Jonathan Friedman – <em>Politicamente corretto</em>
10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3555
Book forum su Jonathan Friedman, Politicamente corretto. Il conformismo morale come regime, a cura di Piero Zanini, traduzione di Francesca Nicola e Piero Zanini, Milano, Meltemi, 2018, pp. 348.
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Book forum: Jonathan Friedman – Politicamente corretto
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                                                                       BOOK FORUM

Jonathan Friedman – Politicamente corretto
Edited by
Antonio Maria PUSCEDDU
Universitat de Barcelona

JONATHAN FRIEDMAN, Politicamente corretto. Il conformismo morale come regime, edited
by Piero Zanini, translation by Francesca Nicola and Piero Zanini, Milano, Meltemi,
2018, pp. 348.
Comments by
George BACA, Giacomo LOPERFIDO, Christian GIORDANO, Piero VERENI.
Response by
Jonathan FRIEDMAN.


  It is with Jonathan Friedman’s latest book, Politicamente corretto. Il conformismo mo-
rale come regime (2018) that we are launching the book forum, which brings togeth-
er several critical comments by different authors, followed by Friedman’s response. The
readers will notice the extravagance of debating in English the Italian translation of a
book originally written in English. This is because the book was firstly published in
Italian, which at this moment remains the only available edition. As soon as the
book came out in Italy, the issues polemically raised by Friedman’s critique of political
correctness triggered a broad debate that reached a readership usually unfamiliar with
anthropological literature. This was also certainly due to the national political climate,
with anti-political correctness being claimed by right-wing and xenophobic political
forces against the alleged buonismo – a derogatory term for welcoming attitudes and
practices towards migrants and refugees (from buono – good). We think this can be a
proper start for launching a new space of discussion the aim of which is to speak to a
broader readership beyond the strict boundaries of our discipline.
  It is with great sadness that we learned the sudden passing of Christian Giordano. Like
the rest of this Anuac issue, our first Book forum, to which he eagerly contributed, is
dedicated to his memory. We are confident that his anthropological legacy will continue
to encourage unconventional, passionate intellectual engagements.




This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © Antonio Maria Pusceddu (ed)
Jonathan Friedman – Politicamente corretto
2018 | ANUAC. VOL. 7, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2018: 227-263.
ISSN: 2239-625X – DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3555
                                         2018 | ANUAC. VOL. 7, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2018: 229-234




                                                                        BOOK FORUM

Multiculturalism, moralism, and the politics of a
“new” nationalism
George BACA
Dong-A University


Comment on JONATHAN FRIEDMAN, Politicamente corretto. Il conformismo morale come
regime, edited by Piero Zanini, translation by Francesca Nicola and Piero Zanini,
Milano, Meltemi, 2018, pp. 348.



   Jonathan Friedman has written powerfully about the political and eco-
nomic transformation of Euro-American societies since the 1970s (Friedman
1995; Friedman and Friedman 2008)1. Friedman rejects the view that finance
capital represents a particular stage of capitalism. Instead, he sees present-
day decentralizing of capital accumulation as the recurrent rise of finance
and withdrawal of capital from production. He is in the excellent company of
Fernand Braudel and Giovanni Arrighi – as well as John Maynard Keynes – in
underlining the conflict between long-term, fixed capital and the speculative
nature of finance capital (Braudel 1982; Arrighi 1994; Keynes 1936). As he-
gemonic centers of capitalist accumulation rise, so do the costs of doing
business, which encourage the export of capital and the increasing import-
ance of credit and finance to feebly, and fleetingly, step into the breach. The
powerful industrialized nations that settled World War II, and rebuilt the
global economy through the establishment of the Bretton Woods multilater-
al system, are presently experiencing economic decline, the unraveling of
social institutions, and the rise of political instability that has accompanied
growing disparities in wealth.
1




1. This study was supported by research funds from Dong-A University.


This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © George Baca
Multiculturalism, moralism, and the politics of a “new” nationalism
2018 | ANUAC. VOL. 7, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2018: 229-234.
ISSN: 2239-625X – DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3513
230                                                                GEORGE BACA


   The politics of multiculturalism has emerged during the same period
when European and North American financial and political leaders have
turned against Keynesian economic policies, especially capital controls, and
implemented policies that exported capital and simultaneously rolled back
social provisions of the welfare state (Baca 2006; Baca 2010). Befitting of
Friedman’s iconoclasm, Politicamente corretto. Il conformismo morale come
regime, highlights the moralistic nature of multicultural politics by taking
aim at Sweden, for many, the poster-child of the welfare state. Friedman
takes the reader beneath these positive images of Sweden to illustrate how
neoliberal economic policies encouraged mass immigration from the Third
World and readjustments in the welfare state. Moreover, he argues that a
«rising elite», directing these social changes in the organization of Swedish
society, have embraced multiculturalism. Furthermore, political leaders and
prominent opinion makers have fashioned a sense of political correctness to
shield questions of immigration from criticism. Those who dare to question
mass immigration risk being classified as racists or right-wing extremists.
   Friedman tends to present multicultural narratives that celebrate immig-
ration as if they reject nationalism and the nation-state. However, national-
ism, much like PC discourse, does not have a fixed content. Politicians and
citizens are continually revising and elaborating national myths and symbols
in relationship to social, political, and economic transformations. Many
writers, including Friedman, have been too quick to announce the decline of
the nation-state amid contemporary shifts from Keynesian macroeconomics
to neoliberal economic policies. Rather than a dissolving nation-state, I see
national politicians and financial leaders adapting the myths and symbols of
the nation to meet the challenges represented by the export of capital and
the retrenchment of the welfare state. In this process, multiculturalism –
and its discourse of tolerance – exerts immense ideological power in elabor-
ating nationalist myths of the liberal democratic state at a moment of in-
creasing economic inequality. Moreover, these frames create a sense of cre-
ates a sense of sympathy for elites who are trying to maintain social solidar-
ity in the face of anti-democratic threats – a theme being played in the
United States as corporate elites embrace multiculturalism, and ideals of
democracy, as they struggle with Donald Trump’s regime.
   Friedman’s reluctance to conceptualize multiculturalism in relationship
to nationalist politics stems partly from the unique impetus for this work.
During the late 1990s, many Swedish social commentators, scholars, and an-
thropological colleagues attacked his wife, anthropologist Kajsa Ekholm
Friedman, for being anti-immigrant and racist. The pain and duress that


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MULTICULTURALISM, MORALISM, AND THE POLITICS OF A “NEW” NATIONALISM                  231


Friedman experienced during this awful ordeal animate the book. Politica-
mente corretto reads like one part defense of his spouse and one part exten-
ded case method of Manchester School fame (see Gluckman 1940; Turner
1957). Friedman employs a version of the extended case method to examine
the twists and turns of the national controversy that enveloped his house-
hold for a decade. The controversy erupted in 1996 when Ekholm Friedman
agreed to give a talk to a political group called The People’s Will and Mass
Immigration (PWMI)2. Before she appeared, a major news show had already
reported that she was a leader of the PWMI. Sweden’s largest national news-
paper Dagens Nyheter expanded the sense that she had breached proper
norms of a multicultural society by falsely reporting that Ekholm Friedman
disparaged African immigrants for infiltrating the country with fake college
degrees. In an attempt to quell the drama, she wrote a commentary in Da-
gens Nyheter. She admitted it was a mistake to speak before the PWMI and
went on to clarify that she was not anti-immigrant. Instead, she came to un-
derstand, through her ongoing research, which was Guggenheim funded,
that «ethnification» and ethnic politics during periods of increasing unem-
ployment and economic decline represent a «serious problem».
   Friedman’s depiction of the social drama lacks necessary details. Max
Gluckman developed the extended case to focus analysis on the emergent
qualities of a social formation, to examine cultural politics beyond the «apt
illustration» and to bring the underlying issues of conflict under sharp ana-
lysis. Friedman arrays the data in ways that do not capture the emergent
qualities of Swedish political economy. After all, Friedman argues that PC
culture, and the sacred object of multiculturalism it seeks to protect, is part
of the processes of the decline of western hegemony and the nation-state.
However, he does not provide enough details of the various, and contradict-
ory arguments and how these changed throughout the social drama. He tells
us little about PWMI, dismissing them as an unthreatening group of elderly
people who were concerned about mass immigration in Sweden. More prob-
lematically, Friedman does not provide the full text of Ekholm Friedman’s
comments about immigration during the entire ordeal. Instead, he para-
phrases her main idea: the Swedish government has implemented immigra-
tion policies in ways that has furthered processes of «ethnification» in ways
that could threaten the Swedish welfare state. In other places, he tells us
that she argued that multiethnicity is a real problem and it has explosive po-
tential and must be taken seriously. Nevertheless, the primary question re-


