Chapter Five

Taking account of the achievements and deficiencies of the three approaches to domination discussed earlier in this thesis, this chapter advances a revised framework for interpreting domination. To propose a revised framework for interpreting domination may appear rather ambitious. However, in this chapter I will show that when the framework is applied and evaluated, its strengths and weaknesses appear, and the task of reformulating the framework can be articulated as a significant research programme.

Given that the major theoretical traditions examined earlier failed to generate a satisfactory account of domination, it is clearly beyond the ambit of a post–graduate thesis to provide a satisfactory theory of domination. For this reason, this chapter offers no more than a revised framework for interpreting domination which will be evaluated critically in the light of subsequent chapters. While the level of discourse is admittedly general, the issues raised will be used in Part Two to interrogate detailed empirical material with the overall aim of formulating a research programme which does carries the quest for an adequate account of domination somewhat further.

Chapters two, three, and four provided critical evaluations of Weberian, critical theoretical, and political theological approaches to domination. As was argued in chapter one, it is important to hold the three approaches in tension as a revised framework for interpreting domination is developed. Praxeological perspectives can be built into the account in a way which overcomes the dualism between theory and practice and gives purchase on dimensions of real world situations which can never be entirely satisfactorily covered by theory (Kortabiñski, 1965). There are also domains in which perceptions, especially perceptions of value judgements made by others are intrinsic to the events at issue such that any rigorous separation of fact from value cannot cope with the ontology of the relevant domain.

I now summarise and develop further the results of my critical evaluations of these approaches. All these approaches lack an adequate definition of actor domination. Where the three approaches appear strongest is in their analysis of structural domination, but here, too, they neglect key elements. Both Weber’s approach, and to a lesser degree, the approach of critical theory, lack a dialectical phenomenology capable of sustaining an exploration of the existential components of domination. Political theological approaches to domination engage with such components but they too lack any methodology for representing the interpretation of existential domination. All three approaches also lack an adequate social ontology able to capture the relationality of domination. Domination is difficult to theorise because, as Hegel argued in his account of the master – slave relationship, it is about inter alia how the dominators relate to the dominated as much as about how the dominated related to the dominators. An adequate social ontology may provide a limited purchase on this problem. All three approaches fail to articulate a coherent ethical basis for judging domination undesirable. Habermas’s theory of communicative action comes closest in this respect, but it remains idealised and a–historical. All three approaches also fail to develop clear strategies for limiting domination, and two of them, critical theory and political theology, rely heavily on Marxist notions of political action which have turned out to be grossly inadequate. Further, all three approaches lack a clear notion of praxis, which is adequately self–critical and self–reflexive. A notion of praxis which is moralistic or para–theoretical, however, is of limited use and could be used in certain circumstances to justify extensive violence. In this context, a self–restrictive and action–ethical notion of praxis is needed to prevent praxis being falsely totalised, or even used to justify hegemonic political violence in the name of emancipatory ideals.

Max Weber’s work on domination in historical and contemporary societies remains an outstanding and influential contribution to a sociological understanding of domination (see, chapter two). Domination, for Weber, especially in a political context "... is the probability that a command with a given specific content will be obeyed by a given group of persons" (Weber, 1978: 53). But this definition does not capture the heterogenous dimensions of domination in modern social life. Weber’s view of domination is a structural one. His concern is primarily with the operations of large institutional structures of administration and coordination. As was discussed in chapter two, Weber’s view of domination is an elitist view, for Weber intimates at points that individuals interacting with those structures have to internalise and reproduce required traits and behaviours in order to functionally survive and make some sort of sense of their situation. However, his decisionistic ideal of heroic morality threatens to consign the mass of humanity to effectively permanent domination. Other problems arise from Weber’s treatment of legitimation. Weber’s definition of legitimacy was located in the general bases for legitimacy in society. This led to his typology of charismatic, traditional, and legal-rational legitimacy, and thence charismatic, traditional, and legal-rational forms of domination. Legal–rational domination was seen as the most stable in the modern era because it was exercised virtually independently of the actual actor or actors occupying particular administrative positions (Weber, 1978: 215 - 6).

Weber assumes the implicit normality of domination. Although he did consider some exceptional circumstances in which routine political domination could be destabilised or overturned, such as the eruption of charismatically legitimated violence, the bulk of his work stresses the explanation of certain social behaviours and the institutions or structures which limit or contain social action. With respect to charisma he argued:

This ascription of routineness to relations of domination, especially in the context of increasing rationalisation, indicates Weber’s dystopic approach to domination because he could not allow for sustainable alternatives to domination to arise.

Weber’s ethical response to domination, for example, in his essay ‘Politics as a Vocation’ is also inadequate:

Weber has a one–sided approach to the problem of why the majority of people in society obey the commands of those who dominate them. He neglects the sociologically important fact that history is laden with instances of some people disobeying their dominators. This approach to domination neglects the view of domination held by the dominated.

