Indicator development as a site of collective imagination? The case of European Commission policies on the circular economy

ABSTRACT

In recent years the concept of the circular economy gained prominence in EU policy-making. The circular economy promotes a future in which linear ‘make-use-dispose’ cultures are replaced by more circular models. In this paper, we use the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries to ask how an imaginary of circularity has been assembled and stabilized, which imaginative resources were drawn on, and how goals, priorities, benefits and risks haven been merged with discourses of innovation, sustainability and growth. Drawing on policy documents and interviews with policy officers of the European Commission, we argue that the monitoring framework and indicator development function as a site collective imagination in which desirable ‘circular’ futures are co-produced. These futures are imagined to provide novel opportunities for the private sector and to generate jobs and economic growth while at the same time improving the natural environment as measured by selected environmental indicators.     

Caregiving for the Elderly Person: Discourses Embedded in the Brazilian Practical Guide for the Caregiver

It is estimated that in 2025, Brazil will have the sixth largest elderly population in the world. Beyond the economic consequences of this projection, this changing demographic portends significant changes in the social realm. The aim of this study was to review and consider a range of government documents, developed during the past thirty years and directed toward elderly Brazilian citizens, to explore the ways that caregivers of older persons are positioned in daily care practices through the discourses such documents deploy. The analysis draws on Foucault’s genealogical approach, and begins with a review of the historicity of policies, regulations, and legislation related to older people, followed by an analysis of the discourses embedded in the Practical Guide for the Caregiver, a document created by the Brazilian Ministry of Health to provide guidance to informal caregivers in the actual provision of care to elders. The analysis shows that throughout the Guide, caregivers are portrayed as multifaceted subjects; yet at the same time, three primary positionings for the caregiver and her or his work are emphasized: the almost-angel, the almost-healthcare professional, and the almost-household professional.     

Neoliberalisation,the social investment state and social work

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the challenges to social work evolving from two major discourses contributing to the common sense contextualising social work within the new spirit of capitalism and the governing of the soul. Beside neo-liberal ideas and values challenging social work values and the welfare state, the question is also about managerialism. To what extent is the social worker able to contribute to liberating, reflexive critique, or exert pastoral power? I have chosen to see how the idea of the social investment state may be linked to Rose’s and Foucault’s ideas about expanding governmentality and end my discussion by relating to some of the early writing on social work’s challenges in confronting ideas and practices interpreted as neoliberalisation moves.     

Transnationalism and Diffusion: A Study of the Food Sovereignty Movements in the UK and Canada

Abstract

This paper explores a number of questions surrounding the transnational diffusion of social movements and their ideas through case studies of the food sovereignty movements in the UK and in Canada: How do social movements in one country or world region diffuse to another country or region? How do social movement participants learn about other movements and their ideas in different countries and organize and mobilize around these same ideas while at the same time adapting them to their local context? What are the channels and mechanisms of social movement diffusion? In addressing these questions, the paper contributes to our understanding of the transnational diffusion of social movements and the ways in which social movement participants adopt, interpret, and adapt new ideas, organizational forms, and agendas and causes that originated outside their own countries. It highlights the ways in which groups and communities around the world recontextualize social movement discourses to make them relevant to their own circumstances and to connect their causes and struggles to global movements.     

Deciphering the modern Janus: societal multiplicity and nation-formation

ABSTRACT

How to theorize the nation’s Janus-like form, its simultaneous modernity and antiquity? This paper provides an original answer to this longstanding question. It argues that nations arise from the interaction of ‘societal multiplicity’ and the expansionist tendency of historical capitalism. The emergence of capitalism super-adds a modern inflection to the inherently relational process of collective identity formation by generating modern sovereignty as an abstract form of rule. Crucially however, just like its emergence, capitalism’s expansion also refracts through societal multiplicity. Non-capitalist societies are therefore pressured into ‘nationalist’ projects of emulative self-preservation in which the nation’s political form (i.e. the sovereign state) is forged before its sociological content (i.e. primitive accumulation). Thus, the original site of this process, France, produced the modular nation-form that unlike Britain’s imperial nationhood could be globalized. The paper therefore shows that IR’s premise of multiplicity may be the key to one of social sciences’ most enduring puzzles.     

