Democracy as Culture: Deweyan Pragmatism in a Globalized World

Emil Visnovsk. Charles S. Peirce Society.Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society.

Buffalo: Spring 2011. Vol. 46, Iss. 2; pg. 321, 7 pgs
Abstract (Summary)
[...] the introductory chapter titled "Pragmatism's Passport-Dewey, Democracy, and
Globalization" (1-17), written by both editors, raises the crucial questions that will
subsequently occupy the majority of the contributors from various angles. To move the
issue of democracy into a broader cultural context may make it more understandable
indeed but at the same time also more complex. [...] to reflect on culture and democracy
in the contemporary world is to reflect on the globalization of both phenomena.
Copyright Indiana University Press Spring 2011
Sor-Hoon Tan and John Whalen-Bridge (eds.) Democracy as Culture: Deweyan Pragmatism
in a Globalized World. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008, xiv + 218 pp.
Full text 2792 words
The issue of democracy is alive once more. There is a growing number of works debating
the current state of democracy both in theory and practice.1 In particular a pragmatist
conception of democracy has also been revived. Not only has a Deweyan version of a
participatory democracy become the focus but the intricacies of a Rortian version have
also come to the forefront, from both sympathetic as well as critical viewpoints.2 Thus the
impression that the contemporary world is in quite an exigent need of reconsidering-and
perhaps even forming a novel conception of-democracy seems to be obvious, at least
from a global point of view.3
Moreover, the fact that the idea or ideal of democracy still seems to be attractive in the
global context, especially for non-Western countries, notwithstanding all those serious
foot-faults committed by the G. W. Bush administration during the past decade, may be
taken as evidence of its remarkable power. However, no one should be fooled by the
illusion that democracy is an "eternal" or "universal" system. Rather, democracy-be it
what it may-is to be continuously recreated with all its essential attributes in and for every
particular context. Such is the almost twenty-year long experience of the post-communist
countries of Central and Eastern Europe, where democracy has been wholeheartedly
welcomed and as a political measure instituted, so to say, "overnight," but now the
citizens of these countries have come to realize that there is much more to democracy
than the freedom of speech and the freedom to vote, etc. That democracy is a matter of
culture in the broadest meaning of both terms-and not only of so-called political culture-is
a complex idea, which, strangely enough, might be clear to intellectuals and philosophers,

though, alas, its appreciation is far from common amongst the general public and even
active politicians. It is by no means ingrained within Western culture where the tradition
of understanding democracy primarily, if not exclusively, as a matter of politics in terms of
the "technology of power and governance" prevails.
The current predicament concerning democracy in a global context may also serve as an
opportunity to explore new ways of development. Judging and testing specifically
Deweyan and more broadly pragmatist conceptions of democracy as promising candidates
for "global democracy" is the overall intention of the present book. The volume fits this
trend very well, and the authors attempt to add some further aspects to it. In most cases,
they do so ably and clearly. The idea of providing a Deweyan "passport" to all "democratic
travelers" across the globe in the current era is being fulfilled with similar Deweyan vigor,
intelligence, and creativity combined in many places with a unique sensitivity for "global
details" and a holistic vision stemming from the spirit of Eastern philosophy. The particular
focus-and prerogative-of the book is the specific "Asian dimension" of global Deweyan
democracy (certainly not only due to the fact that around half a dozen of the authors hold
positions at Asian universities), developed in an updated dialogue of Deweyan ideas
between both the past and contemporary discussants that Dewey accrued due to his
journeys to Japan and China (1919-1921). The present volume in principle shows that
Dewey is still relevant today, and even in the global context for the current reconstruction
of democratic culture; however, Dewey himself should be likewise reconstructed in the
face of present challenges and demands. This is not an impossible task, thanks to the
reconstructive and transformative spirit of Deweyan philosophy, which may at the same
time serve as a test of itself: due to the anti-dogmatic character of this philosophy, the
principle of reconstruction can do it no harm; rather, it is required.
The volume contains eleven contributions divided into three sections. These are preceded
by two opening texts, first by the personal recollections that serve as a tribute from Bruce
Robbins to Richard Rorty, who, at some point, was involved in the project of the present
book and to whose memory the whole volume is dedicated. Despite all the controversies
in Rorty's works, and especially with respect to political and cultural issues including
democracy, among his legacies are, according to Robbins, "his intelligent and selfcorrecting hopefulness" and his "private secularism" as "a belief in uncertainty or the
ultimate openness of things to future correction," which he tried to give "a larger public
place" (xiv). Secondly, the introductory chapter titled "Pragmatism's Passport-Dewey,
Democracy, and Globalization" (1-17), written by both editors, raises the crucial questions
that will subsequently occupy the majority of the contributors from various angles. But
they all embrace as their basis Dewey's conception that democracy is broadly cultural
rather than narrowly political, even if culture itself is part of the problem and not only its

