Stanford University Press Blog

In Memoriam: An excerpt from Stephen Guest's Ronald Dworkin, 3rd Edition

To commemorate the life and works of Ronald Dworkin, deemed by many to be the most important and most controversial Anglo-American jurist of the past forty years, we post this excerpt from the newly published 3rd edition of Stephen Guest's "Ronald Dworkin."   This 3rd edition offers a considerable update of the original--a minor classic in the field, offering the most complete analysis and integration of Dworkin's work to date--and incorporates discussion of Dworkin's latest masterwork Justice for Hedgehogs.  Read on for more on same:

Personal Ethics and Dignity: The Importance of an Authentic Life 

One of the striking points about Justice for Hedgehogs is Dworkin’s use of a distinction between personal “ethics” (how we should live) and “morality” (how we should act towards others). He thinks
morality derived from our sense of ourselves and what we think is right for ourselves is the basis on which we work out what is right in our conduct towards others. He there­fore looks for an ethical, not moral, standard to guide our interpretation of moral concepts. An obvious obstacle to the idea is, however, that our personal responsibility to do what’s best for ourselves seems to clash with what we should do for others. Dworkin is remarkably original in his attitude to this: he thinks it is too “austere” a way of looking at it because it denies what he calls our “authenticity,” that is, our personal responsibility to make our lives our own, endorsed by us, and us alone. He says that if we are to live genuinely authentic lives, and thus live our lives responsibly, we need to conceive our personality and life in a way that can “break out of distinctly moral considerations.” The austere—Kantian—view that our personal life consists of continually doing what is morally right—that is, that our personal life is always a reflection back on how we treat others—is, he says, “sad.” It makes morality seem like an “arduous and unpleasant mountain we must constantly cross.”

Dworkin therefore proposes a different way of understanding the cat­egorical nature of morality. It doesn’t just promote our personal desire; that is too “implausible.” Rather, we need to find what personal goals would fit and justify our sense of having obligations. He says that both Hobbes and
Hume claimed ethical bases for moral principles. However, Hobbes’s moral principles, deriving from a “social contract” and based only on the need for individuals to “survive”—a matter of “self-defense”—is not, Dworkin says, a sufficient condition for living well. An ethical life can’t be based on what we
need in order to defend ourselves. Humean “sensibilities” are, he says, “more agreeable,” but sensitivity alone cannot answer problems about the way we should live; our ethical life couldn’t consist of our just following our feelings. Nor, he says, can Hume’s utilitarian principle help, because while it would mean treating everyone’s interests equally, this “can hardly serve as a strategy for living well oneself.”

Opposing the conventional view, Dworkin distinguishes between having a good life and living well. A good life is not just having what one wants, but living according to our critical interests. Nevertheless, he
says, it is “wildly implausible” to suppose that living a morally good life is the same as living well. In fact, a decent view of our moral responsibilities could easily lead to a life not lived well: 

It is hard to believe that someone who has suffered terrible misfortunes has had a better life than he would have had if he had acted immorally and then prospered in every way, creatively, emotionally and materially, in a long and peaceful life.  

We can understand the satisfaction of our drives, tastes and preferences but it is considerably more difficult to understand our desire to live a critically good life—a life of pleasure is not enough. We want, Dworkin says, to live responsibly. He suggests an analogy of art with life; we value our lives for their “adverbial value,” the value of the “performance” rather than the “im­pact” they have on others: 

On any plausible view of what is truly wonderful in almost any human life, impact hardly comes into the story at all.  

Further, striving for a good life is not the same as minimizing the risks of a bad one. Lives are better for “spontaneity, style, authenticity and daring” and the setting of difficult or impossible tasks. But these can go crashingly wrong: living well is not the same thing as maximizing the chances of the best
possible life. On the other hand, he says that we can have a bad life in spite of living well. It is not just that our life can be bad because we made bad choices but because of matters of luck and the circumstances in which we find ourselves. We may, for example, be prejudiced against, or be born disabled, or we may die at a tragically young age. We can also have a good life in spite of our living badly. Dworkin gives the example of the Medici prince who lives a life of achievement and refinement but does so through killing and betrayal. The distinction between “living well” and “living a good life” makes sense of the phenomenon of “moral luck.” We can feel regret for something that was not our fault, as would the bus driver who drives without fault but twenty schoolchildren die as a result of the bus crashing. It makes sense to say that the bus driver “lived well” but had a “less good life” because of the accident. The distinction also makes sense of whether what happens after your death affects the goodness of your life: it doesn’t affect how well you lived but it affects the goodness of your life.

