YouSaid · the spoken record

Eric Kaufmann

lines on the record: 82
first: 2019-07-03
most recent: 2019-07-03
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Well, I'm quite in. I mean, one part of the book, of course, is about progressivism and that sort of liberal left synthesis, which is not socialism and not liberalism. And I kind of want to look at the history of that, all the good things it did, but also perhaps where it's overshot and perhaps some of the places where it's going wrong now. So this is an idea that I have, whether I will pursue that, I'm not sure.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I think the whiteness really doesn't play in Northern Ireland, actually. I mean, it's interesting. I've seen sort of black spectators at the 12th will be welcomed, whereas there's a lot of suspicion of anyone Catholic. I think it's very much a non-racial thing in that sense, but you're right that there are people take history and identity quite seriously and they see themselves connected to feats of their ancestors, etc. So history very much lives in the present, even though the society looks totally modern. So that's what fascinated me about Northern Ireland is just the way that those, the sort of argument that societies are going beyond history is clearly untrue for Northern Ireland where history is very present, even as many other dimensions of modernity continue.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Before the Iron World, but the orange interest was partly because very few Canadians realize that four Canadian prime ministers and almost every mayor of Toronto from 1870 to the 1950s was an orange man. So I was very interested in this, but it's also in keeping with his interest in ethnic majorities, right? So that's sort of an understudied area that I've been in for some 20, 20-odd years, right? So the Northern Ireland question was really about the Protestants who were declining dominant group in Northern Ireland. And that was kind of a similar interest in the American case with the Anglo-Protestant decline. So I was just focusing very much on another instance of a demographically. And in the Northern Ireland case also economically declining majority group.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mean, the work on the oranges was kind of, my first book, which wasn't on the US, was looking at the decline of the kind of WASP in the 20th century in the United States.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For in Hong Kong, and then, but that was just for a year and then moved to Japan for about six years, and then back to Canada for two, and then over to Japan for another two, before moving back to”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Definitely. I think when you grow up abroad and you are a sort of a foreigner in another country, you think more about identity and particularly national identity. So this is how that question.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that television kind of began that perhaps. I'm not sure the internet really is explains that much. I mean, East Asia always returned to East Asia because you can see where they have the internet and they've got a lot of modernity, but I'm not sure that politics has changed anywhere near as much there as it has, say, in the West. And again, the difference, I would say, is around issues of migration and multiculturalism. Similarly, if you look at support for the populist right, those are who are heavy internet users or heavy social media users or not more likely to be populist right voters. So, I mean, I'm less convinced by the technological arguments.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm not a pessimist, Dubby, and I think we don't think things are going to hell in a hen basket. I think though that there has been a downgrading of respect for people who want sort of continuity and tradition and who want to rework those traditions perhaps, but who are not on board with this modernist aesthetic of novelty difference and complete individuality. So I think there has to be a balance between those two. I think we've simply moved, the high cultures move, as Bell writes really heavily in that direction of just the expressive individualism and the novelty. And I think some balance, perhaps, some more respect from the high culture for that tradition. There's respect for foreign traditions and exotic traditions, but there isn't really a respect for kind of Western or native traditions.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's probably been exhausted since the 30s, as Bell says. I think the most creative phase was when they were, where you still had a traditional culture to sort of push against. And that, I think, gave creativity to modernism. The modernism that I like is from that period of 1910s, 20s, 30s. I think beyond that, it gets a bit, well, I think there's a lot of repetition. It's not as interesting for me anyway.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A long time ago. But even the new stuff, I mean, it's all about trying to be shocking and new and different, which is fine, but I think it's the same sensibility. It's the same thing that's driving the art.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I take more than Daniel Bellevue that essentially modernism represents a break sort of towards the end of the 19th century with tradition that it's about novelty difference immediacy. It's kind of an expressive individualism where you're constantly negating the past, negating tradition. And I don't see a whole lot of difference between the 1920s and pop art and Jackson Pollock or even contemporate, what you find in the Tate modern. I think they're all...”