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SOCGRAD MINI-LECTURES
by
Freedom of Speech and Necessary Repression
One of the many domains in which those of us in Social Psychology and Symbolic Interaction studiously avoid is that doing with the political tensions between free speech on the one side and the societal need for the repression of speech harmful to the human project on the other side.
One reason for this neglect is, I believe, that such tensions and conflicts go far beyond the narrow provenance of scholarly research and venture far too much into the realm of values and political agenda. Most social psychologists, imbued with the concept of value-free social science and, at the same time, an instinctive knowledge that public speech on the question of free speech and necessary repression will offend those at the top of racist, class and gender hierarchies and become grist of the deliberations of those who decide tenure, salary and promotion in small colleges as in major universities.
Those of us untroubled by concerns for family, fame and fortune have a larger license to think about and reflect upon these larger, more troublesome questions. I want to help sociologists in general, social psychologists, and in particular, symbolic interactionists to bring such questions into their classrooms and into their assignments for those students who, coming into the fullness of their morality, might like to take such questions on in field assignments, special reports and term papers.
First, I want to consider the concept of necessary repression of physical and speech acts and then, go on to the question of the repression of commercial speech acts. News reports of the efforts of tobacco companies to enjoin the State of Massachusetts from banning cigarette advertizing from within 1000 feet of schools and school properties rise the issue but the issue has been with us since the First Amendment of the Constitution, ratified in 1789, guaranteed free speech.
Necessary Repression and Social Standing. Few people have a problem with the concept of necessary repression of physical acts or speech acts which do direct harm to persons of standing in a society rape, battery, murder, menacing with deadly weapons as well as protection from toxic substances, dangerous drugs and reckless acts of driving are enjoined by law and by tradition when they threaten those with social standing. Speech acts which threaten those at the top of social hierarchies are also forbidden by slander, libel and a well-entrenched system of informal social control often self-administered by those at the lower levels of social hierarchy. Those with social standing almost always use the law to protect themselves from physical danger and set a police force and court system in place to enforce those laws.
Necessary Repression and Non-persons. Non-persons, however, have far fewer protections from either physical acts or speech acts which harm their growth into competent, self-assured and morally engaged adults. The same adults who protect their own dignity and self-esteem by formal and informal social controls, cheerfully endorse speech acts which humiliate, degrade and deform those with little social power and less physical power. Women are brutalized in a thousand dirty jokes in millions locker rooms, clubs, bars, lounges and parties. Minorities suffer the same range of verbal humiliations in public and private conversations, email postings, movies, books and fences in racist and sexist societies around the world. A dominant group makes itself larger, better and more socially respectable by making all other groups appear smaller, incompetent and/or uncivilized.
In the second half of the 20th century, social norms which legitimate physical violence and verbal abuse of minorities have been banned by legal enactments, the effect of which is to protect non-persons in the historical course granting them full social standing before the law and in public spaces.
What was once considered necessary repression--of minorities and women--is becoming Un-necessary repression...much to the outrage of those groups formerly privileged by law and tradition.
Children and Necessary Repression. Children, defined as persons under the age of 16, occupy a different social status from repressed minorities--in both modern and pre-modern societies. Children, especially male children, are seen as prototypical adults. They are to be repressed in such a way as to encourage their transformation from non-persons to full adults in the social order.
Thus children must learn to use the language and to use it in ways amenable to adults. Children must learn to write, to spell, to speak and to think as do adults in their culture. Germans, English, French, Japanese and Brazilian teachers cheerfully repress students when they mis-spell, mis-speak or mis-take a societal norm about symbolic interaction.
And there are four major communication systems a child has at her/his command and which are monitored for 'proper' usage verbal speech acts, body talk, body decoration including cosmetics and clothing as runs of behavior which convey information about affection and dis-affection from the social process at hand.
Children are repressed, necessarily so, in the use of these four most personal communication systems. Rightly so, if the culture at hand is to be honored, reproduced and protected from inroads by other, competing, engaging cultures.
Free speech, for children in the USA, means the freedom means the freedom to spell works as do American adults; to use the Americanized version of speaking and spelling and to do so with a cheerful and engaged demeanor. Children who use a different language, different syntax, different body language, different clothing and different runs of behavior are subject to both symbolic and physical acts of repression. Children themselves are often the police agents on behalf of adults and use verbal cruelty and physical attacks against children who can't or won't embody the proper speech acts with words, costumes, behaviors or body decorations.
