Ethics and Values in Librarianship by Koehler Wallace;

Author:Koehler, Wallace;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Unlimited Model
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Democracy and the Individual

We recognize that the basis of Western society since the Renaissance has been an increasing emphasis of the place of the individual as the primary building block of society. The individual replaced the community, corporate bodies, the group, and the state in the theory of the liberal democracy. For the individual to become the center of civic order, other institutions had to recede. These include the state, the church, and even the family. In their extremes, both the fascist and communist impulses were reactions to the perceived chaotic nature of individualist democracy and a return to more autocratic forms of governance.

Even at the beginning of the twenty-first century there are vestiges of divine right monarchy, not to mention the remnants of class-based or caste-based society in otherwise democratic societies. To borrow terms of the ancien régime, we have moved from an elitism based on noblesse de l’epée and de la robe to a noblesse de la bourse. Our new elites are no longer barons and dukes but CEOs and CFOs. Thomas Friedman (2005, 46), in his popular analysis of the “flattening” of the world, alludes to changes to the role of the individual in a rapidly changing economic environment, an environment driven by information systems.

Political scientists recognize that, while we may maintain the individual as the essential building block of the democratic society, societies (democratic or otherwise) have their basis in group dynamics. Just how societies are organized along which groups is a matter of theoretical concern. Some have argued that liberal democracies are organized along pluralistic lines. Pluralism suggests society constructed in plastic and fluid configurations where individuals shift group allegiances according to their particular concerns, beliefs, and interests. A corporatist society is one in which individual and therefore group interests are unchanging. The group negotiates in the interests of its members. In pluralist and corporatist societies, government serves to negotiate among the competing interests. The primary difference between pluralist and corporatist structures is that in pluralist societies, group membership changes as individual interests change. In a corporatist society, individuals remain members of their defining group and accept group interests over their own.

John Rawls (1993) theorizes that government should serve as a neutral arbiter of the interests of various groups in society. Government serves to mediate interests and definitions of the “good” to establish the “common good.” According to Rawls, justice can be prioritized along two principles: (1) all individuals have basic rights and the right to claim those rights; and (2) while social and economic inequalities exist, they are acceptable only when all have equal rights to compete for preferential status, and the underprivileged should be disproportionately benefited. Rawls’s conception of the role of government—as arbiter—is a liberal democratic one, one that can function in either a pluralistic or corporatist environment.

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