2. Folkviljan och massinvandring.

                                       2018 | ANUAC. VOL. 7, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2018: 229-234
232                                                                 GEORGE BACA


mains: what, and how, is multi-ethnicity potentially dangerous? In addition,
how did Ekholm Friedman’s perspectives on ethnic conflict, immigration,
and the decline of the nation-state develop throughout the social drama?
   Rather than engaging in constructive debate, anthropologists, including
graduate students from Lund University where both the Friedmans taught,
reacted bitterly to her words of redress. By questioning national immigration
policies, they associated her with the subversion of the multicultural social
order and its mores of tolerance. Most notably, four prominent Swedish an-
thropologists – Professors Gudrun Dahl, Ulf Hannerz, Kaj Århem, Karl Erik
Knutsson – wrote a joint letter to Dagens Nyheter denouncing Ekholm Fried-
man for not only being destructive regarding immigration but for also con-
fusing anthropological concepts of culture and ethnicity. For me, the most
telling aspect of this «anthropological» response was that it highlighted the
ways that multiculturalism works with, rather than against, nationalist polit-
ics. Hannerz et al., in a patriotic tone, declared that Sweden was «born as a
country in relation to enriching long distance contacts. » From this national-
ist mythology of long-distance contacts as an essential feature of the nation,
they credit immigrants with further contributing cultural imports, ideas, and
people that have «added to the wealth of the culture and tradition». Instead
of criticizing this dreadful use of anthropological knowledge to support a na-
tionalist politics, Friedman trivializes their claims as «cute, cozy, and con-
sumerist». There is nothing cute about the way that these anthropologists
used their authority to use multiculturalism to engage in politics, during a
moment of downturn, to create the image of a «new» and «enlightened» ver-
sion of the liberal nation-state (see Brown 2009; Povinelli 2002). Many years
ago, Talal Asad pointed out this nationalistic aspect of British multicultural-
ism by showing that the idea of «rich culture-and-tradition» of the nation is
already in place, as «an essence» which foreigners can contribute. This nar-
rative of the nation creates an affinity «between what they bring and what is
essentially there» (Asad 1993: 242).
   These relationships of power raise a problem in how Friedman uses the
term «rising elites». He draws this idea from previous criticisms of globaliza-
tion discourses of the late 1990s whereby authors like Arjun Appadurai de-
ployed the term globalization to invoke the sense of new and overwhelming
cultural forces (Appadurai 1996). Such narratives conjured a sense of rupture
whereby new and sweeping cultural forces have transcended borders and un-
dermined nation-states and sovereignty. Friedman countered by showing
that theories of globalization were elite representations, of a new cosmopol-
itan and transnational class, as opposed to analytic categories for the ex-


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MULTICULTURALISM, MORALISM, AND THE POLITICS OF A “NEW” NATIONALISM                  233


planation of these processes (Friedman 2002). However, the contemporary
elites in Sweden, with their embrace of multiculturalism, are not simply a
new and rising force. Indeed, many of these groups have profound connec-
tions to the interwar political establishment that embraced Eugenics, anti-
-Semitism, and fascism.
   After the War, Friedman points out, Swedish leaders began fashioning a
new image of the nation, following Ernst Renan's dictum «forgetfulness», or
perhaps «historical error» are essential to nation-building (Renan 1990
[1882]). Postwar political and economic leaders silenced this unsavory past
and promoted a new image as the «global good guy». Friedman jumps to the
conclusion that this new project was a shift from a «strongly nationalist to
anti-nationalist positions». Postwar politics changed, and Swedish leaders
revised the narratives and symbolism of the nation. Swedish nationalism
changed partly because of the disastrousness World Wars. Also, the US-led
Bretton Woods system integrated the major capitalist countries into a multi-
lateral system based on the ideals of cooperation. Moreover, the changes
continued and moved in a different direction after the 1970s. With the shift
away from the Keynesian political economy and the influx of Third World
immigrants, dominant political and economic interests in the West have
found multiculturalism a dominant discourse for revising of nationalism and
its models of state power. In this way, multicultural politics carries forward
the narrative of Sweden as a global good guy after the shift from Keynesian
economic policies.
   There is one important aspect that Politicamente Corretto does not fully
address: the ways that the politics of multiculturalism seeks to discipline and
structure the integration of immigrants into Europe, the US, and now, even
South Korea. The guiding theme of the political correctness of multicultural-
ism is the discourse of tolerance. Tolerance works as a mode of governance
that «iterates the normalcy of the powerful» at the same time it regulates the
presence of the Other both inside and outside the liberal democratic nation-
state (Brown 2009). In Korea, for example, the state has developed multicul-
tural discourses and institutions through the master narrative of the nation
to culturalize politics by neutralizing inequality and the exploitation of for-
eign workers as an expression of cultural differences (Baca 2017). Much like
in Sweden, Korean political and economic leaders deploy the cultural idiom
of the nation to reconstitute immigration as the progressive development of
the state through the incorporation of new cultural values, which are to be
protected by new values of tolerance and acceptance. As Wendy Brown
points out, the ethics of tolerance legitimates the most illiberal actions of
the state by employing a term consummately associated with liberalism

                                       2018 | ANUAC. VOL. 7, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2018: 229-234
234                                                                          GEORGE BACA


(Brown 2009). Friedman, by focusing primarily on the way the policies of im-
migration have threatened Swedish workers, he does not delve into the way
multiculturalism exploits Third World immigrants. Unfortunately, this
caveat dovetails with the way conservative criticisms of multiculturalism up-
hold the belief that multiculturalism promotes a relativistic tolerance and
that it provides immigrant with rights without proper duties.

REFERENCES
Appadurai, Arjun, 1996, Modernity al large. Cultural dimensions of globalization, Min-
      neapolis, University of Minnesota Press.
Arrighi, Giovanni, 1994, The long twentieth century. Money, power and the origins of
      our times, London, Verso.
Asad, Talal, 1993, Genealogies of religion. Discipline and reasons of power in Chris-
      tianity and Islam, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press.
Baca, George, 2017, Multiculturalism and class conflict: Contradiction in the com-
      forting images of a “new” South Korea, in Beyond multiculturalism. Toward in-
      terculturalism, Jung Ok Lee, ed, Seoul, CM Press: 65-86.
Baca, George, 2010, Conjuring crisis: Racism and civil rights in a southern military city,
      New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press.
Baca, George, 2006, Politics of recognition and myths of race, Social Analysis, 49, 2:
      147-154.
Brown, Wendy, 2009, Regulating aversion. Tolerance in the age of identity and em-
      pire, Princeton, Princeton University Press.
Braudel, Fernand, 1982, Civilization and capitalism. The wheels of commerce, New
      York, Harper & Row.
Ekholm-Friedman, Kajsa, Jonathan Friedman, 2008, The anthropology of global sys-
      tems. Historical transformations and global process, Lanham, MD, Alta Mira
      Press.
Friedman, Jonathan, 1994, Cultural identity and global process, London, Sage.
Friedman, Jonathan, 2002, Champagne liberals and the new “dangerous classes":
      Reconfiguration of class, identity and cultural production in the contempor-
      ary global system, Social Analysis, 46, 2: 33–55.
Gluckman, Max, 1940, Analysis of a social situation in modern Zululand, Bantu
      Studies, 14, 1: 1-30.
Keynes, John Maynard, 1936, General theory of employment, interest and money, Lon-
      don, MacMillan.
Povinelli, Elizabeth, 2002, The cunning of recognition. Indigenous alterities and the
      making of Australian multiculturalism, Durham, Duke University Press.
Renan, Ernst, 1990 [1882], What is the nation? In Nation and narration, ed. Homi
      Bhabha, New York, Routledge.
Turner, Victor, 1957, Schism and continuity, Manchester, Manchester University
      Press.


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                                      2018 | ANUAC. VOL. 7, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2018: 235-240




                                                                        BOOK FORUM

Political correctness: A form of anthropological
“do-goodism”
Christian GIORDANO
University of Fribourg


Comment on JONATHAN FRIEDMAN, Politicamente corretto. Il conformismo morale come
regime, edited by Piero Zanini, translation by Francesca Nicola and Piero Zanini,
Milano, Meltemi, 2018, pp. 348.



   In his new book Politicamente corretto. Il conformismo morale come regime,
Jonathan Friedman once again hits the mark with his critical spirit often
tinged with polemical tones. In fact, he cogently highlights the hypocrisy in-
herent in the ideological and political practice of what I would define as “do-
goodism”, widespread in present-day anthropology as we shall see.
   Jonathan Friedman aptly and strongly stresses that “political correctness”
has become an ideological instrument of today’s elites. In my view, however,
the term “elites” is ambiguous since it is semantically too broad, thus also
too indefinite. Vilfredo Pareto had already been criticized in his days be-
cause of the concept’s lack of semantic clarity (Pareto 2006). Who are the
elites? Are they the “political classes” as defined by Gaetano Mosca (Mosca
1958) or, quoting Robert Michels (Michels 1989), the political parties’ upper
echelons or again the power elites mentioned by Charles Wright Mills (Wright
Mills 1989), i.e. those who steer and monopolize parliamentary life? Could
they be the upper spheres of bureaucracy controlling public administrations?
Or again, those in a dominant position in the cultural and artistic spheres,
i.e. those who successfully produce or manage cultural activities? Finally, to


