Abstract
Bromell suggests that while we invoke the symbol of the rainbow to acknowledge and celebrate diversity, the fact we need to invoke it at all points to enduring social realities of domination, humiliation, cruelty and violence. This chapter reflects on diversity and super-diversity, our human tendency to cluster into tribes of “us” and “them”, the relative importance for politics and public life of our personal identities, social identities and human identity, and how we might create public value from our differences—provided we adopt an agonistic politics, moderate our anger and refrain from turning opponents into enemies. The proposed resolution for public leadership is to be civil. This implies understanding and accepting that people have different, competing and conflicting interests and values, and staying present and engaged to resolve conflict where possible, without necessarily driving for consensus.
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Notes
- 1.
Thomas Nagel (1995) comments: “The hardest problems of political theory are conflicts within the individual, and no external solution will be adequate which does not deal with them at their source” (p. 4).
- 2.
Meyer and Brysac (2012) identify and describe five apparent exceptions, oases of civility where human ingenuity and determined statecraft have defused potentially explosive civil conflicts.
- 3.
- 4.
The census usually resident population count of New Zealand is a count of all people who usually live and are present in New Zealand on a given census night. This count excludes visitors from overseas and residents who are temporarily overseas on census night. At the time of writing, data from the 2018 Census were not yet available.
- 5.
Research institutes on super-diversity include the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen, Germany; the Institute for Research into Superdiversity at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom; and the Superdiversity Centre for Law, Policy and Business in Auckland, New Zealand. The Max Planck Institute (2019), in collaboration with statistical agencies and researchers in Australia, Canada and New Zealand, has produced an interactive website to demonstrate processes of urban super-diversification in Vancouver, Sydney and Auckland.
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- 7.
Montagues and Capulets are the feuding families in Shakespeare’s tragedy, Romeo and Juliet.
- 8.
Bill English, leader of the New Zealand National Party, expressed this well when he gave his concession speech in October 2017: “We all know the rules, we play by them. This is the result … we certainly accept it.”
- 9.
- 10.
Amartya Sen characteristically talks about our freedom to lead lives we value and have reason to value. By this, he means that we must be able to justify the choices we make in exercising our freedom through a public exchange of reasons and open (rather than closed) impartiality (Sen, 1993, p. 30, 2009, pp. 124–152, 321–337). See further Sects 4.2.1 and 5.3.
- 11.
An Archimedean standpoint is a point outside our usual frame of reference from which a different way of thinking about something may be possible. The metaphor plays on a saying attributed to Archimedes that with a fulcrum and a long enough lever he could move the earth.
- 12.
Je suis Charlie (“I am Charlie”) was a slogan adopted by supporters of freedom of speech and freedom of the press after twelve people were killed in a terrorist attack on French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo on January 7, 2015.
- 13.
New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern affirmed “they are us” in reference to Muslim victims of the terrorist attacks on two mosques in Christchurch on March 15, 2019.
- 14.
- 15.
- 16.
Both Waldron (interviewed by Rashbrooke, 2017) and Nussbaum (2016, pp. 194–197) express concern at the retributive tone of many victim impact statements. Nussbaum suggests they are too prejudicial to include prior to sentencing, and that we might “cautiously consider an institutional setting for victim narratives after sentencing” (p. 196), so they cannot undermine the legal process. None of this is to deny the importance or place of emotions in public policy. On evidence, emotion and values in policy making see Bromell (2017, pp. 95–101). On emotions, and kindness, in public policy see Unwin (2018) and Sect. 7.2.3.
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Bromell, D. (2019). Pluralism, Tribalism and Civility. In: Ethical Competencies for Public Leadership. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27943-1_2
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