Josien Arts
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781447340010
- eISBN:
- 9781447340164
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781447340010.003.0010
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, Public and Welfare
This chapter shows the differences between local welfare-to-work programmes in the Netherlands in terms of the ways in which social assistance recipients are directed towards paid labour: through ...
More
This chapter shows the differences between local welfare-to-work programmes in the Netherlands in terms of the ways in which social assistance recipients are directed towards paid labour: through pressing, repressing and accommodating modes of governing. Based on 13-month ethnographic research in three Dutch social assistance offices, this chapter argues, first, that the observed local differences result from decentralisation of policy design and implementation as well as increased discretionary power for case managers. Second, that the different local practices can be understood as varieties of neoliberal paternalism legitimised through various forms of stigmatisation of social assistance recipients that leave little room for them to revolt against disfunctioning policy and wrongful treatment. Third, by means of using the republican theory of non-domination, this chapter argues that the observed local differences (between as well as within municipalities) and limited room for social assistance recipients to voice their concerns indicate that Dutch welfare-to-work policies work partly in arbitrary ways and are insufficiently democratically controlled.Less
This chapter shows the differences between local welfare-to-work programmes in the Netherlands in terms of the ways in which social assistance recipients are directed towards paid labour: through pressing, repressing and accommodating modes of governing. Based on 13-month ethnographic research in three Dutch social assistance offices, this chapter argues, first, that the observed local differences result from decentralisation of policy design and implementation as well as increased discretionary power for case managers. Second, that the different local practices can be understood as varieties of neoliberal paternalism legitimised through various forms of stigmatisation of social assistance recipients that leave little room for them to revolt against disfunctioning policy and wrongful treatment. Third, by means of using the republican theory of non-domination, this chapter argues that the observed local differences (between as well as within municipalities) and limited room for social assistance recipients to voice their concerns indicate that Dutch welfare-to-work policies work partly in arbitrary ways and are insufficiently democratically controlled.
Gul Ozyegin
- Published in print:
- 1937
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814762349
- eISBN:
- 9780814762356
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814762349.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
As Turkey pushes for its place in the global pecking order and embraces neoliberal capitalism, the nation has seen a period of unprecedented shifts in political, religious, and gender and sexual ...
More
As Turkey pushes for its place in the global pecking order and embraces neoliberal capitalism, the nation has seen a period of unprecedented shifts in political, religious, and gender and sexual identities. This book shows how this social transformation in Turkey is felt most strongly among its young people, eager to surrender to the seduction of sexual modernity, but also longing to reman attached to traditional social relations, identities and histories. Engaging a wide array of upwardly-mobile young adults, Ozyegin links the biographies of individuals with the biography of a nation, revealing their creation of conflicted identities in a country which has existed uneasily between West and East, modern and traditional, and secular and Islamic. For these young people sexuality, gender expression, and intimate relationships in particular serve as key sites for reproducing and challenging patriarchy and paternalism that was hallmark of earlier generations. As the book evocatively shows, the quest for sexual freedom and an escape frpm patriarchal constructions of selfless femininity and protective masculinity promise both personal transformations and profound sexual guilt and anxiety. A poignant and original study, the book presents a snapshot of cultural change on the eve of rapid globalization in the Muslim world.Less
As Turkey pushes for its place in the global pecking order and embraces neoliberal capitalism, the nation has seen a period of unprecedented shifts in political, religious, and gender and sexual identities. This book shows how this social transformation in Turkey is felt most strongly among its young people, eager to surrender to the seduction of sexual modernity, but also longing to reman attached to traditional social relations, identities and histories. Engaging a wide array of upwardly-mobile young adults, Ozyegin links the biographies of individuals with the biography of a nation, revealing their creation of conflicted identities in a country which has existed uneasily between West and East, modern and traditional, and secular and Islamic. For these young people sexuality, gender expression, and intimate relationships in particular serve as key sites for reproducing and challenging patriarchy and paternalism that was hallmark of earlier generations. As the book evocatively shows, the quest for sexual freedom and an escape frpm patriarchal constructions of selfless femininity and protective masculinity promise both personal transformations and profound sexual guilt and anxiety. A poignant and original study, the book presents a snapshot of cultural change on the eve of rapid globalization in the Muslim world.
Katherine Fusco and Nicole Seymour
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780252041242
- eISBN:
- 9780252050107
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252041242.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Kelly Reichardt is the first book-length study of contemporary filmmaker Kelly Reichardt. This book argues that Reichardt’s process-based slow cinema captures the “emergent” quality of contemporary, ...
