Intellectual Culture Column of "London Mercury"

Dr Jonathan Kenigson, FRSA

We continue from the previous two interviews to discuss the legitimation of social institutions in a greater degree of abstraction. Legitimation is the process of retroactively binding the disparate natures of institutions and furnishing an explicative or performative context in which institutional roles can be unified (85). In other words, it is necessary for a given society that the universe of institutional processes seem satisfactorily justifiable, and that institutions are conceived as fluidly interlocking and not dissonant (85). Additionally, the individual's temporal passage through the institutional universe must be made meaningful to the individual in a more 'intimate' or "subjective" (86) way. Legitimation is especially vital in trans-generational propagations of knowledge, because such knowledge has not ossified in the next generation by practical, lived experience that makes institutional narratives subjectively plausible (87). Knowledge and "values" reside in the primary acculturative processes by which the trans-generational transmission of knowledge may be located (87).

Such legitimation possesses three phases, the first of which consists of linguistic constructs that determine relation and consequent modes of conduct and understanding (87). Linguistic constructs (words and phrases) have a particularly fundamental process of definition: namely, mimesis and example. Such constructs form the basis for future legitimative processes and alternative forms of institutional knowledge. Berger and Luckmann's understanding of this acculturative concept is very dense, and one is best served with several examples (of my design, in this instance). Consider two siblings at play, using a toy that one of the children has always identified as his own. The other sibling attempts to steal the toy at which point a parent intervenes, exclaiming, "you must not take toys that do not belong to you." Upon requesting to know the reason for such a prohibition, the adult replies that the state of nature has always demanded such behavior.

From this discussion, both children have formulated the ideas that: (1) ownership is determined by "who always had" a given token; (2) ownership is a fact of nature; (3) items cannot be taken from one who owns them. Another example of the linguistic conditioning of legitimation is found in words themselves. For instance, the word "teacher" produces with it an entire universe of meanings which must be interpreted and understood subjectively and objectively. Such a term consequently demands a certain conduct with respect to it (obedience, silence, etc.) and in-itself defines a knowledge of the characteristics of the word.

A second stage of legitimation consists of simple theoretical relationships (87). Proverbs, for instance, provide a relative "linking" between and among disparate areas of thought and permit the formation of interrelationships that were impossible to formulate in the first stage of legitimation (87). With respect to the first example provided above, one would have a second-stage legitimation in the sense of "Thou shalt not steal," embedded mimetically within the discourse of other proverbs: "He who steals shall face judgment." The totality of such proverbs condition the individual to relate stealing and judgment in a more abstract way than the initial explanation rendered by the parent in the preceding paragraph. At such a point, the individual is capable of cognitively entertaining the more abstract, theoretical calculations of judgment which cause 'aberrant' behaviors to appear unwanted or retrogressive.

The third stage of legitimation is yet more abstract: specialized knowledge that is maintained by designated individuals and disseminated principally by them (89). An example would be a professor of sociology delivering research on the negative social effect of stealing, or a police officer giving testimonies of the difficulty of re-orienting a lifestyle which was based upon stealing as a principal aim. The third stage implicitly requires the ossification of knowledge obtained from the prior stages, which a society delegates in accordance with predefined rules and didactic procedures.

Finally, the fourth stage of legitimation is the production of entire symbolic universes of meaning (90). These universes are conceived as the entire acculturated wisdom and knowledge of a given society and completely characterize the construction of a given institution or practice. Given their totalizing frames, they are necessarily "nomic" (90) and life-ordering. A compelling example of such a universe would be the world of talmudic discourse of the Haredic Jews; the perception of the totality and full systematization of the acquired knowledge is echoed in the numerous responsa to given passages and, indeed, to the full measure of social meanings in lived Haredi society. Talmudic interpretation formulates the contexts by which normative texts may be interpreted or approached; determine the relations between individuals; provide ritual legitimations to the totem order (the Old Testament laws); and provide stories of originary nature (creation myth, etc.). However, the responsa also crystallize the "proverbial" knowledge of the second stage by providing a framework in which Talmudic knowledge can be parsed into lived interactions through the Proverbs themselves, and also related wisdom literature.

The legitimating nature of the symbolic universe also possesses an orienting function (93) for individuals by prescribing what roles should be, and by furnishing examples of role-fulfilling individuals. For instance (in the example above), role-fulfilling individuals (the David kings, Prophets, etc.) are held as models of appropriate behavior and appropriate interactive and reactive agencies. In Haredi society, one "should want" to be one of the individuals mentioned above, because of the latter's complete embodiment of the totem order's symbolic totality. The symbolic universe is structured in such manner as to reward obedience to assigned roles (e.g. curry God's favor, in our prior example), and to punish disobedience (death penalties, expulsions, exile, etc.) Symbolic universes have the further function of providing and maintaining history within a society. Disparate events within (and bordering upon) the society can be vested with orienting agency and legitimized as socially acceptable or even necessary phases (95-96). Universe-maintenance occurs when these phases are interpreted in light of the symbolic universe's history-orienting functions (96).

