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The global and gendered dimensions of citizenship, community and ‘cohesion’
Abstract
In this article we draw upon both critical and feminist international political economy (IPE) approaches in order to interrogate processes of change effecting specific localities in the context of neoliberal global restructuring. We give a closer focus to our interest in the global/local nexus by concentrating on issues of citizenship, community and discourse and practice on community cohesion. After setting out our framework, we develop a critique of community cohesion policies and practices in contemporary Britain. We then briefly review some of the current literature on gender and citizenship paying particular attention to how issues of material inequality, poverty and exclusion currently figure in academic debates. We conclude that gender inequality must be taken seriously if strong and cohesive communities are to be realised and that there is a need for further research that connects critical and feminist IPE to emerging critical literatures on community and citizenship.
This article develops an understanding of the internationalisation of the state, inspired by critical approaches to state theory, regulation theory and the concept of scale which was developed in critical geography. International state apparatuses and the integral state – in an Gramscian sense – are analysed with the concept of a „material condensation of societal power relations of second order“. The example of international environmental politics is briefly developed and some open questions for research and emancipatory politics are formulated.
When the nation-state loses many of its traditional powers, Daniele Archibugi argues, democracy requires a cosmopolitan political authority above it. But current 'humanitarian' interventions do not fulfil such higher norms-they betray them, as the self-arrogated prerogatives of the few.
The relationship of paid work and care to citizenship is a central issue in feminist citizenship theory, echoing the longstanding dilemma between ‘equality’ or ‘difference’-based claims to full citizenship. The implications for feminist politics are discussed in the UK context where such politics can be characterized as a pendulum swinging away from an ‘equality’ towards a ‘difference’ model, in reaction to New Labour’s fetishism of paid work. The article explores the dilemmas this raises. It proposes an alternative model, which promotes both a more equitable gendered distribution of time and work (paid and unpaid) and also a more balanced way of life, which allows women and men time just to be. Social policies, it is argued, are crucial to the achievement of such a model.
Contemporary Economic Sociology closely examines critical and contemporary issues in the sociology of economic life. Bringing together a range of theoretical perspectives, Fran Tonkiss examines major shifts in the organization of economy and society - from the politics of globalization to the cultural economy, social exclusion and the 'end' of class. This new volume is organized around three core themes (globalization, production and inequality) and answers the questions: • how are transnational processes re-making contemporary economies? • can capitalist globalization be governed or resisted? • do class relations still shape people's social identities? • how can we think about inequality in national and international contexts? Key changes in each of these domains raise new challenges for analyzing social and economic relations, power, agency and identity. Setting these changes in a transnational context, this book examines how these issues are being re-shaped in contemporary societies, and explores competing frameworks for understanding such changes. Drawing on arguments from economic sociology, politics and policy studies, political economy and critical geography, the text focuses on both conceptual approaches to the social study of the economy, and trans-national processes of social and economic restructuring. The arguments provide a critical overview of current concerns for economic sociology, and extend the boundaries of the discipline to a new set of questions. The text is particularly relevant to undergraduate and graduate students and scholars in the fields of economic and political sociology, politics and government, geography, economics and international relations.
Abstract
To what extent has citizenship been transformed under the New Labour government to include women as equal citizens? This chapter will examine New Labour’s record in terms of alternative conceptions of citizenship: a model based on equal obligations to paid work, a model based on recognising care and gender difference, and a model of universal citizenship, underpinning equal expectations of care work and paid work with rights to the resources needed for individuals to combine both. It will argue that, while New Labour has signed up to the EU resolution on work-life balance, which includes commitment to a ‘new social contract on gender’, and has significantly increased resources for care, obligations to work are at the heart of New Labour ideas of citizenship, with work conceived as paid employment: policies in practice have done more to bring women into employment than men into care. Women’s citizenship is still undermined – though less than under earlier governments - by these unequal obligations and their consequences in social rights.
Women’s employment is on the increase throughout Europe, and more women are going into managerial and professional ocupations. These changes are both cause and consequence of wider changes in the family, relations between the sexes, and social attitudes more generally. However, differences in national policies and attitudes mean that trends in women’s employment show considerable variation across Europe. Restructuring Gender Relations and Employment investigates the differences in women’s employment across Europe and explores the possibilities and limits of structural change and development. The book seeks to develop a new framework for the investigation of the changing mosaic of employment, family lives, and gender relations in contemporary Europe.
