University of Amsterdam
Department of Philosophy
25 August 2019
The Historical Imagination of Climate Change
Climate Change in View of Cultural Theory and Metahistory
Masterxw Thesis
MA Philosophy
Supervisor: Prof. Dr Jacques Bos
Second Reader: Prof. Dr Dingmar van Eck
2 TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ... 3
INTRODUCTION ... 4
CHAPTER : CULTURAL THEORY OF RISK ... 9
CULTURAL THEORY ... 9
RISK ... 11
GRID-GROUP ... 13
CULTURAL THEORY OF RISK AND NATURE ... 15
CHAPTER : METAHISTORY ... 16
PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY ... 17
METAHISTORY ... 18
CHAPTER : CULTURAL THEORY OF HISTORY (HYPOTHESIS) ... 22
FIRST INTERPRETATIONS ... 22
THE HISTORICAL GRID-GROUP ... 24
CHAPTER V: CLIMATE CHANGE AS A TEST CASE ... 30
CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE GRID-GROUP ... 30
TEST CASE FOR THE HISTORICAL GRID-GROUP ... 33
CHAPTER V: CHALLENGES ... 37
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION ... 38
3 Acknowledgements
I would, firstly, like to thank Prof. Dr Jacques Bos, who has been incredibly supportive and understanding throughout this process. I would, secondly, like to thank my partner, Elise Addlem, who gave me all the possible help and has persevered through the hard fact of being with me during the writing of this thesis. I want to also thank my mum, Ludmila Burtman Teplitskiy, who has encouraged me, given me endless love and support, and is the reason for all of my successes. I want to thank my dad, Vladimir Teplitskiy, for giving me my inquisitive mind. Finally, thank you to the rest of my family and friends for all of their love and support.
4 Introduction
The greatest ethical question of our day seems to be ‘what should we do about climate change?’ In a time of crisis of this sort, more than ever philosophy has a place to question the big questions themselves and to bring together different academic fields to attempt to answer these questions. It is philosophy, out of all the fields of academic endeavour, that can bring together different fields of scholarship in order to take an in depth look at the theories themselves and find common ground amongst them. Hopefully, this project will be a small contribution to this endeavour. The main objective of this master thesis is to combine Cultural Theory and Metahistory to investigate ideological positions on climate change.1 This introduction will expand on the motivation behind this topic of philosophy enquiry, it
will describe the hypothesis of the thesis, it will shortly introduce Cultural Theory and Metahistory, and finally it will describe how the hypothesis can be structured in order to give new information on climate change.
The motivation to write this thesis comes from a deep worry for the current state of affairs in the area of policy when it comes to preventing climate change. There is a general feeling that climate science has spoken on the issue, showing that climate change is of deep concern, yet we as human beings remain inactive. Thus, now is the time for social science to ‘prove itself’ and find solutions for the inability to create great change in the field of policy. Philosophy has been engaging with climate change for decades now, but it seems that there have not been many attempts to cross academic boundaries in order to research the deep-rooted ideological issues that a dilemma such as climate change bring to the fore. In order to understand the ideological positions that make people either believe in climate change or not, it is helpful to find a method via which to understand ideological positions in general.
The motivation to look at perceptions of history in general and connect these with perceptions on climate change comes from the way that both perceptions have an ‘end of history quality’ to them, such that cultural ideological structures play a formative role in structuring these perceptions. Perceptions of history and climate change meet in a sense, today, given the sense that we are living in the end-times of history in light of the catastrophe of climate change. It is hard to imagine another issue of our time that directly poses a greater threat to humanity, nor one that has such potential to affect the march of history. The intuition that these perceptions were related lead to this master thesis. At its core is the idea that the way we tell the story of history, the structure we have for it, and the ideologies that we come with are all connected to social factors. These social factors affect the way we as individuals perceive the transition that is happening both in nature and in history itself.
1 The terms Cultural Theory and Metahistory will be capitalised in this thesis, since both terms refer to specific
5 The way humans tell the story of history is extremely important. The role humans imagine themselves taking in history will affect how they act. If indeed climate change is the most historically significant issue of our time, the perception of it being that important and humans being able to ameliorate its effects has great value. The theoretical work in this thesis has the potential to explain different value-laden positions on history and on climate. Perhaps this knowledge will help people to take action on this global issue.
This thesis presents the hypothesis that it is possible to explain perceptions of climate change through a combination of Douglas’ Cultural Theory grid-group and White’s Metahistory. The pivotal claim being made in this thesis is that it is possible to stich the two theories together and, by doing so, create a much wider understanding of the climate change debate. Chapter I will introduce Cultural Theory, insofar as it is relevant to this thesis. Cultural Theory’s potential to provide a framework within which to understand different perceptions of climate change will be made clear. Chapter II will introduce the relevant issues from White’ Metahistory (White, 1973). Having explained the two theories that are important to this thesis, chapter III will explain how these two theories can be combined. It will be claimed that Cultural Theory and Metahistory share parallel ideas of ideology that allows them to be combined quite easily. A new grid-group typology will be drafted, which will include both attitudes to risk in nature and attitudes towards history in general. Chapter IV will examine the hypothesis on climate change and will reconstruct the new grid-group with history and climate change. Finally, chapter V will be a consideration of some challenges to the hypothesis, after which the thesis will be concluded and summarised.
The first chapter of this thesis is focused on a deep exploration of Cultural Theory in general, and specifically the grid-group typology. Cultural Theory is a subject of a research in social anthropology and political science. In Natural Symbols (Douglas, 2003), Douglas expanded the theoretical horizon of her predecessors in the social sciences by re-establishing a grid-group via which to understand ideological positions of different individuals based on their social and political environment. The grid-group is based on two axes. The group axis shows how much the group controls a given individual, while the grid shows how hierarchical a society of a given individual is. Cultural Theory of risk is a field that comprises a range of research projects by political scientists and sociologists, researching people’s perceptions of risk. The fundamental aspects of both the theory and its use on risk and nature can be summed up in Figure I. There are four possible socio-ideological positions. 1. The hierarchist, who perceives nature as tolerant and, like a ball on a parabolic line with edges, he believes that nature has a limit point after which point nature becomes unstable. 2. The individualist who perceives nature like the hierarchist, just without the edges, meaning that nature is tolerant of human action. 3. The egalitarian who perceives nature as extremely vulnerable and in a state of crisis, and like a ball on reversed parabola, any action towards nature brings with its huge risks.
6 4. The fatalist who is sceptical of the possibility of human beings having any kind of positive effects on nature, which is capricious.
Figure I. Myths of humans and nature (Tansey and O’riordan, 1999, p. 81).