More
Kelly Reichardt is the first book-length study of contemporary filmmaker Kelly Reichardt. This book argues that Reichardt’s process-based slow cinema captures the “emergent” quality of contemporary, neoliberal emergencies such as global warming and economic precarity. The book positions Reichardt’s filmmaking in relation to contemporary American independent cinema, the international slow cinema movement, and the tradition of European neorealism. Drawing from these lineages, Reichardt’s cinema emphasizes the local effects of global catastrophes and represents crises as everyday experiences that are slow in unfolding. In this way, the book argues that Reichardt challenges the cinema’s tendency to spectacularize disaster. She makes this critique both through her films’ pacing and her tendency to work with the traditions of genre film, only to deflate their most thrilling elements to reveal what has been termed the slow violence of our postindustrial moment. Additionally, the book considers Reichardt’s frequently thin characterization of her protagonists, arguing that the underdrawn and often unlikeable characters work to challenge audience identification and the expectations that victims of emergency should be especially deserving or empathetic. In chapters that examine Reichardt’s earliest film, her four Oregon-centric films, and her experimental short films, Kelly Reichardt establishes Reichardt as a crucial voice in American independent film, one committed to documenting the challenges of the twenty-first century.
Less
Kelly Reichardt is the first book-length study of contemporary filmmaker Kelly Reichardt. This book argues that Reichardt’s process-based slow cinema captures the “emergent” quality of contemporary, neoliberal emergencies such as global warming and economic precarity. The book positions Reichardt’s filmmaking in relation to contemporary American independent cinema, the international slow cinema movement, and the tradition of European neorealism. Drawing from these lineages, Reichardt’s cinema emphasizes the local effects of global catastrophes and represents crises as everyday experiences that are slow in unfolding. In this way, the book argues that Reichardt challenges the cinema’s tendency to spectacularize disaster. She makes this critique both through her films’ pacing and her tendency to work with the traditions of genre film, only to deflate their most thrilling elements to reveal what has been termed the slow violence of our postindustrial moment. Additionally, the book considers Reichardt’s frequently thin characterization of her protagonists, arguing that the underdrawn and often unlikeable characters work to challenge audience identification and the expectations that victims of emergency should be especially deserving or empathetic. In chapters that examine Reichardt’s earliest film, her four Oregon-centric films, and her experimental short films, Kelly Reichardt establishes Reichardt as a crucial voice in American independent film, one committed to documenting the challenges of the twenty-first century.
Judah Schept
- Published in print:
- 1942
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479810710
- eISBN:
- 9781479802821
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479810710.003.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Law, Crime and Deviance
Progressive Punishment begins with an early and disorienting moment from Schept’s field research, when he first encountered a local official criticizing the prison industrial complex and calling for ...
More
Progressive Punishment begins with an early and disorienting moment from Schept’s field research, when he first encountered a local official criticizing the prison industrial complex and calling for significant local carceral expansion. The chapter uses this seeming contradiction as a point of departure for discussing several foundational elements of the book. First, the chapter discusses the ways that carceral expansion in Bloomington fits into and complicates the national picture of mass incarceration. Building on that discussion, the chapter then introduces a central element of the book’s theoretical framework: carceral habitus, or the ways that neoliberal policies and logics structured community dispositions, including those that appeared to reject incarceration. The book uses carceral habitus as a way to reconcile the power of the neoliberal carceral state to structure its own reproduction with the ways communities filter dominant logics of imprisonment to fit particular political and cultural contexts. Finally, the Introduction discusses the importance of ethnography attuned to the structural and historical production of local events and dispositions.Less
Progressive Punishment begins with an early and disorienting moment from Schept’s field research, when he first encountered a local official criticizing the prison industrial complex and calling for significant local carceral expansion. The chapter uses this seeming contradiction as a point of departure for discussing several foundational elements of the book. First, the chapter discusses the ways that carceral expansion in Bloomington fits into and complicates the national picture of mass incarceration. Building on that discussion, the chapter then introduces a central element of the book’s theoretical framework: carceral habitus, or the ways that neoliberal policies and logics structured community dispositions, including those that appeared to reject incarceration. The book uses carceral habitus as a way to reconcile the power of the neoliberal carceral state to structure its own reproduction with the ways communities filter dominant logics of imprisonment to fit particular political and cultural contexts. Finally, the Introduction discusses the importance of ethnography attuned to the structural and historical production of local events and dispositions.
Judah Schept
- Published in print:
- 1942
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479810710
- eISBN:
- 9781479802821
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479810710.003.0002
- Subject:
- Sociology, Law, Crime and Deviance
Following the short introduction to Part 1, Chapter 1 begins the story of local carceral expansion with an examination of the 85-acre site designated to house the justice campus. The site was the ...
