Back to the capitalist future: Fantasy and the paradox of crisis

This paper draws on a Lacanian perspective to better understand how crisis can paradoxically produce fantasies of ideological renewal. Using the 2008 economic meltdown as an example, it argues that these events are articulated as a part of a crisis narrative that links past ideals with future stability and progress. At the level of subjectivity, these fantasies reflect the psychological trauma individuals feel in the face of encountering the incoherent and fragmentary ‘Real’ of their identity during periods of greater social and economic upheaval. In the context of the current crisis, political leaders attempted to reinforce capitalist ideologies through promoting a fantasy of recovery that connected future prosperity with values of financialization and a global ‘free market’, as is borne out in their public statements following this event. Critically, this points to the importance of ‘traversing’ these fantasies in order to break free from desires for renewal in favour of those emphasizing transformation.     

Gambling and the risk society: the liberalisation and legitimation crisis of gambling in the Netherlands

The liberalisation of gambling is associated with gambling addiction; thus gambling markets can be interpreted in line with Ulrich Beck's thesis of the ‘risk society’. This article analyses the dynamics of the risk society in the case of Dutch gambling markets. It is argued that a paradigm shift relative to gambling policy—from the ‘alibi model’ to the ‘risk model’—has created a legitimation crisis of gambling policy in the Netherlands. This crisis is characterised by a chain of small but significant adjustments to market forces, justified by changing and often contradictory policy motives. Although gambling markets increasingly tend to be regulated with reference to risks, what exactly constitutes these risks is in many cases controversial. This article highlights the ambiguous nature of the risk society and commercialised gambling.     

The right to be different: Implications for child protection

This paper traces the historical emphasis of defining the disabled child or adult as ‘abnormal’—to be made ‘normal’! Such an emphasis disempowers the child, who comes to believe that his or her difference is as ‘bad’, ‘unacceptable’, and readily allows him or her to be viewed as ‘useless’. Such disabilist attitudes have fostered the belief that child protection services would not be relevant for this child population. The experiences of disabled women are explored, and clear messages emerge that can help us consider the environment of disabilism and the effects of this on disabled children. It helps us to see that, even before the disabled child is abused, his or her experience is one of oppression.     

Strangers asking strange questions? A methodological narrative of researching belonging and identity in English rural communities

This paper emerges from a current research project that examines the relationship between contemporary English rurality and notions of identity and belonging. While this is primarily a methodological narrative we argue that this narrative speaks to an analysis of current rural relations. The paper concerns itself with two key methodological issues that have arisen during the ‘doing’ of the research. First, it examines our own relationship, as ‘outsider’, urban-based researchers, to the rural and the use and/or relevance of our biographies as resources for making ourselves seem less ‘strange’ and for accessing, and being in, rural environments. At the same time as providing us with a map into our micro rural worlds the paper draws on this biographic-research relation in order to problematize notions of homogenous rural identities and polarized rural/urban identities. The second part of the paper argues that who we were/how we were perceived had a relation to what ‘truths’ and accounts we were told by our respondents. More particularly, we show how our use of focus group interviews had a direct role in the rehearsal and presentation of these ‘truths’. Given the current contestations and tensions over what and who ‘the rural’ is, it was clear that those involved in the focus group discussions wanted to give us particular stories that often fell into a consensus pattern of either ‘rural idyll’ or ‘rural crisis’ narratives. Drawing on Simmel's notion of the stranger and focus group data we argue that for these narratives to be told we, as researchers, were ascribed by the group members to shifting positions of intimacy and remoteness.     

Crisis Management by Subjectivation: Toward a Feminist Neo-Gramscian Framework for the Analysis of Europe's Multiple Crisis

The ongoing global crisis not only poses challenges for critical empirical analyses, it also forces us to reconsider central analytical concepts. This paper takes the multiple crisis as a starting point to reconsider notions of (state) power, hegemony, and subjectivation in contemporary crisis management. We discuss recent analyses by feminist and neo-Gramscian scholars, highlight their valuable contributions to a richer understanding of current crisis politics, and argue for their mutual complementarity. Neo-Gramscian perspectives, which productively highlight the current conjuncture's increasing (lack of) hegemonic qualities, need to be confronted with feminist insights regarding the current transformations of gender orders. In combining these approaches, we develop the notion of ‘crisis management by subjectivation’. To illustrate this we refer to the example of Greece: increasingly coercive and authoritarian modes of governance parallel the re-privatization of reproductive work and increasing reliance on gendered division of labor, traditional concepts of privacy, and gendered knowledge of care and the practices associated with it for the reproduction of social cohesion. With the notion of ‘crisis management by subjectivation’ we hence refer to the fact that austerity policies draw on a gendered (re-)allocation and subjective incorporation of social responsibilities as hidden resources of stability and hegemony. The crisis, through its management, is displaced into the gendered subjects themselves.     