simple solution. To move the issue of democracy into a broader cultural context may
make it more understandable indeed but at the same time also more complex.
Moreover, to reflect on culture and democracy in the contemporary world is to reflect on
the globalization of both phenomena. With respect to culture, does globalization mean its
standardization, homogenization, and unification in terms of establishing a single model of
planetary human culture (but what kind of a model)? And with respect to democracy,
does globalization mean its universalization also in terms of establishing a single model of
planetary human democracy common to all cultures and nations? The editors here
attempt specifically to outline a pragmatist (Deweyan) approach to all these issues, which,
according to them, is to be definitely "pluralistic" and "experimental" (2). In this sense,
democratization as a crucial part of globalized culture is by no means the mechanical
extension of Western-style modernization and application of one ready-made (lest liberaldemocratic) model of democracy to all countries. Rather, from a pragmatist (Deweyan)
standpoint, if "democracy really has a global destiny, it must grow out of, rather than
replace, the values of different cultures, for any democracy promoted by the West that is
construed as culturally hegemonic will be a democracy in name only" (3). Let us, then,
have a closer look at how the contributors to the volume succeed in showing the global
potential of Deweyan pragmatism in current multicultural contexts. Since, given the
number of individual authors and their interdisciplinary backgrounds, the volume is
naturally heterogeneous and includes some chapters which speak to its leading theme
only indirectly, in what follows I will mostly focus on the main line of argument and will
consider those other contributions only with respect to it.
Section one sets the tone for the whole volume. It examines the question of whether a
universalization of Deweyan democracy (or any kind of democracy, for that matter) is
possible and even desirable. The answer, I take it, is unobtrusively suggested in the very
title of the section "Universalizing Democracy Pragmatically," that is suggesting that (i)
there is something universal to democracy such as its key features and criteria, which
cannot be only local and particular, but (ii) the universal itself is not necessarily immutable
and eternal and may be changing (at least in the long term), and (iii) universalizing
democracy as pragmatists might envision it is based on the manifold participatory
practices of particular communities whose need as well as result is what any real
democratization can only be. Pragmatists do not oppose universalization in abstracto;
they just demand that this process be the creation of "democratic norms" that are
generated from experimental ethical and political practices, i.e., "active, systematic, and
controlled attempts to determine . . . , which forms of life . . . are best positioned to
achieve the desired balance between the goals of freedom and equality" (25). Thus
universalization is legitimate "under certain conditions." This is the position Larry Hickman

