scholarly journals On the Unbearable Lightness of John Key

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 143
Author(s):  
Warwick Tie
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
The Self ◽  
Efficient Operation ◽  
Psychological Traits ◽  
Neoliberal Reforms ◽  
Public Figures ◽  
The Social

The neoliberal reforms of the 1980s produced, going into the new millennium, a contradiction within capitalism that is illuminated by the unprecedented popularity of John Key as prime minister. This contradiction concerns an impasse in political economy that develops as a consequence of capital’s inability to create experiences of self required for its own reproduction. In short, the contradiction signals a crisis in the social reproduction of capital, a crisis in the reproduction of capitalist subjectivity. The requirement upon people to become ‘entrepreneurs of the self’ or units of self-actuating ‘human capital’ produces insufficiently coherent experiences of selfhood, accompanied by a widespread development of compensatory states of narcissistic grandiosity. Different social formations produce particular kinds of subjectivity, and come to privilege specific public figures as ideals of the psychological traits favourable to the efficient operation of the prevailing social order. That order, in our case, is neoliberal capital of an increasingly authoritarian populist kind, and Key exemplifies its ideal subject. Resistance to the logics by which a given social order is functioning turns, in part, upon the dislocation of its central figures. Against the individualistic contentedness projected by the figure of Key, a need arises to imagine how a collective, cooperative, subject might form anew in this situation. This essay will move towards Jodi Dean’s discussion of the party form to think through what such a project might entail.  

scholarly journals “Leviathan”, or an essay on the doctrine of the state by T. Hobbes

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (8) ◽  
pp. 26-36
Author(s):  
Vadym Nikolenko
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Life Support ◽  
The State ◽  
Psychological Traits ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
Political Views ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Philosopher ◽  
Legitimate State

The study focuses on individual episodes of the biography, the most notable ideas and main socio-political views of the outstanding English scientist, social philosopher, theorist of the origin of the state – T. Hobbes. On the basis of the classic work “Leviathan”, his backbone thoughts on the processes of state building, the development of a balanced normative and legislative system and specific motives for striving for power are highlighted. In particular, attention is focused on the search by the researcher of the optimal balance between freedom and the duties of a citizen. The aspiration of the classic to a comprehensive study of the most effective mechanism, optimal forms of public administration, primarily for the establishment of stable social order and safety, is noted. The scientist emphasized that an authoritative, sovereign, legitimate state is able to effective cope with the tasks set. In which those in power are obliged to be guided by norms of morality and law. Characterized, according to the researcher, the socio-psychological traits of both average citizens and sovereigns for the full life support of the country.Highlighted his heuristic principles of anthropomorphism, which more metaphorically, expressively detail the likely destructive diseases of the state, among which he considered the lack of frugality and the processes of oligarchization of the socio-political system to be especially unsafe. Scientists emphasized the absolute rejection of corruption, lack of social justice, abuse of power. Thus, the advantages and disadvantages of various forms of government were highlighted, in particular, monarchical, aristocratic, democratic. The scientists himself was an active supporter of absolute monarchy and the unshakable authority of the state. At the same time, he focused not so much on the duties of citizens to the state, as on the duties of state representatives to their citizens, the implementation of which can state structure effective, authoritative and legitimate. At the same time, the contribution of T. Hobbes to the development of the philosophy of law is highlighted. In general, it was emphasized that the English scientist comprehensively substantiated his own thought about the immutability of human nature in the form of manifestations of selfishness, individualism, insatiable appetites, unrestrained passions, and the desire for social change. According to the philosopher, only a just, sovereign, authoritative state is capable of curbing the negative manifestations of human nature. In addition, attention focused on the state-forming nature of his philosophy and the scientist’s significant contribution to the development of the theory of the social contract or the contractual origin of the state is highlighted.

Bangladeshi immigrants’ self-organization and associationism in Venice (Italy)

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-122
Author(s):  
Claudia Mantovan
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
Formal Education ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Home Country ◽  
Local Level ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Organization ◽  
Economic Context ◽  
Personal Variables ◽  
The Social

In Italy, most of the studies on immigrants’ associationism and participation have concentrated on the more formal andstructured aspects. Little research has been done on forms of immigrant self-organization not oriented towards the society in the country of adoption. Drawing on these considerations, this article analyzes the self-organization of Bangladeshi residents in the municipality of Venice considering both their infra-political and their politico-organizational mobilization, seeking relationships between these two spheres of action, identifying transnational bonds, and dynamics linked to the social and political context of their home country. At the same time, the study considers the influence of other factors, such as the social, political and economic context found in the country of immigration (at both national and local level), and also the personal variables that can influence people’s participation, such as gender, generation, social class, amount of time spent in the adopted country, legal status, formal education, human capital, attitudes and personal projects in general.

scholarly journals The Use of Marriage Data to Measure the Social Order in Nineteenth-Century Britain

1998 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Prandy ◽  
W. Bottero
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Strong Relationship ◽  
The Social ◽  
Time Periods ◽  
Very High ◽  
Underlying Dimension

