a post from Transforming Society: a space where research evidence and critique can create positive social change
In this long read, Roger Brown, author of The Inequality Crisis: The Facts and What We Can Do About It, outlines causes of the Neoliberal turn and shows how it has created vastly increased and unjust social inequality. Crucially, he explains where we need to begin in order to reverse the tide.
In November 1984, at the age of 90, the former Prime Minister, the Earl of Stockton (previously, Mr Harold Macmillan), made his maiden speech in the House of Lords. Besides warning, somewhat presciently, about a growing division of comparative prosperity in the South and an ailing North and Midlands, he asked where the theories of monetarism had really come from:
“Was it America?” he inquired, “Or was it Tibet? It is quite true, many of your Lordships will remember it operating in the nursery. How do you treat a cold? One nanny said, “Feed a cold”; she was a neo-Keynesian. The other said “Starve a cold”; she was a monetarist.
For about thirty years after the end of the Second World War, the advanced economies of the West enjoyed unprecedented prosperity. There were big increases in growth and productivity; there was full or near-full employment; economic inequality fell; home ownership increased; there was a considerable degree of financial stability.
Since the mid-70s we have had much smaller increases in growth, productivity and investment; lower savings and higher debt; higher unemployment, with many leaving the workforce altogether; greater market concentration; greater inequality; falling social mobility; greater poverty; increased fraud and other forms of crime; reduced trust, especially in institutions; and recurrent financial crises. Even the growth in home-ownership has tailed off. Only on inflation has the performance of the major Western economies since the mid-1970s been better than before. So why did most Western countries abandon what, on nearly all economic and social criteria, was a successful model, in favour of one that has been so much less successful?
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Showing posts with label neo-liberalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label neo-liberalism. Show all posts
Wednesday, 30 October 2019
Wednesday, 24 April 2019
I give therefore I am Inequality, consumption and recognition
published in Eurozine (April 2019)
In a system in which inequality, consumption and the desire for recognition correlate, giving plays a central role: gifts express our sense of our own value as much as that of others. Only by legitimizing areas of acknowledgement beyond economic success can we move towards a more inclusive form of giving, argues sociologist Alain Caillé.
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Hazel’s comment:
I did not understand all the words but I understood enough to be fascinated by the underlying idea.
In a system in which inequality, consumption and the desire for recognition correlate, giving plays a central role: gifts express our sense of our own value as much as that of others. Only by legitimizing areas of acknowledgement beyond economic success can we move towards a more inclusive form of giving, argues sociologist Alain Caillé.
Continue reading
Hazel’s comment:
I did not understand all the words but I understood enough to be fascinated by the underlying idea.
Thursday, 8 February 2018
Constructing a national higher education brand for the UK: positional competition and promised capitals
an article by Sylvie Lomer (Northampton University, UK), Vassiliki Papatsiba (University of Sheffield, UK) and Rajani Naidoo (University of Bath, UK) published in Studies in Higher Education Volume 41 Issue 1 (January 2018)
Abstract
This article examines national branding of UK higher education, a strategic intent and action to collectively brand UK higher education with the aim to attract prospective international students, using a Bourdieusian approach to understanding promises of capitals.
We trace its development between 1999 and 2014 through a sociological study, one of the first of its kind, from the ‘Education UK’ and subsumed under the broader ‘Britain is GREAT’ campaign of the Coalition Government.
The findings reveal how a national higher education brand is construed by connecting particular representations of the nation with those of prospective international students and the higher education sector, which combine in the brand with promises of capitals to convert into positional advantage in a competitive environment.
The conceptual framework proposed here seeks to connect national higher education branding to the concept of the competitive state, branded as a nation and committed to the knowledge economy.
Abstract
This article examines national branding of UK higher education, a strategic intent and action to collectively brand UK higher education with the aim to attract prospective international students, using a Bourdieusian approach to understanding promises of capitals.
We trace its development between 1999 and 2014 through a sociological study, one of the first of its kind, from the ‘Education UK’ and subsumed under the broader ‘Britain is GREAT’ campaign of the Coalition Government.
The findings reveal how a national higher education brand is construed by connecting particular representations of the nation with those of prospective international students and the higher education sector, which combine in the brand with promises of capitals to convert into positional advantage in a competitive environment.
The conceptual framework proposed here seeks to connect national higher education branding to the concept of the competitive state, branded as a nation and committed to the knowledge economy.
Thursday, 8 June 2017
Welfare rights, self-help and social enterprise: Unpicking neoliberalism’s mess
an article by Jessica Gerrard (University of Melbourne, Australia) published in Journal of Sociology Volume 53 Issue 1 (March 2017)
Abstract
Neoliberalism is often represented as a fundamental intrusion of individualism into post-war welfare policy settlements. This article seeks to unpick this understanding through a case study of the intersections between the welfare rights and self-help approaches of the homeless and community sectors in the 1970s and 1980s, and the emergence of social enterprise and The Big Issue in the 1990s.