Weber’s treatment of the ethical implications of his approach to domination is also unsatisfactory. Towards the end of ‘Politics as a Vocation’, Weber set up his ‘Two Ethics’, one being the ‘ethic of ultimate ends’ typified by pacifists and some socialist factions, the other being the ‘ethic of responsibility’ which could guide the putative political actor through the difficulties and uncertainties of political action (Weber, 1968: 118 - 128). Weber held that the votary of the ethic of ultimate ends could not accommodate the compromises which politics requires. But he could not conceive of any convincing sources of guidance for human action which could withstand the scrutiny of rationality. Yet action demands that choices be made, and by implication, the risks that making choices entail have to be accepted. The way out of this labyrinth, for Weber, lay in the proposition that the ‘personality’ was the standard aspired to by those who sought to act in ways which were informed by ethical standards. Leo Strauss labelled Weber’s position ‘noble nihilism’:

Weber accepted value polytheism in an attempt to come to terms with the radical pluralism modernity allows. As a result, he apparently chose not to develop a coherent ethical standpoint from which domination can be critiqued. Couple that problem with the overall thrusts towards modernity which were changing his own society’s institutions in ways which he regarded with decided ambivalence, and Weber is shown to oscillate between what amounts to capitulation to the forces and dynamics of rationalisation and adherence to an ethical system, any ethical system, which informs meaningful political action.

Weber’s approach to domination falters further because he cannot sustain the tension between a teleology of forms of domination developing from forms rooted in traditional or charismatic modes of rationality towards more ‘developed’ forms typified by legal-rational domination, and his stress on verstehen or ‘understanding’ as a methodological imperative for the sociologist. Weber rightly stresses the need to include existential components in an account of social action. Weber’s approach to verstehen does lead towards understanding actors’ actions from their point of view. This latter approach also requires attention to be given to existential categories, which would shed light on the self-understandings of actors in various social contexts. It points towards the meanings which the actors themselves attach to their actions, and the sense they make of their own experiences of being dominated. But Weber does not use existential components of verstehen to critique domination. Behind many of Weber’s difficulties lies a dualism between self and society which leads to a disembodied view of domination which neglects the interconnections between individual and society.

The major strength of Weber’s approach is his attention to processes of rationalisation transforming social institutions to create a bureaucratised form of legitimate legal–rational domination. This strength is, however, eroded by his neglect of what individuals in society might believe or feel as they try to make sense of their situations for themselves. Weber himself put it this way:

Reconstructions of Weber’s sociology of domination may act as correctives to this dualism, but they cannot overcome it while remaining true to Weber’s overall scheme. In this sense, Weber’s theory of domination, while insightful on its own terms, does not suffice when applied to projects oriented to challenging relations of domination.

Critical theory problematises domination in a way which goes beyond Weber, and this is an important contribution which takes discussions of domination beyond analysis into critique. The multi–disciplinary approach of critical theory also enables additional detetectivistic and methodological tools to be focused on the problem of domination. While fraught with difficulties, critical theory’s explicit stress on the issues of praxis and agency arguably highlights the need to offer practical hermeneutical readings of real world situations to a greater degree than other approaches concerned with pure theorising.

There are few satisfactory definitions of domination in the literature of critical theory (chapter three). Many critical theorists, including Habermas, use the term ‘domination’ without explicit definition. Trent Schroyer offers one potentially useful definition: "The critique of domination, or the reflective critique of socially unnecessary constraints of human freedom, is as old as the Western concept of reason" (Schroyer, 1975: 15). He goes on to explain the domination of Third World societies by the American empire under the cloak of ‘modernisation’ (Schroyer, 1975: 22). Insofar as, Schroyer’s slippery use of the term ‘domination’ is representative of critical theory usage, critical theory leaves itself open to the accusation that ‘domination’ refers to anything which raises a critical theorist’s ire. Neither approach – linking domination to specific historical situations or practices, or leaving the term virtually undefined – is especially useful. Here, the work of Herbert Marcuse is of particular importance. Schroyer’s stress on socially unnecessary constraints of human freedom, on the other hand provides a rhetoric which arguably can be combined with an insight from Marcuse to gain more purchase on the problem of domination. In attempting to develop critical theory with a psychoanalytic cast, Marcuse asserted that:

Marcuse agrees with Weber that it is impossible to wholly escape domination, but he goes well beyond Weber to argue that domination can be reduced if the difference between individual needs and social capacities for meeting them is reduced. According to Marcuse, domination can be attributed to a situation if it can be shown that individual needs could be met through the application of available technical or social means but that they are not being met because of the operations of identifiable social phenomena, forces, or institutions.

Many critical theorists looked in vain for a social ‘agent’ to actualise their theory in the world. While maintaining that their theory could only find verification through struggle waged by actors with interests in emancipation from domination, they increasingly despaired of finding such an agent. Marcuse, however, never relinquished his interest in praxis (chapter three). Indeed, he shifted his recognition of possible agencies for theoretical actualisation from the proletariat through to so–called Third World independence or guerilla struggles, student protesters, and even the so–called ‘counter culture’ of the latter 1960s. As he did so, however, he evidenced a dystopic critique of Western civilisation in which discourse and action about freedom was being increasingly circumscribed and rendered ‘one–dimensional’. Moreover, when he did discuss the mechanics of praxis in his ‘Five Lectures’ (1970) and the essay on ‘Repressive Tolerance’ (1969), Marcuse romanticised violence and dismissed nonviolence a unrealistic.

