Yes I think the protocol conversation (which we've been having in many different ways in literary studies for a while, but mostly at the margins) is the most important conversation going forward. I am a scholar of sonnets, for example. A sonnet is a protocol.
It is all too easy for those of us who live in the'modern' West to radically overestimate the degree to which the rational legal ideal has prevailed globally. The overwhelming majority of the world population have never lived in such a state and do not today.
However, for those of us that do, we are indeed facing a crisis of legitimacy. Why is this? Is it really the result of objective immiseration? Do the numbers confirm this? I'm not going to argue the point here, but I don't think so. This observation is I suspect true globally (see Rosling)
Modern rational legal states are indeed facing huge complex problems but the complexity of modern economies is such that any social order with any form of legitimacy would have such problems. Would a traditional or charismatic form of authority fare better? And can ANY form of authority fare better if society has lost faith in the value of expertise? IMHO the current assault on expertise is profoundly corrosive of legitimacy of rational legal legitimacy and Trump's charismatic leadership will likely fail to safely street the ship of state.
IMHO the deepest underlying cause of the crisis currently plaguing rational legal states is a groundswell of revolt against rationality itself. But the analysis of this is for another time.
There's a problem with "objective immiseration": immiseration is subjective. If people are "objectively well-off" but also miserable and revolting against reason, then the "objective model" is false.
And then if the "objective models" are wrong in this way, that's in fact good grounds for revolt against a putative "rationality" that could not catch this kind of error.
I think Randall Collins and those around him have already been advancing on these lines for a while; his highly Weberian book Conflict Sociology and the network sociology of The Sociology of Philosophies both seemed to me to have quite a lot of content that you're asking for above.
Yes I think the protocol conversation (which we've been having in many different ways in literary studies for a while, but mostly at the margins) is the most important conversation going forward. I am a scholar of sonnets, for example. A sonnet is a protocol.
It is all too easy for those of us who live in the'modern' West to radically overestimate the degree to which the rational legal ideal has prevailed globally. The overwhelming majority of the world population have never lived in such a state and do not today.
However, for those of us that do, we are indeed facing a crisis of legitimacy. Why is this? Is it really the result of objective immiseration? Do the numbers confirm this? I'm not going to argue the point here, but I don't think so. This observation is I suspect true globally (see Rosling)
Modern rational legal states are indeed facing huge complex problems but the complexity of modern economies is such that any social order with any form of legitimacy would have such problems. Would a traditional or charismatic form of authority fare better? And can ANY form of authority fare better if society has lost faith in the value of expertise? IMHO the current assault on expertise is profoundly corrosive of legitimacy of rational legal legitimacy and Trump's charismatic leadership will likely fail to safely street the ship of state.
IMHO the deepest underlying cause of the crisis currently plaguing rational legal states is a groundswell of revolt against rationality itself. But the analysis of this is for another time.
There's a problem with "objective immiseration": immiseration is subjective. If people are "objectively well-off" but also miserable and revolting against reason, then the "objective model" is false.
And then if the "objective models" are wrong in this way, that's in fact good grounds for revolt against a putative "rationality" that could not catch this kind of error.
I think Randall Collins and those around him have already been advancing on these lines for a while; his highly Weberian book Conflict Sociology and the network sociology of The Sociology of Philosophies both seemed to me to have quite a lot of content that you're asking for above.
I have not read Collins but now will. Thank you!
Great, I hope you find it useful!