Egalitarian Reform Research Articles

Is Historicism a Viable Strategy for Islamic Law Reform? The Case of 'Never Shall a Folk Prosper Who Have Appointed a Woman to Rule Them'

AbstractThere are at least two kinds of historicism that are relevant to Islamic legal reform, one rooted in a progressive theory of history, the other rooted in history as a source for textual interpretation. The latter has the potential to garner greater support for progressive legal change insofar as it falls squarely within the well-known jurisprudential concept known as takhsis al-'āmm (specification of the general term). In this article, I explore this reform strategy by analyzing a well-known Prophetic hadīth that is traditionally understood as excluding women from holding political office. By exploring literary history, Islamic legal hermeneutics, and substantive Islamic law, I demonstrate that, in this particular case, substantial egalitarian reform can be justified without fundamental changes to traditional Islamic theological doctrines. While no one rhetorical strategy offers a “magic bullet” for creating a more gender-egalitarian version of Islamic law, progressive Muslim reformers in my view should first exhaust possibilities for reform implicit in traditional methods before introducing arguments outside of that tradition—arguments which, by their nature, raise controversial theological questions that may be more intractable than the legal rules that are the object of the desired reform.

The Terminal Crisis of the “Participatory Government” and the Election of Lee Myung Bak

This paper examines the election of Lee Myung Bak through the terminal crisis of the Roh Moo Hyun government that preceded it. I start with an analysis of the election of Lee Myung Bak and the electoral strategies of the liberal-progressive bloc in the December 2007 election and then move on to detail how these strategies shed light on tensions within Korean progressive politics since the transition to democracy in 1987. These tensions inform what I shall call the “terminal crisis” of Roh's “participatory government.” I argue that this crisis involves a problem of articulation within progressive politics between a politics of reunification and one grounded in egalitarian economic reform, including the lack of an alternative to the different forms of neo-liberalism embraced by both the Roh government and the conservative government of Lee Myung Bak. My hope is that thorough examination of these tensions that have informed the liberal-progressive bloc during the long decade since 1987 can spur reflection on the role of social movements in Korean democratisation and the dilemmas they face in crafting strategies for political and economic reform.

Did the Egalitarian Reforms of the Swedish Educational System Equalise Levels of Democratic Citizenship?

In the mid-1990s an extensive reform of the Swedish educational system was initiated in order to create a ‘school for everyone’ intended to function like a ‘social equaliser’. The new unified gymnasium initiated longer educational programmes with an extended curriculum of social science courses. This article examines whether the well documented gap in levels of democratic citizenship indicators between students in theoretical and vocational gymnasium study programmes persisted after this massive reform. Given the vast amount of empirical research that has shown that education promotes democratic citizenship, the reform could be expected to result in a decreased civic gap. However, contrary to the conventional wisdom in research on the impact of education, little evidence is found linking the initiation of longer educational programmes with more social science courses to an increase in the levels of the examined dimensions of democratic citizenship. The egalitarian reform of the Swedish gymnasium, which provided more civic education, did not produce hypothesised positive effects on any of the dimensions under study (i.e., political participation, political knowledge and political attentiveness). Rather, results support the pre-adult socialisation models since the gap between citizens from theoretical and vocational gymnasium study programmes remained after the unification of the educational system.

“Do Grandmas Have Husbands?” Generational Memory and Twentieth-Century Women’s Lives

This essay uses memory in the ancient and modern sense of the “inner life of thought” to describe the formation of generational memory in a modern professional family whose twentieth-century history has been fractured by migration, war, education, and divorce. It is about the power of feeling and law, which framed the practical freedoms of twentieth-century women’s lives and introduced the modern citizen in the aftermath of universal suffrage and world war. The first part of the essay emphasizes the psychic dimension of bodily feeling and drive in the formation of memory; a dimension overlooked by oral history and social movements, yet confirmed by autobiography and memoir. My granddaughter’s questions provoked resistance as well as family stories, and let me observe the thought process in a child. Social history, autobiography, and personal memory confirm the common experience of everyday life reaching back through generations of London families; folklore, commerce, and family story make narratives of dreams, hopes, terrors, and events; a child’s comprehension of the outside world is grasped through curiosity, imagination, and play in which bodily feeling is as powerful as speech and prohibition to make meanings that flow between inner world and external reality. The second half of the essay reflects on Joan Riviere’s description of the self. Leading British psychoanalyst, translator of Freud, writing in the 1950s, Riviere’s language of the inner world resonates with the liberal social ethics—empathy, public service, common good—which underpinned women’s and human rights mid-twentieth century and the egalitarian and reproduction reforms whose universalism has been challenged since the 1970s. Negative feeling is striking in Riviere’s description of the self—fear, shame, shock, and trauma, which are confirmed in memoir and autobiography. In contrast, liberal social democratic accounts of the time idealized English character. Today, the future uncertain, memory—in the ancient and modern sense of the “inner eye of thought”—is more than ever necessary for social movements as for the individual.

