Conservative Modernization Research Articles

Foreword

Foreword Efrem Fisher, Shane Perkinson, and Sam Abrams Our issue's theme, when first introduced for discussion, was suggested as a look at the global trend towards religiously-influenced conservative political parties. The topic was quickly expanded beyond politics to encompass broader ideas and trends: the seeming rise of religious conservatism globally, the threat to and retreat of economic conservatism as a result of the global financial crisis, and the unsettled impact of increasing interconnectedness on social conservatism. Ultimately, we sought to explore the state of conservatism and its future, whether in jeopardy or thriving, under our broad themes. We never expected to reach a definitive conclusion on the fate of conservatism. The endeavor itself is foolish considering the breadth of the concept, but also because trends are rarely so conveniently linear. Still, the developments of the moment are deeply meaningful and need to be understood and debated. Therefore, we have aimed to include some of the most interesting and important topics, cases, and perspectives across the globe today. Our issue begins with the section, "Perspectives on American Conservatism." In the first piece economist John Williamson identifies the central tenets of conservative economic thought, offering both support and critique of those ideas. Joshua Muravchik, formerly of AEI and currently a fellow at SAIS's Foreign Policy Institute, follows with an explanation, assessment, and defense of neo-conservatism. William Poole, former president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, concludes with a libertarian interpretation of the financial crisis. The next section is "Country and Regional Case Studies." Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, looks at conservative modernization in Russia. Yousra Fazili, Senior Consultant for Booz Allen Hamilton, writes on the political tension in Iran. Professor Jens Rydgren (Stockholm University) analyzes the success of conservatism in Denmark versus its failure in Sweden. Former Japanese diplomat, Professor Kazuhiko Togo (Kyoto Sangyo University), illuminates the assertive conservative right in Japan. Finally, Professor Andrew Chesnut (Virginia Commonwealth University) discusses the rise of charismatic Christianity in Latin America. The final section, "Comparing the United States and Europe," does just that in two theoretical pieces by Professors Peter Lawler (Berry College) and Michael Zoeller (Bayreuth University-Germany). Next, in our "Responses" section, Professor Mahmood Mamdani (Columbia University) responds to a review of his book, Saviors and Survivors by Sean Brooks of the Save Darfur Coalition which appeared in our previous issue. [End Page 1] Four book reviews follow. Former CIA deputy and acting director and current SAIS professor John McLaughlin reviews James Mann's The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War. Foreign service officer and current fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations Rachel Schneller reviews Thomas Ricks's The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008. SAIS professor Luis Marques reviews John Be Taylor's Getting Off Track: How Government Actions and Interventions Caused, Prolonged, and Worsened the Financial Crisis. SAIS professor John Karaagac reviews William E. Scheuerman's Morgenthau: Realism and Beyond. Our issue concludes with the winning submissions to our biannual SAIS Prize competition: Iwan Davies for his essay on the impact of the economic crisis on developing countries, Andre Castillo for his review of Shahriar Mandanipour's Censoring an Iranian Love Story, and Jared Katz for his photo essay of Nepal. As always, we are deeply indebted to our advisory board, headed by SAIS Dean Jessica Einhorn, for their time and support. In particular, we would like to thank Professor Francis Fukuyama who was instrumental in shaping our thinking on this issue from the beginning. Professor Fukuyama has been a committed member of The SAIS Review advisory board for years and we wish him the very best going forward. [End Page 2] Copyright © 2010 The Johns Hopkins University Press

Can critical education interrupt the right?

This article examines the ways in which the complex and at times contradictory project of ‘conservative modernization’ has altered the terrain of education. It extends the arguments I make in Educating the ‘Right’ Way (2006) about understanding the ‘right’, about the possibilities of interrupting the right in education, and about our roles in assisting in the building of workable alternatives. It proposes a number of tasks of the critical scholar/activist in education. The aim is to contribute to an ongoing set of crucial debates about the means and ends of our educational institutions, about their connections to larger institutions and power relations, and what our responses to these relations should be.

Some ideas on interrupting the right

In a considerable number of nations, `conservative modernization' has gained increasing influence. Neo-liberals, neo-conservatives, and new middle-class mangerialists have defined the terrain of educational policy and practice. In some nations as well, authoritarian populist religious conservative movements and ideologies have also become major actors in the struggles over what the ends and means of education are. I critically examine the contradictory alliance that has been built among these movements and ideologies. However, understanding the reasons behind the growing influence of these positions is not sufficient. I then discuss a number of strategies for interrupting their power, some of which may be risky but are worth being taken seriously if we are to engage in successful counter-hegemonic activity.