It would be a mistake, says Dworkin, for us not to care about how we personally live. Judging people to be equal is much more of a principle of morality than it is of ethics; it tells us that no one’s life is “more important” than anyone else’s. The principle that we should show respect for ourselves is clearly
ethical because it describes the attitude we should have to our own lives. Is it, then, important to “live well”? It is different from enjoyment, although enjoyment is linked to what we believe is “living well”; “pleasure,” too, is not pure feeling independent of belief about what gives rise to it because it is “fused with ethical flavor”—even the enjoyment of doing what we know we shouldn’t.

Authenticity, he thinks, is “the other side of self-respect,” for it requires accepting responsibility for our actions both towards others and ourselves. I can’t treat an act as mine unless I accept responsibility for
it (I can’t hive off my responsibility for something I’ve done by saying my parents are to blame, for example). I should also be prepared to acknowledge limits both to what I ask of others and to what I ask of myself. I can’t demand that others fund ridiculously expensive projects I have in mind (such as major
help in building a vast monument to my personal god); nor should I suppose that because I made some relatively minor mistake in my life I should suffer a life of hair shirts and dire poverty. Authenticity demands, Dworkin says, that we strive for independence but this idea is not the same as the commonly
understood value of “autonomy”; that idea does not adequately bring out the way we have to balance the ethical and moral determinants and do so while being bound to some extent by an “ethical culture.” His example is that it is not possible to live a life of medieval chivalry in Brooklyn in the present age. The idea of independence must capture the internal ground between those inescapable influences on us and our being dominated: “We cannot escape influence but we must resist domination.” So autonomy is not a “range of choices” as, for example, Joseph Raz has argued. Rather, Dworkin says: 

Authenticity is damaged when a person is made to accept someone else’s judgment in place of his own about the values or goals his life should display.

The Happy (Intellectual) Housewife

This month marks the 50th Anniversary of the publication of The Feminine Mystique, and the  chattering classes haven't stopped, well, chattering about it.  We asked Rachel Mesch, author of our forthcoming Having it All in the Belle Epoque: How French Women's Magazines Invented the Modern Woman, to comment on the striking similarities--and differences--between how women were both portrayed and instructed in women's magazine's from the Belle Epoque through the 1960s.  Plus ca change, we might say...

"While the problem may have had no name, its cause was easy to identify. In her classic volume The Feminine Mystique, which celebrates its 50^th anniversary this year, Betty Friedan pointed an accusing finger directly at American women’s magazines.  

“By the end of 1949,” lamented Friedan, “only one out of three heroines […] was a career woman—and she was shown in the act of renouncing her career and discovering that what she really wanted to be was a housewife.” What particularly disturbed Friedan, and what might seem surprising to contemporary readers, was that in previous generations, some of these very same magazines had urged women otherwise—cheering them on towards equal rights, suffrage and the career of their choice. A post-war emphasis on marriage and family building altered the equation. Friedan documents with dismay how legions of happy housewives seemed to get increasingly younger and childlike in the pages of McCall’s, Ladies Home Journal and Redbook, just as the bright ambitious futures that once lay before these college graduates receded from memory. 

Friedan’s classic work reminds us that magazines have long controlled the precise dose of femininity served to women, inviting readers to see themselves in specific, culturally determined ways that can radically shift from one generation to the next—and from one continent to another. American readers, noted Friedan, scoffed at Simone de Beauvoir when The Second Sex was translated in the US. But French women’s magazines have their own fascinating story to tell about the feminine mystique and its journalistic deployment. The first French women’s glossies, Femina and La Vie Heureuse (literally, The Happy Life), which were launched in the early 1900s, also celebrated the happy housewife. But these blissful domestic figures were depicted just as often sitting at their desks-- where they wrote novels and poetry—as arranging flowers and tending to their children. Happiness, for these early working mothers, was measured through the precise balance of books and babies, intellectual and domestic productivity.  