Education, neoliberalism and the consumer citizen: after the golden age of egalitarian reform

In this paper I attempt to explore the implications for education policy arising from aspects of Third Way political thought and its troubled relation to neoliberalism. In particular, the implications for equality arising from Third Way reforms to secondary education are considered. The limits of contestation that mark out the centre ground of UK politics have become increasingly consolidated around neoliberal ideas and principles. I briefly outline a ‘golden age’ of egalitarian reform and its displacement by the emergence of neoliberalism. Neoliberal restructuring is implicated in the emergence of the market state, the establishment of the relation of the individual to the state as one of consumer citizen, the growth of individualism, and a likely increase in competition to fend off downward social mobility. The paper concludes that the future compass for reforms aimed at reducing educational inequality now looks increasingly restricted and narrowed.

Opportunity, responsibility and the market: interrogating liberal equality

This article scrutinizes the claim that liberal egalitarians are now the last real torchbearers for the principles of egalitarian reform. This claim might appear eccentric on the surface, but is increasingly common in leftist circles following the recent abandonment of such principles by formerly socialist parties. Programmes of 'social inclusion', for instance, are now widely criticized for substituting a desire to tackle economic inequalities with an incitement for us to become obedient, productive citizens. Focusing here on the claim that liberal egalitarians pose a radical alternative to this kind of discourse, I show that the real deficiencies of much liberal egalitarianism not only resemble but in many ways actually provide the sort of discourse within which parties like New Labour operate.

Social Justice and the Politics of School Effectiveness and Improvement

The dominant discourse in education in Britain today is that version of ‘school effectiveness and school improvement’ which is endorsed by the Labour Government. In this article I examine the place of issues of equality and social justice in the discourse of ‘Official School Improvement’, making particular reference to issues of ‘race’. On the basis of a comparative analysis of the key elements of OSI and those of the tradition of egalitarian reform which has developed in Britain and elsewhere in recent decades, I argue that OSI is neither oriented to address issues of social justice in education nor equipped to respond effectively to them, and that this has fundamental implications for the wider school effectiveness and improvement movement.

The People and Their Experts: A War-Inspired Civics for H.C. Coombs

The 1944 Towers Referendum', lost by the Curtin government, has been subject to diverse historical interpretations some emphasising the solid good sense of 'the people', others the spoiling of rational debate by fear-mongering tactics of the 'No' case. This paper examines some features of H.C. Coombs'participation in the referendum. As Director of Rationing in 1942, Coombs developed a sense of the popular thirst for egalitarian reform; as Director General of Postwar Reconstruction, he attempted to 'channel' this popular feeling so that it would provide the labor government with a mandate for, among other things, constitutional reform. The paper traces his ideas about the relationship between 'experts' and senior government officials on the one hand, and 'the people' on the other. His practice as adviser to government and as animator of popular opinion made him an unorthodox public servant. The nature and limits of his 'public service' were matters for comment by others and by Coombs himself. A theme of the paper is that both activist bureaucrats and historians have mobilised conceptions of 'the people' which repay historical investigation.

Class Inequality and Egalitarian Reform

Major studies of recruitment to higher education find the association with class to be stable over time, and on this basis conclude that egalitarian reforms have been ineffective. In contrast, measures of inequality for the same data show the distribution of attractive positions to have evened out considerably. The difference in results is explained by how the two sets of measures are affected by changes in the marginals of the class-education table, in particular the increased provision of higher education. It is argued that measures of inequality are more relevant for the question of the effectiveness of reform than measures of association, whether linear or loglinear.

Educational progress and economic change: Notes on some recent proposals

Abstract This article discusses some recent attempts to develop an economic case that can justify proposals for curricular and institutional reform in education of a radical kind. It investigates the claim, which underpins current debates around a Labour Party alternative to Conservative education policy, that a new phase of development, often referred to as ‘post‐Fordism’, of the dominant economies of the western world provides the basis, and the necessity, for a new system of education which would realise a programme of egalitarian and democratic reform.

Is the Oregon Rationing Plan Fair?

THE OREGON Basic Health Services Act mandates universal access to basic care, but includes rationing services to those individuals who are Medicaid recipients. If no new resources are added, the plan may make current Medicaid recipients worse off, but still reduce inequality between the poor and the rest of society. If resources are expanded and benefits given appropriate rankings, no one may be worse off; though inequality will be reduced, alternative reforms might reduce it even further. Whether the outcome seems fair then depends on how much priority to the well-being of the poor we believe justice requires; it also depends on political judgments about the feasibility of alternative strategies for achieving more egalitarian reforms. Oregon makes rationing public and explicit, as justice requires, but it is not clear how community values influence the ranking of services; ultimately, the rationing process is fair only if we may rely on the

Equality of What: Welfare, Resources, or Capabilities?