Heterosexual relationships among young black men in the construction of masculinity at a South African university

ABSTRACT

Drawing on interviews conducted with young men residing in a hostel in a tertiary institution in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, in 2016, this article explores young black men’s construction of masculine sexuality, their approaches to romantic relationships, and responsibility within them. Through the use of semi-structured interviews conducted with young black men, the study investigated the relationship between the social construction of masculinities and the way in which these young men understood, talked about, and explained their views and actions regarding romance and sexuality. The study focuses on the voices of acceptance and resistance to traditional, patriarchal versions of manhood and the variations in men’s discourses and ways of being. It highlights through these voices that heterosexual masculinities are not inherently reckless, impassive, and uncaring, but are situationally and contextually constructed. The findings reveal that while the young men inhabited subject positions offered by traditional discourses of heterosexual masculinity, at the same time they also contested these dominant discourses in the complex and multifarious processes through which these young men constituted their identity.     

‘Heteroglossic’ Discourses on Globalization: A View from the ‘East’

Abstract

In view of the broad scope of literature on globalization, this paper provides a synoptic reading of some of the globalization literatures, organized as ‘discourses’. The analysis of the discourses on globalization is confined to three overlapping discourses, namely, regional, ideological and economic discourses. Specific references and examples of local uptake of globalization will be drawn from Singapore and the wider Asia pacific region, as Beck (2002) has reminded us that we cannot even think about globalization or discuss it effectively without the reference to specific locations and places. Hence the subtitle of this paper, ‘A View from the East’, is deliberate to signal the often forgotten fact that Singapore, as well as the wider Asia Pacific region, is ‘part of the “global” sphere that the West has dispersed itself into’.     

Schizocapital and the branding of American psychosis

Abstract

This essay reads Deleuze and Guattari's Anti‐Oedipus, somewhat perversely, as a radical Lacanian means of conceptualizing hypermodern capitalism. If, as Deleuze and Guattari argue, it is psychoanalysis that rediscovers and retraces the death instinct in classical, nineteenth‐century capitalism, Deleuze and Guattari's schizoanalysis better exemplifies the ways in which the deterritorializing flows of twenty‐frrst‐century global capitalism have overcoded and overwritten that classical, nineteenth‐century order of things. Taking Bret Easton Ellis's novel, American Psycho as its symptomatic text, this essay discusses the implications, raised hysterically in the novel, of an unrestricted economy in which the ‘subject’ is no longer held in place by a governing (master or paternal) signifier in relation to a traditional symbolic order. The essay shows how Lacan's notion of ‘the Other’ has been reconfigured, in relation to consumer capitalism, such that it takes the form of a purely machinic imperative that turns the subject into an economically dividuated producing/product. The subject has become a little machine hooked up to the big machine that maintains it in debt in a continual process of consumption‐production of commodities, brands and identities.     

The capitalist metabolism: an unachieved subsumption of life under the value-form

Abstract

This article views capitalism not only as a mode of production, but also as a mediation of the reproduction of life (human and non-human), following the concept of ‘social metabolism’ that Marx employs to analyze the interaction between the individuals composing a society and their natural environment. Insofar as the ‘value-form’ is the distinctive social relation of capitalism, it appears necessary to ask whether the metabolic process of reproduction can be fully subsumed under this form. Marx takes for granted the idea that the reproduction of labor-power consists only in the consumption of commodities resulting from abstract labor, thus omitting the appropriation of unpaid domestic work, mostly performed by women. Feminist criticism clarifies how capitalism always depends on some reproductive work being appropriated for the accumulation of surplus-value without being integrated in the value-form. Following Jason W. Moore, I attempt to indicate that the same logic is at work for the reproduction of non-human life under the capitalist value-form, thus contradicting the sustainable reproduction of its own natural conditions. These two limitations of the capitalist subsumption of life open a new space for an expanded critique of capitalism, which goes beyond the exploitation of waged work by reflecting upon the concerns of feminist and ecological struggles.     

