Dependence generates safety. Interview with Philipp Sarasin

By Simone Achermann

Societies don’t have bodies, xenophobia is neither an immune reaction nor an allergy. In this interview, historian Philipp Sarasin warns against simple analogies – because they are the ones to beware of.

Mr Sarasin, what is defence?

I haven’t got a general answer to that, the subject is too complex. When we talk about defence nowadays, we intuitively think of immunology. Our knowledge of that has shaped social ideas of defence in the 20th century.

Can you explain that?

With the emergence of bacteriology at the end of the 19th century, modern discourses on defence became somewhat biological and were based on the concept of the immune system. Some biological concepts, however, changed radically. While Louis Pasteur believed that the human body was closed like a “stoppered bottle”, into which no exogenous bacterium could penetrate, we know today that an exchange with outside is absolutely essential to the existenceof every kind of life. And bacteriology has learned since the 1920s that it takes very many more outside influences than the penetration of just one pathogenic bacterium for an organic system to collapse. Although you do have to be careful when transferring biological language and metaphors to the social sphere; in the 20th century, political rhetoric about the “Volkskörper (“the German people’s body”) and “Fremdkörper (“foreign bodies”) had utterly disastrous consequences. Nevertheless, you can say that epidemiological and immunological knowledge accompany the rise of open borders and increasing global networking as at least an ambivalent set of metaphors.

The most recent defensive reactions to the global world indicate that barriers are coming back into fashion.Do you agree?

It is true that hostility towards globalisation has increased again in the last few years – basically since 9/11. However, these are just reactions to irreversible global integration, such as the shift of product manufacturing from the USA and Europe to Asia or the various migration movements. In the face of such trends, the fact that ideological barriers are being raised is probably not that significant.

So we are not currently seeing the start of a new phase of closure?

We can only judge that retrospectively, a few decades from now. But I don’t think so. The world is too networked for individual states or societies to return to increased isolation. In addition, I do not believe that there are pure closed or open phases. It is much more the case that the two statuses are contingent on one another and consequently co- exist. Although cities used to be fortified with walls, national borders never were. As a result, a kind of free movement of people already existed in Europe prior to the birth of the nation states in the 19th century. Of course, the two poles have not always been equally weighted throughout history. There were world wars in between, during which border protection reached its height. But openness and closure belong together. Nevertheless, as I mentioned, there is less and less scope for isolation in the globalised world.

Boundaries will always exist?

I think so. Because the distinction between “insiders” and “outsiders” is something familiar to all social groups in some form and to some degree. Although we identify ourselves less and less by nationality, it is being replaced by new options for group formation, identification and therefore also demarcation. This is demonstrated, for example, by the many special interest groups on the Internet that operate beyond geographic affiliation. Moreover, every human being has multiple “identities” that may be linked to his (or her) family, activities, religious or political convictions or even the style of his dress or his music. The nation state, in contrast, that great 19th century project, has probably reached its limit as the dominant template for defining identity. Nevertheless, paradoxically, national borders will more or less remain in place because we need to act within manageable units of this kind – in order to organise social insurance systems, for instance.

Let’s stay with the digital communities. Is the Internet making us more open?

Yes and no. Digitalisation is making us opener because it is bringing together people with similar interests from different world cultures and regions. At the same time, the personalisation of the web means that we are rapidly finding ourselves in a kind of “bubble” where we only receive individually tailored information – or at least, that development seems to be imminent. Anything really strange or foreign would then no longer appear at all in the field of possible answers provided, for example, by Google. That is dangerous, because if we have no knowledge of “the other person” we will also be indifferent to his fate.

Can the globalised world actually function as a village?

At some point, Charles Darwin’s book “The Descent of Man” (1871) discusses the development of the conscience and therefore of morality. The hypothesis is that man was a weak creature from the start, dependent on cooperation and communication with others. Within his own group, he is fairly peaceful – because he knows he needs to rely on the other group members. Darwin speculates that one of these days thanks to global media we will know so much about our global interdependence that humanity will increasingly function as a community. You could argue that “communal” knowledge of global warming, or the fact that we share rapid information about disasters or wars thanks to global live and online media, has changed the forms of global political action. In short, I believe there is a certain media logic of globalisation that promotes a global civil society. The fact that some national media simultaneously act as though the world ends at their country’s borders will not alter that in the long term.

The world has never been as safe as it is today. What is there left for us to defend ourselves against?

Overheated ”immune reactions” in society, in other words we have to defend ourselves against violent reactions to everything that appears alien. Societies often put up a vehement defence against anything new, and I am also aware that it is not always easy to adhere to a liberal-minded and foreigner-friendly point of view. In 2007, I argued in a newspaper article that a liberal society had to put up with “an average level of criminality”. When I arrived home on the evening of its publication, my flat had been emptied – that gave me the chance to test my “liberality”. But if the perpetrators were “foreigners” – which I do not know –, it is important to note that the reason for their behaviour is often because they are systematically excluded. In Switzerland even people who have been living here for generations are “foreigners” – and are as “strange” to us as we are to them.

You mention immune reactions in society. Is it legitimate to talk about social allergies when we think about overreactions to the increasingly open world?

What we say and think about defence is very much shaped by immunology. However, as I mentioned, it can be dangerous to transfer biological models to society. An allergy is a physical reaction. It is part of nature – whatever that is. Xenophobia, however, is not a natural reaction, but the consequence of socially constructed images of “the enemy”. We should therefore avoid the term social allergies – and not use the term immune reactions either, as I did.

Philipp Sarasin is Professor of Modern History in the History Department of the University of Zurich, a research centre for social and economic history. He is also a founder member of the competence centre “History of Knowledge” at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich. His specialist areas are the history of knowledge, the history of the Cold War, the theory of the science of history, urban history, and history of the body and sexuality. His publications include: “Evolution. Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch” (2010), “Darwin und Foucault. Genealogie und Geschichte im Zeitalter der Biologie” (2009), “Bakteriologie und Moderne. Studien