This article describes the construction of a measure of the social order in the nineteenth century, which will subsequently be used as a basis for studying processes of social reproduction (or social mobility). The technique of correspondence analysis is used to map the ordering of groups of occupations in two time periods 1777-1866 and 1867-1913. The data are derived from the occupations at marriage of the groom, his father and his father-in-law (the occupations of brides, unfortunately, being very much under-recorded). Marriage, it is argued, is a socially significant act linking, on average, families that occupy similar positions in the social order and analyses of the patterns of social interaction involved provide a means of determining the nature of the social space within which similarity is defined. The three occupations provide three pair-wise comparisons and each comparison gives a mapping of the row occupations and the column occupations six in all. Since any one of these should provide a measure of the social order, assuming there to be any consistency in such a concept, we would expect that, at both time periods, the result of the analyses would be six closely-related estimates of the same underlying dimension. This is what is found; the inter-correlations are very high. Furthermore, there is a very strong relationship between the measures of the social order constructed for the two time periods. The analyses are presented within a framework that emphasises the value of the procedures used for understanding the nature of measurement in social science.

scholarly journals Outlining a theory of the social and symbolic function of evaluations of education

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. e1467
Author(s):  
Morten Nørholm
Keyword(s):  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Evaluation Research ◽  
Emile Durkheim ◽  
New Public ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Empirical Material

AbstractThe article presents the results of a research project focusing on evaluations of education as a part of a New Public Management in the area of education.The empirical material consists of:- 8 state-sanctioned evaluations of the formal training programs for the positions in a medical field- various texts on evaluations- various examples of Danish evaluation research.A field of producers of Danish evaluation research is constructed as part of a field of power: analogous to the analysed evaluations, Danish evaluation research forms a discourse legitimizing socially necessary administrative interventions. The evaluations and the evaluation research are constructed as parts of a mechanism performing and legitimizing a sorting to an existing social order. The theoretical starting point is from theories, primarily by Émile Durkheim, Pierre Bourdieu and Ulf P. Lundgren.Keywords: evaluation, evaluation of education, social reproduction, New Public Management, societies after the Modern, meritocracy

Music in the Work of Social Reproduction

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 162-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Drott
Keyword(s):  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Historical Materialism ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Current Crisis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Practice Turn ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Shed Light

This article interrogates music’s role in the work of social reproduction by bringing into dialogue two seemingly antithetical approaches to thinking music’s relation to the social. One is historical materialism; the other is work informed by the “practice turn” in music sociology, exemplified by Tia DeNora’s studies of music as a “technology of the self.” By taking seriously the proposition that under certain conditions music may itself function as a technology, and by reframing this proposition along materialist lines, this article aims to shed light on the changing functions music has come to assume in late neoliberalism. In particular, new modalities of digital distribution like streaming, by simultaneously driving down the cost of music and normalizing its therapeutic, prosthetic, and self-regulatory uses, increasingly cast it as a cheap resource that can be harnessed to replenish the cognitive, affective, and/or communicative energies strained by the current crisis of social reproduction.

Decentering Responsibilization: Towards a Nomos of Governmentality in Mexico

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 156-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
R Guy Emerson
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Codes Of Conduct ◽  
The Self ◽  
Civic Responsibility ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Institutional Power ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Individual Participation

Abstract This paper charts the mechanics of civic responsibility in preventing violence. Attention centers on divergent practices of responsibilization in Puebla, Mexico, which emanate from both state rationales associated with citizen security initiatives and from community-based measures that confound such official logics. Situated in the workings of governmentality beyond advanced liberalism, the paper proposes a decentering of responsibilization. This requires two steps. First, analysis returns to governmentality as the intersection of technologies of domination and the self but locates the former in relation to nomos rather than logos. That is, responsibilization occurs not exclusively in relation to codes of conduct consistent with official determinations (logos) but also as a socially developed order that exceeds the political, economic, and rational dimensions of government (nomos). Second, it positions technologies of the self amid Michel Foucault's work on the empiricohistorical construction of care of the self. This is a situated care, wherein a responsible individual emerges from the constituent complexity of the social order and her interdependence with other living forms. Far from an art of government wherein individual participation becomes the corollary to the withdrawal of the state, civic responsibility in Puebla is socially embedded and, therefore, need not align with institutional power.

The Social Market Economy

2019 ◽  
pp. 13-44
Author(s):  
Peter C. Caldwell
Keyword(s):  
Market Economy ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Free Market ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
The Self ◽  
Social Market Economy ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
Social Democrats ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Market

The social market economy was a first key term used in the formation of the Federal Republic of Germany, firstly to describe how a market economy (i.e. capitalism) could contribute to social order, and secondly to suggest that the market alone could not preserve social order but required social supplements. The term was initially associated with the self-described neoliberals (now known as ordoliberals), and justified a return to the free market. Even within this group, however, there were differences about how a market economy could be “social” and what kinds of measures were necessary to make capitalism compatible with social order and democracy. Beyond this group, Social Democrats also adopted similar ideas at the same time. Despite the intentions of the most economically liberal of the ordoliberals, the idea of a social market economy came to include extensive state intervention to preserve social order.

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