Chapter II investigates philosophy of history topics such as the directionality of history, end of history and narrativism. It introduces specifically Metahistory by Hayden White. Metahistory is a methodological investigation of the ‘the deep structure of the historical imagination’ (White, 1973, p. ix). White paints a picture of philosophers and historians in the nineteenth century based on the way they describe history. He creates a matrix that helps one understand why a philosopher or historian writes about a specific event and how. White sees work on history as being able to be read like a story and can be analysed via literary tools. The modes he uses to understand history in his methodology are mode of emplotment, mode of argument, mode of ideological implication and the tropes the historian uses. The most important tool for this thesis will be the ideological implication mode. White borrows the ideological implications from Mannheim. If tools like tropes look at the linguist and poetic structure of the historian work, the mode of ideological implication exposes how the time, place and society the historian lives in affect his work.
The hypothesis of this thesis is developed in chapters III and IV. Chapter III shows the places where Cultural Theory and Metahistory can meet and be synthesised. This is an interdisciplinary work, though it approached from a philosophical angle. This chapter first proposes an understanding of the directionality of history, before introducing White’s Metahistory. Particularly important will be his ideological framework, presented in a four-part framework. It will be shown that White’s four
7 ideological positions in Metahistory can be read as the four ideological positions in Cultural Theory grid-group. This synthesis will be presented as follows: 1. The hierarchist position is similar to the liberal position in Metahistory. This ideological point of view can be read as perceiving human beings to have a limited degree of control over history. This position emphasis improving current socio-political structures. 2. The individualist position is similar to the conservative position in the grid-group. The individualist perceives the human being as powerful in the face of history. Freedom and individualism are central, and there is a great aversion to radical action. 3. The egalitarian position correlates to the radical position and both are described in the same revolutionary terms, the change to history is immanent and so is the attitude towards nature. 4. The fatalist and the anarchist positions need the most work of imagination to bring them together but it is the disbelief in systems and the somewhat sceptical position towards affecting change makes it possible to tie the two together and show how their approach to history and nature might be similar.
The hypothesis that Cultural Theory and Metahistory can be combined to understand perceptions of history and climate change comes to fruition in chapter V. This combined theory is presented and applied to perceptions of climate change, via the Climate Change and History Grid-Group. It will be shown that Cultural Theory started addressing climate change in the past, but the theoretical work of this thesis is new in the sense that it adds the historical aspect. Figure II presents the outcomes of this thesis. It will thereby be shown that is possible to see an overlap between ideological positions regarding climate change and ideological positions on history. Thus, this new combined theory can provide new knowledge on why people hold the attitudes that they do. The discourse on climate change will be considered in relation to the official position of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), who hold that a global temperature rise over 1.5°C since the pre-industrial age will be a tipping point for the entire climate system (Masson-Delmotte et al., 2018, paras A1, A3). This notion of a tipping point alludes immediately to a historical conception of this event. Four different positions will be presented vis a vis climate change and history.
The four combined positions are as follows:
1. A hierarchist, which will be represented by the IPCC, considers the 1.5°C global temperature rise as the barrier of tolerance of history and climate. The ball of history and climate has wiggle room that can be measured and can be controlled if people listen to the scientific expertise. There is a social hierarchy to which the hierarchist conforms, and even the flow of history itself can be understood through it. This is the liberal approach, which believes it is possible to understand the climate and to fine tune the system.
2. The individualist, which will be represented by an entrepreneur, sees the climate as resilient. He perceives the effects of human beings on history in a conservative way and is dismissive of radical
8 change. This view of history is one in which progress is a natural evolution. It is the location on the grid-group that shows a mistrust of figures in positions of power dictating how to act.
3. The egalitarian, which will be represented by an environmental NGO, believes that we are in the end-times of history and makes a radical call for action to change the entire socio-political system. The egalitarian sees the possibility of utopia or dystopia as imminent, depending on which actions human beings take regarding climate change. An environmental NGO may think the IPCC is not radical enough since nature is at great risk and history is on the verge of radical change.
4. The fatalist, which will be represented by a coal miner, has to some extent an oppressed individualistic point of view. He sees both his own oppression by the group on the one hand, and on the other hand does not enjoy any of the benefits of being in a group. The fatalist can be aligned with an inactive anarchist position. The IPCC is considered just another way to oppress the individual, and the positive outcomes of listening to the IPCC are doubtful. In his view, human beings cannot have any substantial effect on climate change or history.
Figure II. Climate Change and History Grid-group
This thesis is a work that attempts to convince the reader of the connection between views on history and climate to socio-ideological positions. In doing so, this thesis exposes deep rooted ideas on nature and history that evade the public discourse on climate change. The Climate Change and History Grid-Group opens up an opportunity for future research to test this combined position. If the hypothesis
9 can be proven, it is possible that in view of this theory there will be a reconsideration of the reasons change was not yet affected on the issue of climate change.
Chapter I: Cultural Theory and Risk
This chapter will give an overview of Cultural Theory in order that it may be used, in combination with Metahistory, to understand perceptions of climate change. This thesis, as a whole, is an attempt to understand the discourse around climate change by using a theory that is based both in anthropological and sociological research. Accepting the hypothesis that it is possible to synthesise Metahistory with Cultural Theory demands a great understanding of both of these theories. Cultural Theory plays the greatest role in this thesis, since it does a lot of the work to explain how social conditions impact individuals’ positions on climate change and history.
In the first part of this chapter, there will be a discussion of Cultural Theory at large. Following this, risk is introduced as the main subject of Cultural Theory’s classification. Next, the grid-group theory is explored, showing the way it categorises different ideological points of view based on power dynamics within society. Lastly, the work in this chapter come into place when nature is analysed through the lens of the Cultural Theory of risk.
Cultural Theory
Cultural Theory is a tool that was first presented by Mary Douglas. Although in its beginnings it belonged to social anthropological research, Cultural Theory was later widely used by those who concerned themselves with risk perception (Boholm, 1996, p. 64). Cultural Theory is motivated by an understanding of the two ways that human beings judge dangers or threats. It is based on the questions of how and why we judge such threats (Tansey and O’riordan, 1999, p. 71). The basic principal of Douglas’ work is that a person’s social context will affect the kind of risk aversion this person has (Oltedal et al., 2004, p. 5). Douglas’s first work on the matter, Natural Symbols, shows way in which social environments influence behaviour (Douglas, 2003, p. xxvi).
There are two key implicit claims that form the basis of Cultural Theory. The first is the notion of ‘cultural bias’. Cultural bias can be understood as the beliefs or values shared by a group that influence the way that an individual perceives a thing or situation (Thompson, Ellis and Wildavsky, 1990, p. 1). An individual’s beliefs are not formed solely by the individual himself but are influenced by the social world of values and beliefs that an individual is into. For example, a Muslim in Egypt may consider circumcision to be both necessary for a child’s health and ethically good. Meanwhile, an atheist in France is likely to perceive circumcision as a violent act of abuse toward a child that has no proven benefit. Both positions are influenced by the socio-political environment into which an individual is
10 born. The second implicit claim of Cultural Theory is that of ‘social relations’ (Thompson, Ellis and Wildavsky, 1990, p. 1). Social relations can be understood as relationships between two people or more, using symbols, words and other means that can be researched within sociology. An example of a social relation would be the research of work relations, within which who the boss is and who the worker is will need to be established.