More
Following the short introduction to Part 1, Chapter 1 begins the story of local carceral expansion with an examination of the 85-acre site designated to house the justice campus. The site was the former home of the largest color television production plant in the world, owned for decades by the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). RCA was the community’s largest employer at one point but began shifting production to Mexico in the 1960s and ultimately closed the Bloomington plant in 1998. Almost immediately, the county began considering the site for a justice campus. The chapter traces the community’s loss of that plant and subsequent attempt to build the campus as part of broader currents of the neoliberal state, including the geographical movement of capital across scale and space and the rise of the carceral state. As part of this examination, the chapter looks at the municipal growth strategies that created a zone of tax abatements and financing within which the justice campus would have sat. The chapter relies on research from cultural and Marxist geography to discuss the importance of material and symbolic reading of the landscape to consider its telling of history and the way it can be mobilized as an ideological template on which to project a particular vision for the future. The book begins with this history and analysis in order to situate and disturb the "common sense" of carceral expansion.Less
Following the short introduction to Part 1, Chapter 1 begins the story of local carceral expansion with an examination of the 85-acre site designated to house the justice campus. The site was the former home of the largest color television production plant in the world, owned for decades by the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). RCA was the community’s largest employer at one point but began shifting production to Mexico in the 1960s and ultimately closed the Bloomington plant in 1998. Almost immediately, the county began considering the site for a justice campus. The chapter traces the community’s loss of that plant and subsequent attempt to build the campus as part of broader currents of the neoliberal state, including the geographical movement of capital across scale and space and the rise of the carceral state. As part of this examination, the chapter looks at the municipal growth strategies that created a zone of tax abatements and financing within which the justice campus would have sat. The chapter relies on research from cultural and Marxist geography to discuss the importance of material and symbolic reading of the landscape to consider its telling of history and the way it can be mobilized as an ideological template on which to project a particular vision for the future. The book begins with this history and analysis in order to situate and disturb the "common sense" of carceral expansion.
Gul Ozyegin
- Published in print:
- 1937
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814762349
- eISBN:
- 9780814762356
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814762349.003.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
Overviewing transformations in Turkish society since its inception as a republic in 1923, the introduction provides a historical and theoretical frame for understanding the book's principal actors: ...
More
Overviewing transformations in Turkish society since its inception as a republic in 1923, the introduction provides a historical and theoretical frame for understanding the book's principal actors: Turkish youth negotiating the tension between new desires for sexual modernity and neoliberal self-making, and a longing to remain connected to traditional, familial sources of identity. While these young Turks may enact projects of self-making based in global neoliberal ideals of autonomy and self-realization, the introduction argues these projects are shaped by culturally specific forces including gender, class, and, importantly, the continuing centrality of connectivity in the process of self-production in modern Turkey.Less
Overviewing transformations in Turkish society since its inception as a republic in 1923, the introduction provides a historical and theoretical frame for understanding the book's principal actors: Turkish youth negotiating the tension between new desires for sexual modernity and neoliberal self-making, and a longing to remain connected to traditional, familial sources of identity. While these young Turks may enact projects of self-making based in global neoliberal ideals of autonomy and self-realization, the introduction argues these projects are shaped by culturally specific forces including gender, class, and, importantly, the continuing centrality of connectivity in the process of self-production in modern Turkey.
Harry Blustein
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781784992897
- eISBN:
- 9781526104311
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781784992897.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Democratization
The ascent of globalisation captures the sweeping drama of postwar globalisation through intimate portraits of twenty of its key architects. These profiles provide insights into what inspired these ...
More
The ascent of globalisation captures the sweeping drama of postwar globalisation through intimate portraits of twenty of its key architects. These profiles provide insights into what inspired these pioneers of globalisation — the beliefs they each imbibed in their youth, the formative experiences that shaped their ideas and their contributions to the global architecture. Engaging anecdotes and telling personal details, many of which have never been told, enliven each of the stories, as well as the behind-the-scenes dramas that accompanied the creation of institutions such as the World Bank, IMF, UN and World Trade Organization and the informal governance structures that are part of the postwar global architecture. Their legacies are critically examined, both their successes and their disappointments: a global financial system that is fragile and unstable; an international trading system that is unfair; the unintended consequences of largely unregulated transnational capital; and dysfunction that plagues institutions like the European Union and the United Nations. The book ends by examining what implications the flawed architecture may have for the future of globalisation.Less
The ascent of globalisation captures the sweeping drama of postwar globalisation through intimate portraits of twenty of its key architects. These profiles provide insights into what inspired these pioneers of globalisation — the beliefs they each imbibed in their youth, the formative experiences that shaped their ideas and their contributions to the global architecture. Engaging anecdotes and telling personal details, many of which have never been told, enliven each of the stories, as well as the behind-the-scenes dramas that accompanied the creation of institutions such as the World Bank, IMF, UN and World Trade Organization and the informal governance structures that are part of the postwar global architecture. Their legacies are critically examined, both their successes and their disappointments: a global financial system that is fragile and unstable; an international trading system that is unfair; the unintended consequences of largely unregulated transnational capital; and dysfunction that plagues institutions like the European Union and the United Nations. The book ends by examining what implications the flawed architecture may have for the future of globalisation.
Rebecca J. Kinney
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780816697564
- eISBN:
- 9781452955162
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816697564.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Urban and Rural Studies
Beautiful Wasteland critically examines the racial logics embedded in the contemporary stories of Detroit that flow through popular culture, from Internet forums, photography, films, advertising, to ...