This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © Christian Giordano
Political correctness: A form of anthropological “do-goodism”
2018 | ANUAC. VOL. 7, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2018: 235-240.
ISSN: 2239-625X – DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3514
236                                                              CHRISTIAN GIORDANO


avoid drawing out this certainly incomplete list, we need to mention those
who, rightly or not, are defined as academics, i.e. those holding university
positions or active in similar institutions for scientific or humanities re-
search.
    Bearing in mind these differences, we notice that the term elite applies to
persons in positions of power yet in very diverse activities and with highly
dissimilar rhetorics of “political correctness”. In the framework of this brief
contribution, which definitely subscribes to Jonathan Friedman’s arguments,
we can hardly examine them all. Therefore, I will focus on one type of aca-
demic elites hailing from my own discipline who over the past twenty years
have generated a specific form of “political correctness” that I like to call
“anthropological correctness”.
    With the term “anthropological correctness”, I am referring to a scientific
discourse linked to a specific analytical terminology that must not upset the
subjects from a socially and/or culturally different society studied during
fieldwork. On the surface this may seem a sensible and commendable course
of action to avoid forms of crass ethnocentrism. Thus, “anthropological cor-
rectness” first emerged also to exclude blatantly unacceptable concepts such
as the one of race. In brief, at first its function was to ensure the discipline’s
praiseworthy morality. At this point though, we need to put this concept in
historical context and consider when it appeared and then began to spread.
    Starting in the 1980s, anthropology went through a profound and benefi-
cial process of self-criticism, widely known as the postmodern “reflexive
turn”, essentially based on a deconstructive stance towards the then pre-
dominant anthropological currents of thought. Yet, notwithstanding its
many positive aspects, the “reflexive turn” also generated negative con-
sequences that have led to the still rampant fervour of “anthropological cor-
rectness” which continues to influence our discipline’s language and rhetor-
ic.
    In the aftermath of the postmodern “reflexive turn”, anthropology as a
typically empirical discipline of social sciences undeniably developed a sig-
nificant inclination for radical self-criticism. In fact, the detached or disen-
chanted, if not indeed sceptical or agnostic attitude towards societies that
are unlike the one of origin of the person carrying out fieldwork has become
less apparent.
    In fact, in the book Writing Culture (Clifford, Marcus 1986), which may be
regarded as the founding text of the “reflexive turn”, the two authors point
up a number of fundamental flaws, i.e. capital sins of empirical research and
consequently also flaws in the ethnographic description and finally and es-
pecially in anthropological theorization, both idiographic and nomothetic.


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POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: A FORM OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL “DO-GOODISM”                       237


   In the just mentioned book, James Clifford and George Marcus accuse the
anthropological reflection of having an authoritarian approach. Indeed, even
the theoretical paradigm of Clifford Geertz’s interpretive anthropology falls
under this category. The two authors propose a new “dialogical” and “poly-
phonic” theoretical paradigm that considers not only the anthropologist’s
voice, but also that of the “subjects” being studied, i.e. the “others” who
have been viewed as “objects” for far too long.
   Nothing to object, up to this point. However, the “reflexive turn” led to
probably unwanted or unexpected consequences that in my opinion turned
out to be negative especially in terms of the spread of “anthropological cor-
rectness”.
   At present, in fact, we have to avoid embarking on research matter that
may upset or even hurt the feelings of individuals or groups belonging to the
societies being studied, especially if these are peripheral societies. Present-
ing this type of material at conferences or seminars, especially with refer-
ence to subaltern groups or socially or economically disadvantaged individu-
als, is viewed as “anthropologically incorrect”. This methodological oddity is
noticeable in political anthropology in particular. Nowadays, in fact, a neut-
ral or detached analysis of those phenomena that Western anthropologists
deem immoral or uncivilized (such as clientelism or corruptive and Mafioso
practices), or destructive (such as interethnic conflicts or family feuds and
honour killings), is regarded with disapproval. This stance is now very wide-
spread because showing one’s participation or, better yet, involvement in
safeguarding the “good guys down here” in societies regarded as defenceless
or threatened by the social strategies of socially, economically and politically
dominant classes, i.e. “the bad guys up there”, is almost mandatory.
   Most of these practices that are deemed immoral from a Western, thus
ethnocentric point of view, are instead attributed to the upper social strata
and hegemonic political classes. In these cases, it is “anthropologically cor-
rect” to roundly voice criticisms, thus all ostensibly negative social practices
are ascribed to those who can take advantage of economic and political posi-
tions of power.
   Nowadays, whoever dares or continues to deal with subjects that are not
“anthropologically correct” will be chastised, if not indeed discredited with
specific epithets. One of the most widely employed terms to discredit
someone is unquestionably “orientalist”. Whoever uses this term in a
blatantly disparaging way is clearly referring to the title of the famous book
Orientalism by Edward Said (Said 1978). It is not my intention to criticize
Said’s theses, which I consider absolutely praiseworthy and above all relev-
ant, though at times a bit too unilateral, but I do believe that criticizing this
term in connection with “anthropological correctness” is relevant.

                                      2018 | ANUAC. VOL. 7, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2018: 235-240
238                                                           CHRISTIAN GIORDANO


   To avoid the various forms of abhorred Orientalism, many of today’s an-
thropologists tend to regard the “others” as having “our” same “spaces of
experience” and “horizons of expectations”, thus the same social knowledge.
Consequently, one expects the same behaviour in the “others”. Any display
of alterity in an anthropologist is censured as the “invention of others”, i.e.
as a mystification conceived by those who claim to have studied diversity,
namely anthropologists. These forms of anthropological correctness aim to
avoid terminologies and themes that might even hypothetically hurt the
others’ feelings. The following is a typical example; nowadays using the
term “gypsies” is practically impossible. According to the logic of “anthropo-
logical correctness”, the proper term is Roma or, better yet, Rroma (with two
R’s) because allegedly the term “gypsy” has a negative connotation and is in-
herently insulting, thus socially discriminatory. Paradoxically, however,
some of the Roma groups want to be called gypsies.
   Objectionable social phenomena, according to the logic of “anthropolo-
gical correctness” are regarded as irrelevant in those in low or marginal so-
cial positions or roles. Unlike the “good guys down here”, anthropological
correctness attributes all possible and imaginable abominations to the “bad
guys up there”. In fact, whoever holds power must perforce be a “bad guy”.
In the logic of this populist and do-goodery methodology, carrying out a dis-
passionate and unprejudiced research on the elites has become nearly im-
possible because it would amount to a sort of sacrilege.
   We ought to add that paradoxically the dialogical and polyphonic ap-
proach proposed by Clifford and Marcus (Clifford, Marcus 1986) has gener-
ated a kind of anthropologically correct neo-paternalism that aims to con-
trast the moral virtues and positive forms of social solidarity of the “good
guys down here” with the arrogance, abuse and arbitrariness of the “bad
guys up there”. Thanks to this logic, at present an anthropologist feels a spe-
cific moral pressure to highlight the positive human and social qualities of
the members of the society being studied.
   Given the drifts produced by “anthropological correctness”, we can rightly
wonder whether we might be dealing with a new anthropological fiction sim-
ilar to the one of the “noble savage”.
   The sole difference lies in the fact that the “primitive man” has been re-
placed by the “immigrant”, the “refugee” without documents, the “politic-
ally persecuted” and, more in general, by the “poor”, the “exploited”, the
“marginalized”, the “outcast”. The “new noble savages” are precisely those
who fall under these categories on the fringes of society. Personally, I won-
der whether anthropology may be turning into a specific “social work” vari-


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POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: A FORM OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL “DO-GOODISM”                       239


ant in quest of a hypothetical, but unachievable “good society”. Yet, anthro-
pology cannot and must neither be the scientific crutch for “bleeding-heart”
development agencies, NGOs and such like associations.
   In the name of the current anthropological correctness, certain social rep-
resentations and related practices that might cast doubts on the moral integ-
rity of the so-called “powerless” as the “good guys” par excellence, have be-
come rather deplorable in anthropology. In this context we need only men-
tion themes that are considered disgraceful, such as representations and
everyday strategies linked to mistrust in the public sphere or the frequent
conflicts for status, reputation and honour. These behaviours instead are at-
tributed, without empirical evidence, to the “bad guys up there”.
   In line with “anthropological correctness”, if one wishes to be acknow-
ledged and respected in one’s own “scientific community”, one can hardly
avoid searching for unlikely relations, since they are missing, of communit-
arian trust, inclusion mechanisms, negotiation skills, hospitality institu-
tions, grassroots democratic structures, social movements, civil society or-
ganizations etc. of the “good guys down here”. In any case, to avoid any
charge of ethnocentrism and orientalism, current anthropology delights in
researching and inventing fictional, subaltern “cosy worlds” that are des-
pised and threatened by obscure and nefarious hegemonic powers.
   Finally, we need to add that this anthropologically correct populism is
strictly linked to a specific form of methodological individualism that most
times results in a sort of naïve voluntarism by which men, aside from any so-
cial boundaries, act freely and build their own Lebenswelt to their own liking.
This logically implies that social actors have the -clearly illusory- possibility
of choosing among a practically infinite array of action strategies beyond the
most diverse claims of social control. As such, social action is characterized
by an indiscriminate “everything goes”.
   Due to the above-mentioned “populism”, anthropology has lost its initial
allure stemming from its ability to develop and achieve a healthy regard
éloigné as in Lévi-Strauss or at least a realistic “interpretive approach” as in
Clifford Geertz (Geertz 1973), who, I would underscore once again, drew in-
spiration from Max Weber’s verstehende Soziologie (Weber 1980).
   In agreement with Jonathan Friedman, I can conclude that anthropologic-
al correctness, clearly one based on a do-goodery populism, is the social pro-
duction of intellectuals and academics who rightly or not feel burdened by a
guilty conscience because of their apparently higher social standing.




