly thatneeds to be explained.

Ideologically based differences between paradigms, such ascontroversies among political scientists who are for or againstMarxist approaches, can be transcended scientifically (though notnormatively) by a focus on the role of material vis-a-vis nonmate-rial factors. The scientific transcendence consists of an apprecia-tion for studies that genuinely leave room for data to specifywhich types of underlying factors (ideational or material) best ex-plain a particular phenomenon. The conservatives place their betson social disorganization theory, the liberal moderates on mass so-ciety theory, and so forth, but they all rise and fall to the extentthat they can both refute all other theories and provide evidence tosupport their own biases.

Finally, the research agenda for the study of urban unrest ap-pears to be much clearer at this point than it was before exploringalternative paradigms in terms of metaphysical underpinnings.Researchers who continue to leave out attitudinal elements or ma-terial factors can hardly be expected to do so without considerabletheoretical justification in the future. There are many unansweredquestions, imperfect research designs, and unintegrated findingsin the field, as we have demonstrated. Social disorganization the-ory needs to define "cultural deprivation" more clearly. Mass soci-ety theory should give more attention to operationalization, par-ticularly of attitudinal components. Relative deprivation theoryneeds to take data from more recent eras into account, using atti-tude studies. Marxist theory should be tested in a conscientiousmanner with more recent data. Political mobilization theoryshould pay more attention to economic realities that underpin at-titudes and interests. Institutional racism theory needs to be testedas a whole, rather than partially. And structural violence theoryshould be applied to Eastern European countries.

If we find that attitudes are more basic than material factors ina particular study, we need to step behind attitudes to see howthey develop — whether, for example, there are materialist social-ization factors. Our agenda can be expanded in this manner inmany areas of research.

What is the general relationship between ideas and matter inpolitical science? At this point it is obviously premature to say.Medical researchers investigating the impact of perceived stress on


the incidence of disease are shedding new light on the basic meta-physical question of the role of the mind as the source of bodilydysfunctions.60 Political scientists may be in a position to do like-wise when they orient their research accordingly. A final answerwill not emerge in the immediate future, if ever. What is impor-tant is to keep the question in the forefront so that more informa-tion will be continually available about the question; science andhuman understanding advances by improving upon previous re-search. Even Hume will have to demur in taking a sceptical view,as long as science follows his advance to collect more relevantdata.

This essay is an effort to critique a theoretical literature. Con-flicting paradigms are known to us all. One way to rise abovethe debates of the past is to take a "broader perspective," to quoteKarl Mannheim, who noted that competing theories had differingvalue perspectives and metaphysical presuppositions.61 Although Idoubt whether political scientists will ultimately resolve metaphys-ical disagreements that were first framed some 2500 years ago,those who investigate urban unrest have a responsibility to sortout the metaphysical implications of their empirical findings,thereby advancing the debate beyond its current frontiers.

NOTES1 Rudolph Carnap, "The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical

Analysis of Language," Logical Pbsitivism, ed. A. J. Ayer (Glencoe: Free Press,1959), p. 65.

2 Cf. Anthony Giddens, New Rules of Sociological Method (New York: BasicBooks, 1976).

3 Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1970), pp. viii, 178-79.

4 Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (London: Hutchinson, 1949).5 Herbert Feigl, The "Mental" and the "Physical" (Minneapolis: University of

Minnesota Press, 1967). See an exploration by a psychologist on the subject: B.A. Farrell, "The Correlation Between Body, Behavior and Mind," PhysiologicalCorrelates of Human Behavior, ed. Anthony Gale and John A. Edwards (NewYork: Academic Press, 1983), vol. 1, chap. 2. See also Perry Black, ed., Physio-logical Correlates of Emotion (New \brk: Academic Press, 1970).

6 Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave, eds., Criticism and the Growth of Knowl-edge (London: Cambridge University Press, 1970).

7 Kuhn relabels his concept of "paradigm" as "interdisciplinary matrix" inthe second edition of his book in response to these criticisms. I have preferredto keep his original term in this essay.

8 William T. Bluhm, "Metaphysics, Ethics, and Political Science," Review ofPolitics, 31 (January 1969), 66-87.

9 Michael Haas, "Paradigms of Political Integration and Unification: Appli-cations to Korea" Journal of Peace Research, 21, no. 1 (1984), 47-60.

10 The four components of a paradigm, according to Kuhn, are generaliza-


tions, metaphysically shaped metaphors, value commitments, and exemplars(concrete problem-solutions). Kuhn, Scientific Revolutions, pp. 182-87.

