Capital, Ideology, Context, and Democracy
Capital, Ideology, Context, and Democracy
escrito por Dini Harmita
Abstract
Drinking fountains tend to calm our mind through our eyes and the sound of the water. Democracy at some point is supposed to be felt in that sense. This essay is written to explore the roles of capital, ideology, and context in democracy. Using the routinisation indicator in party (system) institutionalization this brief paper argued that with proportional and meaningful participation including its depth of confidence we don’t need to accumulate capitals, homogenize ideology and contexts to favor democracy with quality.
Keywords: Democracy, capital, ideology, context, authoritarianism, populism, polarization
Introduction
Despite the facts that some of us believe states and religions should be separated but in reality as individuals the values are embedded in all of us. That’s why engineering institutions should be completed by the existence of people's development; as individuals.
Bourdieu (1983) mentioned that the way for us to conquer the world is by accumulating capital. Despite the fact that Harmita (2007) agreed upon his classification on capital, she had proven that we don’t need to accumulate capital to have the universe in our hands. Casal Bértoa (2017) confirmed the convergence of ideologies in the forms of political spectrums especially in Europe through one of the interviews in Croatia. This essay is aimed at giving another perspective in seeing capitals and ideologies through the eyes of context and democracy.
Capitals and Ideologies in Democracy
Routinisation is the second favorite yet difficult thing after stability in party institutionalization and party system institutionalization mentioned by most scholars (Casal Bértoa, 2017). If economic capital is defined by Bourdieu (1983) as ownership such as land, one of the routinisation is collecting money to buy land. If social capital is institutionalized in the forms of knowledge and acquaintance exchanges, one of the routinisation is in the forms of listening lectures and facilitating discussions. If cultural capital is institutionalized in the fashion of education, then social capital should be the part of cultural capital and economic capital too because it needs at least exchange of money or belongings and services. Therefore, mastering one capital should actually be enough for facilitating the universe because other capitals tend to follow.
Harmita (2007) explained it by qualitatively sampling the Sundanese women with less than a half hectare land as farmers. Beside exchanging knowledge and acquaintances in their farms as other social units with different occupations and contexts, they also have the privilege of doing it in their kitchen. Having it observed in other contexts indeed it may happen to other tribes too, nonetheless this particular research field has its own distinctive characteristics of being a little bit more humble and caring for each other; to the point that most of the time the extended families should or choose to stay in the same village or town because of that.
Taking also a very different indigenous community called Kasepuhan as the cultural tourism village inhabitants, she had proven that the women have been able to create their own playing field without really needing to follow the rule of globalization, modernisation, dependency, or neoliberalism. To disseminate or replicate it is another story because they live nomads staying almost everywhere in the peak of mountains and enclaves; like the very native fishermen in Galicia who could take one of the most expensive seafood in the world called percebes (Pollicipes pollicipes).
Democracy in this whole context could only be real when those entities or social units called as people feel the benefits. Nonetheless, the current supply and demand system tends to be still only in favor of those who tend to accumulate capital. That’s why when political parties are dominantly funded by private finance, not only that the elected governments are prone to corruption but also the people get less profits.
Different when we see it with multi point of views such as education as cultural capital for example. It opens opportunities for everyone to share their voices by less likely endangering the future. Now let’s discuss the similarities between values in Islam and other religions and beliefs. Germany and Japan believe in quality, the Jews believe in wits, the Catholics trust disciplines, Hindu and Buddha like tranquility, and so does Islam. Most of us need power yet we often forget to use it to reach such a level of values called calmness. Perhaps that’s why as a scientist Bourdieu is often called by the scholars as an artist instead, because his words were too ‘flying in the sky’; to the point sometimes the scholars thought they should be classified as literature instead of scientific pieces.
None of us call him a philosopher or political philosophy theories yet either perhaps because Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, and even Hobbes were born many vintage-years before him. Thus indeed, as convergent as current political spectrums and as geometric as buildings in Spain, ideology and democracy should be seen as deeper and wider than just for example religion at the same time. There when science becomes a true daughter of art.
Contexts and Democracy
Diving democracy into winter is eventually more difficult, even when experts said people who couldn’t swim sometimes could dive, especially in the context of Russian aggression in Ukraine. I wrote an essay to develop a peace formula in 2020 with a naive thought of involving radicalism into a round table simply because acknowledging one of the main sides was not involved in any kind of negotiations. It went to the exile of my brain directly after I sent it to my supervisor. With the current context, the thoughts indeed seem to be less impossible.