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think I probably would be against it, so I think perhaps that does suggest that a certain leaning that things of beauty that have a long provenance, I tend to want to preserve them. And this, I guess, brings up this other issue about preservation versus change. You have to have some change and some preservation, and then people are oriented differently towards both. And actually, if you're consistent, if you want local communities and historic buildings and things which are associated simply with progressivism, then that's also actually consistently associated with things like preservation of existing ethnic compositions or histories, which is a more right, a populist right thing.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, I think, yeah, you're probably right. I guess I'm sort of relatively, I think we should obviously have new architecture and change, but, and I canography like that, I think should be preserved in the form that it was. And that's what people are attached to. Now, doesn't mean I'm close to an argument for making some alterations, but I think the essence of it should be preserved yet.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. Again, I think there was partly a cross-cutting cleavage issue there with cast and religion. So even though you have the Muslim Hindu divide, you then have the caste. Divide which to some extent pushes against a simple Hindu Muslim division. So some lower caste Hindus will not vote for the BJP, for example. They'll vote for Congress along with Muslims. Now that could be one reason. The other thing, by the way, is the Indian states, as I understand it, have moved more towards being more ethnically delineated. I don't know, I'm trying to remember when that occurred. It was sometime in the last few decades. The other thing, of course, there is a kind of Hindu overlay. I mean, even though yes, I mean, 80% Hindu. So you're right that there are Tamils and there are different languages. Marathi in these different languages, but still you could argue that the Hinduism offers a commonality at least to 80% of the population.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They have done something, what have they done? I mean, I'm thinking about their economy. It's sort of a relatively, I think, a free market type of economy. And yet the culture seems to have a high degree of, or high enough degree of social cohesion. So they all can keep a rifle at home and they're not all shooting each other. Somehow they've managed to get that combination right of having enough social cohesion and also having a dynamic market with good education. I don't have the Swiss silver bullet, unfortunately.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So a number of things. First of all, the line between Catholicism and Protestantism cut across the German-French line in terms of language. So that cross-cutting cleavage, I think, helped. It helped that if the language and the religion were aligned, as in, say, Quebec versus the rest of Canada, then you would have had much stronger pressures towards a breakup, I think. The other thing is as a relatively successful society in economically, I think that helps. Although that is more recent. But the main thing, I think, is the fact that at a time when religion was the most important thing, Geneva was Protestant and also other parts of German-speaking Switzerland were Protestant, whereas the central Swiss cantons were Catholic. But yet that held together because of that cross-cutting cleavage.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, first of all, it is diverse, but the German component is much larger than the French and Italian or Romage. That's number one. The other thing is that the identity, it's built up from the commune level. Communes and cantons tend to be ethnically and religiously homogenous, and when they're not, they will tend to jura, for example, broke off, I think it was the canton of Bernes. So at that sub-national level, there's a high degree of cultural homogeneity. And then they federate into a larger whole. It's not the case that this is sort of a highly multicultural society down to the lowest level. It's multicultural in the cities, but at the sort of communal and cantonal level outside those, it isn't. So I'm not sure it's really a great countercase, really.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think for the most part they will. I mean, maybe I'm partly an example of that being a Cordill Latino myself, but I do think that it's just the pull of the culture will tend to lead to this mixing and that over time, I mean, part of the thing is that there is a sort of white majority now, but as that group becomes more admixed, there won't be such a clear kind of monolithic white group to sort of riff off. And I think the mixed population will therefore be more inclined to identify with the kind of majoritarian aspect of their identity. So yeah, I think the direction of assimilation will be towards the majority. We already see it to some extent where I think 60% of people who have at least some one Mexican grandparent identify as white rather than Latino. So there's already this is already occurring to some extent. I think it'll occur more so as we move in the future.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Even the correlation between populist right support and far-right attacks, there's actually an inverse correlation. If you actually look since from 1990 to 2015, Jacob Ravendell in Norway has looked at this sort of quite systematically. And part of the reason is that if you get this out into the light, you can shoot down the bad arguments. Populists come out, they can be attacked in the newspapers, their arguments can be shown to be false. Whereas if you really suppress it, it goes underground. I think that's actually the worst solution. Quite apart from the fact that I think you're doing violence to this idea of equal treatment, which I think is always problematic.