The politicization of otherness and the privatization of the enemy: Cultural hindrances and assets for active citizenship

Introduction

The relationship with others and otherness, which is at the very heart of individual, social, and political life, is a longstanding motif in the philosophical, psychological, and sociological debate. The purpose of our article is to examine this theme in relation to active citizenship, so as to identify both the cultural hindrances and assets that promote: on the one hand, closure and rejection, and, on the other, acceptance and openness to otherness.

First, the notions of citizenship and active citizenship are briefly illustrated, along with their entanglement with otherness and the social consequences of this knot. Then, based on the work of Carl Schmitt (2007/1932), the friend-enemy dichotomy is introduced to exemplify the fundamental opposition characterizing the “political”. It is argued that in the contemporary age and society, the public and the private dimensions of the “enemy” have conflated as the result of two concurrent phenomena: the politicization of otherness and the privatization of enemies. An explanation of such a transformation is then offered, based on the integration of classical social psychology approaches (Tajfel & Turner, 1979, 1986; Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987) with more recent cultural psychology contributions (Valsiner, 2007; Salvatore, 2016). Specifically, the inherent notions of symbolic universes and semiotic capital are introduced as the key concepts. Finally, the cultural assets conveyed by semiotic capital are discussed as factors for promoting active citizenship and openness to otherness.

The citizenship-otherness tangle

The concept of otherness is closely connected to the concept of citizenship. As is well known, the notion of citizenship first arose in the city-states of ancient Greece, where it designated the full members of the political community who were entitled to vote. Notoriously, it applied only to some individuals (i.e., property owners), while others, namely women, slaves, and the poorer members of the community were excluded. Although in the modern and contemporary age, in democratic regimes, the parameters used to define “citizens” have gradually been enlarged so as to become more inclusive, both the liberal and republican versions of citizenship have not reached the full stage of universalism they claim. On the contrary, being based, among other variables, on territoriality (i.e., the state), they are suspected of embodying some form of exclusion, if not discrimination (Dobson, 2003). Indeed, either the principle for determining citizenship is ius soli (citizenship is acquired by birth within the territory of the state) or jus sanguinis (citizenship is acquired regardless of the place of birth if one of the parents is a citizen of the state), the individual-(territorial) state relationship is at the core of citizenship. Such a device inevitably delineates identity issues that revolve around social and psychological boundaries between “citizens” who have rights, duties, and virtues, and “non citizens”. Moreover, as identities are socially acquired, this mechanism also triggers struggles for identity recognition (Honneth, 1995). So the us-them distinction is clearly set in the very concept of citizenship, even though parameters for acquiring it and boundaries between those who meet and those who do not meet them may vary across space and time.

In the notion of “active citizenship” otherness presents itself in a twofold perspective. Indeed, in citizenship theory the passive-active dichotomy is extensively recalled, depending on “whether citizenship is developed from above (via the state) or from below (in terms of more participatory institutions)” (Turner, 1990, p. 189). This distinction emphasizes, on the one hand, the rights granted by the state to which citizens are entitled because of their status as citizens, and on the other hand, the responsibilities of citizens and the political community to which they belong. In active citizenship the individual-state relationship goes along with the relationships between citizens, thereby bridging the liberal individualist perspective with the republican communitarian perspective, and overcoming the opposition between citizenship as status and citizenship as practice. As feminism in particular has pointed out (Voet, 1998; Werbner & Yuval-Davis, 1999), citizenship is not only about rights and duties, individuals and the state, but it is also about political relationships with co-members of the community as well as civic virtues and practices. In active citizenship the relationship to otherness is key, and it cannot but be influenced by the general social perception and cultural dynamics, which guides people’s feelings, thoughts, and behaviours.

The friend-enemy distinction

The current Zeitgeist and the broader cultural milieu permeating many societies hardly promote inclusion, acceptance, and openness to otherness. “Enemies” have always existed in the history of mankind, rooted in the human need to define a sense of group identity. However, as the globalized world has become more and more complex, uncertain and risky, and as economic, environmental, and demographic crises have affected the life people all over the planet, reactive tribalisms and endogamous communitarisms have spread (Pulcini, 2012), along with an insulation tendency (Daloz, C. Keen, J. Keen, & Parks, 1996). Just to draw a few examples from the current socio-political scenario, islamophobia, xenophobia, racism, rage against political institutions and élites, authoritarian and populist upsurges all target old and new enemies.