The culture within which one exists not only influences one’s views about what is right and wrong, it also plays a role in establishing perceptions about concepts that may seem, prima facie, to not be ideologically loaded. For example, the concept of risk, of history or of climate change may seem to be straight forward technical concepts with straightforward dictionary definitions. Yet, Cultural Theory was able to show that even such concepts as these are ideologically loaded. This thesis will explain how the cultural bias that is created by social relations also warps the individual’s understanding of the role of history when it comes to climate change. Cultural Theory scholars emphasise the mechanisms that bond groups, where empirical work in sociology showed that without ‘trust mechanisms’ angst is created (Tansey and O’riordan, 1999, p. 73). This angst is the root of the four different ways to perceive risk. Perhaps trust mechanisms protect people from angst, but it is intuitively evident that the price is paid for this social bond in lower degrees of freedom. For example, the Chinese today experience greater and greater economic success that is based on their trust of the government but pay the price for this trust in personal liberties.
Cultural Theory is based on the position that an individual, together with his society, creates ‘symbolic meaning’ via which they understand the world (Tansey and O’riordan, 1999, p. 73). Therefore, Cultural Theory shows that it is possible to understand a person’s values to a large extent by considering the social group to which they belong. It is argued that people do not have a finite amount of possibilities open to them, but rather that the possibilities of the values that a person will hold will be based on a finite number of options offered by their social group (Thompson, Ellis and Wildavsky, 1990, p. 13). The freedom of people to form their own values, then, seems to exist in their path to taking up some of the given values espoused by their social group. Even the knowledge of what a person can do with his life is limited to his group. For example, consider an indigenous Australian in pre-colonised Australia. This person would not consider land ownership as a possibility for himself, since some indigenous tribes did not have a concept of landownership before British colonisation. Meanwhile, the British colonisers that came to Australia saw Australia as an expanse of land ready to be taken as private property (Verran, 1998, p. 241). In this way, concepts can be seen to be developed and sustained within given cultural contexts, influencing the views and values of the individuals within societies.
Douglas’ theory is based on a very specific realm of social sciences. In its essence, it is part of social construction theory that deals with risk (Tansey and O’riordan, 1999, p. 73). This means that not only the categorisation of people in general, but their attitudes towards risk is a consequence of their
11 social background. The theory does not argue against risk as a real phenomenon, but it does focus on the social construction of how human beings perceive risk. Douglas uses the terms ‘social construal’ as a weaker form than construct (Ellis and Douglas, 2018, p. 123). The term social contractual can be understood as the way society influences an individual’s specific position on risk. The next two parts of this chapter will define the issues with risk that these interactions may contribute to and the most up to date way the categories are set out.
Based on the idea that individual views are socially situated and influenced, Cultural Theory established the following four ideological positions that an individual may belong to: fatalism, individualism, hierarchy and egalitarianism.2 These positions will be described in detail later in this
chapter. According to these positions, Cultural Theory highlights the social basis of people’s ideas about risk, which will now be explained.
Risk
This sub-chapter is diving into the core of the theory: the idea of risk perception. Cultural Theory ties political and social discourse on risk with social dynamics such as ‘power, justice and legitimacy’ (Tansey and O’riordan, 1999, p. 71). This is to say that there are social values that contribute to the epistemological system within which, and according to which, individuals quantify risk and make decisions accordingly. Risk is in the background of many of the biggest moral, ethical, political and sociological questions of our age. It seems correct to say that people in the same time and place, be it geographically or historically, share similar risk perceptions. It is easy enough to think of the post-World War II generation and the scare of the atomic bomb that posed an enormous perceived risk for a generation of people, combining futuristic technology, the threat of another world war and an ideological divide between liberal democracy and communism. It is interesting to consider whether this threat felt for those people like the threat that we feel today of global climate change. It could be argued that climate change is perceived to be the greatest threat to the human species today. On the other hand, this depends who you ask. There are people who, of course, are entirely sceptical of the existence of climate change and of it posing any risk at all to human beings. Before this matter is entered into, however, it is necessary to explain what risk means.
Risk in general can be defined in few ways (Hansson, 2018, sec. 1): 1. An unwanted situation that may occur. 2. The cause of an unwanted situation that may occur. 3. The probability of an unwanted situation that may occur. 4. The statistical expectation value an unwanted situation that may occur; and the definition that is considered the most correct to date. 5. A decision under known probabilities. The final definition of risk, as a decision under known probabilities, aligns with Cultural Theory since it
2 Some Cultural Theorists also add the ‘hermit’ position, which is a person who is withdrawal from society. This
category is irrelevant to most Cultural Theorists and does not offer any information that can be assed because of the lack of social interaction of this position. Therefore, this position will not be used in this thesis.
12 presents risk as related to people’s perception of it. Within Cultural Theory, humans only perceive risk amongst things that they know to exist (Wildavsky and Dake, 1990, p. 42). This means that the knowledge a person has affects their risk assessment. For example, things like technologies are feared because people use them and know about them.
Cultural Theory defines risk according to a dichotomy of ‘technical’ and ‘social or perceptual’ examination of risk (Tansey and O’riordan, 1999, p. 72). This dichotomy is borrowed from Roger Kasperson’s theory of risk analysis. Kasperson’s technical approach to risk considers the ‘probability of events and the magnitude of specific consequences’ of risk (Kasperson et al., 1988, p. 177). Here, Kasperson means that risk is related to the safety of the population, via a mix of economic and utility principles. It is clearly a utilitarian approach, whereby the professionals may calculate the list of risks and maximise the safety of most people. The social risk analysis is favoured by Kasperson due to the issues described here. There are psychological issues that are added on top of some kind of rational calculation. Kasperson’s idea is that there are different mechanisms that create a social amplification of risk, whereby the mechanisms themselves are ‘both in direct personal experience and in indirect, or secondary, experience, through information received about the risk, risk events, and management systems’ (Kasperson et al., 1988, p. 184). This shows the connection between the idea of risk as a technical utilitarian issue and its relation to the social and political environment within which risks are perceived.