Several generations before their 1950s American equivalents, then, French women’s magazines  pressured readers into a new bourgeois ideal.  But it was one that encouraged women to use their minds, even as they kept up their impeccable households and appearances. Don’t leave it up to male authors to tell stories about women, urged best-selling author Delarue-Mardrus in a 1909 column for Femina. “Reflect, ladies,” she exhorted, “and write for us what you discover!” 

Out of this combination emerged the paradoxical image of an “intellectual housewife,” as writer Camille Marbo termed it in 1907, one taught to recognize her own strengths inside and outside the home. There is nothing wrong with housework, noted Marbo in a long-forgotten but deeply significant early moment in “having it all” myth-making from the pages of La Vie Heureuse. It’s just that housework is not for every woman. And the worst thing in the world for a woman is to be forced to stay home when her talents lie elsewhere. 

It would be another four decades before Friedan discovered this all over again."

For more on Having it All, including images from the book, see her recent piece in Slate's "DoubleX."

 

 

Related articles

The Feminine Mystique, 50 Years Later

At 50, Does 'Feminine Mystique' Still Roar?

Egypt's State of Emergency, and What it May Mean for the Future of Morsi's Government

The continuing unrest in Egypt has undermined hopes for a dramatic shift away from the authoritian regime that was in place before the spring 2011 revolution.  Latest developments raise further questions about Morsi's ability to lead the nation away from the oppressive regimes of the past.  A recent piece in the New York Times describing the State of Emergency declared in three Egyptian cities on Sunday, January 27, observed: "By imposing a one-month state of emergency in Suez, Ismailia and here in Port Said, where the police have lost all control, Mr. Morsi’s declaration chose to use one of the most despised weapons of former President Hosni Mubarak’s autocracy." The piece went on to comment that "a state of emergency suspends the ordinary judicial process and most civil rights. It gives the president and the police extraordinary powers."  And today's New York Times reports that " the nation’s top general warned Tuesday that the state itself was in danger of collapse if the feuding civilian leaders could not agree on a solution to restore order."

Comments on the parallels between both governments are not new, and certainly not to Josh Stacher:  "Morsi's declaration of a state of emergency in Egypt's three most central canal cities is partially a reaction to the inherited legacy of the Egyptian state after Hosni Mubarak's overthrow and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces-led transition. Morsi is unable to prevent the periodic but routine violence from happening because he refuses to address the protesters' most basic demand: To reform the Interior Ministry and its coercive instruments.

In many respects, he fails to reform the Ministry because he cannot, which leaves him trapped at the crossroads of blame for this violence. Thus, Morsi confronts not only a restive population that has shown no signs of returning to their homes, but also a unbroken state whose ranks are cohesive in their
obstruction of his attempts to lead. Given that the 18 days of revolt in 2011 dislodged Mubarak but did not break the state, it is producing an overall deterioration of state authority and weakening of the state elites' ability to project power or heed the calls of its citizens."

For a more complete analysis on the legacy of authoritarian governments in Egypt, and a striking comparison of those governments in Egypt and Syria, turn to Stacher's latest book,  Regime Power in Egypt and Syria.

 

Where the GOP is Wrong on "Amnesty" and Border Security: a Guest Post by SUP Author Jody Agius Vallejo

President Obama just detailed his Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR) plan one one day after a bipartisan proposal was revealed by a “Gang of Eight” senators (Marco Rubio, R-FL; Jeff Flake, R-AZ; John McCain, R-AZ; Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; Dick Durbin, D-IL; Bob Menendez, D-N.J.; Chuck
Schumer, D-NY; Michael Bennet, D-CO). Both plans are similar and focus on four key elements of reform: border enforcement, a national employment verification system and penalties for employers who hire unauthorized workers, an earned pathway to citizenship for the eleven million unauthorized migrants presently in the country (the majority of whom are Latino), and an overhaul of the ways in which visas are allocated. The sticking point for CIR will be how rapidly, and to what extent, nauthorized migrants are granted American citizenship.

