FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND SOCIAL COERCION

ABSTRACT Much legal and philosophical work has been devoted to discussing the importance of protecting freedom of expression from legislative curtailment by the state. That state-centric focus has meant that the ways that wider social phenomena can stifle freedom of expression have, with a notable exception, escaped sustained philosophical attention. The paper reflects on the nature of socially coercive restrictions on free expression and offers an account of how it is appropriate to respond to such forms of social coercion. First, it considers a range of social costs pertaining to expression and argues that such costs can constitute meaningful restrictions on the freedom to express. Second, it reflects on the normative implications concerning that threat to free expression and defends two related moral duties citizens have to refrain from being complicit in unjustified social coercion—a duty of expressive toleration and a duty of respect for expressive agency.

John Stuart Mill's Harm Principle and Free Speech: Expanding the Notion of Harm

This article advocates employing John Stuart Mill's harm principle to set the boundary for unregulated free speech, and his Greatest Happiness Principle to regulate speech outside that boundary because it threatens unconsented-to harm. Supplementing the harm principle with an offense principle is unnecessary and undesirable if our conception of harm integrates recent empirical evidence unavailable to Mill. For example, current research uncovers the tangible harms individuals suffer directly from bigoted speech, as well as the indirect harms generated by the systemic oppression and epistemic injustice that bigoted speech constructs and reinforces. Using Mill's ethical framework with an updated notion of harm, we can conclude that social coercion is not justified to restrict any harmless speech, no matter how offensive. Yet certain forms of speech, such as bigoted insults, are both harmful and fail to express a genuine opinion, and so do not deserve free speech protection.

ЯВИЩЕ ПУБЛІЧНОГО ДІЙСТВА В РЕАЛІЯХ СОЦІАЛЬНОГО ПРИМУСУ ІНФОРМАЦІЙНОГО СУСПІЛЬСТВА

The article explores the phenomenon of public action as social coercion in modern media practices, whereby shaping the required behavior personal demonstrativeness and representation becomes a compulsory monad of a public person. It is argued that in a public environment, human identity is largely subject to manipulative influence and becomes a target of overt social coercion. If under the dominance of classical social philosophy the question could arise only about the determinants of the social essence of a person: an individual from society (E. Durkheim) or a society from individuals (M. Weber), the modern post-classical philosophy points to a new mode of existence of a social system – its complete domination of human consciousness.The coercion in one way or another has always been an element of social organization. Thus, in pre-class society, it was based on the authority of elders, tribal leaders, etc., and in the class society – on the authority of the state. Nowadays, the coercion is realized through the availability of mass communication and the imposition of certain communicative and public forms of personal representation. At the same time, the existence of a person with their own kind is always subject to established rules, which are the basic component of lifestyle. However, there remain many unsolved problems regarding the phenomenon of social coercion. Especially in terms of the behavior of the modern public person, which is focused on all and no one. For such a person, the public space becomes a large screen, on which it demonstrates a pseudo-identity, which quite easily and quickly overcomes the boundaries of privacy and even intimacy. The large part of today’s public informatization accounts for the Internet space, as an accessible space of social coercion, which, due to its constant updating and development, remains new, unexpected, and unusual. Corporal symbolism in public communication becomes biased exchange material, forms a clear system of necessary coded characters, marked by unification and excessive social demand. It is constantly remodeled in different combinations without losing the primary bodily "tracing paper", and is imposed exponentially by the same public space.The complete theoretical justification for the phenomenon of public action is associated with a specially organized drama theater, which originates in antiquity, liturgical drama, or miracle. Social coercion becomes that specific act of being, which has its own spatio-temporal boundaries, is revealed through behavior, consciousness and human activity, and just like publicity is revealed through things, objects, works, language forms, symbols and signs.The author argues that public demonstrative media practices, like modus of any coercion, are formed precisely in global public practices, integrally demonstrating public actions – the organization of political power, the legal and moral norms of society, socio-cultural values, while the nature of these trends is sometimes far-fetched, beneficial in communicative confrontation.There is an eternal opposition between internal and external in consideration of public action at the level of coercive practices: uniqueness, originality, standardization, cliche and openness, mass character, publicity, unification, standardization, pluralism, diversity. For a person, the primary discourse is non-public, a kind of internal, intellectual, moral, mysterious habitat, and only its secondary discourse can be associated with the public sphere, which is expressed in a person’s realization of their material and spiritual needs and values.Public actions of a public person become more and more asynchronous, pseudo-cyclical, non-linear, shifting ethical boundaries towards personal gain, social similarity, and social coercion. The corporal symbolism, as a technique of social coercion, becomes a biased exchange material and forms a clear system of necessary coded public signs, which are distinguished by their uniformity and excessive social demand. The Internet, as a space BETWEEN, draws the viewer into a large-scale performance in which a person feels their involvement in a certain group, which increases the sense of self significance, self-confidence, security. Public virtuality becomes a gallery of images of forced communicative play. And, such a game has a completely different character than in real life, it develops specific stereotypes of superficial behavior.