More
Beautiful Wasteland critically examines the racial logics embedded in the contemporary stories of Detroit that flow through popular culture, from Internet forums, photography, films, advertising, to news medias, in order to map the extension of the mythology of the frontier in American culture. Through analysing the cross-sections of these cultural locations, the book reveals the continued process of racialization in stories told about the rise, fall, and potential rise again of the city of Detroit. Detroit is indeed a ‘beautiful wasteland’, desirable and distressed in its narrative of ruin. The book is primarily a humanities-based audience. However, it is also interdisciplinary in focus in terms of theoretical and methodological intervention, as the study of the circulation of narratives is always in conversation with other ideas and discourses.Less
Beautiful Wasteland critically examines the racial logics embedded in the contemporary stories of Detroit that flow through popular culture, from Internet forums, photography, films, advertising, to news medias, in order to map the extension of the mythology of the frontier in American culture. Through analysing the cross-sections of these cultural locations, the book reveals the continued process of racialization in stories told about the rise, fall, and potential rise again of the city of Detroit. Detroit is indeed a ‘beautiful wasteland’, desirable and distressed in its narrative of ruin. The book is primarily a humanities-based audience. However, it is also interdisciplinary in focus in terms of theoretical and methodological intervention, as the study of the circulation of narratives is always in conversation with other ideas and discourses.
Harry Blutstein
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781784992897
- eISBN:
- 9781526104311
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781784992897.003.0005
- Subject:
- Political Science, Democratization
At the same time as Keynes was celebrating success at Bretton Woods, neoliberal economist Friedrich Hayek started to publicly campaign against the liberal economic order, in what he called the ‘war ...
More
At the same time as Keynes was celebrating success at Bretton Woods, neoliberal economist Friedrich Hayek started to publicly campaign against the liberal economic order, in what he called the ‘war of ideas.’ He fired the first shots in this war with the publication of The Road to Serfdom, and then established the Mont Pèlerin Society, where he hoped to rally fighters for his war. He turned out to be a poor field general and it looked like the war might be over before it started. Hayek, however, did inspire a young fighter pilot, Antony Fisher, who did have fire in his belly and was keen to face grapeshot in the war of ideas. In 1956, Fisher established the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA). This think tank, together with others modelled on the IEA, helped spread pro-market ideas. The high point of their campaign came when Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were elected, establishing neoliberalism as the new economic orthodoxy. In 1980, Hayek advised Fisher that he needed to seed the world with neoliberal think tanks. The result was the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, which networks over 400 think tanks worldwide and they have helped spread the war of ideas.Less
At the same time as Keynes was celebrating success at Bretton Woods, neoliberal economist Friedrich Hayek started to publicly campaign against the liberal economic order, in what he called the ‘war of ideas.’ He fired the first shots in this war with the publication of The Road to Serfdom, and then established the Mont Pèlerin Society, where he hoped to rally fighters for his war. He turned out to be a poor field general and it looked like the war might be over before it started. Hayek, however, did inspire a young fighter pilot, Antony Fisher, who did have fire in his belly and was keen to face grapeshot in the war of ideas. In 1956, Fisher established the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA). This think tank, together with others modelled on the IEA, helped spread pro-market ideas. The high point of their campaign came when Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were elected, establishing neoliberalism as the new economic orthodoxy. In 1980, Hayek advised Fisher that he needed to seed the world with neoliberal think tanks. The result was the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, which networks over 400 think tanks worldwide and they have helped spread the war of ideas.
Harry Blutstein
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781784992897
- eISBN:
- 9781526104311
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781784992897.003.0016
- Subject:
- Political Science, Democratization
While advances in transport and communications technology drove the first phase of globalisation (1870-1914), it fell prey to short-sighted policies pursued by the major powers. The lesson learned by ...
More
While advances in transport and communications technology drove the first phase of globalisation (1870-1914), it fell prey to short-sighted policies pursued by the major powers. The lesson learned by internationalists, who would assume position of power during the Second World War, was that the postwar order would need to be protected by international institutions and rules. The prologue introduced three phases to the construction of the postwar architecture, around which the book is structured. Part I examines the emergence of the international global order, which saw the construction of the UN, IMF, World Bank and European Union. Next came the neoliberal global order in which the markets for goods, services and capital were opened up. Finally, in response to the unintended consequences of neoliberal globalism, the UN and its agencies worked with transnational corporations to implement policies and programmes to give markets a human face. By the twenty-first century, no single blueprint emerged, and these three models coexisted, sometimes uncomfortably.Less
While advances in transport and communications technology drove the first phase of globalisation (1870-1914), it fell prey to short-sighted policies pursued by the major powers. The lesson learned by internationalists, who would assume position of power during the Second World War, was that the postwar order would need to be protected by international institutions and rules. The prologue introduced three phases to the construction of the postwar architecture, around which the book is structured. Part I examines the emergence of the international global order, which saw the construction of the UN, IMF, World Bank and European Union. Next came the neoliberal global order in which the markets for goods, services and capital were opened up. Finally, in response to the unintended consequences of neoliberal globalism, the UN and its agencies worked with transnational corporations to implement policies and programmes to give markets a human face. By the twenty-first century, no single blueprint emerged, and these three models coexisted, sometimes uncomfortably.