Cultural Theory originates in Douglas’ interest in tribal societies. In today’s world this view is refreshing in the way she both humanises tribal societies but also tackling the negative aspects of their attitudes to danger. While researching tribal behaviours she finds, again and again, that there are political and social reasons for what is perceived to be different kinds of ‘misfortunes. One can say that she does not try to cover up the way these tribal societies consider specific behaviours of individuals as ‘pollution’ i.e. some unclean behaviour that is perceived to need to be eradicated. The pollution can be either a person or a behaviour, such as an individual who, through some erroneous act, created a perceived danger for the tribe. Perceptions of risk are formed according to Douglas called a social ‘code’. Douglas uses the term ‘code’ to describe the way that societies have ways in which to communicate values in a rapid way. It is there to guide social forms and creates solidarity (Douglas, 2003, pp. 57–60). This code is also behind the Cultural Theory of risk. It, moreover, is what makes the theory unique in its novel approach to combining cultural aspects and ideas such as ‘pollution’ or breaking social codes with risk.
Cultural Theory foregrounds different ideas of risk developed by different societies. The specific content of what is perceived to be risky to each society is of less interest in this thesis. It is the formalisation itself that is key. Cultural Theory of risk looks at the perceptions of risks that can help to explain cultural phenomena from why the Jews keep kosher to why the United States sees its borders
13 to be at risk. This is a very universal approach that tries to unify explanations that, at the end of the day, can be connected back to Douglas’ work on tribes.
Risk in Cultural Theory can be described as a social construal of known unwanted effects on the society. Different groups and different individuals within any given society will have different assessments of risk based on their specific social group and environment. Cultural Theory has devised a tool to investigate the situation of an individual which may explain his or her position on the risk of something, namely the grid-group. The next sub-chapter will explain the grid-group and how it can be used to understand different perceptions of risk.
Grid-group
The grid-group typology is the analytical tool used by Cultural Theory. It consists of two axes. In the first diagram drawn by Douglas, the socio-psychological aspects of the theory are clear. As can be seen in Figure III, the basic diagram shows the social relations that affect beliefs.
Douglas describes the typology itself to classify ‘various minimum forms of commitment to life in society postulated by political theory’ and ‘the extent of regulation, whether within or with membership of a group’ (Douglas, 2013, p. 3). The typology is a tool that looks at the intersection of sociology and political science. It wishes to extract some information about the political realm through the sociological realm. In Natural Symbols, Douglas focuses on the classifications of the centre of society versus the fringes. Figure III shows how if an individual is located high on the grid she believes in the popular classification’s in her group and if one is located further down on the vertical grid she will believe in a more private classification. On the horizontal axis, to the left are the individual-centred ideas and to the right are the group-based ideas. With time, it will become described as follows: high on the group axis (further to the right) means higher group control and low on the group axis (further to the left) means more individualistic existence; high on the grid line means greater mechanisms of hierarchy; and lower on the grid means a more egalitarian system where people are not prevented from taking part in different social roles (Krimsky and Golding, 1992, p. 87).
14 There were many transitions that the theory went through in relation to political dimensions. Through various attempts to reformulate the grid-group, the cultural theorists separated the political realm between centre and sects. The map, as seen in Figure IV, includes all five possible ‘vignettes’ drawn by Thompson et al. It includes the fatalists on the top left of the map; the individualist on the bottom left; the hierarchist on the top right of the map; the egalitarian on the right bottom; and finally, in the centre, the hermit (Thompson, Ellis and Wildavsky, 1990, p. 8).
The illustration given by Thompson et al. in the grid-group is of four characters who align with each position: the high-cast Hindu villager, a member of a western, self-sufficient commune, a Victorian manufacturer, and an un-unionised mill employee. Each example is on the grid-group (Thompson, Ellis and Wildavsky, 1990, pp. 7–10):
1. The Indian villager is high on both the group axis and the grid axis. He enjoys the hierarchical structure of his society because of his high class, but still lives in quite an oppressive group.
2. The self-made Victorian manufacturer is low on both the grid and the group axes. He enjoys quite an egalitarian life and has no social hierarchy that is enforced upon him.
3. The western commune member is low on the grid axis and high on the group axis. He lives in an egalitarian society, but is oppressed within this society, even if he chooses this oppression.
4. The un-unionised mill worker is high on the grid axis and low on the group axis. Thus, he lives in an extremely inegalitarian world and suffers from a strong social hierarchy that he is on the bottom of.
Figure IV. Thompson’s ‘five vignettes mapped onto the two dimensions of sociality’ (Thompson, Ellis and
15 Cultural Theory of Risk and Nature
Cultural Theory has many applications but its application to perceptions of risk regarding nature is both one of the most frequent applications and the most relevant for this thesis, given that the aim is to understand perceptions of climate change. The Cultural Theory literature describes four primary myths about nature. Defining nature as ‘ecological systems’ (Tansey and O’riordan, 1999, p. 19), Thompson et al. describe four perceptions of it: capricious, resilient, tolerant and vulnerable (Tansey and O’riordan, 1999, pp. 80–81). The idea that nature is resilient is coupled with a perception of nature as benign, with a state of equilibrium that it will continually return to. According to the view that nature is resilient, nature is perceived to be forging of actions towards it (Thompson, Ellis and Wildavsky, 1990, pp. 28–29). The view that nature is capricious is based on a sense that nature is unpredictable, and its behaviour is lottery like. According to this view human beings cannot affect change upon nature (Mamadouh, 1999, p. 402). The view that nature is tolerant is similar to the idea that nature is resilient, however according to the view that nature is tolerant, there is a perceived tipping point, after which nature ceases to be tolerant and there could be a catastrophe, it is thought. Lastly, the view that nature is vulnerable includes the idea that nature is highly reactionary to human actions and it is very fragile.
Figure I. Myths of humans and nature (Tansey and O’riordan, 1999, p. 81).
In figure I the line is curved and thus the human understanding of nature is like a ball on a curved line. There are forces that work on this line which are human actions towards nature. Within this figure the different perceptions of nature are represented. The fatalist has a view which is high on the grid and low on the group, believing that nature is capricious, that like a ball on a straight line it can go anywhere, and thus her actions toward it do not matter. We can think of the poor mill worker who has no group to identify with, but yet is subject to strong coercive forces which will lead him to believe that
16 the world and nature itself almost random. Even if it he does not take nature to be random, he believes that human actions toward nature do not matter or affect it. The individualist, that is low on the grid and on the group, enjoys a lot of freedoms and sees nature as resilient. The self-made industrialist from the example represents the individualist, who is free to do most things without coercion and without paying a price for it. He uses nature as he pleases and sees it as strong and resilient. For him, if you push nature it will change but it will always return to a state of equilibrium. The hierarchist, who can be understood through the eyes of the Indian high-cast villager that is high on the group and on the grid, sees nature as tolerant. In his eyes, nature is like a ball on a curved line with an edge whereby if one pushes the ball over the edge nature can end up in a state of irreversible disaster. Very similarly to the way he may view his own life in the village, he enjoys the stable system he belongs to, but if he was to push too much against the society, he may break it and lose his high status. Lastly, there is the egalitarian that sees nature as vulnerable. This can be linked to the example of the western commune member. He is high on the group and low on the grid. For him, nature is extremely vulnerable, like a ball on a slope, whereby any human intervention may bring a collapse of nature. The egalitarian demands a radical change to the entire system so nature will be preserved.
