Regulated freedoms: the market and the state,agriculture and the environment

We argue that a “free” market — that is, a market in which the state does not intervene — is a theoretical impossibility in a state society. In place of the natural economy view of a market apart from the state, we offer a social economy view of the inescapable social structuring of markets through state regulation. Even when states institute policies which prevent “interference” in a market, the enforcement power of the state is no less required. We thus distinguish between two forms of regulation: negative regulation — regulation which prevents interference — and positive regulation — regulation which enables interference. These two forms of regulation make possible two different conceptions of freedom, what Isaiah Berlin once termed “negative freedom” from agency and “positive freedom” to have agency. We argue that positive and negative freedom and positive and negative regulation are inseparable; freedom is always contextual. Through a discussion of the debate between industrial agriculture and environmentalists, we show that both supporters and critics of the “free” market are alike in their advocacy, often unacknowledged, of both negative and positive forms of regulation. Rather then a lessening of regulation, this debate represents the institution of a new regulatory regime out of the contest of interests. We conclude by considering the implications for democracy of the contextual character of freedom.     

Relating the Central and the Local

Although a number of valuable models of central‐local relationships in the nonprofit sector have been developed, particularly in relation to federal structures, there has been a tendency to assume that in any given organizational relationship central‐local structures will follow one common pattern. We argue that wider strategies are available: central dependency along one dimension may run with greater local autonomy along another. Such mixed tight‐loose structures may be of considerable importance in the “boundaryless” organizational environment of the future.     

Disappointing and deviant youth and the rage of the elders

A generalized adult hostility toward youth derives from the complexities of the parent/child relationship, often mirrored in the helper/client and therapist/patient dyads. Parents derive considerable or little narcissistic gain from the accomplishments of their offspring, and conversely, are disappointed or even mortified by their failures. This is particularly true of narcissistically vulnerable parents—helpers and therapists as well—and accounts for widespread attitudes of competition, disparagement, and outright hostility toward young people. In the extreme, the pathological situations of emotional exploitation, incest, and physical abuse occur, but lesser forms of exploitation, such as personally gratifying advocacy, political gain, cultism, and enhancement of professional status, point to similar, but seemingly less destructive, forms of narcissistic gain. Youth may respond by conforming, defying, disappointing, and deviating. Adults may be either pleased, or enraged.     

State and Regional Professional Associations—the Case of the CSA and the PSA

The CSA and the PSA share several critical challenges including maintaining a stable membership, providing opportunities for students to present their work while at the same time maintaining their position as an organization of professional sociologists, meeting the needs of a diverse membership and balancing the teaching and research needs of this diverse membership. The need is for the CSA and the PSA to work together to form an even closer partnership.     

Private property and the problem of the miraculous: the kramats and the city of Cape Town

This paper seeks to explore the place of kramats the graves of Muslim saints or Auliyah – in the landscape of contemporary Cape Town. The kramat sites have been proclaimed as heritage sites because of their importance as tangible signs of Islam at the Cape. At the same time, the process of the kramats becoming heritage sites has contained moments of intense, often sensational, public contestation. Offering a reading of the discourses surrounding two contested kramats in Cape Town, this paper explores the way kramats mark out a miraculous space in the prosaic modern city and introduce into the post-apartheid evaluation of heritage, alternative conceptions of space and notions of temporality. They are sites of impossibility where, it is claimed, the laws of nature themselves are interrupted to mark the intangible particularities of the site. This paper explores what happens when this miraculous space is subject to the demands of private property and municipal law and the conflicts that arise from this collision of different conceptual and experiential modalities. It considers the effects of the entanglement of legend and history that result from the production of these sites as heritage in a market-driven economy.     

Between the market and the hard place: neoliberalization and the Polish LGBT movement

ABSTRACT

Whilst the fall of state socialism in 1989 opened up a space for the Polish LGBT movement to emerge and develop, over the last three decades the process has taken place against the backdrop of material and ideological constraints of neoliberalization, a point that has been largely overlooked in the scholarship on the Polish LGBT movement. Informed by interviews with Polish LGBT activists this article explores the contradictory ways in which processes of neoliberalization and market logic influence and often constrain the Polish LGBT movement. The argument is that neoliberalization and its logic profusely affect what is possible and desirable for the Polish LGBT movement on a personal, local as well as a national level. The contradictory effects of the processes of neoliberalization combined with the political climate, with minimal or no state support for LGBT organizing, result in a movement that is at the mercy of the market-like environment, under-resourced, dependent almost entirely on voluntary labor and spatially scarce.