Suchergebnisse

In the wake of Foucault, most analyses of the neoliberal style of governmentality focus on holding the individual accountable, as the preferred new approach to the transfer of what have traditionally been State responsibilities to (certain) individuals A a process fostered by neoliberal policies. The foregoing article looks at some of the techniques used to produce "individual responsibility", then attempts to come up with a counter-argument by focusing on the "flaw" on which this "sophism" is built in order for it to work A or at least to be appealing enough to forestall criticism. The trick is in the disarming confusion between the fostering of individual moral responsibility A in the sense of the ability to act, i.e. to act responsibly, which most people desire and hope for, and the moralizing individualization of responsibility for one's own material wellbeing failing which, one risks being called irresponsible. Our elucidation is intended to save the left wing from being deprived of the rich resources of empowerment processes. Adapted from the source document.

Japan has experienced two major periods of privatization: railroads & telecommunications under Premier Nakasone (1982-1986) & the post office under Premier Koizumi (2001-2006). Between these two episodes, Japan has also pursued deregulation & market-opening policies (1996-2006). The article analyzes the political processes behind this succession of events. It demonstrates that neoliberal ideology was not a decisive factor in itself & that it was often a minority stance in Japan. In fact, the major privatization reforms took place when political entrepreneurs who enjoyed considerable political autonomy managed to exploit this ideology to direct political ends & used privatization as an instrument to restructure the political sphere. Adapted from the source document.

The traditional image of South American Indians in loincloths & glittering feather headdresses, or in ponchos playing the panflute, seems definitively out of date. Indians no longer live lives of isolation on their reservations. These days, the continent's 44 million strong indigenous population has organized into a significant social & political force. The election last December of Evo Morales in Bolivia, the good turnout for Ollanta Humala in Peru & the unseating of three presidents under pressure from popular uprisings in Ecuador all show that indigenous movements have reached maturity. Everywhere they are fighting against expropriation of natural resources, against an ultra-liberal economic model which undermines their ancestral values of sharing & solidarity, in order to end their exclusion & subservience. Their aim is to take their destiny into their own hands & impose their vision of the world. But will their powerful North American neighbor eventually weigh in against them? Let us hope not. Adapted from the source document.

This article seeks to highlight the fact that globalization began after 1945 & that European integration part of forms part of this process. The current globalization is the result of the new economic international order, also called multilateralism, set up after the Second World War by the government of the United States. Multilateralism is a system which introduces new tools in the liberalism inherited from the XIXth century, by taking account of the two world wars & of the crisis of 1929, & it was first of all tested in Europe. Since the 1950s, the European Community has been experiencing a paradox, because it has always wished to reconcile the requirements of multilateralism to open up to the global market with the European desire to protect its own market. Adapted from the source document.

Dependency refers to a person's incapacity to autonomously cope with daily tasks. Lately, it has become a major challenge for social security services, which France has tackled by resorting to a slow & chaotic reform process of social dependency benefits. On the one hand, this reveals a political determination not to be ex ante stopped up in running specific public action. On the other hand, this expands the steady institutional commitment to local leadership over central social security services. Although this development emphasizes a neo liberal trend, it cannot be brought down to this alone. Political confusion helps understanding the ins & outs of such changes; similarly it involves, amongst other things, knowing where we come from before anticipating where we're going to. Adapted from the source document.

The sociology of economic policies argued in this article investigates the permanent work of construction, naturalization and maintenance of the economic order made by a multitude of actors and technical instruments. It consists in describing how the doctrinal project of economy disembeddedness takes shape, detaching itself from the political and social institutions. This program is developed through four steps. First, by offering a constructivist reading of Karl Polanyi writings and highlighting the authors insistence on the uncertain and contested process of production and exchanges practices emancipation vis-a-vis traditional guardianship. Then, by showing how the invention of the economy as an autonomous sphere of activity raises crowd resistance and 'reversed economic worlds' settling their own standards and laws by opposition to the economy 'rules' and values. The after World War Two configuration is revisited as an exemplary laboratory of Politics and State re-embeddedness of the economy. Then, neoliberal disembeddedness of global capital markets reshapes accounts of public and private powers. These economic orders simultaneously mark out areas of access to and, conversely, of non-entitlement to public and political discussion. Adapted from the source document.

At the turn of the 1990s, Ricoeur reformulates his political thought to focus on a task of judgment: the new difficulty for citizens to know whether politics are englobing or englobed. This study intends to demonstrate that the 'paradox' of the englobing/englobed, even though it is never developed in such terms, provides arguments for a criticism of neoliberal reason, which was simultaneously implemented in politics. Devoted to market, these biased politics divert the englobed from the englobing of togetherness. And the latter no longer recognizes itself as such, because mutuality of exchanges focusing on the persons is covered by market reciprocity focusing on the objects. This criticism reveals the unthinkable status, for the neoliberal doctrine, of authority, which is required to articulate englobed and englobing. Adapted from the source document.

This article focuses on Foucault's analysis in The Birth of Biopolitics of the neoliberal concept of homo oeconomicus, which is no more defined (as it was the case in classical liberalism) as an atom of intangible freedom, but becomes on the contrary a manageable and 'eminently governable' man, whose economic behaviour can be modified through an action on his environment. Thus, according to Foucault, the neoliberal governmentality is characterized by the necessary coexistence of an autonomy of the markets and massive strategies of intervention (implying the imposition of modes of subjectivation through the adjustment of an 'environment') on the social field. Adapted from the source document.

This introduction to a special journal issue begins by noting that hegemony always rests on legitimacy, which is the acceptance of power, but it has been a long time since legitimacy was conceived in a predetermined manner. While Max Weber distinguished three types of basic legitimacy -- the traditional, charismatic, & legal dominations -- today, reflection on legitimacy is singularly complex, inscribed in a vast collection of sociopolitical debates. The contributors to this special issue look at how legitimacy is constructed in the public space. Attempts to impose on the trans-national scene a neoliberal regulation & the emphasis of the relationship of citizen consumption to their state, consequent to the strengthening of new public management, have also contributed to displacing the frontiers of political legitimacy. Legitimacy now imposes itself in Western democracies through popular sovereignty, expertise, institutionalization, moral conviction, & efficacy. Adapted from the source document.

A reflection on cultural diversity within an international scheme. The concept of cultural diversity used as it is today, is no longer fitting, regarding the threats concerning this diversity, and therefore a redefinition is needed. The article presents a prolongation of reflections begun by Francois de Bernard to restore the exceptional and clear dignity, strongly footed in the realities of today. The article identifies the double origin of the concept of cultural diversity: 1) cultural exception, meaning that culture is no merchandise; and 2) cultural patrimony, meaning preservation of culture. Furthermore, the two principal threats that weigh today on this diversity: 1) globalization, in the strict terms of neo-liberal spreading of global commerce; 2) mondialisation, menacing the survival of more fragile cultures. Concluding that if cultural diversity is to be preserved, it will be necessary for the powerful cultures to leave a must bigger space to more fragile cultures than it does today. References. O. van Zijl