Class,State, and Revolution in the History of American Capitalism

The significance of the American Revolution has generally been downplayed in accounts of the rise of capitalism in the United States, especially those undertaken from a critical perspective. New approaches to the history of capitalism, however, have emphasised the centrality of the state. This article argues that re‐centring the state's role in the history of capitalism should return attention to the significant restructuring of the American state that occurred during and as a result of the revolution. At the same time, it argues that this restructuring cannot be understood historically outside the context of class‐formation of which it was a part. Revolution reshaped the new nation's capitalist class, in the near term, much more than it did the labouring classes. This reconfiguration encompassed and went beyond the innovation of new political institutions. In the long‐run it helped to underpin the particular development of capitalism in the United States.     

Young people and the gendered and aesthetic dimensions of ‘enterprise’: stories from a ‘Rust Belt’ city

ABSTRACT

In the ‘Rust Belt’ city of Geelong in Victoria, Australia, discourses of young people’s enterprise and innovation provide a counter-narrative to the prevailing material and symbolic consequences of industrial decline, job losses, and the growing insecurity of employment and income. GT Magazine is a weekly, large circulation magazine in Geelong with a significant focus on the activities and aspirations of enterprising young people. In this paper, we examine, by utilising techniques of content analysis and discourse analysis, the particular ways in which young people’s innovation and enterprise are framed and enacted in GT Magazine. Our analysis reveals that ‘youth’ and ‘enterprise’ are, in GT Magazine, given an embodied form that is powerfully marked by aestheticised, normalised enactments of gender, class and race. In doing this work, we make productive contributions to three key themes in contemporary youth studies: new work orders and the youthful self as enterprise; the gendered and aesthetic dimensions of affective labour in these new work orders; and the emerging spatial turn to examine young people's embodied, place-based experiences of employment and enterprise. We seek to make problematic the sense that solutions to multiple disruptions and crises in capitalism and the environment are to be found in young people’s enterprise. Particularly when that enterprise is given form in ways that are aestheticised, gendered, classed, individualised and responsibilised.     

The Production of the Female Entrepreneurial Subject: A Space of Exclusion for Women of Color?

SUMMARY

Using critical discourse analysis, this paper examines how the female entrepreneurial subject is constructed/produced within entrepreneurial discourses, how this subject is racialized, gendered and classed, and examines what practices contribute to the shaping of the female entrepreneurial subject. I specifically look at four areas/discourses central to entrepreneurship; that of independence, self-definition/self-monitoring, networking, and women's abilities as businesswomen. I contend that contemporary self-employment discourses mirror those of neo-liberalism/modernization where the notion of the independent liberal subject has the ability to self-determine and self-monitor, which is a sign of autonomy and mastery of the self. I also argue that the space of women's entrepreneurship legitimizes white middle-class women's experiences and excludes women of color from becoming active subjects in entrepreneurial discourses.     

Overcoming neoliberal globalization: social-ecological transformation from a Polanyian perspective and beyond

ABSTRACT

The ecological crisis has intensified in many respects. Prominent proposals to deal with the crisis are discussed under the header ‘sustainability transformations’ or even ‘Great Transformation’. We argue that most contributions suffer from a narrow analytical approach to transformation ignoring the largely unsustainable dynamics of global capitalism and the power relations involved in it. Thus, a ‘new critical orthodoxy’ of knowledge about transformation is emerging which runs the danger to contribute to a spatially and socially highly uneven green capitalism. This article claims that the current debate on social-ecological transformation can be enriched by a Polanyian understanding but also based on regulation theory. We distinguish between three types of transformation: incremental adaptation of the current institutional systems, institutional change in favour of a new ‘green’ phase of capitalism, and a post-capitalist great transformation that implies a profound structural change of the mode of production and living.     