A precarious hegemony: neo-liberalism,social struggles,and the end of Lulismo in Brazil

ABSTRACT

Analysis of Brazil’s political and economic crisis tends to emphasize the economic ‘errors’ that President Dilma Rousseff’s Workers’ Party (PT) government inherited from her predecessor Luíz Inácio Lula da Silva. It is clear, however, that political regulation is too narrow a focus to understand the current crisis. Such an explanation is unable to reveal the changes in class structure that took place during the Lula era as well as the effects of the international economic crisis. This article identifies the limits of the Brazilian development model and the main features of Lula’s mode of regulation; analyses the conflicts produced by the neo-liberal regime of accumulation and the Lulista mode of regulation, emphasizing the role of precarious work in the current historical cycle of strikes and popular struggles in Brazil; and, finally, interprets the palace coup promoted by the social forces behind the impeachment of President Rousseff.     

Conversation takes two: understanding interactions with people with dementia

The term ‘person-centred’ underpins dementia policy and approaches to support people with dementia. However, ‘person-centredness’ remains hazy, and words and definitions matter greatly when they are at the heart of defining what happens in people’s lives. Drawing on data from an ongoing project, this article suggests that conversations which include a person with dementia can elucidate how ‘relational’ support is enacted in practice and the implications this can have on our understanding of ‘person-centredness’. Identities are shaped in part through how we speak to people, and how they speak to us. This is particularly pertinent to the aims of ‘person-centredness’. A conversation analytic approach to dementia support may therefore move us towards seeing ‘personhood’ as jointly constructed and reconstructed through interactions with others.     

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.     

Pennies from heaven? Conceptions and earmarking of lottery prize money,

The source of money has been shown to be important for how money is spent. In addition, sudden wealth is often associated with social and psychological risks. This article investigates if conceptions of lottery prize money – as a special kind of money – imply restrictions on how it can be spent. Analysis of interviews with lottery winners shows that interviewees use earmarking of the prize money as a strategy for avoiding the pitfalls associated with a lottery win. Conceptions of lottery prize money as ‘a lot’ or as ‘a little’, as shared or personal, and as an opportunity or a risk, influences the ends for which it is earmarked: for self‐serving spending, a ‘normal’ living standard, paying off loans, saving for designated purposes, or for economic security and independence. Clearly defining and earmarking lottery prize money thus helps lottery winners construe their sudden wealth, not as a risk, but as ‘pennies from heaven.’     

The preponderant causes of the USA banking crisis 2007–08

Scientific research on the banking crisis 2007–08 has answered many important questions according to generally accepted methodological standards. However, there remains at least one outstanding question that has not been answered with methodological accuracy: What caused the severe USA banking crisis 2007–08? To address this question the paper uses a counterfactual definition of ‘cause,’ distinguishes between separable and non-separable causes, and employs a well-posed methodology for the causation analysis of singular events. In addition, first causes and preponderant causes are distinguished. The main result of this paper is that the preponderant causes of the banking crisis 2007–08 were securitization and ignorance.     

Students-as-insurers: rethinking ‘risk’ for disadvantaged young people considering higher education in England

The conventional view since the early 2000s has been that participation in higher education (HE) is a risky pathway for disadvantaged young people in England; the social risk of entering an alien environment combines with the financial risk of rising costs and questionable long-term returns. This riskiness has been constructed as a major barrier to participation. However, national administrative data cast doubt on whether this analysis still holds true. Despite significant rises in tuition fees, the proportion of disadvantaged young people entering HE has continued to rise, with advantaged groups seemingly being more price-sensitive. Data from recent qualitative studies has also suggested that young people are now less attuned to risks. This paper considers whether circumstances in wider society have shifted perceptions of risk. The volatility resulting from the global financial crisis appears to have repositioned HE as a less risky option than early entry to the labour market, especially with more jobs becoming ‘graduate’, while the social risk has declined as HE has diversified. The paper draws on theoretical perspectives from Beck, Boudon, Simon and Kahneman to argue that many disadvantaged young people now view HE as a form of ‘insurance’ against an uncertain future.     

Challenging the spatial politics of the European crisis: nationed narratives and trans-local solidarities in the post-crisis conjuncture

This paper explores the potential for the formation of political solidarities across the spatial divisions being intensified by dominant responses to the European crisis. In doing so, it takes inspiration from Doreen Massey’s thinking around the contested terms on which space and politics are articulated and her engagement with the 2008 crisis through projects such as the Kilburn manifesto. We argue that her book World city powerfully articulates a way of thinking about the spatial politics of a particular conjuncture. The paper traces the ways in which various political interventions in post-crisis politics have been shaped by distinctive ‘nationed’ geographical imaginaries. In particular, we explore how left-wing nationed narratives impact on the discursive horizon and unpack their implications for the articulation of solidarities and emancipatory politics in the context of the ‘European Crisis’. Building on this, we reflect on how trans-local solidarities and alliances might be articulated across socio-spatial divisions and contest the decidedly uneven, racialized, gendered and classed impacts of dominant European politics. We argue that such solidarities and alliances can form a crucial intervention in challenging the dominant spatial politics of crisis and articulating left political strategies on different terms.     