espouses in his chapter "The Genesis of Democratic Norms: Some Insights from Classical
Pragmatism" (21-30), briefly outlining these Deweyan conditions.
Sor-hoon Tan, avowedly the progenitor of the whole book project, offers in her chapter,
"Reconstructing 'Culture': A Deweyan Response to Antidemocratic Culturalism" (31-52), a
more detailed analysis of the global cultural conditions for Deweyan democracy. On the
one hand she warns us to be alert to those culturalist conceptions of culture (adopted
from cultural anthropology and cultural studies) that are "reductionist, static, essentialist,
totalizing, and consequently hegemonic" leading to the "closed" vision of any particular
culture and advocating that it "should preserve its own norms and traditions, including
antidemocratic norms, and reject democracy as a Western cultural norm" (33). On the
other hand she develops Dewey's conception of culture- likewise close to cultural
anthropology-which is non-ethnocentric, pluralist, interactionist and transactionist, open
and dynamic. The interplay of multiple elements inherent in culture "determines whether
a culture is free", and only "free cultures . . . employ the experimental method, the
method of intelligence, to resolve disagreements and conflicts, and to guide action", that
is "the democratic method" to solve problems "democratically through consultation,
persuasion, negotiation and cooperative intelligence" (37).
According to Tan, the emergence of such "democratic culture" can only be the result of a
"humanizing process" through the creative and intelligent transformation of cultural
traditions and the redefining of inherited cultural identity, which are never complete or
fixed (40-43). Dewey's conception of democratic culture provides a balance between
conservative and transformative, old and new, stable and dynamic, "own" and "foreign,"
"indigenous" and "assumed" features of culture. Cultural change does not necessarily
mean the loss of cultural identity, much like cultural diversity does not mean cultural
relativism. Tan would prefer pragmatists to "speak in terms of general ideals and
generalization rather than universal ideals and universalization" (45), but, nonetheless,
she considers democracy "as a universal ideal" to remain "a hypothesis" (47). She comes
to the concisely formulated conclusion that "democratic culture is still something to
achieve and to create . . . on a worldwide scale . . . , but not by coercion, economic
domination of one country over others, or by hegemony of one culture over others" (48).
Thus universalization of democracy across the current multicultural world as part of
globalization is by no means identical with Westernization or Americanization.
Further development of this idea forms the core of Section Two, titled "Imposing
Democracy," which includes the next four chapters. Sun Youzhong ("Globalizing
Democracy: A Deweyan Critique of Bush's Second-Term National Security Strategy", 5362) and James Scott Johnson ("Can Democratic Inquiry be Exported? Dewey and the
Globalization of Education," 63-80) convincingly show that such processes as the military

occupation of a foreign country, economic colonization or cultural imperialism via

commercialization of the mass media have nothing to do with true democracy from a
Deweyan point of view (but not only) despite their massive coverage with political rhetoric
imitating various quasi-democratic slogans. Democracy undoubtedly is an ancient Western
idea; however, it has never been a ready-made political precept to be backed by
authorities in order to be implemented anytime and wherever these authorities might
wish. Rather, the Bushean strategy for global governance in the name of Western values
has nothing to do either with "globalizing democracy" or "democratizing globalization." It
is an open contradictio in subjecto since for "democracy to survive and prosper in any
country, it has to prove, above all, that it can effectively solve the problems troubling
indigenous people and bring them what it promises-peace, liberty, prosperity, and
happiness" (57). And much more: democracy includes plurality and diversity of forms of
lives, free communication, etc. It demands emergence from within, "communitydeveloped methods," "voluntary and cooperative efforts of the publics," "respect to the
existing modes of associated living of the publics therein" (77-9), etc. "Only then can
legitimate democracy, in the form of modes of associated living, occur" (79).
As clearly shown by Dewey's experience and his numerous cross-cultural exchanges with
communities in China in particular, his was not such an imperialistic notion of democracy,
despite being American by origin. Dewey would have been sharply critical of any attempts
to impose, export/import or transplant/transmit democracy from one culture to another.
In fact, according to his conception, this is not possible. That a similar attitude toward
democracy is "natural" to other Deweyan pragmatists is exposed in the chapters by Judy
D. Whips ("Jane Addams: Pragmatist-Feminist Democracy in a Global Context," 81-90) and
Bruce Robbins ("War without Belief: On Louis Menand's The Metaphysical Club: A Story of
Ideas in America," 91-104). While Whips sticks to the central theme and rightly exposes
the key features of Addams' social/ethical ideal of democracy such as "reciprocal
learning," "necessity of cooperation and mutual interdependence," "living
interrelationships," empathy, fraternity, participation, etc., and their relevance up until
now ("Democracy cannot be done to people; they must actively create the process in
order for it to be 'worth having'," 86; and this "has not yet been out into practice in any
national arena," 90), Robbins in his chapter drifts away to storytelling as the putative
pragmatist philosophical method (at least of a Rortyan style) and to the topic of war. Via
this excursion he wishes to reflect on the complex relationship between war and
democracy and finally comes to the conclusion "that democracy at the level of the nation
is not enough to stop wars. The only sort of democracy that would have a chance of
stopping war is a truly global democracy" (102).
Section three, "De-centering Dewey," comprises a further five chapters. The focus here is
much more diffused than in the previous sections, and it runs from a sharply ironist