Indeed, the friend-enemy opposition has been considered, according to the work of Carl Schmitt (2007/1932), the specific distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced. In his words:

The friend and enemy concepts are to be understood in their concrete and existential sense, not as metaphors or symbols, not mixed and weakened by economic, moral, and other conceptions, least of all in a private-individualistic sense as a psychological expression of private emotions and tendencies […] The enemy is not merely any competitor or just any partner of a conflict in general. He is also not the private adversary whom one hates. An enemy exists only when, at least potentially, one fighting collectivity of people confronts a similar collectivity. The enemy is solely the public enemy, because everything that has a relationship to such a collectivity of men, particularly to a whole nation, becomes public by virtue of such a relationship. The enemy is hostis, not inimicus in the broader sense. (Schmitt, 2007, pp. 117-120)

It follows from these assumptions that private persons cannot have enemies (hostes), they can only have foes (inimici). Yet we argue that in our contemporary age and society the public (i.e., the political) and the private (i.e., personal) dimensions of the enemy have been conflated. On the one hand, the friend-enemy dichotomy has become the distinction to which all human actions and motives can be reduced, far beyond the political: many life domains (economy, religion, culture, and even the vital world of relationships) have become “political”, so that economic competitors, sport adversaries, members of cultural minorities or opposite opinion-based groups, have all assumed the configuration of public enemies. This is what we refer to with the “politicization of otherness”.

On the other hand, many collective entities (e.g., states, institutions, minorities, diverse groups, etc.) have assumed the configuration of private (i.e., personal, individual) enemies, being progressively perceived on a basis of one-to-one confrontation, highly impregnated with emotionality, as happens in close relationships. This is what we refer to with the “privatization of enemies”. At the psychological level, this shift in perception changes how we respond to otherness: in fact, enemies are no longer perceived as abstract objects which one is unlikely to come across, but as personal menaces, threatening faces, bodies and names. The more these threatening others are felt as close and tangible, the more people feel vulnerable, exposed to risks, and frightened. At the same time, this perceived proximity in space and time—no matter whether real or just dreaded—opens up the possibility of relating to others on a personal psychological basis.

The politicization of otherness and the privatization of enemies can be viewed as the two sides of the same coin. The first multiplies public enemies across societal domains through a process of generalization-depersonalization, the second turns enemies into foes through a process of particularization-personalization. As a pragmatic effect, enemies are perceived as both public and private, collective and individual, abstract and concrete, far and close, general and particular.

The identity-otherness tangle

To account for psychological dynamics underlying what we refer to as the politicization of otherness and the privatization of enmity, we integrate two psychological approaches to the identity-otherness relationship.

The first, coming from social psychology, is the framework of Social Identity Theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979, 1986) and Social Categorization Theory (Turner et al., 1987), which highlights the entanglement between individuals and groups, personal identity and collective identity, group-based identity and relationship to otherness. Social Identity Theory posits that group identification has the main function of fostering individual self-esteem and supporting a positive self-image. Membership (as postulated by Social Categorization Theory) implies that individuals categorize themselves and others as either members of the same group (ingroup, “us”) or belonging to different groups (outgroup, “the other”, “them”). This simple act of categorization affects the way individuals perceive otherness. Indeed, self-categorization typically results in the tendency to extend trust, empathy and cooperation to “us” but not to “them” (Tajfel & Turner, 1986), and in the overuse of negative outgroup stereotypes. Research has revealed that the tendency to positively evaluate the groups to which one belongs and negatively evaluate external groups is general and ubiquitous, even though there are notable exceptions to this dynamics. Specifically, outgroup derogation, that is, hostility towards others, is triggered by specific factors, including how strongly people identify with their reference groups (based on culture, opinion, state, and so forth), whether they feel deprived compared to other groups, or wronged, or whether they perceive other groups as a threat to their own identity, goals, or interests (see Hewstone, Rubin, & Willis, 2002, for a review). These factors account for different forms of hostility, from moderate (e.g., verbal attacks and avoidance) to severe expressions such as discrimination and physical violence.