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, so the question is this, and that is, is penalizing going to make things less dangerous or more dangerous? So if you penalize, let's say, and then the far right is able to say, okay, everyone else gets to have an identity, we don't. That's a double standard, which actually I'm afraid is true. That then is the sort of foundation that they build the crazy stuff on, you know, Jews and globalists taking, you know, wanting to have race suicide for white people, et cetera. I think they call it white genocide, right? So what you've then done is, I mean, if you look at the Christchurch or the Bravik shootings, where are they getting their ideas from, the sort of furthest corners of the dark internet where these conspiracy theories grow? And those conspiracy theories, I think, thrive on this double standard much more than if the argument was out in the open. So for example, if you look at”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Your point, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think what I would say is that attachment to is not the same as hatred of the outgroup, right? And this is something Ashley Jardino points out also in her book. And if you look at the American national election study, the thermometer of whites who are warmer towards whites are not colder towards blacks, quite the opposite. So there just isn't, and this is again part of the psychological literature. We've known that for a long time, unless there's a violent conflict going on. Attachment to your own group is not the same as hating in a group. Attachment to being white or attachment to a North European ancestry is not a predictor of disliking a minority. The problem is if we then, if we try and mash those together and outlaw this identity, we, I think, store up more trouble than if we simply say, okay, this is a fine. You can express this identity like anybody else, but it's got to be moderate, and you have to bear in mind the common good, so it should be subordinate to that.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think you just see it time and time again. Doesn't matter which data set you use, so you can look at Europe, you can look at the United States, and it's just about finding a correlation between voting for Trump or Brexit or Le Pen. What is it that predicts that? It's not being poor versus being rich. It's not disliking politicians because far left voters are as likely to say that as populist right voters. So it is really around views on whether immigration should be reduced and by how much, and secondly, how important that issue is to you. And then we also see it over time that as concern over immigration rises, populist rights support rises. Nine out of ten West European countries. So I think the evidence is pretty strong in the fact that we're still talking about the economically left behind and devolving power to localities as some way of somehow making this disappear, I think it's more about hope over reality.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say perhaps underrated, I mean it's certainly got in many ways a better quality of life than Greater London, unless you're on a high income, you'd live much better there. So to the extent that the high-speed rail connections are put into place, maybe that's where a lot of the activity will be in the future”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I lived in Tokyo. There was not much French food at the time. I'd say it would be, well, overrated, I guess. I mean, he horrendously expensive, no doubt. I wonder if they have the sort of plastic models.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Michelle Foucault, I'd say overrated. Well, even though I think he's interesting, and I think that encountering him at that time, he would have been fresh and interesting. But by now, there have been so many imitators and there's been so much reprocessing that it's just not that exciting anymore. In our day and age. So now I'd say the number of people studying Foucault is vastly disproportionate to his importance for advancing human knowledge.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know much about Glenn Gould except that he composed pieces about the North, but I don't know a whole lot about his music. So I can't comment.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But intellectually. Well, I think similar to Bell in that sense of being sort of center-center left on economics, somewhat culturally conservative, politically liberal. And when I say culturally conservative, perhaps more on this dimension of social cohesion rather than religion, which I don't have a strong affinity for. But yeah, I don't know about Tukvillian in the sense I'm not a sort of libertarian individualist and I do think there's an importance in having social cohesion and a social fabric to underpin some of the good things that we enjoy in Western democracy.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hm, I go, that's a good question. I have to think about that. I mean, he made a lot of the associationalism and how that sort of buttressed American democracy, this, what Putnam talks about, the kind of social capital through associations. And we've seen that decline dramatically. So I think perhaps you might say that he overestimated the tenacity and durability of that associational life, that it may not survive the current sort of secularization and individualism. So maybe that's what he got wrong.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, but the US is shoring up the Israeli side, and so even the moving of the embassy or defending Israel at the United Nations and all of these sorts of things, which I guess one could imagine with a stronger Islamic bloc maybe countering that, perhaps. But, I mean, the whole Jewish thing will be interesting because the Jews have a very low fertility rate, but the ultra-Orthodox have a very high one. So that's a whole nother wild card.