A brief for individual merit in Michigan

Amicus Curiae

A brief for individual merit in Michigan Covington &; burling for the national association of scholars     

Mobail: Moral Ambivalence and the Domestication of Mobile Telephones in Peri-Urban Papua New Guinea

Preliminary ethnographic data about the evaluation and use of mobile phones by low-income, peri-urban Papua New Guineans are analysed. These data do not affirm a modernist narrative that privileges discontinuity, dislocation and progress. They do not show a reduction of collective forms of sociality and agency in favor of ego-centric networks that disembed space and time from localities, alleviate poverty, and so on. Mobile phones neither dissolve the old nor constitute the moral world anew. Instead, their use in and effects on Papua New Guinea appear to be more complicated. By enabling voices to communicate over increased space and time, they make the person both more and less part of society. That is to say, they are used to fulfill collectivist values in ways that separate self from other. One significant purpose for which they are used thus exemplifies pre-existing meanings of kinship in everyday life. They also elicit a new self-reflexive voice, as well as an ongoing critique of postcolonial society.     

THE US ELECTIONS: THE STATUS QUO RE-AFFIRMED

The 1988 American election witnessed a vote for the status quoand divided government, as the Republicans retained the WhiteHouse and the Democrats triumphed for Congressional and stateoffices. The best explanation is that peace and prosperity leftmost Americans satisfied with the kind of government they havehad for the past eight years. Basically the same factors that have correlated with votingDemocratic or Republican since 1934 did so in 1988, with theexception of the White South, which started a movement awayfrom the Democrats in 1948 when Harry Truman ran on a civilrights background, and gradually moved over to overwhelmingsupport for the Republicans. A gender gap, with women votingdisproportionately Democratic also opened in 1980 and has continuedthrough 1988. It seemingly reflects feminists' concerns, sinceworking and single women go Democratic, while ‘homemakers’are much more Republican. The election results point up the existence of two majorities,a Republican presidential one which reflects the identificationof Democratic nominees with permissive liberalism, rejectedby most Americans, and a Democratic one for the other officers,which is related to legislators supporting the interests andvalues of their constituents, the majority of whom favor a governmentwhich is helpful to the underprivileged and to people like themselves.     

PACIFIC DIVIDE: AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM--JAPANESE UNIQUENESS

This paper, part of a larger effort to explicate the natureof American exceptionalism, is based on an assumption recentlyenunciated by Kazuo Ogura: ‘To define the "other" is toknow one's nation’ (Lokker, 1992, p. 2). A person whoknows only one country basically knows no country well. Comparingthe United States or Japan with other nations is the best wayto learn about each. In a previous work, I dealt with Canada,and argued that ‘it is precisely because the two NorthAmerican democracies have so much in common that they permitstudents of each to gain insights into the factors that causevariations’ (Lipset, 1990). Here, I shift to looking atthe two outliers, the two developed nations which are most differentfrom each other. They clearly have distinct organizing principles.And their values, institutions and behaviors fit into sharplydifferent functional wholes. These variations, of course, havebeen written about in myriad comparative scholarly, businessand journalistic works. Given my limited contact with Japan(five visits covering a total of six months over 30 years),I cannot add to them observationally. This article, however,seeks to elaborate and test the validity of the qualitativeanalyses by a comprehensive examination of the comparative dataon opinions, values and behavior, collected by public opinionagencies (Glazer, 1976). As will be evident, there are astonishinglylarge differences between them.