11 Another branch of metaphysics is theology. Yet another metaphysical issueis whether parts comprise the true reality or instead whether wholes are thetrue reality, the familiar dispute among nominalism and realism, respectively. De-terminism and causality are additional topics of concern in the field of metaphys-ics.

12 Cf. Richard Taylor, Metaphysics, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1974.)

13 Ibid., chaps. 2-4; Mario Bunge, The Mind-Body Problem (Oxford: Perga-mon, 1980).

14 David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Indianapolis:Hackett, 1977), p. 114.

15 Herbert Feigl, "The Mind-Body Problem in the Development of LogicalEmpiricism," Readings in the Philosophy of Science, ed. Herbert Feigl and MayBrodbeck (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1953), p. 612. See alsoChung-Ying Cheng, ed., Philosophical Aspects of the Mind-Body Problem (Hono-lulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1975); Paul K. Feyerabend and Grover Max-well, ed., Mind, Matter, and Method (Minneapolis: University of MinnesotaPress, 1966). '

16 Karl von Clausewitz, On War (Baltimore: Pelican, 1968).17 Daniel P. Moynihan, The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (Wash-

ington: U.S. Department of Labor, 1965), p. 11.18 Ibid., p. 5.19 Daniel P. Moynihan, "The President and the Negro: The Moment Lost,"

Commentary, 43 (February 1967), 33.20 John A. McCone, Violence in the City—An End or a Beginning? (Sacra-

mento: Governor's Commission on the Los Angeles Riots, 1965), p. 23.21 Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd (New York: Viking, 1960).22 O t t o K e r n e r , Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders

(New York: New York Times, 1968), p. 128. Nevertheless, Ted Gurr assertsthat "Discontent was most intense among lower-class black Americans, lessamong the black bourgeoisie, most of whom were oriented toward white soci-ety" (Ted R. Gurr, Why Men Rebel [Princeton: Princeton University Press,1970], p. 344).

23 William Ryan, Blaming the Victim, rev. ed. (New York: Vintage, 1976). LeBon, The Crowd, p. 32, uses the term barbarian.

24 Hugh Davis Graham and Ted Robert Gurr, eds., Violence in America (NewYork: Signet, 1969); Jerome H. Skolnick, The Politics of Protest (New York: Bal-lantine, 1969).

25 Ibid., p. 342.26 Martin Luther King, Jr., Why We Can't Wait (New York: Signet, 1964);

Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton, Black Power (New York: Vintage,1967); Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm AT (New York: Grove, 1966). Asimilar conclusion is drawn at the end of Peter A. Lupsha, "On Theories of Ur-ban Violence," Urban Affairs Quarterly, 4 (March 1967), 273-96. See also the dis-sent to the McCone Report by Rev. James Edward Jones, in McCone, Violencein America, pp. 87-88.

27 Le Bon, The Crowd; Robert E. Park, Race and Culture (Glencoe: FreePress, 1950).

28 See E. L. Hartley, Problems in Prejudice (New York: King's Crown, 1946).29 William F. Whyte, Street Comer Society, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1955).30 E m i l e D u r k h e i m , The Division of Labor in Society ( N e w York: F r e e P r e s s ,


1949); Arthur Kornhauser, The Politics of Mass Society (Glencoe: Free Press,1959); NeilJ. Smelser, Theory of Collective Behavior (Glencoe: Free Press, 1962).See also Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1968); Chalmers Johnson, Revolutionary Change (Boston:Little, Brown, 1966).

31 Kornhauser, Politics of Mass Society, pp. 33.32 Smel se r , Theory of Collective Behavior, p . 4 8 .33 G u r r , Why Men Rebel.34 Crane Brinton, The Anatomy of Revolution (New York: Prentice-Hall,

1938); James C. Davies, "The J-Curve of Rising and Declining Satisfactions asa Cause of Some Great Revolutions and a Contained Rebellion," Violence inAmerica, ed. Graham and Gurr, pp. 716-25. See Alexis de Tocqueville, The OldRegime and the French Revolution (Garden City: Doubleday, 1955), p. 177.