Among more recent literature influenced by critical theory, Habermas’s theory of universal pragmatics is of considerable importance here because it offers a theoretical foundation for the proposition that emancipation is a universal human interest (Habermas, 1971a). Further, with his construction of the system – lifeworld relationship, and related critiques of the colonisation of the lifeworld, Habermas has refined and extended some of the arguments of his predecessors in critical theory, as well as updated their earlier critique of instrumental reason. Nevertheless, it remains unclear how far Habermas’s theory can be related to real world conditions. To this extent, he too has yet to successfully deal with the relationship between theory and practice. Some of Habermas’s critics have attempted to offer a solution to this problem by suggesting that his theory presupposes the creation of radically democratic society (eg., Heller 1987, 1990).

Without purporting to address all of critical theory’s many facets, it is fair to conclude that critical theory left the problem of the relationship between domination and praxis unsolved. On the other hand, critical theory provided evidence of the utility of multi–disciplinary approaches to the critique of domination. Further, some useful insights into structural and existential aspects of contemporary domination were gained.

In more general terms, both Weberian and Marxist approaches to domination neglect the reciprocal relationship between identity and experience, thus producing disembodied theories of domination neglect the experiential dimensions of being dominated, despite the fact that both approaches have existential elements which could be used in this way. These experiential dimensions of domination, however, help indicate how and why people internalise and reproduce forms of domination within themselves and so why they might reject views of their situations based upon a theory of domination. As Knights and Willmott argued:

If critical theory tends to be obscure when it comes to defining domination, political theologians tend to be moralistic. But the theologians also have made a virtue of this vice. In theological discourse moral components which allow for the explicit labelling and criticism of evil are far more explicit than in critical theory, and, in the main, political theologians do not resile from making moral judgements. Theological extensions to critical theory, as discussed in chapter four, also model ways in which the individual and the structural aspects of domination can be theorised and criticised.

Political theologies partially deal with the problem of praxis by arguing for active solidarity, sometimes articulated in terms of unconditional agape with the dominated on the part of the theorist. Meaning is accorded to the suffering of the dominated, which is understood as a result of struggling to be more human in an inhuman society and world. From this solidarity understandings can emerge about how domination works which more analytic theories seldom match. A thick phenomenology of the experiences of the dominator held captive by domination also becomes possible. Implicit in much political theology is the possibility of katallagé between dominator and dominatee, and forgiveness for the evil done by the dominator. There is, however, considerable praxiological disagreement among political theologians (chapter four). Some, such as Lehmann (1975), accept that violence can be legitimately used. Others, such as Moltmann (1978), argue for an ethic and practice of diminishing violence. Still others, such as Camara (1971) or Myers (1988), take an absolutely nonviolent position which they argue is congruent with their wider ethical critique of a social world pervaded by violence.

Apart from the conceptual laxity induced by its moralism, political theology lacks a rigorous social science framework able to differentiate the multiple logics and processes associated with modernity. As a result, its treatments of structural domination manifest considerable courage and ethical responsibility (eg., Giddens, 1991), but often lack the empirical purchase which contemporary post–Weberian approaches could provide.

I now advance a revised framework for interpreting domination which incorporates what my earlier chapters suggest is lacking before attempting to test and critically evaluate this framework. Much of the existing literature on domination tends to privilege one or two perspectives. In contrast, the revised framework for interpreting domination I offer is more inclusivist and incorporates multiple perspectives, including both the dominator’s and the dominated’s perspectives. My revised framework does not passively accept the realities of modern social structure. Nor does it ally itself with Romantic oppositional critique. Instead, a via media is cautiously pursued. This via media is trans–disciplinary and takes account of insights into domination derived from a range of social science fields or disciplines. Finally, my account of domination is normatively committed rather than value neutral in terms of the social ontology which it involves. It also attempts to allow for plural value orientations within the range of such normative commitments. This last feature is the least worked out aspect of my revised framework and needs more elaboration.

I do not claim that my revised framework for interpreting domination is complete or the only possible one. Nor do I claim that it is free from theoretical difficulties. Rather I offer it as a possible heuristic with specific purchase incorporating key components. Ideally, the addition of such components would have structural implications for the entire theory of domination, but I do not attempt such an elaboration in this thesis. The revised framework for interpreting domination I put forward is more rudimentary and, at most, tracks a potentially superior theorisation of domination.

The main components of the revised framework for interpreting domination are:

These major components address deficiencies uncovered in the three approaches to domination discussed earlier in this thesis:

Deficiencies Response

The order of these components is not arbitrary. Nevertheless it reflects the order of discovery and tighter thematisations of the relationship between a dialectical phenomenology and a social ontology would obviously be required in a full theorisation of domination. For the limited purposes envisaged here the components need to be presented more concisely and refined in stages.

