HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE NEO-LIBERAL IMAGINATION

‘The end of sovereignty’: this has been an ominous refrain in the chorus of global political and human rights analyses aimed at reformulating a post-Cold War configuration of world power. In cultural studies, the same pronouncement is more likely made through a mix of theoretical exuberance and ambivalence toward a post-nationalist and cosmopolitan imaginary. This essay takes as a point of departure the rise of ‘new sovereignties’ – a fractured Westphalianism – as a rubric for understanding the political imagination about the international community today. It asks: to what dimensions of the regime of the new sovereignties can the human rights legal discourse as we know it today still exert influence, given the new configurations of globally disaggregated power? With human rights today reemerging as a bifurcation, how can cultural studies reconcile a theory of rights as subaltern claim-making with that of rights as an all-englobing tool in the neo-liberal order of world justice? Through a preliminary mapping of the moral-juridical and political forces that shape the regime of the new sovereignties, this essay attempts to illuminate why rights as international deontological politics is inadvertently complicit with the reproduction of rights as something constitutive of empire and neo-liberalism.     

THE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY REVOLUTION AND THE UNSECURED CREDIT MARKET

The information technology (IT) revolution coincided with the transformation of the U.S. unsecured credit market. Households' borrowing increased rapidly and there was an even faster increase in bankruptcy filings. A risk of default model with asymmetric information and costly screening is introduced to study this period. When information costs are high, the design of contracts under private information prevents some households from borrowing with a risk of default. As information costs drop, households borrow more and bankruptcy filings increase. Quantitative exercises suggest that the IT revolution may have played an important role in the transformation of the unsecured credit market. (JEL E43, E44, G33)     

BETWEEN COSMOPOLITANISM AND THE NATIONAL SLOT: CUBA'S DIASPORIC CHILDREN OF THE REVOLUTION

Although cosmopolitanism used to be associated with Western, elite practices, it has in recent years been used to describe a wider array of practices by non-elite and non-Western groups. This article explores the cosmopolitanism of Cuba's “children of the revolution” living in Spain. They are those now young adults who were born in Cuba after the revolution and who were brought up to become the socialist New Man. Theirs was a world of socialist cosmopolitanism, which simultaneously was infused with commitment to a national, territorially-based political project: an independent, socialist Cuba. However, some of these New Men and New Women now embrace ideals of cosmopolitan individualism rather than the patriotic socialism with which they were inculcated as children. Yet the cultural tools that the children of the revolution make use of in their practices and narratives of cosmopolitanism paradoxically point back to revolutionary Cuba. The article argues that cosmopolitanism as a lived practice owes to experiences within the Cuban socialist-national project and is in effect a response to the ineffectiveness of this project, not necessarily a substantive opposition to it. Social capital and habitus deriving from Cuban socialism gave the children of the revolution the desire to attain cosmopolitanism as part of their life-projects. This finding suggests that the relationship between nationalism and cosmopolitanism needs further rethinking.     

Evidence-based practice in social work: perceptions and attitudes among Norwegian social workers

Although the concept of evidence-based practice (EBP) eludes precise definition, it is used as a trademark label to ensure that practice is based on science and thereby effective and of high quality. Proponents of EBP have proposed that both education and practice in social work should be transformed according to the principle of EBP. They attribute critical opposition to EBP to a lack of knowledge of what EBP is. In this article, we endeavour to clarify the concept and present results from a survey among social workers (N?=?2060) from Norway. The survey results show that although many have heard of the concept, few have precise knowledge about it. However, the more educated social workers are (master’s level), the clearer their opinions, both critical and non-critical. The results are discussed in relation to neo-liberal governance and development of social work.     

STOCK OWNERSHIP AND CONGRESSIONAL ELECTIONS: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE MUTUAL FUND REVOLUTION

We find that higher stock ownership rates are linked to an upward shift in the Republican share of the House popular vote since the late 1980s, consistent with theories that property interests affect voting. To proxy for discontinuous stock ownership rates, we use equity mutual fund costs, which have fallen, are negatively correlated with stock ownership rates and the Republican vote share in the long run, and help explain short‐run changes along with midterm elections, economic conditions, and presidential popularity. Findings suggest that the major parties’ shares of the House popular vote will fluctuate around 50% until other factors trigger a political realignment. (JEL D72, G11)     

城市化之终结——新型城市理念与城市化的反思

城市的增长和发展一直与城市体系中的特定节点相联系。然而,在众多大城市的功能区合并形成连绵的城市地区的大环境下,这种联系的意义并不大。当一个国家有85%以上的城市人口,城市化进程不再像我们以往所理解的那样,因此传统的分析手段也无法满足需求。本文以丹麦为考察对象,探讨以单个城市和城乡二元制为基础的传统城市分析方法的局限性。文章提出采用一个与大城市地区之中的本地化进程相关的替代概念,进一步论证如何通过流动性的增加和劳动市场的扩大来解释过去25年丹麦的城市增长模式。     