And, again, in the last half of the 20th century, legal norms have regulated the kind and degree of repression available to parents, teachers, ministers, priests and other children as well. At Michigan State, students who claim the right to use free speech to reproduce racist, sexist or homophobic values are enjoined by school policy. Such university policy is, generally, held to be within the limits of administrative law which holds that formal organizations can make whatever rules and policies it sees appropriate to the welfare and progress of its own organization.
Human Rights and Unnecessary Repression. These changes in the notion of what forms of speech acts and physical acts are 'necessary' and/or 'unnecessary' have come about through a globalization process in which markets have expanded, cultures have merged, populations have migrated and the world made smaller by air travel, satellites, and internets. Central to this transformation of the notion of 'necessary' repression has been, as well, bloc formations in Europe, North America, Arab oil countries and Africa.
Out of this growing world, the concept of a general, transcending bill of human rights has emerged to inform the laws of nations as well as the policies of world religions and transnational corporations.
The last issue of Social Problems, edited by that good and gentle sociologist, John Galliher, is devoted to the risks and costs in the pursuit of social justice by scholars in sociology. But scholars in economics, political science, philosophy and psychology also take risks and pay costs...even as we speak unnecessary repression of social scientists and social activists inflict a heavy cost to those who see a larger human project than one oriented to male elites, to class elites, to ethnic elites or to nationalistic/cultural elites. I comment this Issue to those who would enlarge the writ of social psychology and symbolic interaction to include the study of unnecessary and necessary repression of speech acts.
There is an article on the Red Feather website which might be of interest to your students at
http//www.tryoung.com/archives/193HumanRights.html
Human Rights, Necessary Repression and Commercial Speech. the US Supreme Court refused to give standing to Commercial Corporations in a 1942 case, Valentine v. Chrestensen; a case in which it ruled that commercial advertizing was not protected by the first Amendment. However, in 1976, some limited status was given to commercial free speech in Virginia State Board of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council. The Court ruled that prices of drugs could be published under the First Amendment. And in Bates v. State Bar of Arizona, 1977, the Court ruled that Lawyers could advertize their practices and fees. This was a major step forward in granting the same rights to corporations which had been granted to living persons by the First Amendment.
The definitive case came in 1980 when, in hearing Hudson Gas v. Public Service Commission of New York, the Court set forth a four-part test which now governs the rights of commercial organizations to advertize; accuracy and legality of the speech act; substantial public interest, efficacy of the law to support that public interest and, finally, whether there is another, less restrictive means to advance that public interest.
Children and the Public Interest. In the present case before the Supreme Court of the USA, the question is whether the State of Massachusetts has a substantial interest in protecting children from tobacco advertizing. Every research report suggests that smoking or chewing tobacco will produce a variety of cancers, none of which are in the public interest for children nor for adults. Adults, however, it is assumed, can weight risks and costs and thus do not need state protection.
But tobacco is legal. Tobacco corporations seize upon this fact to the exclusion of other facts. There is a larger fact which should be of concern to social psychology and to symbolic interactionists who might want to encourage their students to think about free and unfree speech. The very legality of tobacco is bought by those same tobacco companies which donate millions to elect legislators in both state and federal districts. Thus legality, in a country where the political process is also a commodity to be purchased in the 'free' market of candidates and policies, this legality is itself not always in the public interest.
A fully engaged social psychology should consider such larger 'facts' when teaching about symbolic interaction, moral agency and necessary repression.
Conclusion. The question of the necessary repression of speech acts for both adults and for children is a very, very difficult question which transcends the narrow purview of fact and truth. Wisdom, judgment, praxis and vision are required...none of which are held in high esteem by thoroughly modern sociologists or by indifferent postmodern sociologists. Pauline Vaillancourt Rosenau has offered some readings on an affirmative postmodern sensibility for social scientists. We have used her work and that of others to help think about an affirmative postmodern morality which would offer a reasoned base for the wisdom, vision and judgment essential to the process by which we can help our students in social psychology, symbolic interaction and sociology in general to come to that fullness of moral agency so essential to life in a democratic society.
It is at
http//www.tryoung.com/archives/190manifesto.html
TR Young