First, I outline the development of a dedicated ‘homeless sector’ in the 1970s.
Second, the ways in which this sector developed in relation to challenges to state authority in social welfare is examined.
Finally, I explore the discursive intersections between the critiques of the welfare state, and the rise of neoliberalism and social enterprise.
I suggest the emergence of social enterprise is emblematic of wider claims to individual agency, while also interwoven with the rise of neoliberalism and the capitalist recuperation of self-help and welfare rights challenges to state strategies.
Abstract
Neoliberalism is often represented as a fundamental intrusion of individualism into post-war welfare policy settlements. This article seeks to unpick this understanding through a case study of the intersections between the welfare rights and self-help approaches of the homeless and community sectors in the 1970s and 1980s, and the emergence of social enterprise and The Big Issue in the 1990s.
First, I outline the development of a dedicated ‘homeless sector’ in the 1970s.
Second, the ways in which this sector developed in relation to challenges to state authority in social welfare is examined.
Finally, I explore the discursive intersections between the critiques of the welfare state, and the rise of neoliberalism and social enterprise.
I suggest the emergence of social enterprise is emblematic of wider claims to individual agency, while also interwoven with the rise of neoliberalism and the capitalist recuperation of self-help and welfare rights challenges to state strategies.
Tuesday, 9 July 2013
Post-secular schooling: freedom through faith or diversity in community
an article by Jacqueline Elizabeth Watson (University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK) published in Cambridge Journal of Education Volume 43 Issue 2 (June 2013)
Abstract
Post-secularism and neo-liberalism have converged in education policy and theory to generate a new enthusiasm for faith schools, along with criticism of the publicly-funded common or community school.
However, in a post-secular social context, where religious and spiritual pluralism exponentially increases, and belief positions are both polarised and syncretised, the democratic notion of the common or community school appears even more crucial to address community understanding. There need to be strong reasons, therefore, for abandoning the common or community school in favour of faith schools.
This article presents a critique of recent key philosophical defences of the public funding of faith schools, put forward by Richard Pring and Harry Brighouse, and by the Christian educationalist, Trevor Cooling. It also gives support to Michael Fielding and Peter Moss’ arguments for radicalising and reforming the common school, to enable it to be a community for understanding in an increasingly challenging post-secular environment.
Abstract
Post-secularism and neo-liberalism have converged in education policy and theory to generate a new enthusiasm for faith schools, along with criticism of the publicly-funded common or community school.
However, in a post-secular social context, where religious and spiritual pluralism exponentially increases, and belief positions are both polarised and syncretised, the democratic notion of the common or community school appears even more crucial to address community understanding. There need to be strong reasons, therefore, for abandoning the common or community school in favour of faith schools.
This article presents a critique of recent key philosophical defences of the public funding of faith schools, put forward by Richard Pring and Harry Brighouse, and by the Christian educationalist, Trevor Cooling. It also gives support to Michael Fielding and Peter Moss’ arguments for radicalising and reforming the common school, to enable it to be a community for understanding in an increasingly challenging post-secular environment.
Thursday, 27 December 2012
Higher education governance: a critical mapping of key themes and issues
an article by Ronald G. Sultana (Euro-Mediterranean Centre for Educational Research, University of Malta) published in European Journal of Higher Education Volume 2 Issue 4 (December 2012)
Abstract
Using the lenses and theoretical frameworks provided by social science, this article highlights some of the central debates concerning higher education governance, within a perspective that privileges the relation between the state and the citizen as mediated by the institution of the university.
The article begins by interrogating the meaning of governance, focusing on demographic, ideological, economic and cultural factors that have an impact not only on the pervasiveness of governance as a focus for research and debate, but also on the way it is defined.
Key trends in – and emerging models as well as instruments of – higher education governance are identified, laying bare some of the local, regional and global forces that are shaping higher education practices. Opting for ‘critical’ over ‘liberal’ models of the university, the article argues for forms of governance that nurture public intellectuals who challenge and disrupt the reproduction of power.
Universities can thus both serve and scrutinize the society they form part of and that supports them, becoming laboratories for democracy that model, in miniature, the kinds of social relations that ought to prevail beyond the confines of the campus.
Abstract
Using the lenses and theoretical frameworks provided by social science, this article highlights some of the central debates concerning higher education governance, within a perspective that privileges the relation between the state and the citizen as mediated by the institution of the university.
The article begins by interrogating the meaning of governance, focusing on demographic, ideological, economic and cultural factors that have an impact not only on the pervasiveness of governance as a focus for research and debate, but also on the way it is defined.
Key trends in – and emerging models as well as instruments of – higher education governance are identified, laying bare some of the local, regional and global forces that are shaping higher education practices. Opting for ‘critical’ over ‘liberal’ models of the university, the article argues for forms of governance that nurture public intellectuals who challenge and disrupt the reproduction of power.
Universities can thus both serve and scrutinize the society they form part of and that supports them, becoming laboratories for democracy that model, in miniature, the kinds of social relations that ought to prevail beyond the confines of the campus.
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