ANDREAS HEINRICH VOIGT AND THE HICKS‐ALLEN REVOLUTION IN CONSUMER THEORY

In 1893, Andreas Heinrich Voigt argued that utility admits only an ordinal characterization. We discuss the apparent impact of Voigt's now forgotten early argument for an ordinal approach to utility on later economists. Edgeworth cited Voigt's ordinal‐cardinal distinction several times in the Economic Journal, bringing both the concept and the terminology into Anglophone economics. In 1927, Rosenstein‐Rodan, too, cited Voigt's argument for ordinal utility. Since Hicks apparently learned the cardinal‐ordinal terminology from Edgeworth, and discussed utility theory and complementarity with Rosenstein‐Rodan, it appears that Voigt's 1893 article is the original source of ordinal utility in economics. (JEL B13, B21)     

PRIMITIVE ACCUMULATION,EMINENT DOMAIN,AND THE CONTRADICTIONS OF NEO-LIBERALISM

Abstract

This essay addresses the institutional conditions of cultural studies, especially those bearing on cultural studies teaching. It does so by reviewing the history of the Open University Popular Culture course from an insider's perspective. Whereas most published accounts of this course have related it closely to the concerns of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, this essay suggests that the two projects — while overlapping in certain respects — are more usefully thought of as distinct. Having disentangled the history of the Open University course from that of the Birmingham Centre, the author goes on to advance a more general argument concerning the politics and practice of cultural studies pedagogy. The essay's main contention in this regard is that a conception of cultural studies teaching which connects it to the cultivation of resistive practices in the classroom is incoherent. It is suggested that this now influential current of thought is best assessed as a negative outcome of the encounter between the projects of cultural studies and US liberationist philosophy.     

Family Mediation in Ireland

Using domestic violence support services as a case study, this paper examines how the ascendancy of neo-liberalism has individualised and pathologised public issues. Four perspectives are identified that have been influential in understanding the causes of domestic violence, determining responses to it and measuring the effectiveness of support services. These four perspectives may be categorised as: (i) victim-blaming; (ii) social movement; (iii) empowerment; and (iv) pathologising. From analysing the standard outcome measures currently used for government-funded accommodation programs, the author contends that the pathologising perspective dominates. This is partly attributable to the inherent methodological and ethical issues in evaluating programs of this nature. However, it is primarily driven by the ascendancy of a neo-liberal, managerialist ideology that has depoliticised and clinicalised domestic violence. This has effectively silenced structural analyses of domestic violence and displaced feminist service models.     

Workers' Protest in Egypt: Neo-liberalism and Class Struggle in 21st Century

From 1998 to 2008 some 2 million Egyptian workers participated in 2,623 factory occupations, strikes, demonstrations, or other collective actions. This social movement does not have a national leadership or program and has not been supported by the Egyptian Trade Union Federation. It is propelled by locally generated grievances that have been produced by the acceleration of the neo-liberal transformation of Egypt since 2004. This workers movement has not changed the existing structures of power that constrain Egyptian working people because the informal, local networks that have sustained the movement are, by their nature, unable to organize a national-scale political movement on their own.     

The labour–nature relationship: varieties of labour environmentalism

ABSTRACT

This special issue is a contribution to environmental labour studies, which aims to investigate the practices and theories that integrate labour and nature, by focusing on labour environmentalism. While nature is privately appropriated and exploited by Capital, workers’ organizations tend to construct nature as labour’s other, a place to enjoy or a place to be protected from destruction at best. In the following introductory article to this special issue, we present our view of what environmental labour studies are investigating and might investigate in the future and the place of labour environmentalism within this broader agenda. We also suggest an analytical framework to evaluate the depth, breadth, and level of the agency of the variations of labour environmentalism. We suggest that environmental labour studies can be a way of studying not only the intersections between social and environmental justice, climate change and working conditions but can also contribute to building a bridge between environmental theory and practice.     

Enforcement matters: The effective regulation of labour

The distinction between de jure and de facto regulation is well understood in theory, but has rarely been applied to cross‐country empirical work on the impact of labour regulation on labour market outcomes for lack of data. Policy debate has been based on measures of stringency of law, suggesting a negative correlation between labour regulation and labour market outcomes. This article provides new cross‐country measures of labour law enforcement and evidence of a negative correlation between stringency and intensity of enforcement. Previous results concerning the consequences of labour regulation and the legal origins theory no longer hold when a measure of effective labour regulation is used.     