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, the 2020s, they will. I think they should. Yeah, probably they will evolve as an interest group. But as you say, they are extremely ethnically diverse, and that will impede their ability to coordinate and organize.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think so honestly. I think that could it be said that a Catholic may be seen as less all-American, less presidential, and therefore would tend not to do as well? I'm not sure. I just don't think the electorate would be attuned enough into that to sort of not select such a person going up the chain. But again, there's a good study in that. I think we'd have to see it.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“and no Protestants, I think it's somewhat accidental, so I really think we could quite easily have a Catholic come in. I don't think there's any, whereas prior to Kennedy, I think there was really a structural reason why you wouldn't have had a Catholic president, because there was a strong anti-Catholic dimension in the population.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, well, you know, it's interesting because John Kerry was running, really his Catholicism was just not an issue in a way it was for Kennedy, right? So I don't think a Catholic could easily be elected. I really think it's just a random thing that they haven't. I think Kerry could have been elected. It wouldn't have been his Catholicism would not have been the issue. You know, it's like the Supreme Court having a lot of Catholics.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think because this issue is a sort of strikes on that open v closed cultural dimension, values dimension more directly than the economic left right, which didn't engage that dimension as much. I think the fact that immigration diversity related issues very much do engage those psychological dimensions. I think that then becomes more the basis of politics over time, yes.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Somewhere. Okay, so here's the kind of way I would make sense of it. Moving from those big five personality dimensions which don't explain that much of the variation in, let's say, immigration attitudes or populist right voting, but according to, say, Robert Ploman, once you have a particular disposition, you then select an environment that's different. So if you are high in openness, you will select different environments, different newspapers to read maybe different political parties, and they will reinforce those dispositions. So by the time you hit age 50 or 60, you're way over here. So the effect is magnified over time. So I think what's happening with, you start with these psychological dispositions that are different, but then they select environments which magnify and play on those differences.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, they're less worried, right? I mean, they are still, you know, they're still a lot of educated women who voted for Trump, for example, but just less so than other groups of people. I mean, I don't put a lot in the social categories, whether it's class or even age or gender in terms of predictors. Most of the variation is within these groups and is, in my view, largely down to psychology. Whether you like diversity or change in a disposition that would be linked to openness, one of the big five personality traits or whether you prefer stability and continuity. And we find those kinds of people amongst educated women, white working class men, etc. But I wouldn't say that there's necessarily much in the educated female experience per se that would make somebody be pro-immigration.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I still believe it'll sort of slouch toward some soft Brexit in the end when people are looking over the cliff only at the last minute will they come up with a decision. I mean that's because I think that the Labour Party has to sort of come up with a story that it can get away with with its supporters. So if they say we had to vote for this deal or else we would have had a hard crash out Brexit, that's the only reason we voted for this deal. That might be acceptable to its Remain supporters. Whereas if they say we supported this deal and now that's pushed Britain out of the EU, their supporters will punish them. So I think it'll be a sort of last minute somewhat soft Brexit deal that would be my undoubtedly wrong prediction.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that's right. And you think of Scotland in the EU. And so it's Scottish independence within the European Union. Although it is interesting that actually whether we're looking at those who voted for or against independence in Scotland, they both have roughly similar views on Brexit. So there's a lot of people who want Scotland to leave who are also Brexiteers.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Runs counter to it? It doesn't run that counter to it. I mean, I think, first of all, Scotland has a smaller immigration. It has less of a non-Christian population. But in addition, Scottish nationalism is explicitly a kind of pro-European pro-immigration. That is the message that they have been running with. And so given that pressure, it's just Scottish nationalism is in some way across cutting cleavage to this sort of anti-immigration populism, and that explains some of the Scottish dynamics around leave and remain. You get upset in England?”