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Caring for property: comments on Susan Smith's “States, markets and an ethic of care”
Political Geography 24 (2005) 21–27 www.elsevier.com/locate/polgeo
Caring for property: comments on Susan Smith’s ‘‘States, markets and an ethic of care’’ John Christman Departments of Philosophy and Political Science, Pennsylvania State University, 240 Sparks, University Park, PA 16801, United States
Abstract This paper pursues some themes raised by Susan Smith’s article, ‘‘States, markets, and an ethics of care’’. Specifically, I consider the way that the complex structure of property rights – a structure that includes both the right to control and manipulate the object owned as well as to exchange it with others – makes the question of where exactly markets operate complex. I also trace out some lines of thought in Immanuel Kant’s views on property to help show that the question of the separation between state institutions and market activity is often misconceived. The state, as Kant’s views show, both structures and protects property rights bundles of its citizens, and hence the line between state and market is not a bright one. Rather, the question will always be how state policies structure ownership and markets not whether they do. These lines of analysis are used to further bolster Professor Smith’s claims about the precarious and sometimes dangerous incursions of market thinking into areas that more often are guided by an ethic of care, and the losses that are observable in such incursions, especially regarding social spaces governed by housing policies of the sort she examines. Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Property; Markets; Justice; Ethics of care
E-mail address: [email protected] 0962-6298/$ - see front matter Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2004.10.007
22
J. Christman / Political Geography 24 (2005) 21–27
Since I come to this discussion from left field, as it were – from Philosophy – I want to supply less of a critical commentary as an additional line of support for the general line of thought laid out in Professor Smith’s powerful and incisive reexamination of the political geography of the public and the private. In particular, I want to trace briefly how certain philosophical approaches to property and justice provide further resources for the re-analysis being proposed, especially regarding the precariousness of the traditional separation between the realms of the political, the economic, and the personal. Professor Smith wants to interrogate and trouble the traditional distinctions between/among the political geographies of the public institutions of the state (politics), the quasi-private mode of market relations (economics) and the arena of the household (the private, informed by a relational ethic of care). I also want to trouble these traditional separations, albeit at a slightly more abstract level of discourse, and to suggest (in tune with Professor Smith) how the traditional understanding of economic relations as somehow ‘‘pre-political’’ – as occurring in spaces of free, spontaneous choice more akin to private arenas of individual selfdetermination and group formation – as another neo-liberal illusion to be discarded or radically rethought. It is the assumption of this separation that Professor Smith challenges here, as well as the state-sponsored expansion of market logic into areas of personal and social life whose value orientation manifests a deeply contrasting motivational structure – care rather than competition. She takes as her focus the political and economic colonizing of the areas of housing and the government provision of welfare goods relating to home life. I will add my own reflections to this effort by first looking at some philosophical work on the relation between property and justice (and hence the spheres of economics and politics) in which we can see just how much the spaces of public and private overlap. I will also hone in on the concept of property itself (and hence the structure of economic exchange and market interaction) and try to suggest how the complex structure of ownership not only exposes the neo-liberal illusion of a prepolitical market arena but also allows us to understand the disparate array of interests – including both those associated with competitive individualism as well as with care and connection – that are affected by property structures themselves. That is to say, the incursion of market logic into caring spaces is not a retraction of state power but an expansion of a certain and contestable conception of such power. Secondly, with a foray into the arcane world of philosophical systems (specifically Hegel’s critique of Kant), I hope to introduce certain considerations that will enrich (and in some ways slightly re-direct) the efforts of Professor Smith to mount an alternative to neo-liberal thinking in the areas of housing and markets. There is clearly a tradition in Western philosophy of seeing property as a ‘‘natural right’’ and hence definable and justifiable independent of state formation and political activity. John Locke, whose views often are taken as an inspiration for modern libertarianism (i.e., neo-liberalism)1 is the typical standard-bearer here. But
1
See, for example, Nozick (1974).