In this perspective, “enemies” can be viewed as the outcome of a basic general intergroup dynamics, which might have become more pervasive than it was in the recent past as the need for identity has become more and more difficult to fulfil in the uncertain scenario of contemporary societies, where the traditional sources of authority have lost their capacity to serve as normative devices.

This framework can at least partially account for what we refer to as the politicization of otherness, that is, the tendency to classify all collective others as friends or enemies and to engage in potentially—if not actual—hostile behaviour.

The second approach comes from semiotic cultural psychology theory (Salvatore, 2016; Valsiner, 2007) and complements the previous one by providing a specific insight into the phenomenon we referred to as the privatization of the enemy. Specifically, this approach accounts for the underlying affect-driven logic of generalization-particularization, and sheds light on the role of cultural milieus in endowing people and institutions with cultural assets that are crucial in promoting a constructive, interdependent relationship with otherness.

Semiotic cultural psychology theory (henceforth SCPT) conceives of culture as a process of sense-making, an ongoing search for meaning and interpretation of the outside world that permeates the experience of individuals and drives their feelings, orientations, attitudes, social behaviours, and relationships with others, be they people, groups, institutions or collective entities in general. The sense-making process generates generalised, affect-laden sets of meanings that work as basic assumptions about the inner and outer world.

These sets of meanings are mainly the result of the mind’s unconscious way of functioning, which organizes the representation of the self and the world according to the principle of symmetry (Matte Blanco, 1975). In brief, the symmetric logic of the mind tends to remove the differences between the objects that are represented, as well as to overcome the distinction between the representation and the emotion that originates that representation. The outcomes of such functioning are broad, homogenizing classes of objects, characterized by few fundamental qualities, where each object is treated as equivalent to any other object included in the class—as in stereotypes.

The nature of this logic of the mind integrates the explanation of the politicization of otherness provided by the social psychology approaches. In addition, it accounts for what we referred to as the privatization of enemies: indeed, by virtue of the symmetry principle others/enemies are represented not only as indistinguishable from each other, but each of them is also perceived as the concrete specimen representing the collective entity (the class), and invested with the emotion that generated it, which drives the primary response.

Symbolic universes and semiotic capital

SCPT names the sets of affect-laden meanings that shape the experience of individuals symbolic universes, and posits that they are shared among large groups of individuals, thereby defining their cultural milieu. A recent cross-national survey aimed at analysing the cultural milieus in 11 European countries (Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands, Spain, and the UK) detected five symbolic universes (Salvatore, Fini, Mannarini, Valsiner, & Veltri, 2019; Salvatore et al., 2018a), each conveying a basic generalised worldview, whereby the world is differently and alternatively experienced as:

1. A universe shaped by an inherent order, conveyed by values, principles, and rules. Even though not experienced as the best of all possible worlds, it is a world within which individuals acknowledge the existence of a supra-individual order that transcends individuals and with which they are willing to engage. This symbolic universe is referred to as “ordered universe”.

2. The sphere of interpersonal significant relations, within which individuals feel at ease, trust each other, and respect rules as long as they share emotional ties with those who are part their own personal network. “Interpersonal bond” is the label used to describe this symbolic universe.

3. A social environment where institutions take care of individuals, fulfil their needs, meet their expectations, and provide them with resources to achieve their aims. A world where there is a good functional fit between individuals and society. Because of these characteristics, this symbolic universe is named “caring society”.

4. A relational niche of primary groups, which are experienced as a shelter from a threatening, hostile outside world, and belonging to which is valued on the basis of this substantial defensive function. This symbolic universe is referred to as “niche of belongingness”.

5. An anomic place to live, where no sense of agency, no trust, no order or rules are in force. This symbolic universe is named “others” world” to emphasize the experience of dispossession and having no control over events.