This is certainly not the first contribution to address the nature of Critical Theory, nor the first to address the necessarily feminist character of Critical Theory. Given that most of the writing concerned with the latter has gone largely unheard in much of IR and IPE scholarship, it seems appropriate to address this subject again. In 1985, Nancy Fraser, in her seminal piece ‘What’s Critical about Critical Theory? The Case of Habermas and Gender’, engaged with Habermas’s conceptualization of distinct logics of symbolic and natural reproduction relating to the spheres of life-world and system-world as crucial to his Critical Theory. Fraser exposed these distinctions as conceptually inadequate and potentially ideological, highlighting the ‘dual aspect’ of both spheres and logics. She showed how Habermas’s logic potentially:
directs attention away from the fact that the household, like the paid workplace, is a site of labor, albeit of unremunerated and often unrecognized labor. Likewise, it does not make visible the fact that in the paid workplace, as in the household, women are assigned to, indeed ghettoized in, distinctively feminine, service-oriented and often sexualized occupations. Finally, it fails to focalize the fact that in both spheres women are subordinated to men.
(Fraser, 1985, p. 107)
The notion of social cohesion is widely used to discuss current economic, social, and political situations. It lacks a clear definition, however. This article's first section reviews some of the ways that social cohesion is used, while cautioning against falling back into nostalgia for a supposedly "golden age." A second section provides a discussion of the reasons why social cohesion is on the agenda in a time of globalization and neo-liberalism. The third section briefly raises some links between social cohesion and culture. The final section, by way of conclusion, raises the following two queries: How can social cohesion be maintained? Can there be "too much" social cohesion? Résumé: On a souvent recours à la notion de cohésion sociale pour discuter de situations économiques, sociales et politiques courantes. Le sens donné à cette notion n'est toutefois pas très clair. Pour le clarifier, cet article passe tout d'abord en revue quelques-unes des manières dont a été employé la notion de « cohésion sociale » dans le passé, tout en évitant de tomber dans la nostalgie d'un prétendu âge d'or de la cohésion sociale. La deuxième partie explore les raisons pour lesquelles la question de la cohésion sociale est évoquée à l'ère de la mondialisation et du néolibéralisme. La troisième partie traite brièvement de liens entre la cohésion sociale et la culture. La dernière partie, en guise de conclusion, pose les deux questions suivantes: comment peut-on maintenir la cohésion sociale et peut-il y avoir « trop » de cohésion sociale?
Over the past 20 years or so, India, China, and the rest of East Asia experienced fast economic growth and falls in the poverty rate, Latin America stagnated, and the former Soviet Union, Central and Eastern Europe, and sub-Saharan Africa regressed. But what are the net trends? The neoliberal argument says that world poverty and income inequality fell over the past two decades for the first time in more than a century and a half, thanks to the rising density of economic integration across national borders. The evidence therefore confirms that globalization in the context of the world economic regime in place since the end of Bretton Woods generates more "mutual benefit" than "conflicting interests." This article questions the empirical basis of the neoliberal argument.
1. The Decline of the Male Breadwinner: Explanations and Interpretations 2. Obligations and Autonomy in Social Welfare 3. Dual Breadwinners: Between State and Market 4. The Modernization of Family and Motherhood in Western Europe 5. Women, Men And Non-Standard Employment: Recent Developments in the Sexual Division of Breadwinning and Caregiving in Germany, Italy and the UK 6. Attitudes, Women's Employment and the Changing Domestic Division of Labour: A Cross-National Analysis 7. Employment, Careers and Families: The Significance of Choice and Constraint in Women's Lives 8. Gender, Occupational Feminisation and Reflexivity: A Cross-National Perspective 9. The Restructuring of Gender Relations Within the Medical Professions: Theoretical and Empirical Implications 10. Discussion and Conclusions
This article focuses on contemporary gendered politics of migration and belonging in Britain. The article starts with an examination of migration and the construction of boundaries in Europe and, more specifically, the gendered implications of recent immigration policies (labour, family, asylum) and the gendered nature of the notion of "secure borders" as well as that of "safe haven" in the UK White Paper. In particular, we address and problematize notions of belonging and "social cohesion" which occupy a central conceptual plank in this construction and consider how this relates to wider debates in contemporary Britain. Our concluding remarks raise central issues of debate with which the struggles against racism and feminism should engage. We stress the importance of intersectionality to such an analysis.
This paper discusses the recurrence and the recurrent limitations of liberalism as a general discourse, strategy, and regime. It then establishes a continuum of neoliberalism ranging from a project for radical system transformation from state socialism to market capitalism, through a basic regime shift within capitalism, to more limited policy adjustments intended to maintain another type of accumulation regime and its mode of regulation. These last two forms of neoliberalism are then related to a broader typology of approaches to the restructuring, rescaling, and reordering of accumulation and regulation in advanced capitalist societies: neoliberalism, neocorporatism, neostatism, and neocommunitarianism. These arguments are illustrated in the final part of the paper through a critique of the World Report on the Urban Future 21 (World Commission 2000), both as an explicit attempt to promote flanking and supporting measures to sustain the neoliberal project on the urban scale and as an implicit attempt to naturalize that project on a global scale.