J. Christman / Political Geography 24 (2005) 21–27
23
there are also strong counter-tendencies in this same tradition which question the very comprehensibility of establishing ownership rules prior to or separate from state (and hence potentially democratic) institutions. Even such an Enlightenment stalwart as Immanuel Kant can be taken as a case in point. Kant argued most forcefully, for example, that the fundamental element in a system of justice (recht) was the definition of what he called ‘‘intelligible’’ property – the rightful control over things not in one’s physical possession. That is, the distinction between mere powers of personal possession – the physical possession of a thing – and rightful ownership – the juridical relations that define what are properly mine and thine – is the first order of political institutions, for Kant. Only when we, as rational agents, can know what justice dictates concerning the use and development (or destruction) of physical resources, including most notably land and hence space, can we have an understanding of (permissible, social) juridical relations at all.2 Only when we know what the system of property is can we know how to (rightfully) interact with others in civil society. Justice, then, as enacted in institutions of the state, and property, as the defining condition of economic exchange, arises together: justice determines property, not vice versa. (And with property, of course, markets, a subject to which I will turn in a moment.) But this is not to underwrite the view that justice in this tradition is merely the aim of protecting individual property rights and hence enshrining possessive individualism as the center of politics. To see this, we need only to reflect on the complexity and variability of ownership itself. What is called ‘‘ownership’’ (both in purely capitalist as well as social democratic economies) is a complex and variable bundle of rights, liberties, immunities, liabilities and powers held in relation to others concerning some tangible or intangible ‘‘thing’’. The legal elements that can be recognized under the rubric of ownership (depending on the economy in question and the locality within that economy) range from rights to use, destroy, consume, manipulate, and alienate the thing in question to rights to trade and gain income from it in exchanges with others.3 Add to this liability rules, inherited or imposed use restrictions (easements, zoning), regulation of exchange (taxation, price restrictions), and so on, and one sees immediately that to claim to ‘‘own’’ something is only the beginning of a process of defining what rights (etc.!) one enjoys in relation to that thing. And to show where I am heading here, it is the state whose institutions define and enforce these rights bundles. So Kant’s suggestion that property rules are central to justice just means that some of the various possibilities of rights and liberties concerning the proper use of land, space, and resources, must be set by state institutions in their basic principles of justice. Turn now to markets, which as Professor Smith ably suggests are clearly not one single thing but a motley. Indeed, given the complexity of property rights bundles just described, to try to identify a ‘‘market’’ in all its forms is a daunting conceptual
2
See Kant (1979/1999). For fuller analysis of the structure of property and the concept of ownership, see Christman (1994a), chapter 1, and Waldron (1988). 3
24
J. Christman / Political Geography 24 (2005) 21–27
task to say the least. But we can say this: markets are clearly arenas of exchange, and they are marked by the relative (note that term) manner in which the terms of the exchange (prices) are set by the participants themselves. But insofar as property rights determine the structure of such interactions, and property rights vary so enormously, then markets also vary. Therefore, markets are always regulated areas of exchange, the terms of which are structured by background laws, at least those that fix the rights held by the participants over the goods traded. And since it is state institutions that determine and enforce those background laws, the state is always the (not so) silent partner in market interactions. In my own work on property rights, I stressed a crucial dichotomy in the complex bundle of legal elements that comprise (for the most part) private property rights. Rights to use, consume, alter, alienate, destroy, and the like cluster around what I called ‘‘control rights’’ – the prerogative of owners (individual or collective) to determine the character, use, and ultimate state of the property in question. Contrasted with this are ‘‘income rights,’’ comprised of rights to the economic return from trading items of ownership with others. The former cluster relates more closely, I argued, to ‘‘autonomy interests’’ – those interests connected with persons’ selfdefinition, freedom, and self-realization,4 while rights to income connect to general welfare interests (that is, becoming ‘‘better off’’ more generically but for the most part measured in financial terms). Others have made parallel claims, specifically relating to housing.5 The point is that