Although republicans are eager to appeal to Latinos who overwhelmingly voted for Obama in the last election, many republicans are reluctant to agree to a rapid citizenship pathway, what they derisively call an amnesty, because they mistakenly think it rewards unauthorized migrants and encourages more
unauthorized migration. This is why the Gang of 8’s plan has placed contingencies on their proposed citizenship pathway that include proving that the border is secure and that visitors can no longer overstay visas. These contingencies do not bode well for America’s future, which is inexorably tied
to how rapidly Latinos achieve social mobility and enter the American middle class. What are the measures by which you prove that the U.S.-Mexico border is secure? Recent research demonstrates that levels of unauthorized migration are at their lowest levels in nearly a quarter of a century. In fact, unauthorized migration is presently at net zero.

In just a few months Latinos will surpass whites to comprise a majority of California’s population, and their national population is expected to double in just a few decades, from 17% in 2012 to 30% in 2040. Citizenship is a critical mechanism that will allow today’s immigrants, and tomorrow’s native-born citizens, to fully integrate into American society. My research on the Mexican American middle class shows that families with parents who gain legal status and citizenship early on in their children’s life forge a more rapid trajectory into the middle class. These parents exit exploitative low-wage jobs and earn higher incomes, the benefits of which stream down to children. Parents have more money to
invest in their children and save for college and they move to better neighborhoods. If republicans want to charm the Latino population, and do what is best for America’s future, they must support a rapid citizenship pathway that does not include contingencies that are impossible to meet.

For more on the Mexican Middle Class, see Jody's new book, Barrios to Burbs" The Making of the Mexican American Middle Class, and a Q&A she did recently with KPPC's "Multi-American."

And we thought that constitutionality would be the end of the debate…

The Supreme Court may have decided to uphold the constitutionality of the controversial Obamacare program on June 28, but the health care debate rages on: now the question is, how many states—and which—will choose to participate in the Medicaid expansion?

And on top of that, when will they decide? A handful of states—including Virgina, Nebraska, and Wisconsin—have made clear that they are biding their time to make a decision until after the Presidential Election results are announced later this year (East Village Tribune article), in case Romney wins and throws the entire thing out.

There are a lot of opinions out there, but today we’d like to shine a spotlight on Stephen M. Davidson, not just because he’s a nice guy and we have a habit of shameless self-promotion, but more importantly because he has spent over 30 years researching health care policy, and because the U.S. happens to be moving towards the kinds of changes he proposed in his 2010 book Still Broken. The book—which is a good starting point for anyone seeking a thorough explanation of the U.S. health care system—takes a close look at the current situaion, systematically charts the merits of universal coverage, and, crucially, shows how we can jump through political and social hoops to get that to work.

Here’s what Davidson has written recently concerning states still debating on how to proceed with Obamacare:

-       How opting out of the expansion could ultimately hurt the state’s citizens (NYT Letter to the Editor)

-       How opting out hurts hospitals and the poor (Politico debate)

And for a review of the case and all its nuances, check out this article Davidson wrote for The Huffington Post 10 days before the court ruling.

Check out Davidson’s book here.

 

From Drugs to Civil War: the New Gateway Effect

We all know that drug trafficking can be a deadly business. But can drug trafficking set the precedent for even larger conflict—that is, civil war?

That’s the question that former journalist Jonathan Marshall set out to answer in his newly released book The Lebanese Connection. Looking specifically at Lebanon in the lead up to its 15-year civil war, Marshall traces out how the country’s fledgling drug trade in the 1970s turned the country into a narco-state and financed the war. In other words: there was a sure connection between drugs and civil war in Lebanon—and Marshall warns that that connection can apply to any state.

And that makes modern-day drug trafficking in Afghanistan and Mexico all the more urgent. Afghanistan leads the world in opium production, as it has for the past two decades. Mexico’s drug war has regularly peppered American news sources with brutal images and chilling stories, and has become a party platform priority as the July 1 presidential election draws near. This isn’t just about the drugs anymore—there’s a lot at stake.       

 

Some food for thought:

• “Breaking the narco-state in Afghanistan is essential, or all else will fail.” The New York Times recently ran an article that explains why fighting the opium industry in Afghanistan is of upmost importance.
• The top three contenders for the Mexican presidency have all declared domestic-centered approaches to the drug war to be a priority over curbing drug trafficking into the U.S. See the NYT article here.
• And check out Marshall’s book The Lebanese Connection here. 