Symbolic universes cannot be transmitted perfectly between generations, and symbolic universes are never shared perfectly among all inhabitants of a given universe. Certain members of a society may determine that the given universe is, for some reason, unacceptable (98) and seek the re-definition of certain institutions or the re-establishment of the social order on different grounds (99). Furthermore, the confrontation of a given society and symbolic universe by an alternative society and correspondingly different universe poses a challenge to the totem orders of both societies (99-100). Such confrontation is especially poignant because it demonstrates that, contrary to the accepted vision of a given social order as a fact of nature, alternative orders and states of social institutions exist (100). In other words, states of social fact are shown to be less than ineluctable (100). Mechanisms of universe maintenance permit the respective societies to maintain their respective orders (101). Mythology is one such form of universe maintenance, but by no means the only one (102). Theology also attempts such ends, but the abstruse nature of such arts renders it more suited to a specialist sub-universe than the popular 'theology' of the masses which may, even in astoundingly complex societies, remain mythological instead of intellectual and systematic (103). However, it should be noted that both mythological and theological universe maintenance serve as forms of cultural and institutional legitimation (103). Therapies exist to thwart individuals' attempts to exit the socially constructed symbolic universe, and are a form of boundary maintenance that facilitates the cohesion of the institutional order by sanctioning certain realities and defining alternatives as deviant or retrogressive (104). Institutional legitimations can also have the form of "nihilations" (105), or systems of boundary maintenance which deny the efficacy of realities lying beyond the sanctioned reality (105). Such negations occur when specialists (e.g. "apologists" (106)) seek to redefine all non-socialized behavior in terms of the native symbolic universe and its attendant terms of discourse (106-107).

The complexity of symbolic universes mirrors the complexities of practitioner-based sub-universes of knowledge, and, as described above, permits specialization within the society (108). As knowledge advances, specialists advance and fill niche roles within the knowledge economy (108). Theoretical subjects (e.g. physics, mathematics, philosophy) constitute a major step in the evolution of the entire knowledge economy, because such subjects are entirely divorced from the "practical," mundane, and everyday (108). Abstract theoretical justifications for the existence of institutions tends to shield such institutions from short-term necessities for change (109). Such reifications are not, however, without opposition; members of the society may clash with specialists who, in turn, produce reality-defining institutions (109). Such clashes are found in structures which seek to reify the institutional potencies of the contending factions and as such are of a social, and not an objective or "natural", sort (110). In some societies, there is an effective "monopoly" on symbolic universes, and particular practitioners thus possess absolute interpretive power with respect to the objectified realities (113). Ideologies arise when symbolic universes become connected to "concrete" (113) power-interests. Ideologies may be deployed by groups for concrete political objectives, or to otherwise legitimate political and economic interests (114). Social modifications are, as a consequence, in dialectic between ideological and political interests embodied in living practitioners and specialists (119).

The symbolic universe that facilitates such specialization is not something innate to humans; rather, humans must undergo acclimative processes to socialize them (120). Primary and secondary forms of socialization occur throughout childhood and adulthood and present opportunities for the internalization of the symbolic universe (121). The processes and institutions that facilitate such socialization are often structured (schools, churches, country clubs, etc.) but can be unstructured (conversations with practitioners, reading groups, religious meetings). The process of "inhaling" the symbolic universe and personalizing it is dubbed "internalization" (121). Primary socialization is often controlled by relationships with parents and other power-holding figures who seek to restrict relationships on the basis of suitability in socialization (122). Consequently, primary socialization is not only a cognitive, but a pre-cognitive, apparatus (121-122). An individual's social reality is formed by the same processes by which language is learned, and by which the individual's identity is also formed (123). It is thus not possible to separate the acquisition of a language from the corresponding acquisition of social customs, roles, and identities embedded within it (123). Primary socialization terminates when the individual possesses an ossified sense of self and other (126).

Secondary socialization begins when individuals investigate distinct sub-universes of the given symbolic universe and make ontological adjustments for their particular social locations (127). Secondary socialization is almost always characterized by the acquisition of role-specific knowledge and task-specific knowledge, and entails a process of "secondary membership" to become fully acculturated (127). In secondary socialization, individuals must graft new knowledge on that already established as fact during primary socialization, and ideological work must be performed to remove the cognitive dissonances inherent in this transition (129). Secondary socialization need not possess a heavily affective component, and is typically of a formal and rigorous nature (131). However, in cases where extreme sacrifice must be made to attain some end of secondary socialization, individuals must be able to graft affective attachments to make the sacrifices "more personal" (131). For example, a soldier, as part of his\her training, is bound to identify with some "role model" in arms, whether in antiquity or in the present, and to produce a bond of loyalty and affection for such individual. This affective attachment provides the perfect apparatus to legitimize high levels of sacrifice for the end of whatever service is being socialized (in the case of this example, war). Without such affective mechanisms, secondary socialization is prone to "slippage" and occasional crises of inapplicability (137).