US labour unions and green transitions: depth,breadth, and worker agency

ABSTRACT

The goal of this article is to interpret and analyse two ambitious and prominent cases of labour environmentalism in the USA – the par excellence example of liberal capitalism. In order to capture the nuances, contradictions, and varieties of labour environmentalism, I employ an analytical scheme based on three dimensions. The first dimension (depth) explores the social and environmental commitments manifested in these cases, the second dimension (breadth) explores their spatiality, and the third dimension (agency) explores the degree to which these initiatives reflect a proactive as opposed to a reactive labour environmentalism.     

Impairment on the move: the disabled incomer and other invalidating intersections

In this article, I argue that disabled people and immigrants are subjected to similar forms of representation. I draw on examples from theology in the Christian Middle Ages, the influence of eugenics on late nineteenth and twentieth-century US immigration policy and welfare reform in contemporary neoliberal Britain. These vignettes are invoked as case studies to illustrate how ableism follows impairment on the move and to point to the ways in which the confluence of ethnocentric and ableist fantasies about strangers brings the history of disability and migration onto the same terrain of disrepute.     

‘Who's Got the Look?’ Emotional,Aesthetic and Sexualized Labour in Interactive Services

This article examines sexualized work and, more particularly, how and why, at the organizational level in interactive services, employees become sexualized labour. In doing so it assesses the thin line between selling a service and selling sexuality. The analysis revisits existing literature on emotional labour, organizational aesthetics and workplace sexuality, noting the common concern in this literature with employee's appearance or looks. The article argues that the current conceptualization of interactive services and sexualized work is partial and blunt; either because it does not adequately incorporate employee corporeality or because it fails to distinguish between the different forms of sexualized work. A better conceptualization is achieved by incorporating aesthetic labour into the analysis, demonstrating how it is extended to sexualized labour employees to have a particular corporate look. From this analysis it is argued that a conceptual double shift is to be needed to understand sexualised labour, firstly, from emotional to aesthetic and sexualized labour and secondly, from an employee sexuality that is sanctioned and subscribed to by management to that which management strategically prescribes.     

The social worker as intellectual

This paper examines the state of intellectual activity within social work under the conditions of neo-liberalism. It is motivated by concern with the demise of what previously was termed ‘bottom-up’ social work and a growing sense of despair amongst front line social workers regarding their capacity to engage with users, citizens and communities in ways other than those determined by managerial and regulatory mechanisms. This leads us into a discussion about the possibilities of what it might mean for social workers to think of themselves as ‘intellectuals’. It considers the different meanings of the term ‘intellectual’ and argues that social work has much to gain from the tradition which has identified new kinds of public sector professionals as ‘transformative intellectuals’.     

Taking a stand or playing it safe?: resisting the moral conservatism of risk in social work practice

An emergent critical social work risk literature positions risk as a morally conservative construct that has repressive effects in direct social work practice. In this literature it is argued that how risk is defined and operationalised in social work reflects the political dominance of neo-liberalism as an ethos of government within the context of the social and cultural conditions of the risk society. This narrative is fast becoming a dominant perspective in the social work literature. However, this perspective in effect creates a ‘catastrophe story’ where there is little room to envisage an alternative social work practice that is able to resist the conservative effects of risk. In addition there is little empirical evidence to support the relevance of this pessimistic view to the embodied aspects of social work interventions. This paper presents initial findings of a study undertaken in Australia that has explored whether risk is necessarily as totalising of our professional identities, and in turn our practices, as is suggested by this literature. The findings indicate that whilst practitioners were interpellated within conservative contexts in their front-line practice, ethical, moral and value standpoints assisted practitioners to resolve the moral dilemmas posed by risk.     

Engaging with materialism and material reality: critical disability studies and economic recession

Critical disability studies has been accused of preoccupation with cultural, lingual and discursive matters, and in doing so failing to adequately engage with the often-harsh material reality of disability. This has contributed to a circumstance in which disability studies has produced a lack of material focused directly upon economic processes. Concurrently, disabled people have encountered a momentous economic recession that has threatened their basic economic and human rights. This article seeks to address what is evidently a gap in the burgeoning critical disability and disability studies literature. That is, a gap largely uninhabited by attempts to apply a critical disability studies perspective to macro-economic processes. The article focuses predominantly on two facets of critical disability studies as identified by Goodley: the self and other, and intersectionality. The article concludes that critical disability studies has much to offer through the production of new understandings of economic processes.     

The imprudence of labour market flexibilization in a fiscally austere world

This article assesses the effects of combining fiscal austerity with policies aimed at reducing labour costs and, in doing so, sheds new light on current policy debates. Taking a global perspective, the authors explore the aggregation problem by proposing a stylized analytical macro‐model with explicit distribution dynamics. In this framework, flexibilization policies that suppress the labour share trigger global feedbacks that result in a downward spiral, with contraction even in export‐led economies. The initial gains of more competitive economies are shown to be ephemeral. In the long term, the world economy is essentially wage‐led and responds positively to coordinated Keynesian stimuli.