                                      2018 | ANUAC. VOL. 7, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2018: 235-240
240                                                                     CHRISTIAN GIORDANO


REFERENCES
Clifford, James, George Marcus, eds,1986, Writing culture. The poetics and politics of
      ethnography, Berkeley & Los Angeles, University of California Press.
Geertz, Clifford, 1973, The interpretation of cultures: Selected essays, New York, Basic
      Books.
Michels, Robert, 1989, Zur Soziologie des Parteiwesens in der modernen Demokratie.
      Untersuchungen über die oligarchischen Tendenzen des Gruppenlebens, Stutt-
      gart, Kröner Verlag.
Mosca, Gaetano, 1958, La classe politica, Bari, Laterza.
Pareto, Vilfredo, 2006, The rise and fall of elites: An application of theoretical sociolo-
      gy, London & New York, Routledge.
Said, Edward, 1978, Orientalism, New York, Pantheon.
Weber, Max, 1980, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie,
      Tübingen, J.C.B Mohr, Paul Siebeck.
Wright Mills, Charles, 2000, The power elite, New York & London, Oxford University
      Press




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                                      2018 | ANUAC. VOL. 7, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2018: 241-245




                                                                       BOOK FORUM

Political correctness, and the relentless decline of
critical reason
Giacomo LOPERFIDO
Universitat de Barcelona


Comment on JONATHAN FRIEDMAN, Politicamente corretto. Il conformismo morale come
regime, edited by Piero Zanini, translation by Francesca Nicola and Piero Zanini,
Milano, Meltemi, 2018, pp. 348.



   I met Jonathan Friedman in the early 2000s, when I had decided to make
my research training evolve from archaeology to anthropology. The wish I
then expressed to Friedman was to study radical right wing social move-
ments: a phenomenon that was – to my mind – poorly understood, and – at
that time – largely ignored by the social sciences.
   The early 2000s (perhaps not coincidentally the era in which many of the
debates that spurred the writing of this book took place) was a time of social
optimism in the West, and celebratory narratives of globalisation were pre-
dicting a bright future of freedom of movement and thought, racial diversity,
and cultural hybridity. In this context, not many social scientists were happy
to supervise research on right wing movements, cultural racism, and politic-
al violence of the neo-fascist kind. Friedman was then the one scholar (and
such he remained for long) I could find, who was willing to engage in long
discussions around this topic, and the one academic who accepted to super-
vise my MA, and eventually PhD research on this theme. I say all this in or-
der to situate my relationship with the author, as well as the theme of right-
wing ideologies (somehow involved in the topic of this book), which is in
both cases certainly partial and biased.


This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © Giacomo Loperfido
Political correctness, and the relentless decline of critical reason
2018 | ANUAC. VOL. 7, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2018: 241-245.
ISSN: 2239-625X – DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3515
242                                                             GIACOMO LOPERFIDO


   At the same time, if I were to pick one thing among the very many that I
have learnt from Jonathan Friedman, it would be the crucial value of critique
for the evolution of knowledge, and how science is always about the possibil-
ity of being wrong. This book itself, I would say, appears to me as a bold – if
polemical – act of strenuous intellectual opposition to (I am tempted to
write revolt against) the ever expanding breach of this principle. In my re-
view, I will try to stick to this idea myself, and possibly use it against Fried-
man, by trying to bring to light what I am critical about, before I move to
what I find important and productive.
   The book represents an extensive effort to deal with the establishment of
political correctness (PC) as a regime of sociality, and an attempt to under-
stand it from the analysis of the general conditions of its emergence. The es-
say has an explicitly structuralist approach and – within this frame – it com-
bines Marxian political economy with Global Systems theory, and a proces-
sual understanding of social reality, we could say, à la Victor Turner.
   An important social fact Friedman puts into relation with the emergence
of PC, is the establishment of multiculturalism as a political ideology in-
creasingly hegemonizing governmental policies, established discourses, and
the organisation of the everyday interactions in social life.
   In this frame, Friedman sees PC situations emerge as a defence mechan-
ism, protecting the ideological formations of multiculturalism from critical
attacks, dissent, or even scepticism.
   Such defence operates via repression of any critique, where those who are
critical of – or simply do not comply with – the multicultural grand narrat-
ive, are silenced by means of moral accusation. The imputation itself is ana-
lysed in terms of the creation of associative chains leading to the re-defini-
tion of the accused through morally essentialized categories such as racism,
fascism, nazism, and the like.
   The very necessity of writing this book – Friedman tells us – originates
from within the author’s personal life. The theoretical/analytical work
around PC was triggered by a series of attacks to Kajsa Ekholm Friedman -–
the author’s wife, herself an anthropologist – from different segments of
Swedish academia and the press, after Ekholm Friedman gave a talk where
some problematic aspects of policies where exposed (pp. 76-78) to an audi-
ence that the press initially categorised as “right wing” (pp. 78-83).
   The organisation of the book – as it appears to me – is divided in three
parts. In the introduction and the first chapter Friedman positions himself as
a writer, and introduces the reader to the problematic of political correct-
ness, while situating his work in relation to the existing literature. In the


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POLITICAL CORRECTNESS, AND THE RELENTLESS DECLINE OF CRITICAL REASON                  243


second part (chapters two, three, and four) he describes the series of events
and attacks, that eventually led to his and Ekholm Friedman’s work on PC.
The third part (chapters five, six and conclusion) is devoted to the analysis of
the PC phenomenon and its structural conditions of emergence.
   I find two issues problematic: one is more research/ethnography related,
the second concerns instead some aspects of Friedman’s analysis. I will start
with the first and move then to the second.
   I have been wondering if we can talk of this book as an ethnographically
based anthropological work, and I have decided that it is. I do believe with
Pierre Bourdieu (2003: 281) that «idiosyncratic personal experiences meth-
odically subjected to sociological control, constitute irreplaceable analytic
resources, and that mobilising one’s social past through self-socio-analysis
can and does produce epistemic as well as existential benefits», and this is
certainly what Friedman does with his “participant observation” of the
events, or even, following Bourdieu, his “participant objectivation”. How-
ever, especially for a book that aims at being healthily polemical, there is a
certain lack of clarity in the way ethnography and research are presented.
Some of the texts Friedman refers to (from Ekholm Friedman’s talk to – say
– Sweden’s “integration act”, to media and academic reactions, etc) are
simply evoked or summarised by the author, and poorly referenced (media
quotes miss date and/or page, what was the radio/tv broadcast, etc). I think
Friedman’s polemical zest would gain critical momentum from actually
presenting some more of these texts, while a more accurate referencing
would provide us with further information about the context in which they
have been used. Ethnographically, actors and characters should also be more
precisely situated. «A group of (mainly female) anthropologists raises in in-
dignation…» (p. 54); «A conversation with a Norwegian psychologists con-
firms…» (p. 284)1. Who are these people and where are they speaking from?
How did Friedman get to interact with them, how did they get involved in
the polemics? Friedman’s argument would become more solid if they were
presented with their own history and a description of the social relations
they are immersed in. This would have situated them within the larger se-
quence of events and given the reader a more substantiated backup of the
general theoretical argument.
   With regard to Friedman’s analysis, the Swedish situation comes about as
the product of a decline (or rather collapse) of egalitarian individualism – in
Dumontian terms –, and its fragmentation into a polarised geography of cul-
tural identities, in competition with one another. Swedish individualism,

1. Translation by the Author.

                                        2018 | ANUAC. VOL. 7, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2018: 241-245
244                                                            GIACOMO LOPERFIDO


moreover, has peculiar local specificities, as powerful collectivistic ideolo-
gies (which have taken shape during post-war economic expansion), and a
strongly centralised state, seem to have somehow weakened the process of
individualisation in the first place. Within this context, declining individual-
ism seems thus to turn established ideologies of social control from below
into mutual surveillance and social paranoia. So, the emergence of multicul-
tural ideology and PC regimes are presented as the tools of “new” elites try-
ing to establish themselves in power. The struggle for power creates a situ-
ation of fragmentation, social uncertainty and insecurity in which multicul-
tural ideologies and the PC regimes are used as mechanisms of social control
imposed from above.
    The newness of this elite and its competition for power have implications
that are not thoroughly explored. Which are the old ones? What is the his-
torical dynamic of conflict and replacement among old and new elites? What
is their composition? Are we talking of private or public elites? Is it econom-
ic, political elite, or media power, or both? How are the old and new elites
defined by their reciprocal positionalities? In other words, what are the logics
of the struggle for power within which multicultural ideologies and PC re-
gimes are mobilized? A more thorough class analysis of the Swedish state in
its historical transformation, as well as a deeper exploration of the upper
echelons of the global society that seem to have hijacked it would be pro-
ductive, here. Without that, the lack of clarity concerning the elites leaves
the reader wondering about the structural role that is given to PC: does it de-
fend some identities against others, or does it defend this newly established
order as such?
    Despite these aspects generating some confusion, however, the book does
a brilliant job of exposing a phenomenon that is increasingly paralysing
western societies, by disabling criticism both in the dynamics of knowledge
production and in political arenas. With his refusal to abide by the general
doxa protected and consolidated by PC dynamics, Friedman seems to open
up a space of knowledge that wasn’t accessible before: the global systemic
anthropological explanation of the PC phenomenon is powerful, thorough,
and original. Especially the comparison with the social logics of sorcery ac-
cusations in other parts of the world (appearing in the long, conclusive sec-
tions), makes structural invariants visible in differing contexts. This allows
the reader to scale up from the specificity of the cases presented by Fried-
man, to the larger logics of reproduction of social systems that – under the
current crisis – are undergoing powerful transformational pressures.
Throughout his long career as one of the world’s foremost anthropologists,
Friedman has always had the impudent courage of polemics and critique,

