Quoted: "Situating the Self" by Seyla Benhabib

Chapter 2. Autonomy, Modernity and Community
Communitarianism and Critical Social Theory in Dialogue

The Critique of the "Unencumbered" Self
and the Priority of the Right over the Good

"The intersubjective constitution of the self and the evolution of self-identity through the communicative interaction with others has been a key insight of Habermas's work since his early essay ... ... Habermas often formulates this insight concerning the intersubjective constitution of self-identity in the language of George Herbert Mead. The "I" becomes an "I" only among "we," in a community of speech and action. Individuation does not precede association; rather it is the kinds of associations which we inhabit that define the kind of individuals we will become." (p.71)

"Whereas Rawls distinguishes between justice as the basic virtue of a social system and the domain of moral theory at large in which a full theory of the good is at work, Habermas is committed to the stronger claim that after the transition to modernity and the destruction of the teleological world-view, moral theory in fact can only be deontological and must focus on questions of justice. Following Kohlberg, he insists that this is not merely a historically contingent evolution, but that "judgments of justice" do indeed constitute the hard core of all moral judgments. Habermas writes: "Such an ethic ... stylises questions of the good life, and of the good life together into questions of justice, in order to render practical questions accessible to cognitive processing by way of this abstraction." It is not that deontology describes a kind of moral theory juxtaposed to a teleological one; for Habermas, deontological judgments about justice and rights claims define the moral domain insofar as we can say anything cognitively meaningful about these phenomena. (p.72)

Burmese Violence: Links Collected

Surayud lays into Burmese junta at UN > The Nation
Army enters monasteries, cuts access to Internet > The Nation
Satellites confirm reports of Myanmar violence > Reuters
Satellite Images May Show Myanmar Abuses > AP
Satellites capture evidence of Burma crackdown > NewScientist
Defying Burma’s Military Rulers > VOA
Bloggers in Burma keep world informed during military crackdown > SFGate
Gordon Brown: World must act over Burma > Telegraph
Net access cut as junta crackdown intensifies > Sydney Morning Herald
Myanmar Monks’ Protest Contained by Junta’s Forces > NYTimes
Residents surhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifround security forces at raided monastery > Democratic Voice of Burma
Rangoon: ‘army mutiny’ reported Troops refuse to fire on crowds > The FirstPost
Japan said to demand punishment for death in Myanmar > Yahoo!
Japan demands answers over journalist death > Guardian

Bloggers
Violence in Burma > Woman of Color
Message to the People of Burma > DalaiLama

Pictures
NYTimes | Reuters

Video

Colonalism & Imperialism

Dependency Theory

Evans, Peter. "Imperialism, Dependency, and Dependent Development." in The Alliance of Multinational, State, and Local Capital in Brazil"

...The development of the multinational corporation has enabled international capital to retain greater control over third world factories than Hobson could have imagined possible. Nonetheless, the international division of labor, measured in terms of the kinds of goods produced in different locations, has changed substantially in the direction that Hobson predicted. Manchester no longer makes cloth for Indians or Brazilians. The larger countries of the periphery manufacture their own consumer goods and come capital goods. A few are substantial exporters of manufactured goods.