The map of the cultural milieus resulting from this survey showed that a significant proportion of European citizens experienced life and society as a threatening and frightening environment, full of enemies, and is therefore likely to relate to otherness in a defensive way. Indeed, two more studies on political behaviour exemplify the pragmatic effects of the sense-making processes conveyed by symbolic universes. The first (Veltri, Redd, Mannarini, & Salvatore, 2018) highlighted that the diffusion of symbolic universes that centralize the private sphere of relationships and group identity, such as “niche of belongingness” and “interpersonal bonds”, was associated to the Brexit outcome. The second (Mannarini, Rochira, Russo, & Salvatore, submitted) revealed that symbolic universes that acknowledge the positive individual-system interdependence, namely “ordered universe” and “caring society”, were likely to promote support to democracy, trust, civicness, egalitarian values, and openness to diversity.

This capacity of the symbolic universes to make sense of the world and to account for a certain type of approach to otherness goes hand in hand with their functioning as cultural assets or hindrances. Indeed, symbolic universes provide individuals, groups, institutions, and communities with what has been referred to as semiotic capital (Salvatore et al., 2018a), that is, a repertoire of meanings, values, attitudes, and behavioural scripts that foster the individuals’ and social groups’ propensity to value otherness, interdependence, civicness, and the rules of the game.

The findings of the studies mentioned above suggest that two symbolic universes—namely, “ordered universe” and “caring society”—are likely to endow social actors with semiotic capital. They are both characterized by the introjection of a super-ordered dimension of life that makes people value the relation between the individual and the supra-individual sphere of experience, far beyond the small niche of primary bonds. This type of semiotic capital is akin to bridging and linking social capital, as it is able to connect groups both horizontally and vertically (Pelling & High, 2005; Szreter & Woolcock, 2004), and thus it can promote engagement with otherness, cooperation and friendship (as opposed to enmity).

On the other hand, the “interpersonal bond” and “niche of belongingness” symbolic universes are likely to provide individuals with a set of meanings that, while reinforcing group identity, cohesion, and homogeneity (as bonding social capital, see Putnam, 2000), are at risk of replicating the “we-them” logic of tribalism and the politicization of otherness that generate enemies almost everywhere.

Finally, the “others’ world” symbolic universe lacks all type of semiotic resources, as it offers no cultural instruments to make sense of the outer world.

Cultural assets for active citizenship

In the present time semiotic capital seems to be a quite scarce resource within the European societies’ cultural milieus (Salvatore et al., 2018a). Especially in Southern European countries as Italy and Greece—which have suffered the recent economic and institutional turmoil the most—the prevalent cultural meanings proved to be those associated with the “niche of belongingness” and “others’ world” symbolic universes. At least in part, the politicization of otherness and the privatization of the enemy can be understood as a reflection of the incidence of these two symbolic universes, which encourage broad segments of society to feel and connote outgroups as a threat from which to defend themselves (Salvatore et al., 2018b).

Recognizing the cultural grounds of the politicization of otherness and the privatization of the enemy can help to identify strategies aimed at counteracting such critical phenomena, with the perspective of promoting more inclusive and reflective societies and reinforcing active citizenship. More specifically, the SCPT interpretative framework brings to the fore the awareness that the cultural environment calls for policies aimed at promoting cultural resources (i.e., semiotic capital, according to SCPT terminology), just as the physical environment calls for policies aimed at preserving natural resources. The promotion of semiotic capital is a challenge. While social sciences are able to recognize the signs of the lack of cultural resources, they are less able to model the social dynamics underpinning their development, as well as to identify actions to orientate them. A systematic discussion of this issue would go beyond the scope of this paper. Below we confine ourselves to outlining two basic concepts that could contribute to a general theory of psycho-cultural development.

