3 - Ethically constitutive stories and norms of allegiance

Summary

The preceding chapters sketch what I hope is a lifelike portrait of the processes through which shared senses of political peoplehood are generated and sustained. All the great variety of forms of “imagined” political communities are human creations, I have claimed – the products of both coercive force and persuasive stories inspiring a sense of trust and worth among a critical mass of supporters for particular visions of common membership. Those persuasive narratives include not only economic and political power appeals but also “ethically constitutive stories” that claim membership is somehow intrinsic to the core identities of potential constituents. Though their prominence and impact may wax and wane at different times, I have contended that such stories always have important roles in shaping the governing activities, including policies and institutions of inclusion and exclusion, in all long-enduring political societies.

With this chapter the argument takes a normative turn. The guiding question is: if the foregoing arguments are right, what do these political realities suggest for how human beings at the dawn of the twenty-first century should evaluate and attempt to sustain or modify their existing forms of political peoplehood? The claims made so far have been at best reasonable speculations, and to move from any empirical premises, however solid, to specific normative positions always involves many legitimately debatable steps.