A revised definition of actor domination is difficult to apply to concrete cases without resort to both a structural analysis and a dialectical phenomenology. Using such a phenomenology the need to explore the existential components of domination comes to the fore because a dialectically phenomenological approach indicates the relationality of domination which has existential consequences for those in relations of domination. An examination of the existential components of domination suggests that they cannot be adequately understood in substantialist terms. This suggests that a specific social ontology is required to theorise the hermeneutical considerations involved more clearly.

At least three factors need to be considered: social structures, actors, and an a–symmetrical relationship between them. It is possible to conceive of non–structural domination which nevertheless falls within the ambit of a proposed revised definition of domination. A dictionary definition of domination includes notions of govern, ascendancy, sway, or control, and it is quite conceivable to consider that an individual can be said to dominate themselves when they are able to exercise self–control over their life's circumstances. Adding a normative component to this view suggests that an individual ought to be able to exercise control over their life circumstances. It may then be possible to identify any factors which prevent them from effectively doing so, and these factors may be structural, actor–caused, or fall into a third general category of unthematised impersonal domination. This last category is the least amenable to precise examination, though its effects may be significant. It seems possible to posit an individual being dominated because they cannot travel beyond a remote valley because some geographical barrier prevents them, and their existing transport technology cannot overcome that barrier. There may be no religious taboo against leaving the valley, or a social structure which binds them to their village, or armed guards with a chief's orders to kill anybody who attempts to leave, but individuals can still be understood as being dominated by their objective physical circumstances. Clearly, this last form of domination may not be domination at all, but a heuristic list of forms of domination needs to be made as part of a continuing research programme into forms of domination even if its character and the fuzzy relations involved may be able to be specified.

Given the difficulties of Weber’s approach to domination, critical theory’s consistent vagueness about what precisely is meant by domination, and political theology’s moralistic criticisms of domination, it is nonetheless possible to advance a revised definition of actor domination which benefits from the positive insights of these approaches. Such a revised definition might run as follows:

As has already been indicated (chapter one passim), domination is notoriously difficult to adequately theorise, let alone define. It may then be necessary to disaggregate domination for heuristic purposes to distinguish between three general forms of domination, though further research may uncover still more forms. Structural domination may be the most readily identifiable through recourse to an indexical analysis of a given society which would point to disparities in the relative distribution of power, wealth, finance, travel, participation in government, social stratification, disproportionate regional development, the role of women, religious, or caste discrimination to produce a set of semi–objective indices of domination. The revised definition of domination suggested above identifies causal features of domination in the sense that it indicates the need to examine what social circumstances or arrangements stop an individual from exercising their freedom. But the issue of whether or not oppression of one set of people by another set of people really constitutes domination requires a closer analysis. This may be pursued by reference to a generally accepted standard of human rights, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, though even this standard is problematic when implemented in specific contexts in which locally accepted social or religious traditions conflict with the Declaration. Alternatively, two assumptions of modern Western political theory may be accepted. The first is that the political constituency consists of human beings who must live under politically variable institutions, and the second is that political arrangements should be normatively satisfactory from the equal point of view of all relevant individuals. Added to these could be ecological considerations and constraints which should accord at least some sensitivity to relations between humans and nature (Pettit, 1993: 286 – 287). Either of these approaches, limited by reference to relevant empirical data in given situations, at least would assist in more closely uncovering whether or not given social arrangements in which one group of people apparently oppress another group of people to the extent to which at least a provisional or heuristic appellation of domination would apply.

The revised definition of actor domination proposed here emphasises an actor–orientation biased to an individualistic procedure for identifying actor domination, which can be compared to liberal and neo–liberal theories of liberty, and emerging new republican conceptions of freedom as freedom from domination (e.g., Pettit, 1994). Nevertheless, further research is needed to detect all three forms of domination, and others which may be uncovered, even as the revised definition proposed here points towards actor domination and thence its hermeneutic complexity.

The possible advantages of such a definition include:

1. The definition is applicable to most societies, moreover most societies can be analysed hermeneutically to discover if there is a gap between constraints on human freedom which are necessary for sustainable social existence, and constraints which serve identifiable social interests in continuing and extending domination. A society’s technical capacity to sustainably provide essential resources – food, shelter, clothing – for all its members can be incorporated into the definition. An analysis can then be conducted to highlight how essential resources are unevenly distributed throughout the society. Freedom to discuss action to control domination is incorporated into the definition, domination often also manifesting in imposed controls on what can be discussed.

2. The revised definition is applicable to detailed accounts of historically specific contexts, legal orders, and ethical systems. Consistent with this, historically local sub–definitions of the key terms could be proposed for problematic cases, eg. indigenous peoples whose suffering needs to be filled out in terms specific to their culture.

3. The definition provides a defence against antinomianism because it accepts that even freedom can be a form of domination (eg, Marcuse, 1970). Societies always impose controls on their members. The issue becomes which arrangements can be shown to universally restrict the realisation of human potentials for emancipation as hermeneutically interpreted.