Queer immanence in "Who is? Woyzeck": The technocentric utopia of the master and the slave

Queer immanence in Who is? Woyzeck: The technocentric utopia of the master and the slaveMontažstroj’s Who is? Woyzeck is a performative history about individuals’ open wounds that will probably never heal, especially in the context of technodemocracy and liberal deprivation processes. Woyzeck is a Georg Büchner hero whose voice is not able to be heard. He is deprived, deprivileged, and his behavior/labor is socially unacceptable. He is devoid of humanity, turned into an animal, pure zoe, and thus treated like one by the system. Montažstroj’s project was, therefore, eager to explore the politics of power where the individual is subdued to numerous forms of violence and the way these violent acts resonate on the surface of human intimacy. The rhythmic changing of scenes depicted social coercion and private agony; the play questioned the world of isolated and lonely individuals. Woyzeck was presented as a pure phenomenon, as an individual trapped in a Hegelian master-slave relation, thus as a non-person whose body is being occupied and used in a specific situation of violence, love, betrayal, jealousy and murder, with no way out. The performance of two men and a woman on a stage, which is supposed to function as a specific community of life, bombarded with techno and rave music, together with pure channels of associations derived from various sources, primarily from Büchner's text, which was written in 1836, is thus analyzed as a deconstructive and multi-layered re-inscription of political and discursive regimes subdued by frenetic music samples. Immanencja queer w Who is? Woyzeck. Technocentryczna utopia „pana i niewolnika”Who is? Woyzeck autorstwa grupy Montažstroj to performatywna opowieść o otwartych ranach jednostek, które prawdopodobnie nigdy się nie zagoją, szczególnie ze względu na procesy technodemokracji i liberalnej deprywacji. Woyzeck, którego głos jest niesłyszalny, to bohater dramatu Georga Büchnera – jest ograbiony, odarty z praw, a jego zachowanie/praca są społecznie nieakceptowane. Woyzeck jest pozbawiony cech ludzkich, zamieniony w zwierzę, czyste zoe, a co za tym idzie jest traktowany przez system jak zwierzę. Celem omawianego projektu grupy Montažstroj było zbadanie polityki władzy, w której jednostka jest poddana licznym formom przemocy, a także sposobów, w jakie te akty przemocy rezonują na powierzchni ludzkiej intymności. Rytmiczna zmiana scen ilustruje społeczny przymus i prywatną agonię, sztuka bada świat zamieszkany przez wyizolowane i samotne jednostki. Woyzeck został zaprezentowany jako czyste zjawisko, jednostka uwięziona w Heglowskiej relacji „pana i niewolnika”, a więc jako nie-osoba, której ciało jest zawłaszczane i używane w konkretnej sytuacji przemocy, miłości, zdrady, zazdrości i morderstwa, bez możliwości ucieczki. Performans dwóch mężczyzn i kobiety na scenie, który ma prezentować specyficzną wspólnotę życia, bombardowany muzyką techno i rave, wzbogacony czystymi strumieniami skojarzeń wywodzącymi się z różnych źródeł (przede wszystkim z napisanego w 1936 roku tekstu Georga Büchnera), jest analizowany jako dekonstrukcyjna i wielowarstwowa re-inskrypcja politycznych i dyskursywnych reżimów podporządkowanych frenetycznym próbkom muzycznym.

The Political Ape

This chapter describes social-coercion theory as conceptualized by Paul Bingham and Joanne Souza. This theory, which pertains to the evolution of human uniqueness, helps us understand how humans evolved to coordinate social activities in small non–kin-based groups. The tendency of humans to form such coordinated alliances is a foundational part of our evolutionary history that sets us apart from other apes in important ways. Further, this theory can help us understand the emergence of democracy and egalitarianism as basic aspects of the human social world. Understanding the principles that underlie this theory can help us understand factors associated with positive functioning in human communities.