 

Prize-Winning Beach Reading for the Intellectually Curious

Looking for something to fill that beloved L. L. Bean tote bag you haul to the beach every summer?  Look no further!  SUP's summer reading list has something for every taste:

 

 Sure it might take up most of the space in your beach bag, but according to the WaPo Book World's "10 Books We've Loved This Year," James Hershberg's Marigold: The Lost Chance for Peace in Vietnam is worth it!

  We also recommend:

 Ottomans, Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth-Century Palestine, by Michelle U. Campos, winner of the 2011 National Jewish Book Award in Sephardic Culture, sponsored by the Jewish Book Council.

 Shiping Hua's Chinese Utopianism: A Comparative Study of Reformist Thought with Japan and Russia, 1898-1997, winner of the 2011 Distinguished Research and Publication Award, sponsored by the Association of Chinese Professors in Social Sciences (USA).    

 
Shahla Talebi's Ghosts of Revolution: Rekindled Memories of Imprisonment in Iran, co-winner (Gold Medal) of the the 2012 Independent Publisher Book Awards (Autobiography/Memoir Category), sponsored by the Independent Publisher Book Awards, and Honorable Mention, for Biography & Autobiography, in the 2011 PROSE Awards (PSP Awards for Excellence), sponsored by the Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division, Association of American Publishers.           

 Marisa Abrajano's Campaigning to the New American Electorate:  Advertising to Latino Voters, winner of the 2011 Best Book on Latino Politics Award, sponsored by the APSA Latino Caucus.           

  Larry Wolff, The Idea of Galicia: History and Fantasy in Hapsburg Political Culture, winner of the 2012 Karl von Vogelsang Staatspreis, sponsored by the Bundesministerium fuer Wissenschaft und Forschung. 

The Battle for China:  Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945, edited by Mark Peattie, Edward Drea, and Hans van de Ven, winner of the 2012 Society for Military History Distinguished Book Award (non-US category), sponsored by The Society for Military History.

 John Richardson and Justin Powell's Comparing Special Education: Origins to Contemporary Paradoxes, winner of the 2012 Outstanding Book Award Contemporary Issues in Curriculum category), sponsored by the AERA Division B.

 Richard Graham's Patronage and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Brazil, winner of the 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award, sponsored by the Brazilian Studies Association.            

 Erik Kuhonta's book The Institutional Imperative: The Politics of Equitable Development in Southeast Asia, shortlisted for the 2012 Comparative Politics Prize, sponsored by the Canadian Political Science Association.           

 Robert Rhoads and Katalin Szelényi's Global Citizenship and the University: Advancing Social Life and Relations in an Interdependent World, winner of the 2012 Outstanding Publication Award, sponsored by the AERA Division J.          

Illicit Flirtations: Labor, Migration, and Sex Trafficking in Tokyo by Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, winner of the 2012 Distinguished Scholarly Publication Award, sponsored by the ASA Labor and Labor Movements Section.

The low down on Egypt's presidential elections

This Saturday, Egypt will hold the final round of its first presidential elections since ex-President Mubarak stepped down in 2011—and the media is rife with speculation on how it will go.

In this podcast by news blog The Arabist, four Egypt scholars—including our recent author Joshua Stacher—sit down to tell us what we need to know about the unfolding events in Egypt and what the U.S. has to do with it.

The conclusion is a bit of a downer: no matter what happens this weekend, there’s not going to be a dramatic change from authoritarianism to democracy in Egypt. In other words, don’t hold your breath for a radical shift to democracy.

Joshua Stacher, who teaches and researches Middle Eastern politics at Kent State University, chalks this up to Egypt’s centralized political power structure—aka its executive autonomy, which has given the political elite the flexibility to navigate the revolution surprisingly well. In his latest book Adaptable Autocrats: Regime Power in Egypt and Syria, Stacher shows that Egypt is actually experiencing a relatively swift and smooth transfer of power—especially in comparison to nearby Syria, a decentralized system of power, which is struggling through a full-scale civil war as its president hangs on.