4. The definition is compatible with theories which seek to establish a human interest in freedom, for example Habermas’s theory of communicative action. However, it implies the need to enculturate such a theory in context–specific ways sensitive to multiple and specific ethical systems and legal orders.

Possible objections to the revised definition of actor include:

1. What might constitute ‘human potentials for emancipation’ resists adequate definition. The term ‘potentials’ blurs a key distinction between dispositions and socially acquired capacities. In effect, it is logically evasive. The term ‘emancipation’ may also have surrogate religious overtones and is hard to defend against a critic who demands rigorous criteria.

2. Despite claims made for the revised definition, it is not safe against either theoretical or methodological laxity, and could easily be used to generate further unsatisfactory theories of domination.

3. It may be problematic to suggest that ‘socially unnecessary constraints on human freedom’ can be identified, even for a specific society, let alone all human societies, especially so long as the conditions for free and open discourse are not operating in such societies.

In reply, I concede that my revised definition of actor domination is open to theoretical objections, although I deny that these go to the heuristic uses for which I deploy it. In so far as I advance a revised framework for interpreting actor domination, which includes non–theoretical elements, I claim less for my revised framework of actor domination than those committed to a pure theory project. I also concede that a framework of actor domination of the kind I am trying to advance must resort to judgements of prudence (phronesis) in practical terms, but I deny that this is a weakness. For example, what constitute ‘human potentials for emancipation’ obviously has to be determined hermeneutically. However in any specific practical context it is possible to make prudent judgements about conditions relevant to realities and potentials such as freedom from the threat of nuclear war. What constitutes human potentials for emancipation can also be specified consensually by reference to actual positive indicators, such as access to education or health care where such access was previously restricted. The fact that both negative and positive characterisations involve judgements of prudence is not a weakness, any more than a recognition of the need to be open–ended to allow for future norms and morés detracts from such a definition.

This means that my revised framework for interpreting actor domination is a middle level heuristic which does not pretend to meet severe demands for higher levels of analytical rigour, especially if they result in cognitive eunuchry. The parallel with the contemporary world–wide debate about human rights is illuminating in this respect, not least because context–variable specifications have turned out to be compatible with consensual usages of the key terms, even though those terms themselves have not been defined in an analytically rigorous fashion.

The emphasis on actor domination nevertheless requires that attention to specific structural aspects of domination operative in particular historical and social situations is obviously required. To ignore or neglect structural aspects of domination would be to produce a one–sided framework for analysing domination, one which runs the risk of reifying social structures which even an informed commonsense understanding of domination would suggest are of considerable importance to relations of domination. It is tempting to emphasise either structural aspects of domination or take a more idealised approach to analyse domination from the perspective of individuals. Both approaches have their advantages but the revised framework for interpreting domination proposed here suggests the need to maintain a tension between structural and idealised analyses of domination, taking account of what each approach has to offer. In this I agree with Philip Pettit, who suggests an ecumenical position with respect to methodology which need not privilege structural or individualist accounts even while a particular account may emphasise one or the other (Pettit, 1993: 252 – 253).

In many respects, structural analysis of domination is the most developed approach in discussions of domination because social structures can be identified, differentiated, and their social functions analysed. Analyses of social structures, perhaps deploying indexical analyses, can be used to determine whether or not existing social structures restrict, retard, or enhance human potentials for emancipation as specifically indicated in particular contexts.

Here it is useful to recognise, as Max Weber argued, the state itself exists to maintain legitimate domination through the institutionalisation and control of the legitimate means of violence within territorial boundaries. While violence itself cannot be construed as a social structure, violence can be seen to be embedded in the routine practices of many social structures, especially those which emphasise hierarchal chains of command and which rely for their efficacy on routine obedience by subordinates to orders from superiors, from the military and police forces, through many elements of the state bureaucracy, and into the routine operations of most other social institutions. Social divisions along economic lines, perhaps with a religious legitimation, such as caste, are well recognised as embedded in social structures. Where religion or ideology enter the picture as decisive factors in a society, they can be analysed in terms of social structure. A feminist analysis of social structure adds patriarchy to this general list because it institutionalises the domination of women by men.

A critical analysis of particular social structures can also reveal that structures are monolithic, are potentially if not actually riddled with constant internal conflicts, and that specific structures are impenetrable and unresponsive to even large–scale organised opposition from without. A more subtle, less instrumentalist analysis would nevertheless indicate the likelihood of particular structures, construed as 'social actors', behaving as more like agents of domination. To be sure, from the point of view of an individual social actor, a mechanism or institution like the police can often appear to be largely monolithic and act in ways far more congruent with the interests of structure maintenance even when it is acknowledged that structures are composed of collectivities of individual actors. Using a concept such as hegemony points towards at least a partial explanation of why structures, and actors within them, collectively behave together in ways which can be construed as reinforcing rather than challenging relations of domination at a macro–social level. Some structures could be analysed as if they were autonomous of the particular actors occupying even key positions of power within them, but this stark 'juggernaut–like' view of social structures can all too easily lead to a reified analysis of them, which can contribute to reinforcing a view of domination, and the specific structures which implement specific instances of domination as immutable, impenetrable, and unchallengeable. Such a view does not aid theorising, analysis, or praxis against dominating structures. It needs to be balanced by an actor account of domination, for example, of the type outlined above.