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POLITICAL CORRECTNESS, AND THE RELENTLESS DECLINE OF CRITICAL REASON                    245


never in and for itself, but always in the intent to open up the box of intel-
lectual debate, expose contradictions, and demystify grand narratives that
had become hegemonic. Also, and importantly, he always has been more
than willing to take criticism of himself and his own work.
    It appears somehow ironic that some of the polemics that have emerged
around this book have resulted in certain accusations of the author as “fas-
cist2”. Daring to define myself a scholar of fascism, I would say that the most
foundational functioning principle of this ideology is the repression of con-
flict and critique by means of externalization. Fascism as an ideology func-
tions by creating a rigidly enclosed in-group and out-group, and repressing
conflict and critique internal to the in-group via expulsion of the latter to-
wards the out-group (Lefort 1986; Loperfido 2018; Sternhell 1984). What
Jonathan Friedman does is precisely the contrary; his lucid work is so im-
portant because it brings the repressed critique back in, while rapidly vertic-
alizing arenas of power suffocate critical discussions via the imposition of a
PC logic.
    While writing this review, I was tempted to suggest that some lack of clar-
ity I imputed to the author might be coming from the emotionality involved
in having to face moral attacks reaching into the intimacy of his personal
life. Yet I decided not to venture into this territory. The private is private and
it is only Friedman’s job to respond to critique about his work. He will do
that, and will most likely conclude that regardless who’s right or wrong, a
full, open possibility to discuss anything is what remains crucial for the pro-
gress of both, knowledge and society.

REFERENCES
Bourdieu, Pierre, 2003, Participant objectivation, Journal of the Royal Anthropologi-
      cal Institute, 9: 281-294.
Lefort, Claude, 1986, The political forms of modern society, Cambridge, MA, MIT
      Press.
Loperfido, Giacomo, 2018, “Neither left nor right”: Crisis, wane of politics, and the
      struggles for sovereignty”, in Worldwide mobilisations, Don Kalb, Mao Mollo-
      na, eds, New York & Oxford, Berghahn: 118-14.
Sternhell, Zeev, 1989, Naissance de l’idéologie fasciste, Paris, Fayard.




2. Elisabetta Rosaspina, La ricerca è sempre «scorretta», La lettura/Corriere della Sera, 28
January 2018.

                                        2018 | ANUAC. VOL. 7, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2018: 241-245
                                       2018 | ANUAC. VOL. 7, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2018: 247-253




                                                                      BOOK FORUM

A book that is out of sync with current times
Piero VERENI
Università di Roma “Tor Vergata” / Trinity College, Rome Campus


Comment on JONATHAN FRIEDMAN, Politicamente corretto. Il conformismo morale come
regime, edited by Piero Zanini, translation by Francesca Nicola and Piero Zanini,
Milano, Meltemi, 2018, pp. 348.



   There is an interesting debate (at least in Italy) on whether the Left
should adopt nationalism/souverainism as one of its principles or whether it
should instead embrace cosmopolitanism/internationalism. This is a book
entirely about the first issue, to the point that the Author (henceforth JF)
employs what seems to be a historical oversimplification to support his view.
According to JF, until recently – when a moral inversion occurred due to
political correctness (PC) – the Left was solely focused on the interests of the
domestic population, or common people, in a purely domestic setting while
the Right was totally caught up in the international reach of its markets and
its transnational ruling class. This biased historical perspective ignores the
overly optimistic internationalism of the Left and the overly pessimistic isol-
ationism of the Right, to say the least, but it is nonetheless interesting to see
what JF is able to derive from such prejudicial attributions to the historical
Left and Right and the “moral inversion” that subverted them.
   Besides this historical bias, the basic issue with this book is that it is out
of sync with current language. We no longer live in a predominantly politic-
ally correct public sphere. It is true that there may be some far-flung corners
in the North where intellectuals, thinkers and politicians still believe that a


This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © Piero Vereni
A book that is out of sync with current times
2018 | ANUAC. VOL. 7, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2018: 247-253.
ISSN: 2239-625X – DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3516
248                                                                   PIERO VERENI


certain dose of political correctness and moral constraint should prevail in
public discourse, but for the most part, politics and public arenas have gone
wild in the last twenty years, and battles are now fought about reliability
rather than courtesy, whatever the point of view. This very simple historical
fact (that public discourse has largely moved on from political correctness)
creates a sense of estrangement in the reader, who sometimes struggles to
grasp references to contexts that have not existed for over two decades.
   This is an astonishing essay indeed. One very interesting point is that it is
(accidentally) a perfect example of that which it sets out to criticize. In order
to demonstrate his view of what PC really is, JF employs exactly the same
undocumented, preposterous moral dichotomies that he accuses PC of using.
Although he wants to play PC basher, he uses exactly the same rhetoric and
ontology as the worst PC fanatics. For instance, as an authorial strategy JF
appears to be affected by the same outrage he correctly identifies in bell
hooks and other champions of PC. While hooks just longs to murder «an an-
onymous white man», JF seems to wish exactly the same for an anonymous
postcolonial, possibly coloured, dumb cosmopolitan member of the PC con-
spiracy. The central question revolves around social definition, namely the
same question that can be asked of the shocking stance that hooks un-
ashamedly maintains: who is the «anonymous white man» or «the elite(s)»
that they refer to?
   The word elite/elites appears 229 times, but is never defined. It is often
connoted (national, Swedish, cultural, political, cosmopolitan, Western,
new, centralized, established, rising, academic, globalized, dominant, emer-
gent, European) yet never denoted. We grasp that the elite(s) just want to
keep their status but we do not know what that status is: is it economic,
symbolic or political? We are told that PC discourse is central to them keep-
ing that status but why that should be so is not stated. The undefined pres-
ence of a mysterious elite plotting behind the scenes against the "common
people" rings an ominous bell in the ears of those who have been following
the transformation of political public discourse in the past twenty years or
so. When researching a paranoid stance, you have to be careful not to use
the same arguments as the people that you are studying.
   On a more theoretical level, I find JF’s theory on the relative weight of se-
mantic and indexical categories extremely epistemologically weak. His re-
peated hypothesis is a very general statement: human beings communicate
to talk about the world (semantics) and to locate themselves and others in
that world (indexicality): «In normal situations the semantic content of com-
munication is dominant and the indexical less marked, but in periods of


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A BOOK THAT IS OUT OF SYNC WITH CURRENT TIMES                                         249


stress or in institutional situations of strong horizontal social control, the
social indexical outweighs the semantic» (p. 260). Unfortunately, we are left
with no clue as to what a “normal situation” could be, apart from consider-
ing “globalization” as a period of stress (associated in Sweden with a strong
horizontal social control, I imagine).
   A central critical point in JF’s view of PC is the connection with his previ-
ous scientific social theory. Kajsa Ekholm Friedman (KEF) and JF are famous
for having questioned the vulgar idea that Globalization is a recent phe-
nomenon, dating from the second half of the Twentieth century or, for some,
from the late Nineteenth century. With KEF and JF’s work, we found out that
the world has always been integrated at least at regional level and big chunks
of the globe have exchanged goods, information and “culture” for centuries,
long before airline deregulation in the US in the mid-1970s.
   If this still holds true, and JF still believes what he published in 2008, we
have a problem with his current theory of PC. According to JF, PC is rooted
in multicultural ideology, and multiculturalism and multicultural policies
are fiercely attacked by JF as the epitome of new and old cosmopolitan elites
opposed to the “common people”, who would rather stick to their good old
habits and local practises. Especially when dealing with the Swedish case
study, JF pits a cosmopolitan elite (led quite oddly by Ulf Hannerz) in love
with multiculturalism, with down-to-earth Swedish common people, who
are represented as anxious pensioners afraid of being crushed by the elite
simply because the former are annoyed by the general multi-whatever moral
climate.
   As an Italian with his own problems with populism and souverainism,
though, I will not linger on this point. I would rather focus on the strange
fact that whatever existed well before a multiculturalist ideology took off in
Sweden is never debated or questioned in this book. JF confines himself to
describing PC (in the form of multiculturalism) as «a drastic change in prin-
ciple from a formerly culturally defined nation state». «Formerly» entails a
whole century of nation building, not a natural Swedish-ness that was all of
a sudden toppled by a plot hatched by a bunch of elitist cosmopolitans. If the
theory of Global Systems (GS) is true, where were the pure Swedes totally ig-
norant of the world and desperate to maintain their traditions? Where did
they start and end? And if, as in the GS theory, what was imported could be
incorporated into the “cultural definition” by simply denying (or not know-
ing) its foreign origins, is that enough to explain the sense of horizontal
solidarity among nationals? Should we not add a lot of political activity re-
sponsible for homogenizing the practises, imaginations, tongues and values