Larry Polivka and Baozhen Luo
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781447340850
- eISBN:
- 9781447340904
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781447340850.003.0009
- Subject:
- Sociology, Gerontology and Ageing
Neoliberal political economies have emerged across the west over the last 40 years. This development has been driven by several forces including public policy regimes that prioritize privatization of ...
More
Neoliberal political economies have emerged across the west over the last 40 years. This development has been driven by several forces including public policy regimes that prioritize privatization of public assets and services, deregulation of the economy, reduced taxes on high incomes and wealth and use of public revenues to bail out corporate entities that are “too big to fail”. This chapter draws on Streeck’s theory of the Consolidation State dominated by corporate priorities. It describes how neoliberal policy priorities, especially privatization, are being implemented in the health and long term care systems in the U.S, and how these are in turn creating the same levels of economic insecurity and precarity in the context of work and retirement over the last 20 plus years.Less
Neoliberal political economies have emerged across the west over the last 40 years. This development has been driven by several forces including public policy regimes that prioritize privatization of public assets and services, deregulation of the economy, reduced taxes on high incomes and wealth and use of public revenues to bail out corporate entities that are “too big to fail”. This chapter draws on Streeck’s theory of the Consolidation State dominated by corporate priorities. It describes how neoliberal policy priorities, especially privatization, are being implemented in the health and long term care systems in the U.S, and how these are in turn creating the same levels of economic insecurity and precarity in the context of work and retirement over the last 20 plus years.
Emma Craddock
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781529205701
- eISBN:
- 9781529205749
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781529205701.003.0004
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy
This chapter explores what motivates and sustains anti-austerity activism within the context of continued austerity. It affirms the centrality of the affective and normative dimensions of political ...
More
This chapter explores what motivates and sustains anti-austerity activism within the context of continued austerity. It affirms the centrality of the affective and normative dimensions of political engagement by demonstrating that anti-austerity activism is motivated and sustained by three core elements; emotion, morality and relationship. Individuals are motivated by an emotional response to perceived injustice combined with normative ideals about how society should be and how we should act in relation to others. They utilise notions of humanity and empathy to combat the dehumanising effect of neoliberal capitalism and its focus on individualism and competition. Participants translate such abstract, universal concepts into concrete, particular actions through a focus on everyday activism and individual choices. Rather than an outright rejection of individualism, participants seek to redefine it in ways that move away from the dominant neoliberal understanding and towards reconciling the individual with the wider collective and common good. Here, activism is conceptualised as a moral duty. Participants therefore suggest that everyone and anyone can and should do activism, with small acts making a difference. This chapter begins to unpick the ways in which activists resist, subvert and sometimes unwittingly reinforce neoliberal capitalism, as well as questioning the problematic distinction drawn between ‘non-activist’ and ‘activist’.Less
This chapter explores what motivates and sustains anti-austerity activism within the context of continued austerity. It affirms the centrality of the affective and normative dimensions of political engagement by demonstrating that anti-austerity activism is motivated and sustained by three core elements; emotion, morality and relationship. Individuals are motivated by an emotional response to perceived injustice combined with normative ideals about how society should be and how we should act in relation to others. They utilise notions of humanity and empathy to combat the dehumanising effect of neoliberal capitalism and its focus on individualism and competition. Participants translate such abstract, universal concepts into concrete, particular actions through a focus on everyday activism and individual choices. Rather than an outright rejection of individualism, participants seek to redefine it in ways that move away from the dominant neoliberal understanding and towards reconciling the individual with the wider collective and common good. Here, activism is conceptualised as a moral duty. Participants therefore suggest that everyone and anyone can and should do activism, with small acts making a difference. This chapter begins to unpick the ways in which activists resist, subvert and sometimes unwittingly reinforce neoliberal capitalism, as well as questioning the problematic distinction drawn between ‘non-activist’ and ‘activist’.
Leigh Gilmore
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780231177146
- eISBN:
- 9780231543446
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231177146.003.0004
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gender Studies
Chapter three examines the historicized women’s life narrative as it migrates into the 21st century, via Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club and television show, to the genres of self-help and redemption ...