state determination of property structures always already structures the interests and modes of interaction and self-realization that citizens tend to pursue as holders of such rights. And as such, the cultural effects of this structuring can be noted and, again assuming a fairly robust democratic control over such politics, potentially affected by citizen activity. And the reference to ‘‘autonomy interests’’ here should not be taken to imply a reinscription of the atomistic individualism from which an ethic of care is meant to depart. Autonomy can be understood in a number of ways (and here I make use of another line of research of mine),6 which include notions of ‘‘self-government’’ that presuppose a relational, affective, socially embedded ‘‘self’’. (Some recent theorists have even developed notions of ‘‘relational autonomy’’ to underscore this fact.)7 So property rules contain elements which can be shaped to empower individuals and groups to realize their needs relating to social connections and hence care in those spaces where such needs arise most saliently. But it must also be recognized that despite the porousness of the walls between state and economy (and hence public and private), there nevertheless exists sharply contrasting ‘‘logics’’ in the various and different realms of social life. The logic of competitive bargaining in the economic sphere can be sharply contrasted with other value orientations and motivational structures found elsewhere. The ethic of care 4
See Christman (1994a, 1994b). See Radin (1982); though Radin distinguishes types of things owned (personal versus fungible property) rather than clusters of rights. For discussion, see Christman (1994b). 6 See, for example, the Introduction to Christman (1989). 7 See, for example, the essays in Mackenzie and Stoljar (2000). For discussion, see Christman (2004). 5
J. Christman / Political Geography 24 (2005) 21–27
25
Professor Smith underscores clearly differs in moral temper and psychological orientation from the strategic interaction of economic actors. Insofar, then, as the state extends the logic of markets to areas of social life previously (or ideally) governed by an alternative logic of care, it is fundamentally altering the character of culture and social life in the very sphere that traditionally was understood to lie outside its purview. Moreover, a further erosion of this supposed separation arises from the other direction, in that markets themselves operate only against a background of shared understandings and social trust that cannot be dictated by legal determinations of formal rights. To see this, let us return to more broad abstract philosophy. As I mentioned, Kant claimed that justice begins with the determination of property rights so that juridically defined prerogatives to move about and use of resources can be understood. But Kant (notoriously) understood justice and morality to be comprised of purely formal, impersonal and universal principles of action. The Categorical Imperative, which commands us to do only that which one could will as a universal law of nature, manifests this logic. In the realm of justice, Kant conceived of right as the system of external coercion that restricted the freedom of action of citizens, a system which by nature says nothing about the motives and ‘‘ethical’’ orientation moving citizens bound by them to act. Hegel (and many others) responded to this ethical formalism with complex arguments to the effect that such accounts of both morality and law are empty and hence inapplicable to real-world agents if they do not include specification of the ethical values that define social existence and orient choice.8 We are beings embedded in history and social life and hence can be expected to respond to moral maxims only when an identification can be established between our own point of view (defined as it is in rich textures of social embeddedness and thick identities) and the demands of universal law. No such identification exists, he argues, in the Kantian world of purely formal rights. This applies to the present topic in the following way: legal rules defining social interaction in civil society are, of necessity, silent about the motivation and value orientation that characterize agents’ movements in such spheres. Legal rules (for example setting the terms for exchange) are formal, like Kant’s paradigm principles of justice. But political theorists such as Robert Putnam and others (though not necessarily influenced by Hegel) stress that only when a significant level of (what Putnam defines as) social capital underlies and orients the social and economic interactions among participants in a market can those exchanges retain their predictability and meaning in a way that ensures ‘‘success’’ (in both economic and more broadly social terms).9 This implies, among other things, that interpersonal relations of shared values, personal connection, and cultural commonality must always operate to spur (and give meaning to) the purely competitive social action of market encounters in the first place. The ethic of ‘‘care’’ Professor Smith wants
8 9
For discussion, see, for example, Taylor (1979). See Putnam (2000).