                                        2018 | ANUAC. VOL. 7, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2018: 247-253
250                                                                  PIERO VERENI


of the Nation? Why should multiculturalism be so dangerous and repellent
in itself to “common people” as though they once naturally belonged to a
culturally defined nation? I know very little of Scandinavia, but I know
enough of Southern Europe to be sure that cultural homogeneity is not a
natural condition in many, many cases and had to be produced, imposed,
forged and often violently established. Why then should this «culturally
defined» Nation State be taken as sacred or naturally belonging to the
people, when so often the people that came out of the process were the vic-
tims of that production? If multiculturalism is functional to the new exploit-
ation of the global masses (and I believe JF has a point when he states this),
what about the link between national economies and national homogeneity?
If we need REF and JF to understand the deep connection between new
modes of deterritorialized production and cosmopolitan multiculturalist
ideology, don’t we still need Benedict Anderson and Ernest Gellner to ex-
plain the “history” of any national cocooning in the safe cradle of traditions?
Why should the homogeneous be the standard, the benchmark of identity,
and all intentional coexistence of differences be a fraud enacted by evil or
stupid actors? Having worked in Greek Macedonia, that sounds like yet an-
other attempt to impose a homogeneous model of identity where people
have learnt to put aside cultural differences and focus on other unifying
principles. Religion can be one, civil values may be another.
   I am not denying there are a lot of problems with multicultural life in the
Western world, but it is not cultural difference that necessarily creates the
real problem for real people. Inequality of opportunities, ignorance and utter
poverty: these are the real issues at stake.
   Besides all these details, I want my point to be clear. In the representation
of “ordinary” Swedes (and equally for the cosmopolitan and evil elites) there
is no history, no cultural elaboration, no debate. They seem to have arrived
on this planet as ready-made Swedes, only to be shattered by the evil forces
of multiculturalism.
   The graphic part of the book provided new input for an old project of
mine, namely, to write an essay on how tables, charts and drawings have
been used in social sciences to mimic the respectable formalism of harder
sciences and – most of all – the visual sexiness of economics. Due to space
constraints, I will not linger on the fact that in the book some figures have
no textual description, no caption at all and are not numbered (p. 159), or
that some curious axes feature undocumented names on the sides (what is
«self-direct» and «etero-direct» in figure 3 p. 165? The State? The people?
The Government?). I will focus instead on figure 8, «Hegemonic cycles».


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A BOOK THAT IS OUT OF SYNC WITH CURRENT TIMES                                         251


From a purely graphic perspective, this is jaw-dropping: you have a sinusoid
cycle in opposition to a co-sinusoid anti-cycle. One reads «Hegemony», the
other «Homogeneity» (but we are told in the text that it should read «Hier-
archy»).
   There are two inexplicable points, or at least two points I could not figure
out the reason for, although I worked on those pages for hours, truly.
   Why are the curves represented as opposite, even though they apparently
depict two dimensions in “direct” (that is “not inverse”) relation? Why is He-
gemony at its zenith when Homogeneity is represented at its nadir? JF ex-
plains that «In periods of expanding hegemony the political center functions
as an assimilation machine». I read this as a “direct (causal) correlation”
between Hegemony and Homogeneity, if it is reasonable to take “assimila-
tion” as a proxy for homogeneity. It is well known that the expansion of the
power of the nation state as a political and economic model (from the 19th
century to the first half of the Twentieth century) goes hand in hand with a
strong process of internal (nation-building) and external (colonialism) ho-
mogenization at all levels, from the imposition of national languages to the
standardization of more or less everything. Why are two clearly “parallel”
and “directly” dependent processes represented in figure 8 as opposites? Un-
fortunately, we cannot rely on JF’s explanation, or at least I cannot, because
this statement makes no sense to me: «The inverted curves represent the in-
verse relation between hegemonic expansion and decline and accompanying
integration/assimilation and fragmentation/cultural identification» (p. 270
my italics). How can a curve be “inverse” and “accompanying” another curve
at the same time? The Italian translators (whom I congratulate for their ex-
cellent work) had to resort to «quella [relazione] parallela» to translate “ac-
companying” and fell into the same trap as JF. The point is that each sinus-
oid curve does have an inverse relation, but “with itself” at different
angles/times, and surely the curve «Hegemony» moved in time from «politic-
al integration» to «political fragmentation». This is the inverse relation. Sim-
ilarly, Hegemony/Hierarchy moved across time from the national integral
cultural identity to the fragmentation of multiculturalism and cosmopolitan-
ism, but the two curves moved in a parallel sinusoid curve. Why does JF visu-
ally emphasize his mistake?
   I would blame what he calls «associationism». «Associationism is based on
the indexicality, or social sign value of statements, i.e. on those properties
which can be used to classify statements or the subjects of statements into
pre-existent categories» (p. 75). As we have already seen, JF relies on a
Bourdeian model of communication as a social system of distinction. We can
act, work and talk using «critical rationality» namely, «what is meant by a

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252                                                                   PIERO VERENI


statement» (this is semantics), or we can act and talk (and draw figures in
our essays) «based on what that which is meant means in the wider social
field» (this is associationism). There is no doubt that the figures in JF’s essay
look extremely elegant and very – I cannot find a better word – scientific.
Two opposite curves immediately remind us of the cycles of growth and de-
cline in economics, and their inverse relation to other curves (investments,
welfare expenses, whatever makes sense to relate to productivity cycles). If
you are able to draw such a figure in your essay, the wider social field cat-
egorizes the book and its author in the realm of true science. The real (ra-
tional) content of the drawing is pushed into the background while the relev-
ant part becomes the association of the figure with the glittering world of ra-
tional-cum-scientific view.
   However, as I said, there is another blind point in the drawing, besides
this incomprehensible opposite curve relation, and that is the existence of
“cycles” in what could be better represented as a timeline that starts in the
late 18th century and ends in our time. Even though JF frequently writes
about «hegemonic cycles» in global systems, there is no way to understand
why a book about such a partial and time-limited phenomenon as “political
correctness” should be analysed within a cyclical framework. Moreover, the
emergence of PC (with its opposing cultural aspects, cosmopolitanism and
indigenization) is always (from the subtitle) related to the «End of Hege-
mony». Hegemony of what? Of Western Politics and Economics, no doubt.
Therefore, JF explains to us what happened to identities when Western he-
gemony began to fade away: the integrative process of states that still con-
trolled (national and inter-national) economies has been slowly but steadily
superseded by new economic centralizations that needed a newly estab-
lished elite interconnected on a global level. That elite thus pushed towards
multiculturalism for states and cosmopolitism for themselves, causing a loc-
alist or indigenist reaction among “common people” that had incorporated
as natural the old forms of national identity and do not want to accept the
newly imposed interest and passion for diversity.
   I definitely feel that this model is too simple and is missing central di-
mensions, but this is not the point. The point is that this is nonetheless a
“historicist” explanation, not a “naturalist” one: there is a specific political-
economic model, the nation state, with its own historical genesis and con-
formation that suffers the consequences of a worldwide reallocation of eco-
nomic resources and the formation of new centralities. This historical phe-
nomenon produces a cultural consequence, which is a shift from national
(civic) to post-national forms of identities, either ethnic or cosmopolitan.
The specific shape of post-national identities is still a historical issue, not a

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A BOOK THAT IS OUT OF SYNC WITH CURRENT TIMES                                         253


natural one that can be explained in terms of cycles and rules. Without the
historical Nation State there would have been no «cultural identity» the way
JF conceives it in figure 8 as the starting point of a potentially cyclical pro-
cess. National cultural identity has nothing natural about it, as historians of
pre-modern-state empires and other political entities know very well. Cit-
izens of the Roman Empire or the Most Serene Republic of Venice were not
naturally endowed with the same «cultural identity» entailed in JF’s model,
which is national identity. That was because before the modern Nation State
became the benchmark of world politics and economy, there was no shared
citizenship as a complex of duties and rights packed into a common cultural
frame. Instead there were other forms of collective identity (religion, kinship
ties, locality, local “languages”) and the hegemonic crisis (of Rome or
Venice, for instance) could not produce the same cycle of «de-culturaliza-
tion» and «multi-culturalization» that is represented in figure 8.
   Thus, the following question is crying out for an answer: why describe a
purely historical event as though it were just a moment in a natural cycle? I
cannot help finding an explanation once more in the potential association of
natural cycles with natural sciences. From there, it takes very little to associ-
ate the social scientist with the “real” scientist in the lab, wearing his white
coat while practicing real rational science against those magicians of the
word who mesmerise the populace with empty praises for a post-national
way of living together. Let us go back to crude reality, figure 8 suggests,
where we have to face the natural laws of identity and power. I must admit I
do not share this naturalizing view of what political and cultural identities
are, as I think that anthropologists in general have a different notion of
identities as historical processes. Indeed, I must have read too many “Po-
Mo” authors1 and been affected by their notion that it is historical idiosyn-
crasies, and not natural laws, that make up human life.




1. Post-modernist literature.

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                                       2018 | ANUAC. VOL. 7, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2018: 255-263




                                                                       BOOK FORUM

“Do not disturb”
Why we need to be awake

Jonathan FRIEDMAN
University of California, San Diego / École des hautes études en sciences sociales


Response to comments by George BACA, Christian GIORDANO, Giacomo LOPERFIDO
and Piero VERENI on Jonathan FRIEDMAN, Politicamente corretto. Il conformismo mor-
ale come regime, edited by Piero Zanini, translation by Francesca Nicola and Piero
Zanini, Milano, Meltemi, 2018, pp. 348.