To make use of the disaggregated framework of domination, a phenomenology of domination which is suspensive of the apparent objectives of the social domain being studied would have distinct advantages. Such a phenomenology would be generic. It would investigate how the empirically given came about. A Foucauldian genealogy could also be deployed at this point, depending on the purchase of humanist and anti–humanist methodologies for the study of particular areas. Moreover, such phenomenology should be dialectical in the specific sense of transformative of the observer, as attention to the existential components of domination leads to further openness and more refined identification with the experiences of being dominated.

However, such a phenomenology also needs to be inflected because the phenomenological observer needs to acquire context–sensitive capacities to participate the value judgements made by social actors who are dominators and dominated. A positivist or a Foucauldian genealogy would find it more difficult to do this precisely because its purchase largely depends upon abstracting from experiential factors. As Shierry M. Weber writes,

There is also a tension here with the structural analyses of domination which are needed. But this tension can be productive if the phenomenology is sufficiently reflexive and related to the approaches which characterise the Weberian, critical theoretical, and political theological perspectives. Such reflexivity points towards the inherent complexity of domination, a complexity which may relate to the embedded contradictions in social phenomena which are both the source of change and can only be resolved through change, and that one contradiction may be decisive in a given social phenomenon (Fiske, 1979).

Reflecting on experience phenomenologically leads towards experiencing:

The point is not to engage in a permanent project of phenomenological reflection, but to expand the understanding of domination with an intentional objective of reflecting upon one’s own experience of being dominated with a view to enhancing one’s understanding of the experiences of others who are also being dominated. This can lead to attempting to erode the allegedly self–protective indifference to the plight of others which both reinforces and reproduces their domination by removing one’s own potential contribution to their amelioration.

This implies a shift from a dualism towards duality. It also points towards the emphasis on the relationality of domination, which usually presents in a–symmetric relations between actors, in which one actor achieves or exercises domination over another, often viewed as a subject or a thing. This dualism can be starkly described in the following way.

From a dualistic perspective, when I regard you as a thing, you become simply a means or a resource available for me to continue to develop my conception of an ‘authentic self’ in much the same way as I exploit nature. But I only come to this awareness after reflection on my lived experiences. At the same time, I am reflecting on how successful or otherwise my securing of an ‘authentic self’ in the face of chaos is being achieved.

In contrast, alongside three other possibilities suggested by a dualistic position – dominating others, being dominated, or attempting to maintain a self–defeating indifference from the other which unsustainably denies the inherent interdependence of self and world (Sartre, 1978: 471 - 534), a fourth possibility exists: recognising that a dualism of extending relationality into human solidarity brings positive benefits for all. This brings the individual into greater solidarity with others, consequently eroding the dualism of ‘self’ versus ‘other’ and replacing it with a duality of ‘self’ and ‘selves’, human beings united together in each other’s search for mutual self–authentication and freedom. This seems to also be part of the import of political theological discussions of suffering on behalf of the other unto death, surely a most acute expression of identification with the other (eg., Peukert, 1984: 234 - 235).

The need for an exploration of existential components of domination follows from the dialectical phenomenology discussed above. The tendency to shy away from such existential components is understandable given a purely theoretical project. Existential components of domination can be theorised within purely theoretic approaches to domination, as the case of Weber shows, but such components are largely dispensed to theoretical impurities.

The approach to existential components of domination proposed here has psychological forms. It also postulates a duality between self and experience in contrast to a dualism of self versus experience:

In this approach self and society are interpreted as complementary parts of a unity. Emphasis is placed on the fact that social actors have more in common with each other as a result of their mutual interactions than an apartheid ontology of separate individuals suggests. Existing approaches to domination may sometimes note such components, but they find them difficult to handle. The approach proposed here, in contrast, recognises them as integral phenomena with causal consequences.

In the context of a framework for interpreting domination, which includes praxeological perspectives five existential components of being dominated deserve particular attention: 1) passivity on the part of the dominated; 2) mimesis, or the mimicry of the dominator by the dominated; 3) selective attempted transformation of physical appearance by the dominated; 4) self–explanations of the dominated’s situation by reference to immutable ‘laws’, fate, or the will of a God; 5) attempts to escape from the dominated identity through withdrawal from the wider society into ghettos, or into mental illness.

1. Existing approaches to domination, such as that of critical theory, often note the problem of passivity on the part of the dominated. They usually attempt to explain this passivity. Frequently they propose a solution or program of education to teach the dominated how and by whom they are dominated. These didactic approaches tend to neglect the depths to which such existential components of domination are interiorised within the identity of the dominated, leading to unsatisfactory explanations, and failures of proposed programs because the explanations and programs challenge the dominated’s arguably false yet deeply held views of themselves and the causes of their situations.