26
J. Christman / Political Geography 24 (2005) 21–27
to preserve and expand is only one (very powerful) example of a value orientation that already operates in successful arenas of exchange, including housing markets. Formal legal rules defining property rights and culturally determined modes of ethical orientation interact in a mutually supporting and mutually affecting manner. A ‘‘market’’ no more demands competitive and strategic impersonalism than relational caring forbids exchange. Cooperation and trust are crucial to the stable operation of markets in the first place. But moreover, caring relations can be not only allowed but also encouraged by housing policies that recognize the complex array of interests that all property rules serve to protect. The autonomy interests that ownership addresses, especially when the objects of the ownership in question is personal property or domestic space, can be manifested in caring relational dynamics as much as separated individualism. Therefore an alternative politics for shaping housing policy which is designed to allow and encourage care is not a departure from some assumed separation between state and household (public and private) but simply a different understanding of their relationship. This is all said in full support of Professor Smith’s call for a renewed politics of care in the formulation and implementation of housing policy. I would add, by way of emphasis, that such renewals must take place on multiple planes, and not merely through formal legal structures or the economic realm of incentives, prices, and rents. For the cultural element operating in an area of the economy, an element which embodies the ethical orientations and value priorities of the participants in those arenas, are as important in the reconstruction of ‘‘careful spaces’’ as are the formal policies of state institutions. As I have noted, cultural practices ensuring trust or encouraging care intersect with formal legal rules to stabilize social systems. Public discourse more generally, and not merely political debate and electoral activity, has to reflect shifts in ethical orientation fundamental to the re-direction Professor Smith envisions. The point here is that property rights already structure and are structured by the social relations and personal motives operative in the activities they make possible, even those fully colonized by the market logic of competitive individualism. Therefore, for these reasons – ones offered in addition to the powerful lines of analyses of Professor Smith – the political, the economic, and the cultural are already mutually interactive and hence susceptible to pressures from democratic activity aimed at altering these structures.
References Christman, J. (1989). The inner citadel: Essays on individual autonomy. New York: Oxford University Press. Christman, J. (1994a). The myth of property. New York: Oxford University Press. Christman, J. (1994b). Distributive justice and the complex structure of ownership. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 23(3)(Summer), 225–250. Christman, J. (2004). Relational autonomy, liberal individualism, and the social constitution of selves. Philosophical Studies, 117, 143–164.
J. Christman / Political Geography 24 (2005) 21–27
27
Kant, I. (1797/1999). The metaphysical elements of justice. Part I of The metaphysical of morals, trans. by John Ladd. Indianapolis, IN: Hacket Publishing, Co. Mackenzie, C., & Stoljar, N. (Eds.). (2000). Relational autonomy. New York: Oxford University Press. Nozick, R. (1974). Anarchy, state and utopia. New York: Basic Books. Putnam, R. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York: Simon & Schuster. Radin, M. J. (1982). Property and personhood. Stanford Law Review, 34(5), 957–1015. Taylor, C. (1979). Hegel and modern society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Waldron, J. (1988). The right to private property. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Caring for property: comments on Susan Smith’s ‘‘States, markets and an ethic of care’’ John Christman Departments of Philosophy and Political Science, Pennsylvania State University, 240 Sparks, University Park, PA 16801, United States
Abstract This paper pursues some themes raised by Susan Smith’s article, ‘‘States, markets, and an ethics of care’’. Specifically, I consider the way that the complex structure of property rights – a structure that includes both the right to control and manipulate the object owned as well as to exchange it with others – makes the question of where exactly markets operate complex. I also trace out some lines of thought in Immanuel Kant’s views on property to help show that the question of the separation between state institutions and market activity is often misconceived. The state, as Kant’s views show, both structures and protects property rights bundles of its citizens, and hence the line between state and market is not a bright one. Rather, the question will always be how state policies structure ownership and markets not whether they do. These lines of analysis are used to further bolster Professor Smith’s claims about the precarious and sometimes dangerous incursions of market thinking into areas that more often are guided by an ethic of care, and the losses that are observable in such incursions, especially regarding social spaces governed by housing policies of the sort she examines. Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Property; Markets; Justice; Ethics of care
E-mail address: [email protected] 0962-6298/$ - see front matter Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2004.10.007
22
J. Christman / Political Geography 24 (2005) 21–27