More
Chapter three examines the historicized women’s life narrative as it migrates into the 21st century, via Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club and television show, to the genres of self-help and redemption --analyzes how the memoir scandals of the late 1990s were invoked to discredit Rigoberta Menchú’s testimonio, but also focused additional vitriol at women who wrote about incest and sexual violence within families. The chapter goes on to offer an alternative history of the memoir boom to the conventional association of memoir and confessional culture by dating its beginning to self-representational writing by radical women of color, queer activists, and literary innovators in the 1980s, and uses the response to Kathryn Harrison’s memoir, The Kiss, to demonstrate how judgments about women’s credibility operate across legal and cultural courts of public opinion. The chapter further claims Harrison as pivotal episode in the memoir boom that solidified the power of the backlash and made it a formal part of the boom, and identifies further lack of credibility and social authority as James’ Frey’s memoir, A Million Little Pieces, was attacked. The chapter concludes by examining how Elizabeth Gilbert and Cheryl Strayed revived and redefined memoir to feature a traumatized heroine who may evade critique is she is resilient and sexually well-adjustedLess
Chapter three examines the historicized women’s life narrative as it migrates into the 21st century, via Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club and television show, to the genres of self-help and redemption --analyzes how the memoir scandals of the late 1990s were invoked to discredit Rigoberta Menchú’s testimonio, but also focused additional vitriol at women who wrote about incest and sexual violence within families. The chapter goes on to offer an alternative history of the memoir boom to the conventional association of memoir and confessional culture by dating its beginning to self-representational writing by radical women of color, queer activists, and literary innovators in the 1980s, and uses the response to Kathryn Harrison’s memoir, The Kiss, to demonstrate how judgments about women’s credibility operate across legal and cultural courts of public opinion. The chapter further claims Harrison as pivotal episode in the memoir boom that solidified the power of the backlash and made it a formal part of the boom, and identifies further lack of credibility and social authority as James’ Frey’s memoir, A Million Little Pieces, was attacked. The chapter concludes by examining how Elizabeth Gilbert and Cheryl Strayed revived and redefined memoir to feature a traumatized heroine who may evade critique is she is resilient and sexually well-adjusted
Manduhai Buyandelger
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226086552
- eISBN:
- 9780226013091
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226013091.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
When state socialism collapsed in Mongolia and the chaos of neoliberal “shock therapy” took hold, like most other herders throughout the country, the ethnic nomadic Buryats were left without means of ...
More
When state socialism collapsed in Mongolia and the chaos of neoliberal “shock therapy” took hold, like most other herders throughout the country, the ethnic nomadic Buryats were left without means of livelihood on the edge of an impoverished state. Attributing their misfortunes to their ancestral origin spirits, who were suppressed during socialism but now returned to take revenge for forgetting, the Buryats sponsor shamanic rituals in hope of taming these spirits. What results is a gradually unfolding and constantly shifting history of their tragic past. This history is incomplete and unsettling as well as unsettled; acknowledging the spirits seems to allow more to erupt and provoke. Both shamans and clients seek knowledge of how to placate these spirits, much of which was lost to the socialist state’s disruption of the transmission of shamanic practice. As clients search for the most reliable shamans, shamans hustle for recognition through flamboyant rituals of spirit possession. Together they perpetuate the very practices that they aim to tame. Despite the ambiguity of shamanic powers and reality of spirits, the narratives of origin spirits assume life of their own as shamans pitch them simultaneously as communal histories and individual memories. Yet many spirits remain unknown -- with identities and voice lost -- due to centuries of violence. More, revealing the link between gender and memory, female ancestors—absent from genealogical record and forgotten --are prone to turn avaricious and haunt their descendents. Tragic Spirits documents this shamanic proliferation and its context, economics, and gendered politics.Less
When state socialism collapsed in Mongolia and the chaos of neoliberal “shock therapy” took hold, like most other herders throughout the country, the ethnic nomadic Buryats were left without means of livelihood on the edge of an impoverished state. Attributing their misfortunes to their ancestral origin spirits, who were suppressed during socialism but now returned to take revenge for forgetting, the Buryats sponsor shamanic rituals in hope of taming these spirits. What results is a gradually unfolding and constantly shifting history of their tragic past. This history is incomplete and unsettling as well as unsettled; acknowledging the spirits seems to allow more to erupt and provoke. Both shamans and clients seek knowledge of how to placate these spirits, much of which was lost to the socialist state’s disruption of the transmission of shamanic practice. As clients search for the most reliable shamans, shamans hustle for recognition through flamboyant rituals of spirit possession. Together they perpetuate the very practices that they aim to tame. Despite the ambiguity of shamanic powers and reality of spirits, the narratives of origin spirits assume life of their own as shamans pitch them simultaneously as communal histories and individual memories. Yet many spirits remain unknown -- with identities and voice lost -- due to centuries of violence. More, revealing the link between gender and memory, female ancestors—absent from genealogical record and forgotten --are prone to turn avaricious and haunt their descendents. Tragic Spirits documents this shamanic proliferation and its context, economics, and gendered politics.
Kate Parker Horigan
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496817884
- eISBN:
- 9781496817921
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496817884.003.0005
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This chapter examines Tia Lessin and Carl Deal’s 2008 documentary film Trouble the Water. The filmmakers use unique documentary techniques that incorporate narrators’ engagement with the processes of ...