The subject of objects: Marx,new materialism, & queer forms of life

Abstract

This article examines two interrelated themes in the scholarship categorized as ‘new materialism’: first, the aim to undermine the subject/object distinction; second, the proposition that agency exists across the material world. While new materialists, such as Jane Bennett, conceive of their approach as an intervention against the injurious effects of capitalism, I argue that destabilizing the object/subject binary and endowing inanimate objects with vitality and agency is actually a constitutive feature of capitalism itself. To illustrate this point, I turn to Marx’s analysis, providing a queer reading of his theorization of commodities. Revisting Marx’s account of commodity fetishism in tandem with new materialism yields fresh insights into the logics of capitalism, specifically, the manner in which it thrives on concurrently producing and erasing subjectivities, thereby distorting social materiality and material sociality.     

Monologic Results of Dialogue: Jewish-Palestinian Encounter Groups as Sites of Essentialization

Since the 1980s, many scholars have focused on the promise that dialogue holds to get beyond essentializing discourses. Based on the observation of a yearlong dialogue intergroup encounter between two groups of Israeli citizens, Jewish and Palestinian, this article shows that dialogic encounters between groups in a situation of structural inequality and domination may solidify essentialist discourses of culture and identity. The interpretative analysis of specific moments of the intergroup dialogue shows that throughout the dialogue process, self and other essentializing strategies recurred. The attempt of the Palestinian students to clear a space that would enable them to talk about their status as second class citizens while simultaneously presenting claims for equal access to citizenship was met with declarations about "Arab" culture by the Jewish students. In this process, both groups, albeit for different reasons, reinforced their monological conceptions of culture and identity.     

How migration information campaigns shape local perceptions and discourses of migration in Harar city,Ethiopia

Migration-information campaigns informing potential migrants about the risks of the journey and the harsh life conditions in the destination countries have emerged as prominent tools of migration management in the last decades. Despite their growing importance, little is known about their local implementation in countries of transit and origin as well as their influence on potential migrants' perceptions and experiences. The central objective of this paper is to understand how migration-information campaigns are implemented on a local scale and how they shape the perception and discourses of migration in the region. We pursue a multi-scalar analysis of international migration management policies and their outcomes in a specific place and link them with local migration aspirations. The paper is based on qualitative empirical research carried out in Harar, a medium-sized city in the Harari regional state of Ethiopia. Drawing on interviews with government officials, NGOs, city dwellers, and return migrants, as well as the analysis of policy documents and scientific literature, we show how the local implementation of migration-information campaigns shapes the local perceptions and discourses on migration within which migration aspirations are embedded. We found that information campaigns did not take into account the complexity and multifaceted nature of local socioeconomic and political conditions which reflects the discrepancy between policy discourses at large and people's perceptions.     

The un/state of lesbian studies: an introduction to lesbian communities and contemporary legislation in Japan

Although it would be safe to say that Lesbian Studies has never seriously been placed on the Japanese academic agenda, women-loving-women in Japan continue to individually and collectively desist from and resist heteronormative gender discourses. This paper first gives a brief overview of 'rezubian' communities since the 1970s and then outlines the Basic Law for a Gender Equal Society and the Law Concerning Special Rules Regarding Sex Status of a Person with Gender Identity Disorder; two recent laws that demonstrate contemporary regulatory gender discourses. In closing, I stress that the paradox of contemporary Japanese 'lesbian studies,' being almost nonexistent in the academe and continuously in development in the community, is clear only if we look at academic discourses alongside writings in both commercial and community publications.     

Working with Lesbian,Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Abuse Survivors

Abstract

While the new economic globalization provides the overarching context for human development, the influence of political economy on personal values, beliefs, and behaviors is not usually directly addressed in the HBSE texts and coursework. Making the connections between the dimly visible structures of global capitalism and the lives of students and clients in the U.S. is challenging. This paper makes a case for the inclusion of content on globalization in HBSE and presents two dynamic “experiments” aimed at increasing student insight into the political and economic roots of human behavior in Western society.