The grammar of the prompt suggests a tension between the work Fukuyama and Walzer, that the notion of moral minimalist and an end-of-history are incommensurable ideas. I believe this to be a false dichotomy as Walzer’s notions of moral maximalist are simply culturally contingent and specific articulations of universal moral values, an idea that is not in conflict with Fukuyama’s thesis. Even if one believes that societies around the world are moving inexorably in the direction of a single notion of moral good, that does not in any way mean that that moral system is upon us now. As Fukuyama said in his review of Walzer’s work in Foreign Affairs magazine, in which he largely praised Walzer’s formulation of moral minimalism and maximalism, “compartmentalization of “maximalist” critiques may be an unnecessary concession to relativism given the degree of cultural homogenization that is going on in the world alongside cultural differentiation”.  Thus Fukuyama does not reject Walzer’s descriptive analysis of moral system, he merely questions its relevance given the eventuality of universal system of values and goods, of which morality would no doubt be an integral piece.

The first and most important thing to consider in this question of the balance between democratic gains and demands for justice is the most basic function of the state: to provide order and protect citizens while improving their lives. Insofar as that is true, any demands for justice must be considered within the framework of their reconcilability with the basic functions of the state. That is to say, demands for justice can only be considered to the extent that they still allow for the state to provide order and improve the lives of citizens.

This is true for a number of reasons among which being that even notions of what constitutes justice are subjective. To conduct policy and to potentially destabilize and change the face of government on the basis of subjective notions of justice is absurd. Practical challenges to this approach abound, whose notion of justice would we use? How would we ascertain individuals’ notions of justice? Whose notions do we privilege and use as the basis for policy?

Another considerable challenge lies in the reality that in many of these fledgling democracies, many of the perpetrators of violence and atrocities occupy certain positions in the government. Even the acts of violence themselves were carried out not by isolated rogue actors but by the state military and police apparatus. To prosecute and “deliver justice” to all of those complicit in these acts would be to eviscerate the military and police and thus, the state itself.

With all of this said, the symbolic importance of trials against the perpetrators of these acts cannot be overstated. If a country is to move on from these past traumas, at the very least, the appearance of an attempt to pursue justice should be undertaken. To that end, selectively punishing only those most visibly responsible for these atrocities is a good middle-ground.

In Lerner’s “The Grocer and the Chief”, Lerner’s conclusions are predicated on a number of assumptions about progress and change. Chief among these assumptions is the notion that there is only one true definition of progress: a Western-style industrialized, liberal state. Lerner further assumes that urbanization and technological development is necessarily good, painting the development of infrastructure in the village as to allow them to commute to work in the city as an unabated positive. To call this work Western-centric is nothing if not understatement.

As Lerner’s Western-centric biases serve as the basis for this ethnographic work, they render many of the conclusions drawn, if not the underlying work itself, distorted and thus unsound. Every aspect of his description of the village and his inhabitants point to the reductive notion of Western good, Eastern bad. This faulty logic certainly extends to the case of the two eponymous figures, the Chief and Grocer. Lerner dismisses the Chief and the traditional values he represents as being backwards and reactionary while holding the values of the Grocer as being Western and thus enlightened and good. No sound social scientific study, much less an ethnography can proceed from such flawed premises. Irrespective of one’s personal inclinations, to so openly push an ideological agenda while dismissing all else is to dismiss the very essence and lifeblood of ethnography, different cultures and practices.

The shortcomings of the approach used by Parsons and the erroneous conclusions that were drawn from it highlight the importance of facts and data to supplement any qualitative analysis. Without data to adjudicate theoretical disagreements, qualitative analysis is at best informed opinion. However, this is not to say that data is a panacea to otherwise intractable disagreements in theory as there are limits to what data can tell you. Thus, the best approach is to use hard data, like statistics, in conversation with soft data, like ethnographies. In the case explicated by this reading, even this hybrid approach used by Eberstadt is incapable of any definite answers, but in leveraging data analysis to refine the scope of theoretical inquiry, a social scientist is at least able to to move closer to an answer.

Given technological and conceptual limits, there are, by necessity, plenty of things that are unknowable to us now. However attempting to place limits on human knowledge and capability is a fool’s errand. Just as people a hundred years ago would not have predicted the speed of the development of medical technology or electronic communication, people now are ill-equipped to declare insurmountable technological and conceptual barriers to human understanding. As such, to preemptively declare certain things unknowable and avoid seeking their answers is to impose unjustified and ultimately self-defeating limitations.  

As illustrated by Orwell’s account in Shooting an Elephant, talking about power as simply being the force which constrains the oppressed is an insufficient account of the way in which it truly works. The power that Orwell wields in this account is the institutionally granted power of domination and coercion over the natives. Orwell, as an agent of the British Empire, wields the might of the British military and legal system over the natives, able to arbitrate disputes as he chooses and indeed even kill if the situation dictates it. This is the prima facie manifestation of power, one which all can recognize and must submit to.

The more subtle and interesting form of power is that which the natives hold over agents of the British Empire like Orwell. While they certainly do not possess legitimate claims over the use of force, through watching these agents and implicitly holding the agents to the routinized conventions of the Empire, the natives are able to push the ostensible oppressors towards certain actions. In this case, it comes in the form of needlessly killing an elephant.

This is a more insidious form of power as it is less readily apparent but is in many ways more fundamentally constraining as agents of the Empire are held to the narrow confines of what is institutionally justified. This notion of power operating not from the top down but having a reflexive nature is an insight that is very much Foucauldian. Thus, while the British Empire and its agents wield all of the formal power in this scenario, a true and full account of power would show that all actors hold and use it to varying extents.