   First, and briefly, I would like to thank the reviewers for reading and criti-
cizing my book. After so many years it is a real pleasure to have the issues
discussed. And I, of course, greatly welcome all your attacks. Open discus-
sion is best weapon against PC.
   Vereni definitely has an ax to grind, which, although he accuses me of the
same tactics as those whom I criticize, is not the case at all (see below). But
he may make whatever assumptions he likes. The picture he paints is one in
which I am the angry old man, leftist nationalist or rather sovereignist as he
seems to presume. The best way for me to deal with his critique given the li-
mited amount of space allowed is simple outline:
   1. It is interesting that there is a debate in Italy on whether or not the left
can embrace the national or whether it should be cosmopolitan. This is an
old debate in the left, which I do discuss in the book, one that divided the
early communist movement between national Bolsheviks and international-
ists. Now the internationalism of the workers movement is not really the
same as the cosmopolitan ideology of today even if there is a certain overlap.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © Jonathan Friedman
“Do not disturb”: Why we need to be awake
2018 | ANUAC. VOL. 7, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2018: 255-263.
ISSN: 2239-625X – DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3517
256                                                           JONATHAN FRIEDMAN


George Soros and Trotsky do not have a lot in common other than what
might be called a global intentionality. This is the difference between the
International and what in France was referred to many years ago as «l’inter-
nationale du capital» (Dockes 1975).
   2. Vereni states that PC is dead; that we have gone beyond all that; and
that nowadays it’s about being “reliable” rather than PC. It is true that some
of the manuscript of the book dates from the first years of 2000 and two of
the chapters are based on articles written in the late 1990s. I wondered my-
self over the years whether it was all still relevant. However circumstances
have proved to me that the relevance has increased if anything. In my con-
clusion I do say that we have gone beyond PC, not to a more normal state of
openness, but to one of open warfare. To say that PC is extinct is to be out of
touch with what is happening in the US and in large parts of Europe, from
“trigger warnings”, to the new UN migration pact in which it will become
more or less illegal to criticize immigration, to the expelling of employees
who say the wrong things, all of which I refer to in the Postscript. The con-
tent of PC is the same but it is clearly more militarized, as in the current
conflict between the “new populists” and the so-called traditional party
complexes.
   3. Is my argument of the same type as those whom I criticize? Do I make
use of the same dichotomies as those whom I criticize? Am I out to kill the
cosmopolitans? Is it wrong to make the connection between the new multi-
cultural/hybrid discourses and the elites that I document have fabricated
them? Where are the “undocumented, preposterous moral dichotomies”
that he claims I make use of? This sounds like a very angry and vicious PC
advocate, the kind who has applauded much of the so-called anti-fascist vio-
lence that is clearly on the rise. I do make a serious effort to document my
arguments. I could have written a chapter on the history of elites, but I did-
n’t think it was necessary in such a book, seeing that there are shelfloads of
publications on the subject. Is there a real polarization in Western societies?
All the increasing fear talk, not least in university organized conferences
about the rise of populism is ample proof that this is real enough, to say
nothing of the real politics of parties to the “gilets jaunes”.
   4. With reference to my use of the notion of “indexicality” to relate PC
language to situations of instability, I am not sure that the critique is seri-
ous, even from the reviewer’s perspective. Is the contrast between normal
situations and situations of instability so counter-intuitive? After all I also
illustrate the contrast.



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   5. In the remarks on the fact that Kajsa Ekholm Friedman (KEF in follow-
ing references) and I have been writing about a global systemic anthropology
for so long he finds it paradoxical that we can be so critical of globalists. I
find this quite absurd and assume that the reader didn’t do a careful job.
First, trying to locate globalization within global systemic processes has
been one of our priorities and has nothing to do with taking sides. Nowhere
is Hannerz accused of leading a globalist movement. That would be absurd!
On the contrary, he is described as more of an academic “wannabe”... not the
same thing. This is just as false as the accusation that I say that PC is «root-
ed in multicultural ideology». What I do say and exemplify is that academics
and other “intellectuals” have produced much of the ideological texts for the
new elites.
   6. Have I ever stated that cultural homogeneity is a “natural” phenome-
non? Certainly not in this book. I have always discussed all identities as the
product of practices and always in the process of production as such. The
presentation offered here is a mere parody. If I live in a rental apartment, the
history of its tenants does not eliminate my feeling of being home in it. This
is typical globalist rhetoric, like accusing anyone who likes his home for be-
ing a racist. We are all nomads now!
   7. Can it be maintained – as Vereni states – that «Inequality of opportuni-
ties, ignorance and utter poverty» is the real problem of multicultural soci-
ety? It is a common explanation among liberals and leftists, i.e. it’s all about
class. Of course there is a connection which I have taken up many times, be-
tween marginalization of immigrants, poverty and criminality. This is, in
fact, a principle argument of some populist parties for stopping mass immi-
gration. They refer to the formation of a new underclass, not least where the
labor market cannot absorb the newcomers. But this does not change the
fact of ethnicization which occurs in such situations, one in which violence
is often directed at the “other” group. And this is a generalized problem and
not a product of the racism of the host society, something that has also been
well documented. If it were otherwise, all poor people would be automatical-
ly redefined as culturally foreign.
   8. I take it that my critic does not like my use of graphic representations. I
apologize if there are some missing captions or numbers for some of the
graphics (I think these are corrected in the longer American version of this
book). I can only say that I have not been criticized for precisely these things
before. He spends most of his argument on figure 8 in which I try to repre-
sent the inverse relation between processes of political-economic hegemo-
nization and processes of cultural integration. First, these are two curves not
sinusoid curves. And why is it that cultural integration and political-eco-

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258                                                             JONATHAN FRIEDMAN


nomic hegemony cannot vary inversely to one another? I wrote an entire
book about this in 1994 (Friedman 1994) and no one has ever informed me
that this relation is impossible, especially in graphic form. Cultural fragmen-
tation that is rampant in the West today but which began in the 1980s is, in
my argument, closely related to the declining hegemony of the West, a
process that is quite the opposite of what occurred in the period of increas-
ing Western hegemony, something that I have been documenting for the
past four decades. From the increasing regionalism in the 1980s, then the
ethnic politics of immigration, indigenous politics, all have become increas-
ingly salient, not least the shift in Europe to Islamic based immigration (see
Tibi 2002 [1998], 2008) with serious consequences related to ethno-religious
violence. This should not seem surprising for those who are not entirely re-
pressed.
   9. As for non-nation state social orders, I have been clear that the nation
state is a recent phenomenon and in discussing the model to which the
graphic refers I state that cultural homogeneity is common in the national
order but ethnic hierarchy is the more general pattern of integration in the
longer history of state orders. Both of these forms of integration break down
in periods of hegemonic crisis. In fact the very proliferation of the nation
state in the late 19th century is directly related to the crisis of, for example,
the Habsburg Empire. Nationalism here was a product of the fragmentation
of empire. The same might even be said for the emergence of nation states in
Europe more generally. It has even been ventured that the French Revolu-
tion was essentially a nationalist project, pitting the “people” against a cos-
mopolitan aristocracy (Dubost, Sahlins 2000).
   10. Vereni claims that I use a naturalistic rather than historical approach
to issues of expansion and contraction of hegemony and that this is all an at-
tempt to sound scientific. If there is anything that sounds “scientific” or
natural it is the discovery that this “shit” has happened before, which could
give reason to be a little suspicious about the functioning of the world or
global system. Perhaps, as he says, he has read too much of the “Po-Mo” lit-
erature, especially if he thinks that using graphs is some kind of fake science.
   George Baca’s discussion of the book is, of course, more to my liking and
his criticism is thoroughly argued and I agree with much of his argument.
However his focus on the issue of multiculturalism as a facet of the nation
state is contrary to my own understanding of developments in Sweden as in
other nation states in the West at least. There are a number of issues here.
First, let me try to specify more clearly the nature of the argument concern-
ing multiculturalism and immigration, not least because it is related to the


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global systemic model that Baca seems to be in agreement with. Mass migra-
tion of populations with so-called different cultures, leads at first to a situ-
ation of cultural segregation and even enclavization, but this is dissolved
when the host society is expanding so that immigrant groups are included in
the national economy along with the host population. There are variations
on this process, from the strongly assimilationist republican model of France
to the more pluralist model of England and the even more complex model of
the United States. So it is clear that the nation state has always absorbed
new populations. But no one presumably would deny that there are serious
contradictions involved that are distributed along a scale of increasing/de-
creasing integration. However the argument in the book is basically that
global elite formation since the 1980s has been characterized by an identific-
ation of the latter out of the nation. In previous eras this was not an issue
since aristocracies were not rooted in local territorial entities (although even
that varied historically). Elites who have splendid residences all over the
world and are married globally have been discussed before (Wagner 1999,
Pinçon and Pinçon-Charlot 1996, Friedman 2012). Their discourses define
themselves as global citizens and their opposites are referred to as, e.g. “ter-
riens”, terrestrials who inhabit limited spaces to which they are strongly at-
tached (Wagner 1999: 204). This kind of discourse has been adapted by the
new elites as well. I do try and demonstrate the extent to which some politi-
cians identify out of the nation, and the section of the Swedish constitution
which I quote recategorizes Swedes as an ethnic group among others and
claims that we need a new way or forging unity in the new multi-ethnic
world. Now one might well argue that this is still about the nation, but its
content is greatly transformed in a way that turns political elites into a
group positioned above the population over which it rules. The “will of the
people” (now associated with Nazism) is transformed into the “wills of the
peoples”. This political change is accompanied by a blade-runner like lower
class formation that does not act as a subject but is divided into multiple
groups with different cultural and even social orders that are maintained by
multicultural decree as well as local circumstances, where criminality, ag-
gression and violence increase and where no unity is achieved except within
the local groups themselves. Could a national unity be forged out of this as
occurred to some extent in the US as a result of WWII? That could only be
realized in a world of nationalistic states and there is evidence that this is
not the case although there are clear nationalist tendencies today, usually
classified as populism.