Anthropologies of the Urban Periphery: Salvador, Bahia

Brazilian slums and squatter settlements have acquired a generally unattractive public image that often obscures differences between peripheral urban situations. Based on research in a socially stigmatised neighbourhood of the city of Salvador, Bahia, this paper begins with a broad structural view of the processes that have shaped the situations of its poor residents, from the conservative modernisation led by the Bahian strongman and protege of the military, Antonio Carlos Magalhaes, to a multi-cultural present of anti-poverty and Afro-Brazilian empowerment initiatives, NGO interventions, and private-public partnerships. It then illustrates a range of variables that influence the ability of poor communities to counteract tendencies towards social and political fragmentation. It highlights the need to consider the particular histories of poor neighbourhoods, their differing relations with richer surrounding areas, their internal divisions and the way these reflect links with broader social, political and religious forces, and the social networks between different poor neighbourhoods that the poor themselves construct as they pursue strategies to maintain livelihoods and acquire assets. Consideration of the processes involved suggests a need to question conventional accounts of social segregation in Salvador and indicates ways in which more rounded ethnographic perspectives on how people live their lives help us to understand their greater or lesser capacity for collective action and why, in some cases but not others, residents are still trying to build ‘places’ that conform to their long-term aspirations to live better.

Sistemas agrários na Velha Província: O processo de transição para o trabalho livre sob o signo da Modernização Conservadora (1850-1888)

Com base no conceito de "via prussiana" defendido por Barrington Moore Jr., o artigo retoma importantes teses no estudo dos sistemas agrários fluminenses, na conjuntura de crise do trabalho escravo e de transição para o trabalho livre, argumentando que a ideia de uma "fronteira agrícola fechada" a partir da Lei de Terras é insuficiente para definir as relações de trabalho e de acesso à terra estabelecidas após 1888. As conclusões destas teses, quando analisadas em conjunto, nos permitem afirmar que a existência de terras livres exerceu forte pressão contrária aos mecanismos de "proletarização" do trabalhador rural, levando portanto ao emprego de "sistemas repressivos de mão-de-obra" como alternativa viável de preservação da grande propriedade, configurando assim um aspecto fundamental da modernização conservadora, tal como previsto por Moore Jr.

O arcaico e o moderno no Brasil: variações em torno de uma educação interrompida

Este artigo analisa alguns aspectos e problemas da modernização conservadora do capitalismo no Brasil, tendo como foco o período do pós-guerra e a ditadura militar que começa em 1964 e se radicaliza em 1968. As relações entre cultura, educação e política são analisadas tendo como referência o ensaio "Cultura e política, 1964-69", de Roberto Schwarz.

AKP’s Move to “Conquer” the Center‐Right: Its Prospects and Possible Impacts on the Democratization Process

The Justice and Development Party (AKP) is moving to fill the void on the center‐right by claiming the legacy of the Democratic Party. In this essay, the center‐right legacy of conservative modernization and its influential political strategy of conservative populism will be introduced, since the AKP is also trying to reproduce them under novel conditions. Then, five interrelated sociological processes will be highlighted in order to assess the prospects of the AKP realizing its strategy. The subsequent section will deal with the problematic legacies of both the center‐right and political Islam that could hinder full‐fledged democratization of Turkey. Finally, some moderate predictions will be proposed by reconsidering the precedent set by the Justice Party in the 1960s and 1970s.

Global communication and political culture in the semi-periphery: the rise of the Globo corporation

AbstractThis article will offer a description and explanation of the rise of the Brazilian media corporation Globo by situating it in the context of the periphery and semi-periphery of the World System and the globalisation of communication. In particular it focuses upon the changing role that Globo has played in the construction of an elite-led political culture in Brazil that has moved through phases of authoritarian and democratic government. The article sets out an historical account of the emergence of Globo from being a regional media organisation in the periphery of the world system to a global broadcaster in the semi-periphery. It moves through three phases: First, 1925–1964, the colonial legacy and Brazil in the periphery; second, 1964–1985, a period of transition and conservative modernisation, into the semi-periphery; and finally, 1985 onwards, the age of globalisation.

Lutas Culturais: Relações Raciais, Antropologia e Política no Brasil

The author, in this essay intended to address two propositions. First, advance a partial and fragmented reading toward the consolidation of some issues which would be seem as constituent of the race relations field in Brazil. Secondly, the intention is to point out the surmounting politicization of this field, a politicization which is followed by the racial identities politicization, as well as the by expansion and consolidation of a black political agenda in the contemporary Brazil. We seek, besides it, to demonstrate, using data from black identity studies in the city of Salvador da Bahia, features of the contemporary black identities making process. Such propositions may be better understood against the broader context of conservative modernization that Brazil had experienced in the last decades and in regarding to these modernization effects in social subjects making, inside and outside Brazilian University. Key-words: race relations; academic field; modernization; affirmative action.