2. The mimicry of the dominator’s behaviour by the dominated is well established in the sociological literature (eg., Adam, 1978). The causal consequences of its psychological features are less adequately researched. Mimesis has the dominated attempting to resemble the dominator by adopting the latter’s language, dress, values, and beliefs, eschewing their own group’s language, dress, values, and beliefs. But there usually remains a barrier between the dominated and the dominator which cannot be finally crossed. In addition to mimesis, the dominated may undergo cosmetic treatments to physically resemble the dominator, attempting to eradicate their different appearance as if it were a major impediment to their recognition by the dominator as social equals rather than inferiors. Ascribing their inferior status to immutable laws, fate, or the will of a God shifts the dominated’s attention away from identifiable social factors responsible for their marginalised social location, reifying it, and actually contributing to continued domination by ascribing their condition to factors which cannot be challenged or changed.

3. Existential aspects of domination from the dominator’s perspective are much less discussed. These deserve attention here because, if being dominated can be shown to have existential effects, it logically follows that so too does dominating. Some of the possible effects of dominating could include retreats into ideological constructions which fictively attempt to legitimate the position of the dominator by reference to ethnicity, gender, or sexual preference, behaviours such as adopting language and appearance which seek to emphasise the difference between dominator and dominated, and creating and extending social practices and institutions which structurally implement and maintain the dominator’s role and position in a society. Apartheid is one example of a dominating ideology with existential effects on its followers. The dominator’s position can then be understood better as one of precarious dependency, precarious because it depends on enforced, and arguably unsustainable, domination of other human beings, legitimated by norms, traditions, and laws. But it is still necessary to explain how these existential aspects operate together. This could be done by examining the behaviour of actors identified hypothetically as being dominated and seeking to discern if their behaviour is congruent with the five existential effects of being dominated listed earlier. This analysis may uncover further behaviours which would expand the list of existential effects of being dominated, or indicate where some of the alleged effects of being dominated have been misinterpreted and need to be conceptually refined or dismissed as not an existential effect of being dominated.

Many social ontologies are possible, but in the context of domination, a social ontology able to distinguish between dominating and emancipating approaches to the relationality of self and other would be advantageous. As in the case of structural analysis of domination, the tendency can be to emphasise either an individualistic or a societal focus on what might exercise paramount influence over the actions and reflections of actors in a society. However, a creative tension between both extremes may indicate a more productive course, leading to an emphasis on the relationality of social interactions between selves and others in a dialogic relationship, even when those relations are a–symmetric with respect to domination and subjugation (c.f., Pettit, 1993; Gosden, 1994). Social actors can be and demonstrably are both active, self–aware, self–reflective, and embedded in individual and collective experiences of history, tradition, and necessarily exist in relations with other actors (e.g., Fay, 1987: 45 – 46; 208 – 209).

It has long been suggested that Marx offers a social ontology which broadly points in the direction which is needed. Drawing on Hegel, Marx suggested that through the process of labour, the individual, in relations with other individuals, came to self–awareness as well as differentiated themselves from other individuals. Marx went on to suggest that in a future society, the mutuality of relations of production and between members of that society would lead to greater justice and freedom.

Here a strong moralism does not necessarily help to give real purchase to analysis and is constrained in the following way.

In the framework for interpreting domination proposed here a specific social ontology is introduced, designed to highlight the vocative dimensions of human action. This is social ontology which treats ‘events’ constituted by how individual human beings and other agents, such as governments and institutions, respond to ways they are addressed as an ‘other’. This social ontology is more familiar in continental rather than Anglo–Saxon discussions. The work of Emmanuel Levinas (Hand, 1989, Levinas, 1991; Peperzak, 1993), Michael Theunissen (1984), and Mikhail Bakhtin (1984 & 1986) is of particular importance and is drawn on here to counter the noble but potentially uncompromising perspective of a social ontology a step further. In typically heavy Teutonic mode, Michael Theunissen has argued:

Theunissen’s point, however, is relatively simple. Basically he insists upon the reciprocity of the relationality between self and other, in which, at one and the same time, self is subjectively constructing the other, and yet the other remains an objective phenomenon with which self must necessarily relate as an objective phenomenon.

This relationality of domination was discerned long ago by Hegel in his discussion of the ‘master and the slave’. Hegel showed that while it would appear that the dominator exerts total control over the dominated, as the dependency of the master on the slave develops the master begins to realise the absolute reliance they have placed in the slave:

To be a dominator, as Hegel suggested, is to become a thrall just as surely as those who are dominated. Moreover, as Marx was to emphasise later, it is precisely through labour as a slave that the dominated could come to self–awareness as a self in relation to the dominating other, and as a self–constitutive individual able to remove themselves from the relations of domination which consigned them to otherwise permanent ‘other–dom’ the existence of which was defined by the dominating relation.

But it is possible to take Hegel and Marx further by opting for a specific social ontology which privileges the role of the vocative (emphasised by Theunissen) in the relationality of domination. Clearly such relationality needs to be specified to take much greater account of the interdependency of relations of domination, especially the dependency of the dominators upon the dominated to a greater degree than has hitherto been discussed. Not only do the dominators come to rely on the dominated in structural terms to perform administrative or productive tasks. They also come to rely on their thralls in ontological ways because their very beings come to depend on the relations of domination which bind both sides together.

