I am co-teaching the Summer Institute of Civic Studies and blogging about roughly half of the 18 topics on our syllabus. One of our topics yesterday was the work of Roberto Mangabeira Unger, the former Brazilian cabinet member and Harvard law professor (see my summary from 2010).
Here is a little fable (mine, not Unger’s) that illustrates how his theoretical position relates to everyday civic efforts:
A group of middle class students has volunteered to serve meals at a homeless shelter. They love the experience. During the reflection session later, one remarks, “Serving the homeless was so great! I hope that shelter will still be open in 50 years, so my grandchildren can serve.”
A progressive educator cries, “No! Our goal must be to end homelessness. You need to think about root causes, not just serve free food once a week. What are the fundamental causes of homelessness?” Chastened, the students do serious research and determine that homelessness results from poverty, which, in turn, is a byproduct of late capitalism.
They are trying to figure out what to do about capitalism when Roberto Mangabeira Unger happens to walk by. “No!” cries Unger. “You are assuming that the link between poverty and homelessness is natural or inevitable. You have seen patterns in our limited experience and have derived ‘lawlike tendencies or deep-seated economic, organizational, and psychological constraints’ from the data; these now limit your imaginations. We human beings have made the social world and we can change any part of it–not only the parts that you have identified as deep structures, but also any of the other elements or links.
“Your ‘confining assumptions … impoverish [your] sense of the alternative concrete institutional forms democracies and markets can take.’ By focusing on the biggest and most intractable factors, you guarantee defeat, whereas any part of the picture could be changed. It would be possible to have a capitalist society with poverty but no shortage of homes. What if we got rid of all zoning rules and rent control but gave everyone a voucher for rent? What if public buildings were retrofitted to allow people to sleep comfortably in them at night? What if some houses were shared, like ZipCars, and homeless people occupied the temporarily empty ones? What if …?
The readings were:
- Roberto Unger, False Necessity, Chapter 1 (pp. 1-40)
- Roberto Unger, Democracy Realized, “A Manifesto” (pp. 263-77)
- See also my Unger-inspired piece on innovation in government
Hi, this blog post popped up on our Ungerian thought facebook group, where I posted the following comments that I would like to share with you:
From this parable (as well as some of your other posts about Unger) it appears that you read Unger as rejecting deep structure social theory. This in turn leads to the position of preserving the larger framework (which is here identified as capitalism) while changing parts of it, e.g. access to housing.
In my reading of Unger, however, he does not reject deep structure social theory, he rewrites it. The clearest articulation is in Social Theory, where he cuts out typologies and law like necessity, and PRESERVES the deep structure analysis. In this way, I would rewrite the parable so that Unger rejects the typology of capitalism as a unified system that must rise and fall as one (and thus the only way to get rid of homelessness is to overthrow "capitalism"). But rather, that there is no rigid form of "capitalism" where things must be exactly as they are. Rather, we should address the root causes (yes, the root causes!) of joblessness and economic inactivity not by rethinking housing, but by restructuring access to educational and economic opportunities.