Social cohesion has become a magic bullet that policy makers imagine will rescue communities from the ravages of the market. Behind the apparent cohesiveness of rural community, however, lies another reality. This article examines characteristics of social cohesion in two rural communities in Saskatchewan. Although new forms of cohesion are emerging, these communities are riven with cleavages along multiple axes. Some of these local divisions appear to be deepening with global and regional processes of socioeconomic transformation. Long-term crises lead to strategies and solutions that precipitate new problems. Ongoing practices of inclusion and exclusion affect the possibilities of development in these communities.
Clarifying Intimate InequalitiesIn Search of Intimate CitizenshipThe Postmodernization of Intimacies in Rich Worlds: Choice, Change, and ConflictIntimacies, Traditionalism and Inequality in Low-income SocietiesChoice and InequalitiesThe Clash of Intimacies: The Case of Same-sex RelationsIntimate Citizenship in an Unjust World
The paper focuses on the discourses, recommendations and programmes for facilitating community cohesion in the UK as recorded on the pages of an archive of documents such as: The Community Cohesion Review Team Report (2001), The Bradford District Race Review (2001) and The Local Government Association's Guidance on Community Cohesion (2002). These documents were commissioned in relation to the disturbances in the city of Bradford and in the towns of Oldham and Burnley in the north of England in the spring and summer of 2001. The facilitation of community cohesion, it shall be revealed in this paper, is a rather sociological enterprise involving the problematization and modification of the forms of sociation in communities and especially the structures of interaction between different communities. Community, civil society and social capital are central to this community cohesion discourse, and the towns of Oldham, Burnley and the city of Bradford are at the epicentre of this unfolding social project of attempting to alleviate disorder, disharmony and discord in these areas characterized by multi-ethnic, multi-faith and multi-cultural communities.
Full-text of this article is not available in this e-prints service. This article was originally published [following peer-review] in Critical Social Policy, published by and copyright Sage. ‘Community cohesion’ is widely regarded as the ‘new’ framework governing race relations policy in the UK. It emerged in government discourse following the civil disturbances that occurred in several northern UK towns in 2001, and has rapidly become absorbed within local government and related organizations to replace previous attempts of multiculturalism. This paper examines several key characteristics of this agenda. In particular, I explore ‘slippages’ in language within and around discourses of ‘community cohesion’. I demonstrate how ‘community’ is central to the community cohesion agenda, and suggest that whilst the concept of ‘community’ is highly ambiguous, it has continuing resonance in New Labour policymaking. The concept of ‘community’ has particular implications for processes of race and gender. Talking about ‘communities’ enables for language to become deracialized, whilst at the same time the language of community cohesion draws upon earlier discourses of assimilation through notions of ‘integration’. The community cohesion agenda is also gendered, and as suggested in this paper, has specific implications for women and the construction of ‘cultures’.
This radical new analysis of international politics reveals the crucial role of women in implementing governmental foreign policies, be it Soviet Glasnost, Britain's dealings in the EEC, or the NATO alliance. Cynthia Enloe pulls back the curtain on the familiar scenes - governments restricting imported goods, bankers negotiating foreign loans, soldiers serving overseas - and shows that the real landscape is less exclusively male. "Bananas, Beaches and Bases" shows how thousands of women tailor their marriages to fit the demands of state secrecy; how foreign policy would grind to a halt without secretaries to handle money transfers or arms shipments; and how women are working in hotels and factories around the world in order to service their governments' debts. Enloe also challenges common assumptions about what constitutes "international politics."She explains, for example, how turning tacos and sushi into bland fast foods affects relations between affluent and developing countries, and why a multinational banana company needs the brothel outside its gates. And she argues that shopping at Benneton, wearing Levis, working as a nanny (or employing one) or planning a vacation are all examples of foreign policy in action. Bananas, Beaches and Bases does not ignore our curiosity about arms dealers, the President's men or official secrets. But it shows why these conventional clues are not sufficient for understanding how the international political system works. In exposing policymakers' reliance on false notions of "feminity" and "masculinity," Enloe dismantles a seemingly overwhelming world system, exposing it to be much more fragile and open to change than we are usually led to believe.
Seen in historical perspective the main economic predicaments of the present world (such as poverty, inequality, backwawardness) appear in a somewhat different light than in many current discussions, especially by sociologists, radical economists and political scientits. In the present paper the achievements of the modern age, and in particular of the post-World War II period, are considered in the perspective of economic and demographic history, and in their connection with the contemporary system of production and of international relations. Some considerations concerning future possible developments conclude the paper.
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