The Cultural Theory of risk3 when it comes to nature has been described in this chapter. This
theory ties together perceptions of risk to nature and the social situation of a person. In the next chapter, there will be a discussion of possible beliefs about history. Following this, in the chapter which presents the hypothesis of this thesis, there will be an attempt to add a new layer to the grid-group that shows that history can be also analysed with the use of Cultural Theory.
Chapter II: Metahistory
Thinking about history is perhaps one of the oldest traditions in philosophy. Even questions of what history should include, such as restricting history to the realm of human history or taking history to mean the history of the world in its totality, are not a matter of consensus (Krakauer, Gaddis and Pomeranz, 2017, p. 3). Daniel Little presents four useful questions about the philosophy of history that introduce the main themes of scholarly work on the subject: 1. What does history consist of (e.g. divine or human actions, periods, social structure, etc.)? 2. Does history have a meaning or direction? 3. What is involved in the explanation of history? 4. What is the human aspect of the human present? (Little, 2018, para. 2). The work of scholars of history was for quite a time perceived as purely scientific work. When one reads some of the works in the beginning of the twentieth century, it is common to read claims that position historians as ‘problem-solvers’ that answer questions about what happened and
3 From this point onwards in this thesis, the use of Cultural Theory or grid-group will describe the entire theory
17 why (White, 1973, p. vii). Such an understanding of history and the work of the historian fails to consider the values and biases that every historian brings to the table. This is an investigation into the way that history is told like a story and structured in the mind of historians and lay people.
Philosophy of History
A key notion in the philosophy of history that is at the heart of this thesis is the directionality of history. The directionality of history is the meta-historian’s tool via which she interprets history (Little, 2018, sec. 2.2). The direction of human history is the main theme not only in works of history but also in cultures and religion. The basic patterns of directionality that can be found are cyclical, progressive, and teleological ideas of history. The directionality of history can be viewed as man-made or can be external, as in the theological ideas of history (Little, 2018, sec. 2.2). A fourth possible option is a diclinism, which describes the perception of the inevitable decline of great societies (Oswald and Gottfried, 2016, p. 3).
An example for of a progressive versus cyclical concept of history can be found in Fukuyama. When he raised the question of the development of societies, he wished to evaluate the evolution of societies as progressive or cyclical (Fukuyama, 1992, p. 72). Of course, being a proponent of liberal democracies, the progression of history seemed to Fukuyama as the answer. But from this analysis the opposing direction to progress is not necessary diclinism. The idea of returning to past and forgetting seems to bother the proponents of progress. Maybe this can be explained via the strong idea of the triumph of the human spirit that is the implicit claim of the idea of progress, while cyclical ideas seem to have a Sisyphic nature. Diclinism can be found in some Christian interpretations of Original Sin, in which the moment Adam ate the forbidden fruit the world began to move from the perfect state in an irreversible decline (Harrison, 2007, p. 180). However, this is not to say it means diclinism is purely a religious point of view, different religious ideas of history can have different directionality and indeed many religions share a theological progress. This idea was shared by non-religious people as well, and it is possible to imagine a way of thinking that perceives the today to be worse than the past. The last position is the teleological position, which gives explanatory power to the directionality of history. According to a teleological view, history is moving toward a determined endpoint, whereby the end explains history itself.
Possible directions of history are many times part of a greater idea of the ‘end of history’. Hegel’s philosophy of history, for example, is one of the most important and influential theories that presents a specific idea of the directionality of history. The idea of ‘end of history’ is a notion that this master thesis is based on in an implicit way, in asking whether climate change presents the new ‘end of history’. In Hegel’s philosophy history has an end, which is human freedom (Little, 2018, sec. 2.2). Following Hegel, Marx conformed to the idea of the end of history as freedom, while incorporating an idea of history as ‘the history of class struggle’. The end of history for Marx, then, will come with the
18 impending revolution (Marx and Engels, 2008). Francis Fukuyama, found the idea of the end of history to mean the end of competing political ideologies, as the cold war was dying out and western liberalism seemed to prevail (Fukuyama, 1992, p. 1). It is possible to see from these three examples that different ideologies and positions on history include different reasons and ways history might ‘end’.
A popular method through which to analyse history is Narrativism. Narrativism is based on the claim that the historian’s work can be analysed as a story. It can be understood as ‘a category we project on the non-narrative past in order to make sense of it’ (Ankersmit, Domańska and Kellner, 2009, p. 78). Narrativism can be described in its minimum form as proposing questions such as ‘whose history do we read?’ and ‘who gets to write it?’. It has both a political and linguistic aspects (Partner, 1998, p. 170). The meaning that we derive from history is the essence of narrativism. Another view of narrativism is that it is ‘the function of narrative…to propose points of view on the past’ together with logical entities (Kuukkanen, 2015, p. 24). This concept is important in this thesis because it is looking for the meaning of history when it comes to discussions of events that are perceived to have huge historical implications such as climate change. The idea of climate change is not meaningful unless told within a historical narrative. Narratives are projected onto history by human beings, according to the specific ideological context that they belong to.
Now that the concepts of directionality in history and narrativism have been established, it is necessary to present a model that the hypothesis can fit into in order to find a synthesis between Cultural Theory and History. White’s methodology in Metahistory turns out to be a clear method that can be easily mapped onto cultural theory, as will be shown in the second part of this thesis. First, Metahistory will be explained in order that it may be used in this way.
Metahistory
It can be claimed that in the end of last century Hayden White was one of the central scholars of narrativism. He presented his main claims about narrativism in his most significant work,
Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (White, 1973). This work was
chosen to be in the centre of the philosophy of history chapter of this thesis not only because of the influence on philosophy of history but also due to its analysis of four historiographical modes which strikingly fit the hypothesis of this thesis. White’s Metahistory can be considered as an awakening of history from its dogmatic slumber, to paraphrase Kant. Its main achievement is changing the perception of history from a so-called scientific work of archiving facts to work of interpretation and imagination that can thus be analysed like a literary work (Paul, 2013, p. 1). White finds elements such as formal arguments, emplotment and ideological implications in the works of both philosophers and historians (Ankersmit, Domańska and Kellner, 2009, p. 16). These elements form the basis of White’s theory of narrativism.
