Public Identity in Defining the Boundaries of Public and Private: The Example of Latent Anti-Semitism

Abstract

THOSE who study everyday communication know that people evaluate the situation in which they will communicate with their partners before communication actually begins. In this evaluation they primarily determine whether they should follow the rules that govern public or private communication. The act of communication itself occurs through constant reevaluation of the situation , the goal of which is to develop a consensus about the public or private nature of the communication engaged in. Such evaluation of the private or public nature of an interaction is perhaps the most common example of defining the borders of public and private spheres. As researchers dealing with latent public opinion have shown (Angelusz, 1996a), the main factor determining whether opinions are hidden or clearly manifested is the political and social system , mainly through the structure of the public realm. On the one hand, opinions may be hard to identify in the course of research because the members of the society in question do not readily form opinions about relevant subjects. On the other hand, some individuals in society hide their opinions because of “a refined attempt to seek psychological advantage, existential SOCIAL RESEARCH, Vol. 69, No. 1 (Spring 2002) Public Identity in Defining the Boundaries of Public and Private: The Example of Latent Anti-Semitism BY ANDRÁS KOVÁCS dependence, or a fear of the harder social consequences” (Angelusz, 1996a: 21.). Even in advanced democratic societies with well-functioning public realms, racial, religious, and other group prejudices belong in a category of opinions that are often kept hidden because their public expression would amount to an open breach of the consensus rejecting such views. As in the case of any other form of illegitimate public behavior, this would give rise to psychological conflicts and possibly even personal disadvantage . This observation has been verified through empirical research. Research on prejudice—and on anti-Semitism in particular— has revealed a strong latency pressure: respondents consider it risky to express anti-Jewish opinions. For example, in the course of a survey performed in Austria in the summer of 1991, 27 percent of those who took part in the survey avoided providing a response when they were asked whether the number of Jews in influential positions should be limited, while 31 percent refused to take a position on whether a law should regulate the amount of property or land Austrian Jews could obtain (Karmasin, 1992: 31-34). In Germany in 1989, 20 percent of respondents to a survey agreed with the statement, “If I am talking about Jews, I am always very careful, because it is very easy to get your fingers burnt,” while 15 percent stated that “I don’t tell just anybody what I think about Jews” (Bergmann and Erb, 1991b: 280). This same statement was accepted by 25 percent of respondents in a 1993 survey of Hungarian university students, while 52 percent of the same students thought that “if you say something bad about Jews, you are immediately branded an anti-Semite” (Kovács, 1997: 58). Using Luhmann’s definition (Luhmann, 1984: 458), scholars concerned with the problem of latency distinguish between two forms of latency. They speak of conscious or factual latency (people do not have developed opinions about certain issues), and of communicative or functional latency (participants in the communication hide their real opinions) (Bergmann and Erb, 1986, 1991a; Bellers, 1990). Opinions may be concealed in two ways: 180 SOCIAL RESEARCH respondents avoid addressing a problem even though they do hold opinions; or they declare views that are not their real perspective . Two types of motivation may explain why a respondent avoids answering survey questions. It may be that some people really have no developed opinions about the issues raised; the problems of the survey are of no interest to them. But it is also possible that the refusal to give a full answer is a means of hiding opinions. Using Luhmann’s categories, the first group is characterized by factual latency, the second group by communication latency. Gilljam and Granberg call the former “real nonattitudes or true negatives,” and the latter “pseudo-nonattitudes or false negatives” (Gilljam and Granberg, 1993: 349). * As we know, the public expression of racial, religious, or...