Since I come to this discussion from left field, as it were – from Philosophy – I want to supply less of a critical commentary as an additional line of support for the general line of thought laid out in Professor Smith’s powerful and incisive reexamination of the political geography of the public and the private. In particular, I want to trace briefly how certain philosophical approaches to property and justice provide further resources for the re-analysis being proposed, especially regarding the precariousness of the traditional separation between the realms of the political, the economic, and the personal. Professor Smith wants to interrogate and trouble the traditional distinctions between/among the political geographies of the public institutions of the state (politics), the quasi-private mode of market relations (economics) and the arena of the household (the private, informed by a relational ethic of care). I also want to trouble these traditional separations, albeit at a slightly more abstract level of discourse, and to suggest (in tune with Professor Smith) how the traditional understanding of economic relations as somehow ‘‘pre-political’’ – as occurring in spaces of free, spontaneous choice more akin to private arenas of individual selfdetermination and group formation – as another neo-liberal illusion to be discarded or radically rethought. It is the assumption of this separation that Professor Smith challenges here, as well as the state-sponsored expansion of market logic into areas of personal and social life whose value orientation manifests a deeply contrasting motivational structure – care rather than competition. She takes as her focus the political and economic colonizing of the areas of housing and the government provision of welfare goods relating to home life. I will add my own reflections to this effort by first looking at some philosophical work on the relation between property and justice (and hence the spheres of economics and politics) in which we can see just how much the spaces of public and private overlap. I will also hone in on the concept of property itself (and hence the structure of economic exchange and market interaction) and try to suggest how the complex structure of ownership not only exposes the neo-liberal illusion of a prepolitical market arena but also allows us to understand the disparate array of interests – including both those associated with competitive individualism as well as with care and connection – that are affected by property structures themselves. That is to say, the incursion of market logic into caring spaces is not a retraction of state power but an expansion of a certain and contestable conception of such power. Secondly, with a foray into the arcane world of philosophical systems (specifically Hegel’s critique of Kant), I hope to introduce certain considerations that will enrich (and in some ways slightly re-direct) the efforts of Professor Smith to mount an alternative to neo-liberal thinking in the areas of housing and markets. There is clearly a tradition in Western philosophy of seeing property as a ‘‘natural right’’ and hence definable and justifiable independent of state formation and political activity. John Locke, whose views often are taken as an inspiration for modern libertarianism (i.e., neo-liberalism)1 is the typical standard-bearer here. But
1
See, for example, Nozick (1974).
J. Christman / Political Geography 24 (2005) 21–27
23
there are also strong counter-tendencies in this same tradition which question the very comprehensibility of establishing ownership rules prior to or separate from state (and hence potentially democratic) institutions. Even such an Enlightenment stalwart as Immanuel Kant can be taken as a case in point. Kant argued most forcefully, for example, that the fundamental element in a system of justice (recht) was the definition of what he called ‘‘intelligible’’ property – the rightful control over things not in one’s physical possession. That is, the distinction between mere powers of personal possession – the physical possession of a thing – and rightful ownership – the juridical relations that define what are properly mine and thine – is the first order of political institutions, for Kant. Only when we, as rational agents, can know what justice dictates concerning the use and development (or destruction) of physical resources, including most notably land and hence space, can we have an understanding of (permissible, social) juridical relations at all.2 Only when we know what the system of property is can we know how to (rightfully) interact with others in civil society. Justice, then, as enacted in institutions of the state, and property, as the defining condition of economic exchange, arises together: justice determines property, not vice versa. (And with property, of course, markets, a subject to which I will turn in a moment.) But this is not to underwrite the view that justice in this tradition is merely the aim of protecting individual property rights and hence enshrining possessive individualism as the center of politics. To see this, we need only to reflect on the complexity and variability of ownership itself. What is called ‘‘ownership’’ (both in purely capitalist as well as social democratic economies) is a complex and variable bundle of rights, liberties, immunities, liabilities and powers held in relation to others concerning some tangible or intangible ‘‘thing’’. The legal elements that can be recognized under the rubric of ownership (depending on the economy in question and the locality within that economy) range from rights to use, destroy, consume, manipulate, and alienate the thing in question to rights to trade and gain income from it in exchanges with others.3 Add to this liability rules, inherited or imposed use restrictions (easements, zoning), regulation of exchange (taxation, price restrictions), and so on, and one sees immediately that to claim to ‘‘own’’ something is only the beginning of a process of defining what rights (etc.!) one enjoys in relation to that thing. And to show where I am heading here, it is the state whose institutions define and enforce these rights bundles. So Kant’s suggestion that property rules are central to justice just means that some of the various possibilities of rights and liberties concerning the proper use of land, space, and resources, must be set by state institutions in their basic principles of justice. Turn now to markets, which as Professor Smith ably suggests are clearly not one single thing but a motley. Indeed, given the complexity of property rights bundles just described, to try to identify a ‘‘market’’ in all its forms is a daunting conceptual
2
See Kant (1979/1999). For fuller analysis of the structure of property and the concept of ownership, see Christman (1994a), chapter 1, and Waldron (1988). 3
24
J. Christman / Political Geography 24 (2005) 21–27