Reported immigration and medical coercion among immigrants referred to a cultural consultation service

Members of visible minorities are commonly targets of social coercion related to immigration and medical measures. Social coercion is associated with poor mental health outcomes and mistrust of medical services. This study will determine if Afro-Canadian immigrants referred to a Cultural Consultation Service (CCS) in Montreal report more or less medical and immigration coercion compared with other ethnic minorities. We reviewed the charts of 729 referrals to the CCS and gathered data on the 401 patients included in the study. Chi-square statistics examined the relation between minority group and self-reported coercion. Binary logistic regression models controlled for standard sociodemographic variables in addition to ethnicity, language barrier, length of stay in Canada since immigration, refugee claimant status, referral source, presence of psychosis in the main diagnosis, and presence of legal history. Patients were diverse and included 105 Afro-Canadians, 40 Latin Americans, 73 Arab and West Asians, 149 South Asians, and 34 East and Southeast Asians. Being Afro-Canadian was significantly and positively associated with medical coercion (p = .02, 95% CI = 1.15-4.57), while being South Asian was negatively and significantly associated with immigration coercion (p = .03, 95% CI = .29–.93). Members of visible minority communities are not equal in their reported experience of social coercion after arriving to Canada. Future research clarifying pathways to mental health care for immigrants and the experience of new Canadians in immigration and health care settings would give needed context to the findings of this study.

The New Human Science

All prior attempts to understand human origins, behavior, and history have led to paradoxes and dilemmas, highly resistant to resolution. This chapter reviews specific cases of failures to resolve these apparent paradoxes and dilemmas in human evolution and the social sciences. The authors argue that these failures are rooted in confusing proximate with ultimate causation. They further argue that a sound theory of human origins, behavior, and history (social coercion theory) can help to understand the human condition scientifically; specifically, this theory argues that all the unique properties of humans emerge from the unprecedented human social evolution, driven, in turn by the evolution of cost-effective coercive management of conflicts of interest. Finally, the authors argue that social coercion theory yields the first general theory of history, economics, and politics, which provides an approach to problems within the social sciences while armed with a grasp of ultimate causation. Consequently, formerly intractable scientific questions and social concerns become manageable and solvable.

Power: a Marxist view

Lukes’ Power: A Radical View is a milestone in the debate on power. First, it criticises the narrow conceptions of political sociology, which reduces power to merely interpersonal relations. Second, it suggests an enlarged ontology of power capable of dealing with social coercion and collective action. Lukes, however, seeks the causes of power in politics and society by abstracting from the economic sphere. This detaches power from exploitation and confuses the essential with the only contingent forms of power of capitalism. The economics debate is predicated on this error because mainstream economics rules out the exploitative nature of capitalist production and introduces power later only as a residual category, which might develop only out of competition. The result is a mystified conception in which social coercion is no longer visible and competition appears as power-free. My ‘Marxist view’ on power is founded on a simple idea: exploitation in the economy imposes particular forms of power and coercion in society. Therefore, in the same way as the capitalist mode of production is essentially based on exploitation so it is also based on power and coercion. The economy is not merely one of the many possible sources of power, but the sphere in which the essential forms of capitalist power are generated. Competition is not the antithesis of power but the vehicle through which exploitation imposes the essential power relations of capitalism.

“Either You Do It or You’re Going to the Box”: Coerced Labor in Contemporary America

In recent years the problem of precarity has become the primary focus of both popular and academic accounts of work. Yet precarity is not the only troublesome feature of the contemporary economy. In this article I show that coercion—rather than precarity—is central to an array of work relations in the US, including prison labor, workfare, foreign guestwork, undocumented labor, and more. Through ground-level case studies of prison labor and workfare, I examine workers’ experience of labor coercion. I then build out from this empirical analysis to theorize the structure of coercive labor regimes and their relationship to precarity. Coercive labor regimes, I argue, are those in which employers have state-sanctioned power over workers’ well-being, families, and futures—a power that I call “social coercion.” This analysis thus identifies a new arena in which the “ambidextrous” neoliberal state operates in America today.

BOYCOTTS AND THE SOCIAL ENFORCEMENT OF JUSTICE

This essay examines the ethics of boycotting as a social response to injustice or wrongdoing. The boycotts in question are collective actions in which private citizens withdraw from or avoid consumer or cultural interaction with parties perceived to be responsible for some transgression. Whether a particular boycott is justified depends, not only on the reasonableness of the underlying moral critique, but also on what the boycotters are doing in boycotting. The essay considers four possible interpretations of the kind of act in which boycotting consists: the avoidance of complicity, protest speech, social punishment, or social coercion. Each interpretation provides a plausible account of at least some cases of boycotting, yet each raises distinct challenges to justifying boycotting activities.