35 Clark McPhail, "Civil Disorder Participation: A Critical Examination ofRecent Research," American Sociological Review, 36 (December 1971), 1058-73;Abraham H. Miller, Louis H. Bolce, and Mark Halligan, "The J-Curve The-ory and the Black Urban Riots: An Empirical Test of Progressive RelativeDeprivation Theory? American Political Science Review, 71 (September 1977), 964-82. See, however, Joel A. Lieske, "The Conditions of Racial Violence in Amer-ican Cities: A Developmental Synthesis," American Political Science Review, 72(December 1978), 1324-40.

36 Gurr, Why Men Rebel, pp. 12-13. I have simplified his more complex ar-row diagrams herein for the purpose of this essay. See ibid., chap. 10.

37 Ibid., p . 13 .38 Ibid., p . 12.39 Ibid., p. 344.40 Ibid.41 Ryan, Blaming the Victim, pp. 313-14. Perceptions of negative and positive

change are more associated with potential for political violence than percep-tions of no change in economic gratification in Bernard N. Grofman andEdward N. Muller, "The Strange Case of Relative Gratification and Potentialfor Political Violence: The V-Curve Hypothesis," American Political Science Re-view, 72 (June 1973), 514-39.

42 Ted Robert Gurr and Raymond Duvall, "Civil Conflict in the 1960s: AReciprocal Theoretical System with Parameter Estimates," Comparative PoliticalStudies, 6 (July 1973), 135-70.

43 L ione l R o b b i n s , The Economic Causes of War ( L o n d o n : C a p e , 1940), p . 3 3 .44 V. I. Lenin, Imperialism (New York: International Publishers, 1939), p.

10; Lenin, "The War and Russian Social-Democracy," Selected Works (New York:International Publishers, 1935), 5: 123-30.

45 Herbert Aptheker, "The Watts Ghetto Uprising," Political Affairs, 44 (Oc-tober 1965), 16-29; 44 (November 1965), 28-44.

46 Nathan S. Kaplan and Jeffery M. Paige, "A Study of Ghetto Rioters,"Scientific American, 219 (August 1968), 15-21; Robert M. Fogelson and RobertB. Hill, "Who Riots? A Study of Participation in the 1967 Riots," SupplementaryStudies for the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (Washington: Gov-ernment Printing Office, 1968), pp. 217-44.

47 See Nathan Caplan, "The New Ghetto Man: A Review of Recent Empir-ical Studies," Journal of Social Issues, 26 (Winter 1970), 59-74; T. M. Tomlinson,"The Development of a Riot Ideology Among Urban Negroes," Racial Violencein the United States, ed. Allen D. Grimshaw (Chicago: Aldine, 1969), pp. 226-35.

48 John Stuart Mill, Representative Government (New York: Everyman Edi-tions, n.d. [1861]); Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution (Reading,


Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1978); Joe R. Feagin and Harlan Hahn, Ghetto Revolts(New York: Macmillan, 1973); William A. Gamson, The Strategy of Social Protest(Homewood, 111.: Dorsey, 1975).

49 Til ly, From Mobilization to Revolution, p . 185 .50 G a m s o n , Strategy of Social Protest, p . 138 .51 T h e e x a m p l e is , of c o u r s e , f rom Griggs v. Duke Power Co. ( 1 9 7 1 ) , 401 U S

424.52 Ryan, Blaming the Victim, chap. 9. See also Peter H. Rossi and Richard

A. Berk, "Local Political Leadership and Popular Discontent in the Ghetto,"Collective Violence, ed. James A. Short, Jr., and Marvin Wolfgang (Chicago: Al-dine Atherton, 1972), chap. 22.

53 Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma (New York: Harper, 1944), part 5.54 R y a n , Blaming the Victim, p . 2 3 9 .55 Samuel A. Stouffer, Communism, Conformity, and Civil Liberties (New York:

Wiley, 1955).56 J o h a n G a l t u n g , "Vio lence , Peace , a n d Peace Research ," Journal of Peace

Research, 6 (1969) , 168.57 Ibid., p . 179 .58 Douglas A. Hibbs, Jr., Mass Political Violence (New York: Wiley, 1973),

pp. 180-87.59 See Christopher Jencks, Who Gets Ahead? (New York: Basic Books, 1979).60 See Thomas J. Coates, Lydia Temoshok and Jeffrey Mandel, "Psychoso-

cial Research Is Essential to Understanding and Treating AIDS," American Psy-chologist, 39 (November 1984), 1309-14.

61 Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia (New York: Harcourt, Brace, World,1936), p. 153.

Documents

Metaphysics of Paradigms in Political Science: …polisen.azurewebsites.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/...Political Science: Theories of Urban Unrest Michael Haas Many of the debates