task to say the least. But we can say this: markets are clearly arenas of exchange, and they are marked by the relative (note that term) manner in which the terms of the exchange (prices) are set by the participants themselves. But insofar as property rights determine the structure of such interactions, and property rights vary so enormously, then markets also vary. Therefore, markets are always regulated areas of exchange, the terms of which are structured by background laws, at least those that fix the rights held by the participants over the goods traded. And since it is state institutions that determine and enforce those background laws, the state is always the (not so) silent partner in market interactions. In my own work on property rights, I stressed a crucial dichotomy in the complex bundle of legal elements that comprise (for the most part) private property rights. Rights to use, consume, alter, alienate, destroy, and the like cluster around what I called ‘‘control rights’’ – the prerogative of owners (individual or collective) to determine the character, use, and ultimate state of the property in question. Contrasted with this are ‘‘income rights,’’ comprised of rights to the economic return from trading items of ownership with others. The former cluster relates more closely, I argued, to ‘‘autonomy interests’’ – those interests connected with persons’ selfdefinition, freedom, and self-realization,4 while rights to income connect to general welfare interests (that is, becoming ‘‘better off’’ more generically but for the most part measured in financial terms). Others have made parallel claims, specifically relating to housing.5 The point is that state determination of property structures always already structures the interests and modes of interaction and self-realization that citizens tend to pursue as holders of such rights. And as such, the cultural effects of this structuring can be noted and, again assuming a fairly robust democratic control over such politics, potentially affected by citizen activity. And the reference to ‘‘autonomy interests’’ here should not be taken to imply a reinscription of the atomistic individualism from which an ethic of care is meant to depart. Autonomy can be understood in a number of ways (and here I make use of another line of research of mine),6 which include notions of ‘‘self-government’’ that presuppose a relational, affective, socially embedded ‘‘self’’. (Some recent theorists have even developed notions of ‘‘relational autonomy’’ to underscore this fact.)7 So property rules contain elements which can be shaped to empower individuals and groups to realize their needs relating to social connections and hence care in those spaces where such needs arise most saliently. But it must also be recognized that despite the porousness of the walls between state and economy (and hence public and private), there nevertheless exists sharply contrasting ‘‘logics’’ in the various and different realms of social life. The logic of competitive bargaining in the economic sphere can be sharply contrasted with other value orientations and motivational structures found elsewhere. The ethic of care 4
See Christman (1994a, 1994b). See Radin (1982); though Radin distinguishes types of things owned (personal versus fungible property) rather than clusters of rights. For discussion, see Christman (1994b). 6 See, for example, the Introduction to Christman (1989). 7 See, for example, the essays in Mackenzie and Stoljar (2000). For discussion, see Christman (2004). 5
J. Christman / Political Geography 24 (2005) 21–27
25
Professor Smith underscores clearly differs in moral temper and psychological orientation from the strategic interaction of economic actors. Insofar, then, as the state extends the logic of markets to areas of social life previously (or ideally) governed by an alternative logic of care, it is fundamentally altering the character of culture and social life in the very sphere that traditionally was understood to lie outside its purview. Moreover, a further erosion of this supposed separation arises from the other direction, in that markets themselves operate only against a background of shared understandings and social trust that cannot be dictated by legal determinations of formal rights. To see this, let us return to more broad abstract philosophy. As I mentioned, Kant claimed that justice begins with the determination of property rights so that juridically defined prerogatives to move about and use of resources can be understood. But Kant (notoriously) understood justice and morality to be comprised of purely formal, impersonal and universal principles of action. The Categorical Imperative, which commands us to do only that which one could will as a universal law of nature, manifests this logic. In the realm of justice, Kant conceived of right as the system of external coercion that restricted the freedom of action of citizens, a system which by nature says nothing about the motives and ‘‘ethical’’ orientation moving citizens bound by them to act. Hegel (and many others) responded to this ethical formalism with complex arguments to the effect that such accounts of both morality and law are empty and hence inapplicable to real-world agents if they do not include specification of the ethical values that define social existence and orient choice.8 We are beings embedded in history and social life and hence can be expected to respond to moral maxims only when an identification can be established between our own point of view (defined as it is in rich textures of social embeddedness and thick identities) and the demands of universal law. No such identification exists, he argues, in the Kantian world of purely formal rights. This applies to the present topic in the following way: legal rules defining social interaction in civil society are, of necessity, silent about the motivation and value orientation that characterize agents’ movements in such spheres. Legal rules (for example setting the terms for exchange) are formal, like Kant’s paradigm principles of justice. But political theorists such as Robert Putnam and others (though not necessarily influenced by Hegel) stress that only when a significant level of (what Putnam defines as) social capital underlies and orients the social and economic interactions among participants in a market can those exchanges retain their predictability and meaning in a way that ensures ‘‘success’’ (in both economic and more broadly social terms).9 This implies, among other things, that interpersonal relations of shared values, personal connection, and cultural commonality must always operate to spur (and give meaning to) the purely competitive social action of market encounters in the first place. The ethic of ‘‘care’’ Professor Smith wants
8 9
For discussion, see, for example, Taylor (1979). See Putnam (2000).