Unstressed periphrastic do — from Southwest England to Newfoundland?

This article discusses possible reasons for the (near-)absence of a feature from Newfoundland Vernacular English (NVE) that was present in both of its major donor dialects, namely the varieties of Southwest (SW) England and Ireland. Unstressed periphrastic do, the feature under investigation, is used as a tense carrier and marker of habituality in Southwestern dialects and — in a more restricted context — in Irish English (IrE). Modern NVE shows only traces of periphrastic do. All of these uses are (a) of IrE origin and (b) recessive (cf. e.g. Clarke 2004b: 305). If all settlers had used the feature at the time they emigrated to Newfoundland, it is extremely unlikely that it should have been lost in NVE, one of the most conservative varieties of English, but maintained, at least to a certain extent, in the much less conservative modern varieties of SW English and IrE. This paper suggests possible stages of the life of periphrastic do in Newfoundland. With the help of evidence from literature on SW English dialects from the 19th and 20th centuries, it is argued that it is unlikely that all settlers were do users when arriving in Newfoundland. Moreover, a competing variant, generalized verbal ‑s, a pattern typical of NVE to the present day, existed in some of the settlers’ grammars (both SW English and IrE). It is assumed that periphrastic do, if it ever existed in NVE in those uses typical of SW English dialects, has been eradicated through contact with dialects that either used generalized ‑s or a more standard system.

Negotiating modernity through the past: costume films of the early Franco period

My starting point for this essay—it is not original—is that early Francoism should be seen not as an attempt to take Spain back to the past but as a form of conservative modernity. I want to link t...

Inventing the “All-American Boy”

In the United States and internationally in recent years, a great deal of attention, particularly within popular publications, has been paid to boys, their rearing, and their education. While much of this concern has clearly had conservative aims or at least conservative overtones, even the more progressive elements of the concern over boys have been “pulled into” the conservative camp. Indeed, the entire advocacy position for boys has often been (discursively, at least) relegated to conservatism. This article examines why this happens and, more important, shows how this occurs on a small scale. The author focuses here on how conservatives “pull in” rather than how the Left “pushes out.” Using frameworks laid out by Apple, Bernstein, Bourdieu, and others, the author shows how an unlikely artifact—a toy catalog—might serve as a case study for the methods conservative groups use to pull the debate, as well as those teachers and parents who are intimately affected by its outcomes, under the “umbrella” of conservative modernization. These techniques include mobilizing general similarities to the boys debate, appealing to the tastes of particular class fractions, using recontextualizing processes, appealing through visual forms, accounting for dissonances, creating the constitutive outside, and perhaps most important, providing a possible solution to the “problem” of boys. I discuss implications of these techniques and advocate a reclaiming of the debates by progressive forces.

'Use Your Hands for Happiness':: Home Craft and Make-do-and-Mend in British Women's Magazines in the 1920s and 1930s

This article investigates the role of commercial women’s magazines in the dissemination of modern design in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s. Taking Alison Light’s work on conservative modernity as a starting point, it identifies a discourse of feminine modernity, arguing that magazines, along with radio and the cinema, foreground the experiences, aspirations, attitudes and values of women and provide a useful resource for a wider and more nuanced understanding of modernism and the experience of modernity in these years. The significance of the ephemeral, amateur world of DIY design and craft practice has gone largely unrecognised in design history. The special issue and exhibition represent an important step in addressing this absence. Hackney's article on home craft brings together original oral history interviews, the views of editors and primary material gathered from magazines to assert, rather than devalue, the importance of domestic, commercial craft and the complex and varied nature of women’s responses to it.

Audit Cultures, Commodification, and Class and Race Strategies in Education

The author discusses some of the ways in which certain elements of conservative modernization have had an impact on education at multiple levels. He points to the growth of commodifying logics and the audit culture that accompanies them. In the process, he highlights a number of dangers currently being faced. However, he urges us not to assume that these conditions can be reduced to the automatic workings out of simple formulae. He argues that we need a much more nuanced and complex picture of class relations and class projects to understand what is happening – and a more sensitive and historically grounded analysis of the place of racial dynamics in the vision both of ‘a world out of control’ that needs to be policed and of ‘cultural pollution’ that threatens ‘real knowledge’ in the growth of markets and audit cultures. Thus, Michael Apple also urges his readers to listen carefully to the critiques coming from collective voices within oppressed communities and to not assume that one can read off their positions by reducing their agency to simply expressions of rightist ideological formula. Becoming more nuanced about such constitutive dynamics will not guarantee that we can interrupt the tendencies upon which he focuses here. But it is one essential step in understanding the genesis of what is at stake in a serious politics of interruption.