First, the close relation between uncertainty and people’s tendency to embrace affect-laden, generalized interpretations of facts and contexts should be taken into account. Several lines of theoretical and empirical research in social and cultural psychology (Greenberg & Arndt, 2012; Mannarini et al. (submitted); Proulx & Inzlicht, 2012; Salvatore et al., 2018b), as well as in psychoanalysis (Salvatore & Freda, 2011; Tonti & Salvatore, 2015), converge in highlighting that affective semiosis (i.e., the tendency to interpret the reality in terms of homogenizing, generalized emotional categories, based on the friend/enemy scheme) works as a fundamental cognitive stabilizer, which is increasingly activated the more individuals experience that their own consolidated system of meaning is disrupted or threatened. Accordingly, the prevalence of the symbolic universes that foster defensive, identity-based motives (such as “niche of belongingness” and “others’ world”) can be seen as a response to the deep uncertainty characterizing the current state of societies (Salvatore et al., 2018b).

Based on this framework, a possible strategy of cultural development is to reduce uncertainty, so as to weaken or even neutralize the cultural attitudes that trigger the politicization of otherness and the privatization of enemies. A twofold action can be undertaken: on the one hand, the structural factors that create uncertainty (e.g., economic inequalities, the opacity of financial and political processes) have to be counteracted and defused. On the other hand, institutional and participatory devices that enable people to structure a deeper understanding of the political, socio-economic and demographic processes in which they are embedded have to be set up (e.g., access to data and agencies, inclusive decision making processes that can make financial, economic and ecological processes accountable and subject to social control). Indeed, the more people realize that the outside world and the dynamics of globalization are representable and comprehensible, the less uncertainty they feel: understanding what happens is a form of socio-cognitive protection and social empowerment. As highlighted also in research on well-being (see Di Martino, Di Napoli, Esposito, Prilleltensky, & Arcidiacono, 2018), the appraisal that society is discernable and predictable is an essential ingredient of positive social health.

Second, the promotion of semiotic capital requires the (re)construction of the intermediate bodies (e.g., voluntary associations, community groups, political parties, trade unions, professional groups, and so forth) and the revitalization of their bridging role between the public sphere and the life-world (i.e., the world of lived experience, the domain of primary bonds where people enact and experience their own and other’s subjective and emotional life). The intermediate bodies have historically worked as settings within which these two dimensions of social life—community and society, to use Tönnies’ classical contrast—coexisted intertwined.

Within an intermediate body, subjective, identity-based motives make the experience of social relationships meaningful and existentially salient. At the same time, the role of the intermediate body goes beyond the interpersonal exchange, since it is designed for a super-ordered purpose and functions according to rules that apply beyond the life-world and can even contradict the rules in force in the life-world. This super-ordered purpose is the constraint put on the life-world to enable the intermediate bodies to pursue their public function, that is, to accomplish a task whose meaning and value stand not only for those directly involved in the social exchange of the intermediate body itself, but for a larger segment of people, the “third party” represented by society at large.

In brief, an intermediate body is composed of interpersonal, vital bonds; yet, differently from what happens in primary relationships (family, friendship), these relations are not an aim per se, but a means for accomplishing a public function. In so doing, the intermediate body transforms the life-worlds into social capital.

If up to a recent past intermediate bodies were relatively stable social structures - e.g. political parties, trades unions, the network of cultural, political and community associations—operating between the private and the public sphere, these structures have been progressively weakened in contemporary societies, and it is unrealistic to expect that they can be just brought back to the form and diffusion they had in the past. Accordingly, the reconstruction of intermediation processes requires fully innovative approaches. It is especially at the local community level that intermediation processes need to be hosted and promoted, so as to generate social practices that are sufficiently dynamic and effective to overcome the weakness of the current social and civic infrastructures.

Conclusions

The cultural milieus can convey either cultural assets or hindrances that, according to their distribution and prevalence in a given time and context, orientate societies in one direction or another. The politicization of otherness and the privatization of enemies can be viewed as connected to the widespread nature of symbolic universes that lead people to fear otherness and react defensively. Semiotic capital is an essential ingredient of democratic, just societies; it is a cultural asset that promotes inclusive, active citizenship, as it sets the basis for self-to-other relationships that are cognizant of the necessary interdependency that distinguishes human systems and pursue universalistic principles. Possible strategies of cultural development could both reduce the global uncertainty that unleash emotional responses to otherness, and promote semiotic capital through the action of intermediate bodies. Though they are not simple and straightforward to implement, they open up paths to envisage more open and equal societies.