26
J. Christman / Political Geography 24 (2005) 21–27
to preserve and expand is only one (very powerful) example of a value orientation that already operates in successful arenas of exchange, including housing markets. Formal legal rules defining property rights and culturally determined modes of ethical orientation interact in a mutually supporting and mutually affecting manner. A ‘‘market’’ no more demands competitive and strategic impersonalism than relational caring forbids exchange. Cooperation and trust are crucial to the stable operation of markets in the first place. But moreover, caring relations can be not only allowed but also encouraged by housing policies that recognize the complex array of interests that all property rules serve to protect. The autonomy interests that ownership addresses, especially when the objects of the ownership in question is personal property or domestic space, can be manifested in caring relational dynamics as much as separated individualism. Therefore an alternative politics for shaping housing policy which is designed to allow and encourage care is not a departure from some assumed separation between state and household (public and private) but simply a different understanding of their relationship. This is all said in full support of Professor Smith’s call for a renewed politics of care in the formulation and implementation of housing policy. I would add, by way of emphasis, that such renewals must take place on multiple planes, and not merely through formal legal structures or the economic realm of incentives, prices, and rents. For the cultural element operating in an area of the economy, an element which embodies the ethical orientations and value priorities of the participants in those arenas, are as important in the reconstruction of ‘‘careful spaces’’ as are the formal policies of state institutions. As I have noted, cultural practices ensuring trust or encouraging care intersect with formal legal rules to stabilize social systems. Public discourse more generally, and not merely political debate and electoral activity, has to reflect shifts in ethical orientation fundamental to the re-direction Professor Smith envisions. The point here is that property rights already structure and are structured by the social relations and personal motives operative in the activities they make possible, even those fully colonized by the market logic of competitive individualism. Therefore, for these reasons – ones offered in addition to the powerful lines of analyses of Professor Smith – the political, the economic, and the cultural are already mutually interactive and hence susceptible to pressures from democratic activity aimed at altering these structures.
References Christman, J. (1989). The inner citadel: Essays on individual autonomy. New York: Oxford University Press. Christman, J. (1994a). The myth of property. New York: Oxford University Press. Christman, J. (1994b). Distributive justice and the complex structure of ownership. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 23(3)(Summer), 225–250. Christman, J. (2004). Relational autonomy, liberal individualism, and the social constitution of selves. Philosophical Studies, 117, 143–164.
J. Christman / Political Geography 24 (2005) 21–27
27
Kant, I. (1797/1999). The metaphysical elements of justice. Part I of The metaphysical of morals, trans. by John Ladd. Indianapolis, IN: Hacket Publishing, Co. Mackenzie, C., & Stoljar, N. (Eds.). (2000). Relational autonomy. New York: Oxford University Press. Nozick, R. (1974). Anarchy, state and utopia. New York: Basic Books. Putnam, R. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York: Simon & Schuster. Radin, M. J. (1982). Property and personhood. Stanford Law Review, 34(5), 957–1015. Taylor, C. (1979). Hegel and modern society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Waldron, J. (1988). The right to private property. Oxford: Clarendon Press.