For those confused by what we should think of the unfolding events in the Arab world, Stacher puts it this way: the past defines the present. Why did Egypt experience an uprising remarkably less bloody than the one in Syria? The answer may be in the countries’ political structures: Egypt’s political structure is significantly more centralized than Syria's, and that makes a world of difference when it comes to how a regime change will play out. 

In that case…if the past defines the present, and today is tomorrow’s past... then we’ll be anxiously watching out for how the Egyptian elections turn out this weekend.

 

In the meantime, read an excerpt from Stacher’s book.

Check out more information about Stacher’s book Adaptable Autocrats. 

Listen to some nuggets from the podcast:

• What the possible legal dissolution of the parliament means for the elections (around 13:00)
• Speculation on the election’s outcomes (around 16:00)
• What potential the revolution still has to achieve its demands (from 21:50)
• Josh Stacher speaks on the role of the U.S. in Egypt—and how U.S. policy supports the counterrevolutionaries (from 34:30). For more on this topic, see this interview hosted by Stacher.
• About that anti-spy video aired on Egyptian televisions… (from 52:28)

 

Healthcare go-to list

If you're baffled by the proceedings in this week's Supreme Court hearings on Health Care, you're not alone, according to almost every major news outlet.  Here are some experts in various fields to shed some light:

  The New York Times reported on March 24that the Supreme Court was being inundated by political pressure from various interest groups: "136 so far." For the low down on how interest groups work and which are the most powerful (guess?), turn to Matt Grossman's The Not-So-Special Interests: Interest Groups, Public Representation, and American Governance.  (Incidentally, Matt's book is also key to understanding the power of special interest groups like ALEC in relation to Florida's "Stand Your Ground Act," which Paul Krugman recently commented on, also in the New York Times.

 On the topic of the Supreme Court and outside pressure,  Keith Bybee's All Judges Are Political--Except When They're Not: Acceptable Hypcrosoes and the Rule of Law speaks to how the politicization of the court might be especially in play, given that the health care law deeply divides democrats and republicans.  And you can decide for yourself whether Justice Antonin Scalia is as immune as he purports to be to all those "amicus curaie" briefs that have been flooding the Court in recent weeks!

For a clear, unbiased look at the fundamentals of the Health Care Act, turn to Professor and former Director of the Graduate Program in Health Sector Management at Boston University, and frequent blogger for the Huffington Post on healthcare issues, Stephen M. Davidson.  His Still Broken: Understanding the US Healthcare System will help readers assess the arguments made by partisans on both sides of the continuing debate; understand why and how President Obama was able to get Congress to pass a comprehensive reform bill even though most of his predecessors tried and failed; and understand why so many Americans are either confused about its value or actually oppose it.

Finally, two issues seem to haunt any of the conversations we've been having about health care reform since Hillary Clinton first ignited the subject almost 2 decades ago:  the economic infeasibility of the status quo and "state's rights."  Two experts, Richard Scheffler and Erwin Chemerinsky, can offer insight into these topics; for more info see their respective books, Is There a Doctor in the House? Market Signals and Tomorrow's Supply of Doctors and Enhancing Government: Federalism for the 21st Century.

Not a Cinderella Story: The Long Road to a Japanese World Cup Victory

When Japan’s Women’s National soccer team—or “Nadeshiko Japan”—bested the greatly-favored United States team in the World Cup Final on July 17th in Frankfurt, Germany, it was one of several “firsts” achieved by the skillful and inspiring team. In truly timely fashion, it was the first time Japan had ever beaten the Americans in a total of twenty-six meetings stretching back over two decades. Even more historically significant, however, was that this World Cup Championship was the first for an Asian soccer team, women’s or men’s. The level of interest in the match—and, admittedly, Japanese social media habits—were uniquely gauged by a new Twitter record set by fans within seconds of Saki Kumagai’s decisive final kick in the penalty shoot-out—a shot heard ‘round the world in the wee hours of the morning in Tokyo: a flurry of 7,196 Tweets per second easily overwhelmed the previous Twitter record (and exceeded the pace of Twittering at the conclusion of the Brazilian men’s shocking loss to Paraguay in the Copa America just a quarter-of-an-hour later).