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260                                                           JONATHAN FRIEDMAN


   The model of the EU is, to my mind, an excellent expression of this post-
national elite tendency. Macron is its foremost symbol, combining his desire
to be at Versailles with his attack on nationalism as opposed to “patriotism”
whatever that is supposed to mean. Perhaps he means “for king and country”
but his country seems to be the EU and he is intent on giving it its own army.
The argument I think I made explicit was that there is a critical difference
between a multicultural state and a nation state which resides in the dynam-
ics of identification with the larger political unit and with its cultural con-
tent. Of course in countries such as the US the national culture is thin com-
pared with Europe although there is a repertoire of attitudes, behaviors, and
even forms of sociality that are quite distinct. Americans do recognize one
another when they travel the world. The ethnicization of the country may
have changed this significantly so that what was formerly American is now
understood as white. In both the US and Europe, the contemporary multicul-
tural trend has led in the direction of pluralism in the sense of segregation,
enclavization and even cultural warfare. The new cosmopolitan elites, more
visible in Europe, perhaps, are the main bastion of multicultural politics.
While the latter is included geographically within the same state, I would not
call this a mere variation on the nation state as such. The nation state pro-
ject was also elite and did not emanate from some pre-defined “people”, of
course, but the content of the project was quite different. As Benedict An-
derson wrote «there is no tomb of the unknown Marxist» (1983: 10); the na-
tion works in cultural terms but not the plural society. The Korean case is
very interesting in this context because it is an example of an expansive or-
der able to integrate foreigners into the workforce, which is the opposite of
the Swedish situation as in other European countries. I wonder if the Korean
state uses immigrants as a symbol of the good as opposed to Korean ethnics.
Does this push me into the arms of cultural conservatives? Absolutely! But
my point is to get the description right not to take sides. Lenin was a real
cultural conservative... typical of Marxists once upon a time. As for Swedish
elites and their politics, it’s true that they made a major change in the 1950s
as they tried to become the world’s good guy, a position that they have tried
to maintain, but this had nothing to do with multiculturalism and the in-
ternal restructuring of the country that occurred in the late 1970s and 1980s.
As for my anguish… well maybe at the time but this is very much “anguish at
a distance”. Was Kajsa the leader of an anti-immigrant group? Well they im-
plied in the newspaper that she was leader of PWMI 1 and I would add that
this was not so important since the group disappeared within a year or so. It

1. PWMI stands for the People's Will and Mass Immigration (Folkviljan och
massinvandring).


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was more of an event than a movement. As for the exploitation of Third
World migrants in Sweden, my point was explicitly that this was not the case
since this was in no way labor migration but rather welfare migration and it
was quite explicit at the time. There is even a Ph.D thesis about how papers
were prepared in West Africa for entry into different European countries de-
pending on the scale from work to welfare.
   Both Loperfido and Baca indicate that I seem to have been emotionally in-
volved with this subject. It is true that I would have never indulged in this
subject matter out of a purely intellectual interest even if I think I would
have been wrong not to have done so. Perhaps I was lucky in having been
thrown into this situation which was quite an ordeal. On the other hand both
my wife and I have a history of being apparently provocative to those in
power, first from issues of Marxism in the late 1960s and 1970s, then global
systems and now this! What a pain in the ass. Being a provocative person
seems to come naturally to some, I suppose, but this is no explanation. Per-
haps it’s hubris, but I do think that science and political correctness are
totally incompatible.
   This book was not meant as an ethnography in the normal sense, but an
anthropological analysis of a situation. I should clearly have developed the
issue of method in the book but I suppose I was too engaged in my argument
to really care enough about the methodology. I think that some of these is-
sues are resolved in the longer English version of this book where I have
dealt more explicitly with some of the anthropological problems involved in
this research. As for the question of elites, who they are and where they
come from, this is also dealt with in more detail in the English version. The
argument is basically that there is a transformation of elite identities in the
period following the 1980s in which the latter begin increasingly to identify
out of the nation state. This is not only Swedish, of course, and there are
plenty of examples of the phenomenon that I describe. The context of this is
what I refer to as double polarization, a simultaneous fragmentation of cul-
tural identities and a polarization between elites and people and even
between new upper classes and former working classes who are downwardly
mobile in this period. I do mention the fact that Sweden in the post-World
War II period was known for its very egalitarian political order in which the
political class was hardly existent as an autonomous actor, where their
wages were low compared to other social goups and where they were access-
ible to all citizens. This changed rapidly after the 1980s as the country as a
whole became significantly more stratified. It is this change that I discuss at
some length in the book. And where does PC come into it all. It is not
merely a tool of the rising elites. Stalin’s PC is not the equivalent of today’s
PC. The former is an expression of raw power, the latter is built into a mech-

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262                                                              JONATHAN FRIEDMAN


anism of shaming which works within the forms of sociality that already ex-
ist in a particular society which accounts the differences between the places
in which it occurs. It doesn’t appear as a top-down phenomenon although it
may well be orchestrated in such terms. Rather it occurs in relatively “egalit-
arian and cooperative” milieu such as the contemporary academy. What is
significant here is the conjunction of a major ideological shift that is linked
to the rise of new elites. That shift is crucial; one that takes us from the rise
of cultural identities in the late 1970s to the ethnicization of the social or-
der, so that cultural identity eclipses class identity. The globalization of
elites entails their encompassment of the cultural fragmentation over which
they preside. This takes the form of multiculturalism, the celebration of di-
versity, especially in symbolic terms, in the accumulation of cultural spe-
cificity in art objects, artefacts, home furnishing all of which is a logical sub-
category of cultural cosmopolitanism. PC comes into play in situations
where ideologies are vying for dominance, in this case the new cosmopolitan
multiculturalism. Those who identify with such ideologies are often academ-
ics, cultural personalities, artists, media “intellectuals” who are not elites in
themselves but identified with the latter. It implies a moralization of the so-
cial field and the use of techniques of exclusion to secure dominance. All this
is necessary since both the ideology and the social positions implied in the
latter are not clearly institutionalized but, on the contrary, quite fragile. So
to answer Loperfido’s question as to who is being defended by PC, it is both
the elites and the set of cultural representations with which they have iden-
tified. This is about the attempt to turn a particular cultural identity into a
dominant ideology.
    Giordano’s review, which is perhaps too flattering, but I enjoy it of course,
concentrates on what he calls «anthropological correctness» and which he
locates in the emergence in the 1980s of the self-critical tendency of the “re-
flexive turn” associated with Marcus and Clifford (1986). The thrust of this,
which he sees as positive for the field, was the critique of anthropological
authority, the third person defined description of the “Other” as something
different although not lower unless we are willing to forget the pervasive re-
lativism of much of the history of anthropology. Even Geertz is attacked, al-
though, especially in the case of Marcus it is not a substantial criticism. In
my understanding Geertz is the real problem here since he insisted on the
complete authority of the anthropologist and the entire project of writing
culture is really the Geertzian mission. No multivocalism is welcome here no
matter how literary the style. Part of this development included something
more, not just the reflexive turn but the post-colonial globalist turn which
came later and which Geertz, of course, was quite against. I cannot but agree


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with his discussion of anthropological correctness which is the form that it
took in our discipline; all about terminology and what can be said. I recall of
course, that Sami did and often today also insist that they are Laps and not
Sami which is a language label only. And I remember seeing the same kind of
comments from the San who preferred to be called Bushmen. It is quite a
story, this, quite absurd and shameful as well. When KEF and I worked in
Hawaii we had issues with the white members of the movement who wanted
us not to discuss matters close to the lives of people in the village where we
worked on the grounds that it was akin to racism. The villagers were furious
about this. So yes, the “do-goodery” populism invoked by Giordano is a seri-
ous threat to research, but I would caution against calling this populism,
since it is very much limited to academics and I would say academic elites
even if the latter term has been deemed incorrect by some. Popular among
some even if it is based on a culture of fear, it is not the same as the classic
notion of populism, even if I do understand what the reviewer has in mind.
The populism that is scaring the crap out of the new elites is one that has its
roots in movements like the famous American movement of that name,
which from the late Nineteenth century was composed of workers and farm-
ers and opposed both the capitalist and political classes.

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Dubost, Jean-Francois, Peter Sahlins, 2000, Et si on faisait payer les étrangers ? Louis
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Dockes, Pierre, 1975, L’internationale du capital, Paris, PUF.
Friedman, Jonathan, 1994, Culture, identity and global process, London, Sage
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