criticism of Rorty (John Holbo, "Dewey's Difficult Recovery, Analytic Philosophy's

Attempted Turn," 107-122) to an interesting comparison of Dewey with Descartes (Cecilia
Wee, "Descartes, Dewey, and Democracy," 123-138) to a rather thematically adrift
comparison between Dewey's aesthetics and some Buddhist inspired ideas (John WhalenBridge, "Nonduality and Aesthetic Experience: Dewey's Theory and Johnson's Practice,"
139-162). The final two chapters discuss Dewey's "Chinese connection," in particular his
commonalities and differences with Confucius as exposed by various interpreters. Jessica
Ching-Sze Wang ("When Dewey's Admirer Meets His Liberal Critic: Liang Shuming and
EamonCallan on John Dewey's Democracy and Education," 163-176) shows, among other
things, that a Deweyan democracy may be relevant to and better understood by Chinese
Confucian thinkers than by orthodox Western liberals, which is no wonder, since Dewey's
social, anti-individualistic conception embraces human interconnectedness at all levels,
from local to global. Roger T. Ames ("Tang Junyi and the Very 'Idea' of Confucian
Democracy," 177-199) further deepens the common tenets between Deweyan
metaphysics of experience and Confucian cosmology. Both come very close to an
understanding of many more key concepts (such as order, continuity, time, emergence,
individuality, mind, and the like) than those in which they differ (such as e.g. hierarchy and
family). A comparison like this "has enabled us to more fully appreciate the profundity of
Dewey's radical disjunction within the Western philosophical narrative" (181), and his
relevance for the contemporary global context.
Summing up, I can do nothing but agree with the editors that exploring the global
potential of Deweyan democracy "is attractive to thinkers from diverse countries and
cultures precisely because they do not presume a predetermined historical end point or
political ideal" (16). The authors in this volume as a whole have taken the issue of
democracy as culture one step further.

[Footnote]
NOTES
1. See for example Frank Cunningham, Theories of Democracy (London and New York:
Routledge, 2002); Ian Shapiro, The State of Democratic Theory (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2003); David Held, Models of Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006);
John Dunn, Democracy: A History (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006); Charles Tilly,
Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Sheldon S. Wolin, Democracy
Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008); Georg Sorensen, Democracy and
Democratization: Processes and Prospects in a Changing World (Boulder: Westview Press,

2008); Larry Diamond, The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies
throughout the World (New York: Times Books/Henry Holt, 2008); etc.
2. See for example William Caspary, Dewey on Democracy (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 2000); Eric A. MacGilvray, Reconstructing Public Reason (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 2004); Robert B. Talisse, Democracy after Liberalism (London and New
York: Routledge, 2004); Robert B. Westbrook, Democratic Hope: Pragmatism and the
Politics of Truth (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2005); Christopher J. Voparil,
Richard Rorty: Politics and Vision (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006); Edward Grippe,
Richard Rorty's New Pragmatism: Neither Liberal nor Free (London: Continuum, 2007);
etc.
3. See for example Barry Holden, Global Democracy: Key Debates (London: Routledge,
2000); Daniele Archibugi, The Global Commonwealth of Citizens: Toward Cosmopolitan
Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008); TorbjrnTnnsj, Global
Democracy: The Case for a World Government (Edinburgh University Press, 2008); etc.

[AuthorAffiliation]
Emil Visnovsk
SlovakAcademy of Sciences
ksbkemvi@savba.sk