Years of Poems and Spirits

The other day on the DR show, someone asked Pei Minxin about Internet, civil society and democracy in China. Pei’s answer is very interesting: Yes, Internet does forge a virtual civil society but No, it doesn’t mean more democracy.

In the State-Society literature, civil society is always linked to democracy. But I do agree with Pei that in China this is not necessarily the case. Very interesting, wished the thought had occurred to me while I was in school.

Some angels, assumptions I can think of -

Separate Internet from traditional civic organizations from the “cost of participation” angle. That is obvious. How about the link b/w the State and the virtual/online civil society? Intuitively, the direction of influence b/w State and Society is almost always from Society to State. I haven’t come across a lot of literature on the other direction, since many of the examples of civic organizations seem to have been there forever (e.g. sports club, church, etc.)

Internet would be an interesting case study of how the modus operandi of a state could influence the formation and the shape of an organic community.

Need to think more: what part of state’s modus operandi matter? Institutions (or lack there of) and policies I suppose? And how do they matter? Access, level of monitoring? In China’s case, lack of an independent media must be a focus of any study: how the state’s media policy shaped the Internet culture?

Wish I could come up with more.  The old well is drying …

Randomly scanned Politico and found this discussion very engaging: what does Obama mean when he said he’d like the next SCOTUS Justice to have “empathy”?

I was pretty moved when I first heard the report. As a Constitutional Scholar, Obama didn’t get carried away by the cherished detachment of his profession. Instead, his statement reveals a profound appreciation of the relationship between law and society.

Since the modern age, the Law (i.e. the judiciary machine, including enforcement) is supposed to be cold, precise, blind and vigilant. The Law is Modernity. The Law is the State.

Yet, the Law is inherently biased: it always favors its enactors and suppresses those on the margin. A legal bureaucrat may steadfastly deny this, but in my mind, the Law is never an embodiment of the social justice de jure (i.e. natural law), but a moat around the justice de facto.

Should the Law be cold and detached? What the President said reminded me of the arguments Karl Polanyi laid out in The Great Transformation. In the very beginning of this book, Polanyi described the tension between the forces that is pushing economic activity into its own domain and the society’s instinct to regulate it. The Vienna school and its disciples extended Smith’s “invisible hand” into a “invisible hand of (economy) God”, emphasizing the independence and detachment of economic activities from other the society.

Largely based on English labor movement, Polanyi argued that despite the constant efforts to market-ize labor, capital and land, they are in fact the very conduits through which a society impose its will on to the economy.

Similarly, if the ultimate goal of Law is to sustain a society, it has to be embedded in a social political environment, has to learn to adapt, to evolve. Otherwise, the blind pursuit of legal independence (at least in a post-modern era) may result in a tyrannic State and a broken Society.

Went to Max and Stephanie’s wedding in Quincy, WA.

Here is what I said on my album log:

Two beautiful people I know got married. Max and Stephanie finally tied the knot on 2008.9.13. It was a lovely day, the ceremony was held in a romantic setting–in a vineyard overlooking the Columbia. Seeing the two being together for three years now, I was nevertheless very moved when they read their wedding vows. For a moment, I regretted any cynism I had in social rituals.

Quincy is a pretty place: the color, the solitude and the scale always remind me of autumn, my favorite season of a year. Song and I both love the place.

The Sunserra resort, however, is a different story: underwhelming buildings, excess grassy lawns and stringent behavioral codes: you shall not curse or you will be fined.

Also, met some interesting people there. One couple from Luxemburg: Maria is German, Jeff Welsh. The lady works at European Commission’s nuclear regulatory advisory agency at Brussel. We chatted a lot about European affairs, e.g. Belgium, Germany’s coal and steel regions.

The conversation led to the topic of legislative process in EU. I was surprised to learn that the binding EU laws were drafted by Ministers from member countries, something I thought would be a big no-no in the States. Maria also asked, “so what’s the legislative process in China?”

The conversation was cut short but I left wonder about the difference between the two unions: EU and China. It is my speculation that the two are quite opposite of each other in one regard at least:

EU is a bunch of sovereign polities with a strong desire to “act together”. China is a bunch of legally unified politiies with a constant tendence to “act different”.

Is this correct?