Suchergebnisse

The distinctly contemporary proliferation of pornography and hate speech poses a challenge to liberalism's traditional ideal of a 'marketplace of ideas' facilitated by state neutrality about the content of speech. This new study argues that the liberal state ought to depart from neutrality to meet this challenge.

Based on in-depth research in Poland and Slovakia, Domesticating Neo-Liberalism addresses how we understand the processes of neo-liberalization in post-socialist cities.: Builds upon a vast amount of new research data; Examines how households try to sustain their livelihoods at particularly dramatic and difficult times of urban transformation; Provides a major contribution to how we theorize the geographies of neo-liberalism; Offers a conclusion which informs discussions of social policy within European Union enlargement.

Efforts to build stable states in Africa have often been conditioned by ideological and policy debates about the right approach for enhancing freedom and social wellbeing. Since independence, African countries have experimented with unorthodox variants of liberalism and socialism. However, neither of these has enhanced African states. This article examines the shift from orthodox neoliberalism in the international approach to state-building in Africa and raises questions about the feasibility of an international development approach that fuses neoliberalism with a human development approach. The article advances the notion of people-centered liberalism as the latest approach to international state-building in war-torn African countries. It uses the internationally-driven postwar reconstruction plans for Sierra Leone and Liberia to demonstrate people-centered liberalism.

Examines the transformation of Karl Marx's legal views during 1842/43 in terms of three phases: (1) Marx adopted a natural law, juridical position in which he conceived of the law as grounded, not on custom, but on a higher, universal & historical law. (2) Due to various influences in his life at this time, he quickly moved toward a political phase, in which he viewed the law, not in terms of nature or reason, but in terms of political society. (3) In an antijuridical phase, Marx refuted the language of law altogether, to argue that the languages of politics & the law must be abandoned in favor of materialism. It is suggested that the second phase is preferable to the other two, because it offers a better model of the relationship between language, law, & politics. Contemporary scholars may find valuable resources in Marx's writings during this phase for critiques of his later antijuridical view. 32 References. D. Ryfe

"The story of the dramatic postwar struggle over the proper role of citizens and government in American society. In the 1960s and 70s, an insurgent attack on traditional liberalism took shape in America, built on new ideals of citizen advocacy and the public interest. Environmentalists, social critics, and consumer advocates like Rachel Carson, Jane Jacobs, Ralph Nader, and others crusaded against what they saw as a misguided and often corrupt government. Drawing energy from civil rights protests and opposition to the Vietnam War, the new citizens movement drew legions of followers and scored major victories, disrupting plans for highways and dams, banning harmful chemicals, and blocking pipelines. In the process, citizen advocates helped to undermine big government liberalism and, ironically, clear the way for Reagan-era "free market" conservatives who sought to slash regulations and enrich corporations. Public Citizens traces the history of the public interest movement and explores its tangled legacy, showing the ways New Deal liberalism fell apart and the challenges in trying to replace it."

Social democratic parties have been agents in the neo-liberal transformation of public policy in recent decades. There has been debate about the reasons why social democrats have embraced market policies, with particular emphasis given to ideological trends, globalisation and electoral factors. This paper aims to shed further light on this debate by examining the case of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), which was a prominent social democratic exponent of neo-liberalism during its time in office in the 1980s and 1990s. In Labor's case, the primary cause of the shift from pledging social reform and interventionist government to neo-liberalism was the lower levels of economic growth that followed the end of the post-war boom in the 1970s. Social democrats rely on strong economic growth to fund redistributive policies. Thus when recession occurred in the 1970s it eroded the economic base to Labor's programme. While this paper focuses on the story of the ALP, it may provide some answers as to why social democrats elsewhere have adopted neo-liberalism.

Self-actualization is often touted but rarely achieved. The Liberal frame that champions autonomy requires strict conformity: conformity to laws assured by state force, conformity to market transaction assured by privileging private property, conformity to limited collective action assured by the social atomization which comes from the construction of negative rights. This paper explores the many impediments to autonomous self-actualization within the rubric of liberalism, including the superegoistic internalizations of mores and taboos elucidated by Western-oriented psychoanalysis. It further explores the possibility that self-actualization may be more readily achieved through what Gramsci referred to as "heteronomy:" selfconsciously engaged collective social action. By examining the mechanisms of self-limitation through the dynamics of superego development, the paper posits that self-actualization may best be realized through collective articulation of ethics and morality which are constantly situational. In this, the paper takes up the Deleuzian and Guattarian propositions of simultaneous, multiplicitious identities, deterritorialized and evaluated only within the multitude of a given moment in time and space. The dynamic and contextual quality of this discursive engagement is not one of relativity, but characterized by the intersubjectivity of the participants. ! is specifi city – specifi city of interlocutors, specifi city of locality, and specifi city of time – provides for unique self-actualization, which neither reifi es nor objectifi es selves, but suggests that individuals are not essences, but subjective beings which are as dynamic as the social situations they create. Thus self-actualization cannot be achieved alone, but only within a collective discursive context. This context must be characterized as a social forum of praxis, for instrumentality or technical motivations disrupt the contributions not only of the actor guided by techne, but the contributions of the whole for disingenuousness makes intersubjectivity impossible. Collectively articulated ethics and morals cannot be adjudicated by a discursive forum which is tainted by motives of self-gain. Instrumentality of one impedes the ability of all others to self-actualize. Thus, self-actualization only comes within the context of heteronymous action. ! is paper will thus interrogate the consequences of inverting the age-old problem of public action – autonomous self-actualization is threatened by free-loading – and suggests that collective self-actualization is impeded by self-oriented, atomistic, instrumentality.

Multiculturalism might simply be understood as managing relations of different communities residing within national boundaries on one hand and relations between the states and the community on the other hand. But the rapidly changing socio-economic world has given it multivalent political meanings and expressions. Multicultural societies are faced with challenges posed on identity, religious beliefs, and cultural equations. In recent times in wake of some unfortunate happenings, multiculturalism as a political ideology has come under the scanner and some scholars even pronounced its death. Nevertheless, multicultural societies are as much a reality of the modern globalized world as are the interlinked economies. Today world stands at crossroads, ideologies like 'difference blind position', 'hands-off neutrality', and models like 'melting pot' and 'salad bowl' have, if not failed then definitely proved insufficient to tackle the needs and aspirations of multicultural societies. Multiculturalism is based on and nourished by the political philosophy of liberalism and liberal democracies are believed to be the fertile ground for its propagation. Therefore, this study destructures and deconstructs the principles of liberalism to present an insight into the efficacy and suitability of the classical form of liberalism for multicultural societies. It is emphasized that culture, the most crucial component of multiculturalism is pushed to the periphery in course of the practice of the fairness of justice and equal distribution of goods. Culture plays an important role in the formation of the identity of an individual and a group. Ignoring cultural differences also means undermining identity which manifests itself as somewhat liberal oppression and sometimes as denial of social justice. It is concluded that in changed circumstances radical liberalism can become a source of conflict within the society rather than harmonizing differences. An alternative can be derived from within the liberal theories as thinkers like Rawls and Dworkin; not only acknowledge differences but also make slight provision for differential rights. A moderate broadening of the ideas can create a perfectly balanced model of liberalism for multicultural societies.