A Jeanne Site
A Jeanne Site
California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Latest update: October 12, 1999
Curran or
Takata.
Jeanne's Notes on Exercise 9: Consensus and Conflict
Travis Fraser and Sonya Flower Answer
Lecture notes:
From a consensus perspective, society is moving forward in this new wave of technology, which displaces some workers, but provides thousands of new jobs and careers for others, often at higher levels, with better career paths. Thus, we have agreed as a socieity to accept with the new technology the labor short term labor displacement that technology may cause.
From a conflict perspective, society is providing new jobs and career paths for those with sufficient advantage to acquire the new skills, but those who had no access to such training are finding their jobs destroyed by the shift in technology, with little attention given to equipping them for new work or providing them with jobs they can do at wages they can live at. From this perspective there is no agreement, no consensus. Those with currently more saleable skills are taking work at the expense of those with now-outdated skills. Those losing the work did not agree, and this is very much like a class issue, because it is based on access to new training.
Cliff, in calling "downsizing" a corporate crime, took the conflict perspective.
Sonya Flower and Travis S. Fraser wrote:
ANSWER:
All crime can be considered bad by the majority (consensus), yet individual crimes can be looked at in a positivistic sense. Example is person steals food to feed family, it is semi-acceptable because the family needs to eat.
Sonya Flower
Travis Fraser
Law and Social Change, CRMJ 490
On Mon, 11 Oct 1999, Susan Takata wrote:
Clarify what you mean by "positivism."
Susan
On Mon, 11 Oct 1999, Travis S Fraser wrote:
Okay, I read the defenition in the back of Arrigo and it says that everything can be identified or controlled with scientific exactness or precision. So, Consensus (everyone agreeing) and positivisim (on one answer). That is vary hard to do...look at what happpend in Criminology class on the abortion issue.
Travis Fraser
On Mon, 11 Oct 1999, Travis S Fraser wrote:
Okay, I read the defenition in the back of Arrigo and it says that everything can be identified or controlled with scientific exactness or precision. So, Consensus (everyone agreeing) and positivisim (on one answer). That is vary hard to do...look at what happpend in Criminology class on the abortion issue.
Travis Fraser
On Oct 11 1999, Susan Takata wrote:
Let me clarify. We went over this more in the crim class than law class.
What Jeanne meant by consensus theory are Durkheim & Merton (structural
functionalists who are politically conservative). Durkheim established
sociology as an accepted academic discipiline by borrowing from the
biologic sciences (check out lecture summaries in the theory class off of
DH). By borrowing from biology they were considered positivists.
This question we really haven't gone over in the law class. It's a
challenge for you two to attempt to tackle. Not all questions/exercises
that are up are the material that Jeanne and I both are covering
necessarily.
We kind of hit on this when we talked about Marxist criminology.
Susan
On Oct 12 1999, Susan wrote to Jeanne:
Travis and Sonya are trying to answer this exercise and I haven't gone
over this material. It's nice that they're trying.
Susan
On Oct 12 1999, Jeanne Curran wrote:
For me, positivism is a philosophical position, akin to scientism, that believes that there is a reality out there that we can now, for which there are universal laws, if we can discover them, and that enlightenment is the discovery of such universality. Positivism believes that ultimately everything can be treated in a scientific, unbiased, neutral way.
Postmodernism, critical theory, etc. are opposed to such universalism, and fearful that in the search for enlightenment we are destroying the local, the different, the creative, the human.
And then she added by e-mail:
Susan, Travis, and Flower:
When I was comparing consensus to positivism, I had in mind the intense criticism that critical theorists of all kinds have made of positivism's certainty that "truth" can be revealed, that there is some universal truth that we will discover as enlightenment. Consensus theory, the approach to justice theory that believes that our laws and justice are concepts we "agree" upon and that fit our society as best as can be managed in a real world, also makes that implicit assumption that there is a "right" way, that we are as close to that "right" way as we can get in our consensus.
Critical theory is more like conflict theory in that critical theorists focus on the feedback of system responses that are not working effectively. We're focused on the cracks that let people fall through. The consensus group is focused on moving all of us as a group safely into the next century. Both of these are important areas on which we need to focus, but they produce different policies and practices. The critical theorist does not believe that there is A RIGHT WAY we have agreed upon. She doesn't believe there is such a way. And she doesn't believe we have consensus as much as coercion. She is focused on hearing the feedback for which the consensus theorists don't have time.
Where is Habermas? He believes there is a RIGHT WAY only in discourse in the system of law in public discussions of justice and of resource distribution that will hear the claims of all in good faith. With respect to broader discussions of who we are, where we are going, and why, Habermas recognizes the need to situate discourse within the context of the lifeworld. Only in law does he perceive that we may find consensus and some remnant of enlightenment.
Let me try to give you an example: downsizing in the US today. By downsizing and moving factory work to other countries, we have increased our wealth and that of those workers who have invested in stock. This moves all of us forward in the world economy, a consensus goal. But at the same time workers who were not able to invest in stock are left without jobs and damaged economically by downsizing. Critical theorists focus on this aspect, and remind us that the system isn't working for these workers. Their focus is more local, more narrative, less bottom-line, less willing to see downsizing as consensual.
Does that help? the example that Sonya and Travis used of a person stealing because of necessity to eat, fits more onto the conflict than the consensus side. For one thing, that example acknowledges the importance of situatedness. Consensus tends to operate without such acknowledgment. jeanne