Conservative Alliance Building and African American Support of Vouchers: The End of Brown's Promise or a New Beginning?

A new kind of conservatism has evolved and has taken center stage in many nations, one that is best seen as “conservative modernization.” Although parts of these conservative positions may have originated within the New Right, they are now not limited to what has traditionally been called the Right. They have been taken up by a much larger segment of government and policy makers and have also even been appropriated by groups that one might least expect to do so, such as African American activists in cities like Milwaukee. In this article, we examine a growing phenomenon: the growth of seemingly conservative sentiments among some of the least powerful groups in this society. Perhaps the most significant organization to emerge has been the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO). It has mobilized around voucher advocacy for urban working-class communities of color. BAEO has attracted significant attention not just for its iconoclastic alignment with conservative educational reform, but also for accepting funding from far-Right foundations. This article analyzes the complexity of the discursive and sociopolitical space that BAEO occupies. The organization's awareness of its critics, allies, and the limited range of educational options within which low-income African American families must act belies the notion, put forward by some, that BAEO is simply a front organization for the educational Right. Nevertheless, BAEO's importance to the larger rightist project in education cannot be overstated. At the core of our analysis is a concern about what is at stake for all of us if a rightist educational agenda succeeds in redefining what and whose knowledge is of most worth and what our social and educational policies are meant to do. Yet, no matter what one's position is on the wisdom of BAEO's strategic actions, this case provides a crucial example of the politics of how social movements and alliances are formed and reformed out of the material and ideological conditions of daily life. A critical but sympathetic understanding of groups such as BAEO may enable us to avoid the essentialism and reductionism that enters into critical sociological work on the nature of ongoing struggles over educational reform. It can provide a more nuanced sense of social actors and the possibilities and limits of strategic alliances in a time of major conflicts over educational reform during a period of conservative modernization.

Conservative Alliance Building and African American Support of Vouchers: The Endof Brown'sPromise or a New Beginning?

A new kind of conservatism has evolved and has taken center stage in many nations, one that is best seen as “conservative modernization.” Although parts of these conservative positions may have originated within the New Right, they are now not limited to what has traditionally been called the Right. They have been taken up by a much larger segment of government and policy makers and have also even been appropriated by groups that one might least expect to do so, such as African American activists in cities like Milwaukee.In this article, we examine a growing phenomenon: the growth of seemingly conservative sentiments among some of the least powerful groups in this society. Perhaps the most significant organization to emerge has been the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO). It has mobilized around voucher advocacy for urban working-class communities of color. BAEO has attracted significant attention not just for its iconoclastic alignment with conservative educational reform, but also for accepting funding from far-Right foundations. This article analyzes the complexity of the discursive and sociopolitical space that BAEO occupies. The organization's awareness of its critics, allies, and the limited range of educational options within which low-income African American families must act belies the notion, put forward by some, that BAEO is simply a front organization for the educational Right. Nevertheless, BAEO's importance to the larger rightist project in education cannot be overstated.At the core of our analysis is a concern about what is at stake for all of us if a rightist educational agenda succeeds in redefining what and whose knowledge is of most worth and what our social and educational policies are meant to do. Yet, no matter what one's position is on the wisdom of BAEO's strategic actions, this case provides a crucial example of the politics of how social movements and alliances are formed and reformed out of the material and ideological conditions of daily life.A critical but sympathetic understanding of groups such as BAEO may enable us to avoid the essentialism and reductionism that enters into critical sociological work on the nature of ongoing struggles over educational reform. It can provide a more nuanced sense of social actors and the possibilities and limits of strategic alliances in a time of major conflicts over educational reform during a period of conservative modernization.