19 White is, of course, not alone in the narrativism revolution. An important theorist of narrativism that should at least be mentioned is Danto. Danto sees narrativism as a wider project which shows that if you look at events in life through a teleological point of view it can be understood as a ‘metaphysics of everyday life’ (Ankersmit et al., 2009, p. 24). White’s Metahistory is a much more limited project which focuses on works of history alone. He sees history as ‘literary artefacts’ whereby verbal fictions are both ‘found’ and ‘invented’ (Ankersmit et al., 2009, p. 130). This may be an upsetting idea to some historians of the twentieth century that liked to consider themselves to be uncovering the truths of history and not as creators of literary artefacts. The importance of White is not only in this idea of narrativism but much more in the mechanisms through which historical works can be analysed
White researches the history of the philosophy of history of nineteenth-century Europe and identifies the ‘problem of historical knowledge’ (White, 1973, p. 1). He sees that some advances of thinking about history happened in the nineteenth century and he wanted to provide a theory that explains the structure of this thinking. White created five terms to explain the historical work: 1. chronicle; 2. story; 3. mode of emplotment; 4. mode of argument; and 5. mode of ideological implications (White, 1973, p. 5). The chronological level is the ‘historical field’ in which historical events are organised chronologically, giving history a beginning, middle and end. Emplotment involves giving meaning to the story. Here the reader discovers what kind of genre a work of philosophy of history fits into, be it romance, tragedy, comedy, and satire. These are analysed in search of a unique characteristic through the argumentative paradigms: formist, organicist, mechanistic; and contextualises. The argumentative mode is the one that asks, ‘what is the point of it all?’ (White, 1973, p. 11). The answer to this question is formulated as an argument, this argument is analysed through the four modes.
White’s concept of ideological implication is of greatest importance in this thesis because it exposes the ethical world of the historian. Ideological implication means that every historian or philosopher of history brings their own cultural values to their interpretation of history. White defines ideology as a ‘set of prescriptions for taking a position in the present world of social praxis and acting upon it’ (White, 1973, p. 22). White does not identify the level of awareness to these prescriptions but the ‘real life’ applications are clear: an historian acts upon prescriptions according to her own ideology. White chooses four of the ideologies from Karl Mannheim’s Ideology and Utopia: anarchism, conservatism, radicalism, and liberalism (White, 1973, pp. 22–23). He uses these to explain the kinds of ideology that historians bring to their historical works. White leaves out Mannheim’s apocalyptic approach, which he considers irrelevant. The four types of ideology that White uses have a value system of reason, science or realism (White, 1973, p. 23). He argues that the ideologies that individuals subscribe that do not come from a rational choice but are forced upon are irrelevant to his theory. Through-out Metahistory, White uses this template, as can be seen in Figure V, to analyse the works of the greatest philosophers of history of the nineteenth century: Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and Croce.
20 Figure V may already trigger the imagination about the possible uses of White’s typology with the Cultural Theory typology.
The four types of ideologies are defined by White as (White, 1973, pp. 24–25):
1. Liberals see change like fine tuning a machine. The future is where the system has been improved through non-radical human actions. Utopia exists in the remote future. It is possible to study history rationally and scientifically.
2. Conservatives are suspicious of any transformation of the status quo. Change will come gradually, in a slow evolution. They emphasise the natural rhythm. Utopia is based on current institutions. Time’s evolution is progressive.
3. Radicals demand to reconstruct the entire society, since the current system has led to a catastrophe. Change is perceived to need to occur through structural transformation. Utopia is imminent.
4. Anarchists demand the abolishment of society. It is the most extreme structural transformation, where the social state is exchanged with a community of individuals based on a concept of humanity. This cataclysmic transformation sees utopia in the remote past before the corrupt ‘social’ state. To return to utopia it is necessary to return to essential human nature. Studying history means there is faith in the institution.
Mode of Emplotment Mode of Argument Mode of Ideological Implication
Romantic Formist Anarchist
Tragic Mechanistic Radical
Comic Organicist Conservative
Satirical Contextualist Liberal
Figure V. Historiographical Styles (H. V. White, 1973, p. 29).
The last part of White’s Metahistory that needs explanation is the notion of tropes. White combines the ideas that were described above with modern language theory where in order to read works of history as literature or poetry. More importantly, he identifies the linguistic aspects of those works. In this way, White uses the term tropes to explain the different literary devices that are used in works of history. The tropes that White uses to analyse historical works are metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony (White, 1973, pp. 31–38). All four can be understood as general metaphors,
21 however White presents metaphor as representational, metonymy as reductionist, synecdoche as integrative, and irony as negational (White, 1973, p. 32).
White sees the tropes as something that prefigure the historical field, claiming that ‘linguistic protocol comprise the irreducibly 'Metahistorical' basis of every historical work’ (White, 1973, p. xi). By this, White means that Metahistory is based on three levels and on linguistic tropes. He argues that ‘history is one of the “others” of literature’ because history wishes to make statements about the real world, but of course the separation between history and literature is erroneous in White’s eyes (Korhonen, 2006, p. 1). The tropes White suggests are deeper than the rest of the theory, consciously or not (Vann, 1998, p. 151). White’s position is that the historian becomes captive to her choice of strategies and tropes. For example, Ranke employs a comic mode of emplotment in which the plot will end in a happy ending (Iggers, 2000, p. 377).
The main point from White’s theory that is important to keep in mind is how modes and tropes relate to the ideological implications. The ideological level is the ethical level and thus is of great interest in this thesis. White considers the ideological level to be a combination of the other two levels, modes of emplotment and argument. An example of the ideological level comes in the chapter on Ranke, where White shows how in the political reality of Ranke the Prussian nation-state become the goal, and so it thus becomes Ranke’s ‘prefiguration of the real’ (White, 1973, p. 173; Paul, 2013, p. 72). It is not clearly stated, but it is possible to also understand the ideological level as a level that directly deals with the possible future, due to the fact that ideologies have a telos. In his chapter about Tocqueville, White states that all of the works of history from antiquity are there to explain the present and prepare for the future (White, 1973, p. 205). In his chapter on Nietzsche, White also talks about the relevance of forgetfulness and says that, like in Hegel and Marx, human knowledge is drawn to the needs to forget certain parts of history based on the future a human being wants to construct for himself (White, 1973, p. 349).
White seemed to influence the perceptions of historians themselves with regard to their own works. Carrol, for example, states not long after White published Metahistory, that ‘because history is not science every historical work has an “irreducible ideological component”’ (Carroll, 1976, p. 59). The ideological level in White’s eyes is the most related to the social situation the historian lives in. This thesis wishes to identify the ideological level as the core of the political point of Metahistory. It is the idea that the ‘mechanistic-deterministic relationship between social institutions and history-writing’ (Carroll, 1976, p. 62) is the most significant aspect of White’s theory that will be used here.
This chapter analysed both directionality in history and White’s Metahistory. Having establishes these concepts insofar as they relate to this thesis, the next chapter will bring White into the field of sociology, a move which would not be shocking to White. He himself quotes Mannheim saying that in the social sciences one person’s science is another person’s ideology (White, 1973, p. 307). This
22 is perhaps a golden idea that ties social sciences, ideology and history together. This exact idea will be explored in the next chapter which is an attempt to combine Cultural Theory with Metahistory.