 Two-weeks after the Japanese women’s historic victory, “Nadeshiko fever” shows little sign of subsiding. The last two weekends have witnessed record setting attendances at the domestic Nadeshiko League matches, with the latest record this past Sunday of over 21,000, outdistancing earlier records by thousands upon thousands of fans. Many of the players—the majority of them veritable unknowns prior to the quarter-final round of the World Cup three weeks ago—are now being courted to serve as the spokespeople and public faces of a range of products.  The economic windfall the team has already produced—a reported 1 trillion yen ($15 billion)—looks like it may continue to grow, an unexpected positive boost for Japan's still stumbling economy.

 As someone who used to play and coach professionally in Japan’s women’s league in the mid-1990s, and since then dedicated a bulk of her research energies to the study of the intersections between soccer, discourses of national identity, education, and political-economy, I could not be more thrilled for the National Team and the much larger contingent of soccer-loving girls and women in Japan who are the essential driving force behind this team’s success. I would, however, like to reframe one of the more prominent portrayals of the team since their momentous win.

 Journalists from both within and outside of Japan have treated this championship as more of a Cinderella story than is warranted, and, at times, women’s soccer as an anomaly (in a “traditional country like Japan”) that reflects little understanding of the history of the women’s game in that country. When the Japan Ladies’ Soccer League (JLSL) was launched in 1989, wealthy multinational corporations supported the majority of its ten teams; most players were employed part-time by their corporate sponsors, provided with housing and living stipends, and given excellent training facilities and ample time to train. Throughout the 1990s, the League was the destination for top female internationals from the U.S., Europe and East Asia—the only place on the planet where the best in the game could make a living from their soccer talents alone. While the League has experienced many name changes, reorganizations, and the exit and entrance of many corporate sponsors in step with the vicissitudes of the economy, it has stayed afloat. Far fewer players are financially supported like they were in the early days of the League; most struggle to find decent part-time employment that provides the flexibility necessary to practice and attend weekend games, and enough money to cover living expenses—and in the case of several teams, travel expenses too! Despite the financial stresses (and embarrassingly meager support when compared with the men’s game), the League continues to be incredibly well organized, and teams very well coached. It is this foundation—the efforts of hundreds of under- and un-paid players and coaches, and countless loyal volunteers—and an infectious enthusiasm for the game that I’ve witnessed in female players of all ages that proved the bedrock and fertile turf for Nadeshiko Japan. As too few have noted, the Japanese team finished fourth in the Beijing Olympics just three years ago, and they were ranked fourth in the FIFA world rankings prior to the World Cup in Germany. Rather than a wonderful yet anomalous outcome, Japan’s ability to capture a World Cup trophy in just the sixth tournament in the history of the women’s game is more accurately attributable to over two-decades of hard work on the part of dedicated players and their supporters, fits and spurts of corporate funding, and a bit belatedly, significant commitment from the Japan Football Association.

 As the tragedies of Japan’s March 11th disaster continue to unfold, and recovery proves an overwhelmingly daunting task, some commentators have boldly claimed that Nadeshiko Japan’s victory has the power to “heal a nation.” Needless to say, these assertions are unrealistic; exclamations uttered in the immediate glow of victory that, as often happens, attribute a humanitarian power to sport that exaggerates its actual potential. More modest claims that the team has provided a much needed psychological “boost” to its citizens seem more on target but certainly not negligible. Much like Japan’s famed women’s volleyball team that clinched the gold medal in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and brought great pride and energy to a country still working its way out of the psychological and physical ravages of war, this group of young women have captured the hearts of many in their nation, and re-energized countless individuals who so desperately needed a boost as they fight to forge new lives out of an unthinkable disaster.

We are thrilled to feature this guest post by Elise Edwards, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Anthropology Department at Butler University. Elise played professional soccer for three seasons in Japan’s L-League and currently serves as the goalkeeping coach for Butler’s women’s soccer team. She is a contributor to Modern Girls on the Go: Gender, Mobility, and Labor in Japan (under contract with Stanford University Press) and is working on her own book, tentatively titled Fields for the Future: Soccer, Nation, and Citizens in Japan at the Turn of the 21st Century.