Refurbishment priorities at the Russian coal-fired power sector for cleaner energy production—Case studies

The paper aims to present the current status of the coal-fired power sector in Russia, the prospects for renovation activities based on Clean Coal Technologies (CCT) and two case studies on potential refurbishment projects. Data were collected for 180 thermoelectric units with capacity higher than 100 MWe and the renovation needs of the power sector, among the retrofitting, repowering and reconstruction options, were estimated through a multi-criteria analysis. The most attractive system to renovate a power plant between the Supercritical Combustion (SC) and the Fluidized Bed Combustion (FBC) technologies was evaluated. The application of each of the aforementioned technologies at the Kashirskaya and Shaturskaya power plants was studied and their replication potential in the Russian coal-fired power plant park was examined. Nowadays, the installed capacity of coal-fired power plants in the Russian Federation is 29.3 GWe, while they account for about 19% of the total electricity generation in the area. The low efficiency and especially the advanced age are the determinant factors for renovation applications at the Russian units. Even in the more conservative modernization scenario, over 30% of the thermoelectric units have to be repowered or reconstructed. Concrete proposals about the profitable and reliable operation of two Russian thermoelectric units with minimized environmental effects were elaborated. A new unit of 315 MWe with supercritical steam parameters and reburning for NO x abatement is envisaged to upgrade Unit 1 of Kashirskaya power station, while new Circulating Fluidized Bed (CFB) boilers of the same steam generation is the most promising renovation option for the boilers of Unit 1 in Shaturskaya power station.

Education, markets, and an audit culture

In this article I discuss some of the ways in which certain elements of conservative modernisation have had an impact on higher education and education in general. I point to the growth of commodifying logics and the audit culture that accompanies them. In the process, I highlight a number of dangers that we currently face. However, I also urge us not to assume that these conditions can be reduced to the automatic workings out of simple formulas. We need a much more nuanced and complex picture of class relations and class projects to understand what is happening. Finally, I point to the importance of not simply defending existing institutions, since there may be elements of good sense as well as bad sense in the neo‐liberal and neo‐conservative criticisms. The issue is not whether or not we need accountability, but the kinds of logics of accountability, and the question of accountability to whom, that tend now to guide the process of higher education. An alternative to the external imposition of targets, performance criteria and quantifiable outcomes ‐ but one that still takes the issue of public accountability seriously ‐ can be built. I point to some criteria that can be used to judge it.

Market Movements and the Dispossessed: Race, Identity, and Subaltern Agency among Black Women Voucher Advocates

Critical educational researchers in the United States and elsewhere are missing something essential in their inattention to considerable support among Black urban women for market-based educational reforms, including vouchers. While the educational left has engaged in important empirical and theoretical work demonstrating the particularly negative impact of educational marketization on the disenfranchised, not enough attention has been paid to the crucial role the educationally dispossessed have actually played in building these otherwise conservative reforms. Engaging with Michael Apples arguments concerning processes of identity formation within conservative movement-making, we can begin to conceptualize the importance of subaltern groups in market-based educational reforms. Yet ethnographic work conducted with Black voucher mothers, school officials, and community leaders in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, shows that this subaltern process of conservative formation does not always occur in the manner theorized by Apple and his colleague Anita Oliver, in which ideologically relatively unformed parents and families are ‘‘pushed’’ to the Right by an intransigent state. Although the conceptual tools they provide are the foundation of our ability to imagine a more compelling theorization of dynamics and social actors in Milwaukee, significant conceptual—not to mention empirical—work remains to be done. In this essay I renovate Apple and Olivers arguments concerning conservative modernization in order to make them more resonant with the processes of race, gender, subaltern identity formation and agency evident in my ethnographic field research with low-income African-American women choosing vouchers Thomas C. Pedroni is an assistant professor of secondary social studies methods, educational foundations, curriculum theory, and qualitative research methodology at Utah State University. His recent research has centered on issues of identity formation and subaltern agency among urban low-income predominantly African-American and Latino parents within otherwise largely conservative coalitions for publicly financed private school vouchers. His research interests also include the development of composite critical and post-structural approaches in educational theory and research, the identification of persistent exclusionary power/ knowledge regimes in state-level educational reforms, and the analysis of the increasing colonization of the global educational sphere by neo-liberal and managerial forms. Address cor

Artistas e intelectuais no Brasil pós-1960

This article is about the progress of Brazilian left wing intellectuals, especially the artists, after the 1960's. In it, we develop the hypothesis of the existence of a structure of feelings of revolutionary Brazilianism, strong until 1968, as an answer to changes in social organization, and how it tended to become de-structured when the whole of society went in another direction. The works by the artists who shared this structure of feelings shared something familiar but there was no total identity among them; at times, they were rivals. The process of conservative modernization of society would professionally institutionalize the artistic and intellectual milieu, keeping it apart from the commitment with critical causes of order. The historical constraints in which certain structures of feelings bore fruit dried up, and, many times, those feelings were transformed into an ideology that legitimized the Brazilian cultural industry.