Based upon the experiences gained by the Ukrainians themselves or by helping them we are all agreed upon one thing: democracy perhaps primarily about elections, nonetheless it’s not only that. It’s also about the prior and the aftermath. Casal Bértoa (2023) through his database mentioned Ukraine as a country with the lowest party institutionalization and electoral party dominance, and the electoral fragmentation in 1994-2013. One decade later Ukraine was attacked by Russia.
Building democracy in the country seems to be impossible before Russia withdraws their troops, nevertheless the Ukrainians themselves have proven how such a hypothesis could be not applicable. Nadeau et al (2023) discussed the quality of democracy with the winning and loser gaps framework. A little bit deeper than participation, they concluded that the confidence of the voters matters.
Benedetto et al (2020) mentioned that within 97 years Denmark had 38 elections and Finland had 29 elections in 96 years. Both Denmark and Finland have high ranking in either democracy and happiness index, despite the fact that we couldn’t move freely because of the thick snows and compact buildings for example. The ratio between the election numbers and years could also represent stability as one of the niches of scholars in discussing both party and party system institutionalization.
The way Putin brings himself sometimes is also seen as populist. Reflecting as simple as participation and as deep as confidence in both institutionalization and democracy, Ukraine has been giving it all to survive. If democracy is described as a historical timeline, the lesson learned could be written in the quadrant of prior, while Denmark and Finland in the post axis. Trying to facilitate populism and authoritarianism at the same time, perhaps landing democracy in (0,0) could be an option but by also considering at least the basic characteristics of both populists and authoritarians.
My niece who doesn’t like fish said she would build her own universe where fishes don’t exist. It sounds like she is an authoritarian indeed, but it’s sort of her behavior only to fish cases. This case doesn’t apply to Putin because he literally attacked everything in Ukraine. Finding his part of attitude where he could be less autocratic would be very micro and challenging indeed, nonetheless it doesn’t always represent the country he leads.
Russia, China, and Iran have significant contributions in providing gas and natural gas but it was only Russia attacking Ukraine. China is supporting Russia yet still doesn’t want to be covered by blood. While Iran has a more similar agenda with Russia. Nonetheless, whatever it’s the reason, does it represent the countries? Because Russia also has people who are forced to go to war and Iran has people who are afraid of being accused by the government everyday. It sounds like Turkey indeed. Does Erdogan represent the country? When he decided to help Ukraine with the grain initiative, which parts of Turkey he represented?
How a democracy is measured tends to always interest us indeed. While the electoral system could be measured by indexes and ratios involving votes and seats, democracy itself as a system has a more comprehensive relationship with everything. If even a leader could be less and more participatory and collaborative in a day or seconds, how about the system? That’s why, as party and party system institutionalization, the quality could also be measured by stability. Nonetheless, since contexts matter a little bit more, perhaps surviving democracy doesn’t always mean the collapse of authoritarianism and populism. Both authoritarianism and populism could actually be dangerous spices where democracy is triggered to always be steady and ready in response to.
Avramovska et al (2022) mentioned that Spain and Sweden are indeed the perfect example for the voter behaviors. As voters, our tendencies have always been shaped upon our personal preferences. Perhaps what makes People of Sweden different is not only the less number of people the country carries, but also the implications led by. Every scholar would agree that Spanish politics has a faster pace than British politics. Nonetheless, the competition in the multi-party system is more complicated till it could even create hidden traffic while Sweden could control it easier and better since the vehicles in the highways are still less than the Spanish contexts.
Conclusions
All aforementioned capitals tell us that none of the success stories comes from accumulating capitals, whatever the definition of being successful is. On the other way around, the rise of authoritarianism and populism is characterized by the efforts of accumulating capitals itself.
A microscope is indeed sometimes necessary for us not to fall into darkness. If a disease could be cured by surgery and or therapy, the crisis of democracy indeed is recoverable through the stability as the part of political party (system) institutionalization. Like the United Kingdom, a monarchy has in fact an essential role in democracy too. If only the wicked girls in orphanages and boarding schools still have their parents alive, they might not need to find themselves confused between holding their thirsts towards a simple pleasure such as cakes, wine, and pasta or going for a Phd study without a scholarship. Revisiting theories and practices of democracy, populism, and authoritarianism and having them analyzed with related concepts and contexts has facilitated at least the author to understand how the birds could fly the democracy not higher neither stagnant but levitated dynamically. Like floating, with a perfect speed and gravity where any unnecessary forces could be gradually defeated and prevented beautifully and when the clouds have finally rang the alarm of polarization, it lands smoothly. How? By holding hands, democracy has adequate energy and fuel to interact with authoritarianism and populism through not only a proportional participation and confidence, but also meaningful ones.