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, or immigration attitudes are now very different depending if you're a conservative or liberal voter. That didn't used to be the case even five years ago. So there is more of a politicization of that issue now”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, and I, of course, being Canadian, I think I know Canada fairly well. So there's French Canada and English Canada. French Canada is, I think, very similar to continental Europe and is responding. So the CAQ, which won the provincial election on an immigration reduction platform, is something I would classify as a populist right party. English Canada, well, we've obviously had elections such as in Ontario that Doug Ford Conservative administration, which has elements of this populism. And also there's a new party called the People's Party, which did get 11% in a by-election in Greater Vancouver. So I think the idea that English Canada is immune from this is actually wrong. And I do think we're going to see more of it going forward. The electorate is now more polarized on cultural issues than it's ever been in Canada. Now, we're going to have to see where that goes, but I don't think Canada will be the great exception that it has been for much, much longer.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, if they were getting large numbers of Muslims or non-Christians, then I think you'd see it there yet. I don't think they're immune.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think really it's as simple as the share of Muslim non-Christian immigrants is low. It's very low. So it's your core thesis.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think pretty pacifists, you know, and this is why there's many dimensions of nationalism, though you can have a dimension which is about militarism and pride in your military, which Japan doesn't have, but then they have a very strong sort of attachment to an ethnocommunal definition of the nation.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's a hard one to know. I mean, I remember having in kindergarten having to kneel down with the Buddhish statue there and them. There are all these sort of quasi-religious rituals, but I don't think they really believe in a sort of cosmological way, in sort of an otherworldly way. So, yeah, I think it is a relatively secular society, but with these almost cultural rituals like Shintoism lighting, this is not really about praying to a god. So I think it isn't, I wouldn't classify it as having a relationship with the other world. So not religious in my view.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, okay, well, the way it works with fertility is that if you're very patriarchal, you have high fertility. If you are sort of not patriarchal at all, you have moderate fertility, and if you're in the middle, you tend to really low fertility. So the thing in Japan is that women, they know that once they stop working, they will essentially just be folding shirts for their husband. And I think that part of this is that because the society is still relatively patriarchal, that it has that very low fertility. Something similar in Southern Europe that we see also, again, a very low fertility. And so one of the ways this is explained is that if you give women the opportunity to enter and exit the workforce relatively easily and you don't impose a kind of very sort of patriarchal gender role, then you will get somewhat higher fertility. So Japan fits that pattern of Southern Europe”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Would say, okay, you're allowed to have two kids or one kid, and that would be the end of it, right? So it depends very, it's within a certain environment that the religious can take over, and that is a sort of democratic environment. But within an authoritarian environment, they do very badly. So it just depends on what is the environment in which they're operating.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do well with some caveats, so it's true that sort of secular populations defined as people who say they have no religion everywhere in the world have very low, well below replacement fertility. And people who are regular attenders all have replacement or above with fundamentalists having very high fertility. Now, you run that forward. It's hard to see how we get to a situation in which it's not mainly religious unless there's an equilibrium where the rate of religious loss is fast enough to offset the demographic deficit of the seculars. There is a scenario, I mean, I do think that the kind of liberal-tolerant secular society is quite an ideal one for religious groups to expand demographically. If we imagine China having Amish or ultra-Orthodox or these groups growing rapidly, the Chinese government”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It doesn't. I mean, it doesn't in some cases, so Addis Ababa and Ethiopia has got a two total fertility rate. So it does seem to be happening in some places and not in others. I don't have a good sense of necessarily why that's happening. I mean, some societies where there's strong ethnic and religious competition, local politicians want to keep numbers up and their constituencies strong and growing. That could be one factor. Patriarchal attitudes another. But it is the case that in some sub-Saharan African countries, clearly South Africa, where South African blacks have about a two, also a replacement level fertility. So there are some countries where this has occurred. I know some people say the data might not be very accurate in some countries on fertility, but I think in general the consensus is that you're right, that these fertility rates have not dropped. I would put it down more to”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, depends which aspects of liberal individualism. I mean, they may sort of give lip service to things like low-tax and independence, but it's not clear. If you consider individualism to also extend to expressive cultural forms such as divorce or different forms of sexuality, or then I think there would be more of a clash between that brand of, say, American Christianity or Christian fundamentalism and individualism. So, yeah, I think economic individualism is probably okay, but the cultural or expressive kind, I think there'd be more of a clash.”
2019-07-03 · Conversations with Tyler · Eric Kaufmann on Immigration, Identity, and the Limits of Individualism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source