Occupation as refrain: territory and beyond in Occupy London

Emerging with the wider ‘movements of the squares’ of 2011, Occupy London was defined by occupation, and by participants’ negotiation of what occupation meant. Its forms and meanings changed as London’s Occupiers moved between occupied sites, through uprootings by eviction, and into post-eviction attempts to extend Occupy’s territorial politics without the camps. This paper builds on three years of ethnography to consider occupation as an unfolding process, using Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the ‘refrain’. This describes territory in three ‘moments’: the marking of a fragile centre; the stabilization of a bounded ‘home’; and the breaching of boundaries, extending in progressive directions. This rubric is used to analyze London’s occupations, and their defining tension, between an expansive desire to ‘Occupy Everywhere’ – connecting to the wider ‘99 percent’ – and the tendency to become embedded in the protest camp ‘home’. The features of ‘home’ are analyzed using Foucault’s concept of ‘heterotopia’, highlighting an alterity with ambivalent consequences for Occupy’s project. The paper argues that despite a desire to ‘deterritorialize’ occupation, Occupy London stalled in the moment of ‘home’, a consequence of the camp’s status as the ‘common ground’ of an often disparate movement, and the reduction of productive capacities characterizing Occupy’s terminal downswing.     

From risky to responsible: expert knowledge and the governing of community-led rural development

Rural development policy and practice in the ‘advanced’ Western nations is based increasingly on community-led strategies that seek to manage risk and facilitate change at the local level with minimal direct state intervention. It is widely assumed that such development strategies enable local people to have a greater say in transforming the fortunes of their communities, and are therefore a means of empowerment. Drawing upon the literature on governmentality, this paper argues with specific reference to Australia that such a view depoliticises the significant role played by expertise in defining, governing and setting limits on community-led rural development. We suggest that the notion of risk provides a crucial focal point for exploring sociologically the expert knowledge, categories and techniques through which communities are encouraged to think of and manage themselves as ‘self-governing’, ‘empowered’ and ‘responsible’. Additionally, foregrounding the concept of risk enables a critical analysis of the power-knowledge effects of expertise on rural development practice. Thus, we argue through the use of two case studies that while the use of various forms of rural development expertise creates opportunities for some communities, it enhances inequality for others who either fail to conform to the risk-minimising forms of conduct prescribed by experts, or who pursue alternative forms of development. The paper concludes by considering the implications of these arguments for rural development policy and practice in Australia and in other nations.     

The conditions of action,power and the problem of interests

It is argued that the problem of ‘structure and agency’ should be reconsidered as the problem of ‘fate and agency’ for event causation and agency causation). The problem of fate and agency is addressed by outlining a model of the conditions of action derived from work by Giddens and Wright Mills. The model uses the concepts of different forms of knowledge and of the unintended consequence to set up a framework by which it should, in principle, be possible to decide of fate or events. This framework is then used to discuss the problems raised by defining power in terms of interests. It is argued that this definition is inadequate and suggested that a definition of power based on access to resources and causal responsibility for outcomes may be more useful.     

READING THE FUTURE

This essay asks how cultural studies practitioners can begin to found a critical practice that responds to the events of September 11 and their aftermath. Using Theodor Adorno' concept of ‘semi-erudition’, as developed in his analysis of horoscope readers in ‘The Stars Down to Earth’, together with Homi Bhabha' arguments about the links between racial stereotyping and fetishism, it is argued that those working in the discipline of cultural studies must respond to the multi-layered address of the official discourse regarding the ‘war on terrorism’ without becoming complacent about our own position vis-à-vis this discourse. The author connects this argument with a reading of Herman Melville' novella Benito Cereno to discuss the problem of American ‘innocence’ in this context. The concluding question is how, in the face of the current crisis, to begin to practice a truly responsive ‘criticism’, in the full sense of the term, one able to provide a different reading of the present and in turn affect the future.     

Framing the neoliberal canon: resisting the market myth via literary enquiry

ABSTRACT

There is widespread recognition that neoliberal rhetoric about ‘free markets’ stands in considerable tension with ‘really existing’ neoliberalizing processes. However, the oft-utilized analytical distinction between ‘pure’ economic and political theory and ‘messy’ empirical developments takes for granted that neoliberalism, at its core, valorizes free markets. In contrast, the paper explores whether neoliberal intellectuals ever made such an argument. Using Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman as exemplars, our reading of canonical neoliberal texts focuses on author framing gestures, particular understandings of the term ‘science’, techniques of characterization, and constructions of epistemological legitimacy. This enables us to avoid the trap of assuming that these texts are about free markets and instead enquires into their constitution as literary artefacts. As such, we argue that the remaking of states and households rather than the promotion of free markets is at the core of neoliberalism. Our analysis has significant implications. For example, it means that authoritarian neoliberalism is not a departure from but actually more in line with the ‘pure’ neoliberal canon than in the past. Therefore, neoliberalism ought to be critiqued not for its rhetorical promotion of free markets but instead for seeking to reorganize societies in coercive, non-democratic and unequal ways. This also enables us to acknowledge that households are central to resistance to neoliberalism as well as to the neoliberal worldview itself.