More
This chapter examines Tia Lessin and Carl Deal’s 2008 documentary film Trouble the Water. The filmmakers use unique documentary techniques that incorporate narrators’ engagement with the processes of their story’s publication. The film includes survivor Kim Roberts’ own footage, shot during Katrina on her handheld camera. Kim’s role as documentarian is foregrounded, and in some striking scenes she expresses her awareness about the value of her story and its likelihood of circulating among particular kinds of audiences. The filmmakers successfully integrate survivors’ own critiques of the discourses that typically represent them, and through this and other methods, create what Dominick LaCapra calls “empathic unsettlement.” However, the film’s optimistic conclusion evokes a dominant narrative of racial uplift, with a neoliberal twist that undermines the powerful work the film is otherwise performing.Less
This chapter examines Tia Lessin and Carl Deal’s 2008 documentary film Trouble the Water. The filmmakers use unique documentary techniques that incorporate narrators’ engagement with the processes of their story’s publication. The film includes survivor Kim Roberts’ own footage, shot during Katrina on her handheld camera. Kim’s role as documentarian is foregrounded, and in some striking scenes she expresses her awareness about the value of her story and its likelihood of circulating among particular kinds of audiences. The filmmakers successfully integrate survivors’ own critiques of the discourses that typically represent them, and through this and other methods, create what Dominick LaCapra calls “empathic unsettlement.” However, the film’s optimistic conclusion evokes a dominant narrative of racial uplift, with a neoliberal twist that undermines the powerful work the film is otherwise performing.
Christy Kulz
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781526116178
- eISBN:
- 9781526128430
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526116178.003.0006
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter explores how students navigate and negotiate Dreamfields’ demands from their situated positions. Unlike other research showing how masculinities are often built on displays of resistance ...
More
This chapter explores how students navigate and negotiate Dreamfields’ demands from their situated positions. Unlike other research showing how masculinities are often built on displays of resistance towards school work, Dreamfields makes trying not only acceptable for both boys and girls, but a mandatory requirement. While 'liberation' may bring the benefits of good grades and future success, these benefits come at a cost. Throughout this process students are urged to regard themselves as commodities made better and more valuable through their training as market logic penetrates these young people's lives and their social relationships at an intensely personal level. There is little space for critical thinking, innovation or creativity in the neoliberal school; instead there is obedient reproduction where students, parents and teachers learn to accept that Dreamfields’ approach is the only option.Less
This chapter explores how students navigate and negotiate Dreamfields’ demands from their situated positions. Unlike other research showing how masculinities are often built on displays of resistance towards school work, Dreamfields makes trying not only acceptable for both boys and girls, but a mandatory requirement. While 'liberation' may bring the benefits of good grades and future success, these benefits come at a cost. Throughout this process students are urged to regard themselves as commodities made better and more valuable through their training as market logic penetrates these young people's lives and their social relationships at an intensely personal level. There is little space for critical thinking, innovation or creativity in the neoliberal school; instead there is obedient reproduction where students, parents and teachers learn to accept that Dreamfields’ approach is the only option.
Christy Kulz
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781526116178
- eISBN:
- 9781526128430
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526116178.003.0008
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
Firstly this chapter discusses how Dreamfields’ 'oasis in the desert' allegedly built to transform urban children is changing urban culture in unanticipated ways. Besides grafting cultural capital ...
More
Firstly this chapter discusses how Dreamfields’ 'oasis in the desert' allegedly built to transform urban children is changing urban culture in unanticipated ways. Besides grafting cultural capital onto students, it actively seeks out those who already have the capitals it requires to excel in the education market. Secondly, it explores how race and class are lived out in Dreamfields’ neoliberal regime. Whiteness does not rely on the white subject to be materialised, while the racialised subject is conceptualised through the lens of class. Both pathological blackness and dirty whiteness can be 'lost' through the application of middle-class behaviours, yet this shift requires labour, loss and conformity. Thirdly, the allure of the ‘good life’ acts a powerful tool of neoliberal governance that motivates many parents, students and teachers to willingly embrace Dreamfields’ demands. Finally, the chapter reviews how recent policy developments further centralize education and curtail participation, yet suggests there are cracks appearing in this consensus.Less
Firstly this chapter discusses how Dreamfields’ 'oasis in the desert' allegedly built to transform urban children is changing urban culture in unanticipated ways. Besides grafting cultural capital onto students, it actively seeks out those who already have the capitals it requires to excel in the education market. Secondly, it explores how race and class are lived out in Dreamfields’ neoliberal regime. Whiteness does not rely on the white subject to be materialised, while the racialised subject is conceptualised through the lens of class. Both pathological blackness and dirty whiteness can be 'lost' through the application of middle-class behaviours, yet this shift requires labour, loss and conformity. Thirdly, the allure of the ‘good life’ acts a powerful tool of neoliberal governance that motivates many parents, students and teachers to willingly embrace Dreamfields’ demands. Finally, the chapter reviews how recent policy developments further centralize education and curtail participation, yet suggests there are cracks appearing in this consensus.
Kemi Fuentes-George
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780262034289
- eISBN:
- 9780262333924
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262034289.003.0006
- Subject:
- Environmental Science, Environmental Studies
The conclusion finds that a comparative study of transnational activism underlines the importance of justice claims to global environmental governance. It links debates on international environmental ...