Chapter III: Cultural Theory of History (Hypothesis)
The previous two chapters were an in-depth analysis of two very extensive theories. Both chapters discussed the theories in view of the aim to combine them in order to understand perceptions of climate change. This chapter will show that it is possible to use Cultural Theory of risk to explain different perceptions of history, while the next chapter will focus specifically on perceptions of climate change. This chapter will be divided into two sections. The first section will be comprised of a justification of using Cultural Theory and Metahistory together and an analysis of historical directionality without Metahistory. The second section will explain the hypothesis itself and the reading of Metahistory with the use of Cultural Theory, which forms the core of this thesis.
First Interpretations
In presenting a hypothesis, justification is of course necessary. It is necessary to consider the possible weaknesses of the hypothesis and consider alternative frameworks. There is a need to be especially careful in this case, given that what is being presented is a truly new idea. For this reason, it is necessary to give it as much justificatory basis as possible. This section will be devoted to this justification and to an implicit part of the hypothesis that analyses directionality.
Cultural Theory is a theory that provides an explanatory framework for ‘behaviour in a given domain’ (Thompson, Ellis and Wildavsky, 1990, p. 273). To explain, this means that Cultural Theory presents a means of explaining individual human behaviour according to a certain group that they belong to. White’s Metahistory, on the other hand, views history as a ‘linguistic entity whose structure wholly depended on the original poetic act which prefigured it’ (Mandelbaum, 1980, p. 53). This means it researches specific historians and philosophers and their approaches to history. Cultural Theory and Metahistory not only come from two different academic backgrounds and perhaps also have different subjects of inquiry. Nevertheless, the aim here is to show that it is possible to connect the two theories based on their concepts of ideological positions.
The categorisation of the different modes in Metahistory and of the myths of humans and nature in Cultural Theory are the best place to find a convincing argument to try and apply Cultural Theory to perceptions of history. However, it is necessary to understand that there is a need to first consider the application of the Cultural Theory on ideas of history in general. Following this, it will be possible to build up to applying the theory to Metahistory in particular. It is important to remember the main work
23 of this thesis is not a comparative analysis but an original argument that wishes to apply Cultural Theory to perceptions of history.
White’s Metahistory provides a neat categorisation that can be used to expand our understanding of climate change and history. However, it may be useful to see how, even without White, there may be a basis for this analysis, at least when applied to possible directions of history. The possible speculative structure in Figure VI is a representation of such scenarios:
1. The hierarchist thinks humans have freedom over history without an apocalyptic end, up to a certain point. High on both the grid and group, the hierarchical thinker has a progressive view of history, up until a point where history moves beyond a point of tolerance. If humans keep within the parabola, they will have stable progress. However, if they move beyond it there will be disaster. This position shows two main attitudes toward history: the option to research history in order to understand it and, secondly, the ability to control it. The directionality of history is teleological because its meaning is derived from progress. There is a perceived need to control the ball of history in view of the end. They demand the hierarchy to be maintained to achieve this goal. The meaning of history is derived from this future ideal.
2. The individualist believes that individual actions have a large impact, thus she thinks of the future as safe and secure because every problem can be solved via human rationality. This point of view is driven by a strong historical belief in natural progress. The individualist is low on both the grid and group, showing a mistrust in high levels of authority and control of groups. The ball is always pulled ‘down’ which is the progress of humanity, even with a few deviations on the way, history will find ‘its way’. The individualist shares the belief in history as progressive with the hierarchist, but because of their different approaches to institution they are at odds.
3. The egalitarian sees history as extremely vulnerable and on the verge of a necessary revolution. According to this view, if there will not be an immediate change, history will come to an end. It can be read as both an apocalyptic view and a hopeful view, in its belief in possible utopia after this revolution. The ball on the graph may fall with the slightest push. It is an interesting position because it also offers a beginning of history if there were to be an extremely significant change in the entire system. The egalitarians position low on the grid and high on the group signifies the belief in egalitarianism where society comes together to change the system and to start a new chapter in history.
4. The fatalist, who is low on the group axis and high on the grid axis, views history as having a random or cyclical quality. The hierarchy represented in the grid is represented in the institutions. Actions towards history are perceived to be are nonsensical within the social state. The ball on the line can move in any unpredictable way and human actions within the current system are perceived to be ineffectual. Given the cyclical perception of history, even if some changes will take place, there is a view this does not mean that there will not be diclinism at a later point.
24
Figure VI. A Speculative Interpretation of Grid-Group on Perceptions of Directions of History
Figure VI is a draft of four different attitudes toward historical directionality via Cultural Theory’s grid-group typology. This, in itself, does not have enough explanatory power to create new understandings of history and culture because it is not based on a wider theory that can provide more information on each position. It does show that directionality of history can be analysed on its own if there is no need to create more than just an analysis. Now a new grid-group will be proposed that has more explanatory power, in view of the implicit idea that this can create new information about ideas of history and how they play a role in perceptions of climate change.
The Historical Grid-Group
Following the line of reasoning developed in the first part of this chapter, it is possible to imagine a reading of perceptions of the direction of history through the tool of the grid-group. Nonetheless, there are few features missing, such as a theory that defines different positions towards history in a way that taps into greater ideas about society. This demands an Archimedean point that can lift this thesis into creating new knowledge.
Cultural Theory, as it was demonstrated in chapter I, looks at two dimensions of human thinking that may affect the ways people conceive of risk regarding nature. Social commitments, social situations, and the way a group is regulated all affect the outlook individuals have on risk. This cannot
Grid Group Fatalism History is random/cyclical Individualism History is progressive Hierarchy History is teleological Egalitarianism History is apocalyptic
25 be interpreted other than under the umbrella idea of ideology. Figure VI lacks the theoretical background to explain ideology. For this reason, it seems imaginable to connect Cultural Theory of risk with White’s modes in historical analysis in order that White’s concept of ideologies can be used to enhance the explanatory power of the Cultural Theory grid-group.
In Cultural Theory, the idea that a ‘world view’ or ideology was defined as ‘deeply held values and beliefs depending different patterns of social relations’ (Wildavsky and Dake, 1990, p. 43) meets almost perfectly with White’s definition of ideology, which was explained in chapter II. White understands ideology through social praxis. Ideology, in both the cases of Cultural Theory and Metahistory, is understood through the behaviour of humans based on their time, location and culture. As was demonstrated in the previous chapter, the Prussian nation-state is Ranke’s prefiguration. It is the ideological framework Ranke was born into that makes him think of history from the perspective that he does.