Such a social ontology needs to include a variety of agents, not only individual human beings (Archer, 1988). Further, any specification of such a social ontology needs to foreground determinate Agency and not hide in holistic talk about ‘social ontology’. The very notion of ‘society’ requires the relationality of knowing and aware actors interacting together, often in collectivities which constitute the sociological concept of ‘agents’ (though, to be sure, individuals are also agents, though usually with less significant impacts than collectivities of individuals acting more or less together, e.g., social movements). One of the main problems in attempting to understand domination is the temptation to collapse agency into either a structural account (whereby the actors become puppets of structures they do not understand) or into a methodological individualist account for which individual human beings become the key agents. An abstract combination of these approaches is superficially attractive but ontologically incoherent (cf. the debates concerning Giddens’s structuration theory). A social ontology, however, can focus upon concrete processes of social constitution which transform a dominated ‘other’ into a potentially aware ‘self’. What that ‘self’ might become in relations with other ‘selves’ where such possibilities are constrained by structural considerations but crucially specified with reference to intra–dialogical vocative elements. At the very least, the revised framework for interpreting domination proposed here hypothesises that a specifically vocative social ontology will have greater purchase for interpreting domination, particularly when actors are challenging domination.

This revised framework for interpreting domination is clearly general and may seem far removed from possible practical applications. Moreover, different applications will commend themselves to different social actors, depending on their interests and values. The revised framework may have most purchase for applications involving interests in freeing people from domination in Western–type value systems influenced by classical liberalism, although Eastern value systems are also compatible with social ontology (c.f., Sprung, {ed.}, 1978).

A revised framework for interpreting domination also needs to provide a discursive rational basis for the ethical criticism of domination because prudential judgements about domination require justification lest they be dismissed as rhetorical condemnations. Here it is possible to co–opt, with minor amendments, Habermas’s work on communicative action. Habermas’s more recent work on discursive ethics is not included here, although it is consistent with the general approach adopted. Habermas’s arguments offer a stronger basis for an ethically–based criticism of domination than earlier attempts, such as those by earlier critical theorists. A Weberian approach, though informed by an ethical position (chapter two) effectively capitulates to domination, rather than offers a basis for criticism of domination from an ethically–informed position.

The revised framework for interpreting domination advanced here is confessedly deployed to help those seeking to limit domination. Clearly, it is not deployed for immediate adoption by the dominated. However, strategies for application can be proposed. One strategy would be to translate the framework into the values and social perceptions of the dominated, exemplified in the notions of emancipation in terms familiar from their local values, morality and culture. A second strategy would be to introduce aspects of the relevant structural components of domination on a gradual basis so that the perception of one aspect of structural domination can provide the horizon shift needed for the perception of the next. A third strategy would be to shift the social perception management of the dominated once some levels of structural domination have been perceived, even though this may mean that the struggle of the dominated against domination in the given context does not extend as far or take the form which the theorist of domination would wish. Such a willingness to accept the implications of empowering the dominated is central to the version of ethical theory taken here from Habermas’s theory of communicative action. Habermas always allows for the theorist to stand aside from social actors because it is the latter who finally must make the decisions and take the potentially awesome risks which social action for change often entails.

In so far as people who are dominated come to conceive of themselves in terms of a dominated identity, this dominated identity must also be taken into account. Brian Fay reinforces the importance of identity formation for any theory of domination:

This is equally true for a revised framework for interpreting domination. A stronger notion of praxis is also needed to get past the vagueness of para–theory.

The revised framework for interpreting domination proposed here includes three specific forms of ethical self–restriction on praxis. First, praxis must conform to an ethics which attempts at all times to recognise the alterity of the other, even if this excludes violent forms of protest. This self–restriction is likely to increase the sustainability of the action over longer historical periods even if it postpones precipitate changes in some contexts. Second, praxis needs to be self–critical in the organisational sense that those involved in it must have instituted mechanisms for reflecting on and criticising their own praxis. Third, praxis should be evaluated both by the theorists and the activists in the light of whether or not it adequately corresponded to an ethics of communicative action and further alternative strategies for the future should be discussed in terms of whether they would conform more fully to an ethics of communicative action.

The revised framework for interpreting domination advanced here requires multiple methodologies and cannot be adequately developed by reference to a single discipline. Inter–disciplinary methodologies are arguably insufficient because they often cobble together existing knowledges ill–equipped to deal with the more holistic and intangible aspects of domination. Additional purchase may be able to be achieved by trans–disciplinary methodologies which borrow from a multiplicity of disciplines, including traditional hermeneutics which do not hesitate to make value judgements. Such trans–disciplinary methodologies are open to charges of eclecticism. It may also be said that the exact relations between theory, empirical, and praxical considerations is unclear. Such charges are justified and suggest that the revised framework for interpreting domination needs further refraction, taking more account of the exact domain or domains to which it is to be applied: nonviolence.