More
The conclusion finds that a comparative study of transnational activism underlines the importance of justice claims to global environmental governance. It links debates on international environmental justice with literature on environmental regime effectiveness and neoliberal ecological economics. When networks generated a consensus, socialized with policymakers and invoked norms consonant with local justice, they were more likely to persuade policymakers. Absent one or more of the variables, conservation projects were implemented poorly, or simply rejected by states. Therefore, issues of fairness or justice go to the heart of effective management. They reflect the important normative questions behind biodiversity management, including what biodiversity consists of, what it is being managed for, and for whom it is being conserved.Less
The conclusion finds that a comparative study of transnational activism underlines the importance of justice claims to global environmental governance. It links debates on international environmental justice with literature on environmental regime effectiveness and neoliberal ecological economics. When networks generated a consensus, socialized with policymakers and invoked norms consonant with local justice, they were more likely to persuade policymakers. Absent one or more of the variables, conservation projects were implemented poorly, or simply rejected by states. Therefore, issues of fairness or justice go to the heart of effective management. They reflect the important normative questions behind biodiversity management, including what biodiversity consists of, what it is being managed for, and for whom it is being conserved.
Thibaut Raboin
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780719099632
- eISBN:
- 9781526121011
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719099632.003.0004
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gay and Lesbian Studies
This chapter is dedicated to the analysis of the state management of refugees. It looks at credibility as a central part of the biopolitics of LGBT asylum, and argues that as a mode of veridiction, ...
More
This chapter is dedicated to the analysis of the state management of refugees. It looks at credibility as a central part of the biopolitics of LGBT asylum, and argues that as a mode of veridiction, credibility is based on a series of sexual ontologies, affects and modes of projection that (re)produce as ‛true’ certain forms of liberal queerness. It suggests that the recognition apparatus not only has the function of excluding (or not) claimants, but also of strengthening the hegemony of liberal queerness as a universal way of being queer in the world. Looking at the debates and criticisms around credibility, the chapter then shows how (1) the assessment of credibility involves a neoliberal discipline of self-presentation that assumes autonomy and self-governance on the part of asylum seekers. It also examines how (2) in the debates around how to best recognise truthful claimants, the state and its critics are engaged in a collective work of gradual improvement of the biopolitical machinery of asylum.Less
This chapter is dedicated to the analysis of the state management of refugees. It looks at credibility as a central part of the biopolitics of LGBT asylum, and argues that as a mode of veridiction, credibility is based on a series of sexual ontologies, affects and modes of projection that (re)produce as ‛true’ certain forms of liberal queerness. It suggests that the recognition apparatus not only has the function of excluding (or not) claimants, but also of strengthening the hegemony of liberal queerness as a universal way of being queer in the world. Looking at the debates and criticisms around credibility, the chapter then shows how (1) the assessment of credibility involves a neoliberal discipline of self-presentation that assumes autonomy and self-governance on the part of asylum seekers. It also examines how (2) in the debates around how to best recognise truthful claimants, the state and its critics are engaged in a collective work of gradual improvement of the biopolitical machinery of asylum.
Manduhai Buyandelger
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226086552
- eISBN:
- 9780226013091
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226013091.003.0004
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
The chapter explores connections among postsocialism, neoliberal capitalism, and shamanism. The author traces the multiple contexts behind current misfortunes by revealing the cumulative ...
More
The chapter explores connections among postsocialism, neoliberal capitalism, and shamanism. The author traces the multiple contexts behind current misfortunes by revealing the cumulative repercussions of the socioeconomic procedures that have been implemented as modernization projects in Mongolia since the advent of socialism in 1921. These include, during socialism, forced collectivization and semi-sedentarization of nomads, and the neoliberal reforms that were pushed by the international community after socialism. The chaos and corruption of privatization in particular, with the inheritance of risks and liabilities that Verdery has noted, led to economic devastation and inequality. The author argues that while these external processes and projects constitute sources of misfortune, they have also transformed the local world itself into an additional source that generates more calamity. The author uses the concept of genealogy to highlight the ways in which shamanic epistemology explains misfortunes not as individual mistakes or karma, but as intimately linked with the life-events of ancestors in longue durée, as part of larger historical processes. At the same time, in everyday life, shamanic competition together with gossip, mistrust, and the assumption of ill-intention by others tend to undo the Buryats’ efforts to deal with misfortune, and in fact exacerbate it.Less
The chapter explores connections among postsocialism, neoliberal capitalism, and shamanism. The author traces the multiple contexts behind current misfortunes by revealing the cumulative repercussions of the socioeconomic procedures that have been implemented as modernization projects in Mongolia since the advent of socialism in 1921. These include, during socialism, forced collectivization and semi-sedentarization of nomads, and the neoliberal reforms that were pushed by the international community after socialism. The chaos and corruption of privatization in particular, with the inheritance of risks and liabilities that Verdery has noted, led to economic devastation and inequality. The author argues that while these external processes and projects constitute sources of misfortune, they have also transformed the local world itself into an additional source that generates more calamity. The author uses the concept of genealogy to highlight the ways in which shamanic epistemology explains misfortunes not as individual mistakes or karma, but as intimately linked with the life-events of ancestors in longue durée, as part of larger historical processes. At the same time, in everyday life, shamanic competition together with gossip, mistrust, and the assumption of ill-intention by others tend to undo the Buryats’ efforts to deal with misfortune, and in fact exacerbate it.