As mentioned before, White’s ideologies are borrowed from Mannheim. The details of his concept of ideologies are extremely important, and therefore worth echoing here. The four leading ideologies that remained after clearing out the so-called authoritarian ideologies4 are: 1. The
conservative sees history as an evolution i.e. slow progress. The current structure prevails, and utopia is a realistic hope. A possible example may be Hegel or Ranke. 2. The liberal sees history as a progression with utopia in the far future, so radical changes today are discouraged. A classical liberal figure is Croce. 3. The radical understands utopia to be imminent and should be brought about by means of revolution. Marx is an example of the radical position. 4. The anarchist entertains the view of an imaginary past of innocence, while today’s world is perceived to be illegitimate and thus should be destroyed by human consciousness. An example of this position is Nietzsche (White, 1973, pp. 25, 284, 372, 382, 407, 422).
The grid-group is perhaps the perfect place to find parallel forms of these ideologies. One analysis of the early grid-group by Coughlin and Lockhart has attempted to identify the ideologies and representatives of these ideologies. The four ideologies can be understood as: 1. The hierarchist is high on the grid and on the group axes, and views humans as unequal with different short comings that need institutional guidance, described by Plato’s The Republic. 2. The individualist is low both on the group and on the grid and believes in self-regulation based on the view that human beings are self-interested. An example of this view is Smith’s Wealth of Nations. 3. The egalitarian is high on the group and low on the grid, believing in human equality and in collective decisions made by small groups. This position is represented by Rousseau's Social Contract. 4. Lastly, the fatalist is high on the grid axis and low on the group axis. The high grid position shows that there are perceived outside constraints on the
26 individual but that the fatalist has no perceived social group to back her up. The fatalist does not tend to create political theory. This position can be exemplified by scholars such as Benfield and Turnbull (Coughlin and Lockhart, 1998, pp. 36–37).5
Now that the ideological positions from both theories have been established, it is necessary to introduce the last part of this hypothesis. Specifically, it is necessary to try to actually read Metahistory with the grid-group tool. Figure VII presents the unification of most of the important parts from both theories.
According to this reading, Cultural Theory explains Metahistory and thus considers metahistorical positions inside the grid-group. White’s anarchist will be high on the grid, meaning the outside forces that affect him are great. On the other hand, he is low on group since he will not perceive the group as a something he can rely on. White’s radical ideological implication is low on the grid, thus having and egalitarian point of view, and high on the group due to pressures from the group. White’s liberal can be read as high on both the group and grid, thus believing in the group but also in outside forces and in the existing social hierarchy. The conservative, by contrast, is low on both the grid and the group axes, since she doesn’t feel outside pressures but also doesn’t feel the need for any group affiliation. She perceives the current situation to be natural and that it should thus be conserved. She sees herself as an individual.
Cultural Theory Metahistory
Grid Group Ideology Nature Employment Argument Ideological
Implication
Trope
High High Hierarchy Tolerant Satirical Context-ualist
Liberal Irony
Low Low Individualist resilient Comic Organicist Conser-vative
Synecdo-che
Low High Egalitarian Vulnerable Tragic Mechanistic Radical Metonymy
High Low Fatalist Capricious Romantic Reformist Anarchist Metaphor
Figure VII. A representation of a combined theory in which Cultural Theory explains metahistorical positions.
This reading of history through the lens of grid-group may provide new information about how a person that thinks of history in a certain way perceives risk. On the other hand, it may make it possible to see how a person who belongs to a certain category in the grid-group may perceive history. These
27 two directions of the reading are not necessary for this hypothesis, but it is important to underline that this hypothesis does see a theoretical correlation between the way a person perceives history and the way that they perceive risk.
White has argued that, even within Metahistory, there is sometimes a non-consistent combination between the different parts of his theory when it comes to real examples (Iggers, 2000, p. 375), meaning that White acknowledges that sometimes a historian will mix the different modes but it is done mistakenly and does not mean that the theory is weakened by it. That is also the case for this hypothesis. It may be that some scholars or laypeople have one position regarding history that is inconsistent with their ideology or location on the grid-group. This may just mean that there is an inconsistency in their thinking. It is important to recognise that this hypothesis adds to the discourse is a way that connects the two worlds. Through this framework it is possible to determine, according to a person’s ideology, what their view on history and risk will be.
Figure VIII. Hypothesis Historical Grid-Group
The unified theory is plotted on Figure VIII. In this figure it is possible to see how the ball on the line represents both perceptions of risk to nature and perceptions of history at the same time. The directionality of history can only be inferred from the way history is told but should be kept in mind
28 together with the directionality of the history grid-group presented earlier. To give more explanation of each position, the hypothesis will now be explained in full.
1. The hierarchist sees nature as tolerant up to a point and understands history likewise, history is tolerant up to a certain point. An example of this position is a professor of philosophy in a western university. The professor enjoys high status in his social hierarchy and is willing to be oppressed somewhat by his society as the price paid for his social status. His liberal views entail a view of a progressive directionality of history. He believes that problems in a society can be solved from fine tuning it and he is averse to radical changes that might destroy his status. He sees nature and history like a ball on a curved line with an edge which represents irreversible disaster. There is a hope of utopia, but it perceived to be possible only in the distant future. History, he believes, is overall tolerant and people are able to do what they want until a breaking point which should be avoided. The ball remains on the parabola that represents progress while the given rules of the society are maintained. The idea that the ball of history has limits that can be measured shows a perceived degree of control over history.
2. The individualist enjoys high degrees of freedom in the current society. An example can be of the rector of the university in the west. She sees nature as resilient. She is likely to view history in the same way. She would have a conservative view of history and would be very suspicious of changing the status quo. It is a conservative position because there is the belief in individual liberty inside history. The ball of history is such that no matter how human beings act upon it will go to the origin on the parabola, meaning progress is inevitable but a general equilibrium will be maintained despite changes. The rector is low on both the grid and on the group, enjoying quite an egalitarian society with very little oppression, a system which she therefore wants to conserve. Her rising to the top of society is due to her individualistic personal will. The ball of history is always inside the parabola for the individualist, showing that she believes that humans and history can adapt to each other with no big risks. The evolution of history and human existence is progressive, but the progression is perceived to take place through natural evolution, not revolution.
3. The egalitarian sees nature as vulnerable. He has a radical approach to history. An example to this position is of the radical Marxist philosophy student in the west. He is high on the group and low on the grid, enjoying a very egalitarian society. He believes that the current institutions do not provide the same for others and that this situation should be changed drastically. He believes in creating utopia today. He, moreover, sees nature as extremely vulnerable and history as having a utopian feature that needs to be brought about immediately. The ball on the upper side of the parabola’s curve is history, that must go one way or the other, meaning that there are great challenges to nature that can end catastrophically, and the current institutions do not provide a solution. The Marxist position of the student sees change in nature as inevitable, just as the revolution is inevitable. The ball of history is on