Many of us have egalitarian concerns. To some extent, that is, at some cost, we prefer a world in which goods powers, liberties, opportunities, wealth, health are more equally distributed to one in which they are not. At least to some extent, we are willing to forego delivering a greater benefit to someone who is already better off in order to deliver a lesser benefit to someone who is worse off. Whether we are strictly concerned with equality or merely with giving priority to the claims of those who are worse off, we face the question, What is the ultimate target of our egalitarian concerns? Three apparently distinct targets have been proposed as answers to this question. First, when we urge specific egalitarian reforms, we are really trying to make people equally happy or satisfied, or at least to guarantee them equal opportunity for such welfare. This is the claim made by Richard Arneson and (with qualifications) by G. A. Cohen.3 Rejecting welfare-based targets, others say the target of our egalitarian concerns is assuring people greater equality in the resources needed to pursue their ends. Ronald Dworkin argues in this vein,4 and John Rawls' Difference

American Women's History During the 1970s

Hugh Davis Graham is professor of history at the University of Mary land in Baltimore. The modern feminist move ment came of age during the 1970s. Yet these events have been so recent that we lack both the histori cal perspective and the evidence necessary to understand their full meaning. In short, the mature books that we need on the 1970s have not yet been written. Now that the major archival holdings are being opened for research, we can soon expect to receive a wave of second generation studies that probe the events of the 1970s. This essay will survey the current major literature and specu late on the contours of the coming interpretations. It will concentrate on the realm of public policy, espe cially in the national arena. Much of the future history of women in the 1970s will lie outside the gambit of national politics and policy--in the rich lodes of popular culture, of social and economic life, intellectual and professional development, women's biography and organiza tions, state and local history. But as in the past, with the movements for black civil rights and women's suf frage, the original tone of interpre tation tends to be set by national studies of politics and policy. American feminism was reborn in the 1960s. It spun off of the movement for black civil rights, much as the radical feminism of the Civil War era had flowed from the egalitarian logic and reform experi ence of abolitionism. Yet not until 1980 did we get our first archival based history of women and public policy during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. This was Patricia Zelman's able monograph, Women, Work, and National Policy (1980). The 1960s witnessed the passage of the Equal Pay Act of 1963; the publication of American Women, the report of President Kennedy's Commission on the Status of Women (also in 1963); the unex pected inclusion of gender protec tion in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964: and the formation of the National Organization of Women (NOW) in 1966 to pressure the recal citrant Equal Employment Oppor tunities Commission (EEOC) to enforce the rights of women as well as those of minorities. The second mature histori cal study of the 1960s, Cynthia Harrison's On Account of Sex (1988), covers the postwar years through 1968. Whereas Zelman looks mainly at job discrimination against women and efforts to combat it, Harrison's more comprehensive study surveys a broad range of women's national policy issues. Most of them cen tered on the running battle among Democrats between the special pro tectionists led by Eleanor Roosevelt, Mary Anderson, and Esther Peter son, and the younger feminists of the 1960s, like Marguerite Rawalt and Pauli Murray, who pushed for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). These books appeared as late as the 1980s largely because the Kennedy and Johnson presidential libraries, upon which Zelman and Harrison mainly based their research, did not open their collections on domestic policy until the 1970s. For much the

Gunnar Myrdal as a Social Economist

This paper seeks to establish that Gunnar Myrdal's writings should be considered a contribution to social economics. Although Myrdal has been referred to as a social economist, [Hacken, p. 140] his work in the history of economic thought and economic analysis has not been empha? sized by practitioners of this approach. That is, few social economists have included Myrdal's writings in their bibliographies. The following sections discuss the factors which led to Myrdal's unorthodox epistemol ogy, the characteristics of a practitioner of social economics and the scope of Myrdal's social economics. I Raised in an agrarian environment, Myrdal became imbued with the attitudes prevalent throughout the peasant class in early twentieth century Sweden. His childhood led him to develop a strong belief in the work ethic, to hold values stressing egalitarianism in social and eco? nomic matters and to adopt a rational, pragmatic approach toward problem solving. During his education in the gymnasium, he was intro? duced to the optimistic philosophy of the Enlightenment. Thereafter, he has held that human beings are basically good, that undesirable social conditions are not natural and that, because behavior is culturally conditioned, well-planned reforms and education can effectively allevi? ate society's problems. [Myrdal, 1956, p. 301] Upon completing graduate work in economic theory, Myrdal received a Rockefeller Foundation award to study in the United States. He and his wife Alva1 spent the 1929-1930 period travelling and studying in America. This experience, which included their observing racial tension and poverty for the first time, encouraged them to become politically active upon their return to Sweden. As proponents of the Philosophy of Enlightenment, they saw themselves as social engineers devoted to serv? ing society by working to introduce planned, egalitarian reforms. For the past half century, they have become perhaps the paradigm for civil

Justice and the Division of Labour: A Reconsideration of Durkheim's Division of Labour in Society

Durkheim's Division of Labour in Society is re-evaluated in terms of its profound theoretical tensions. On the one hand, his analysis of an emergent organic solidarity assigns a central place to the values of individuality and justice, and articulates a critical methodology for determining their progressive realization. Justice becomes the overriding requirement of social evolution, and the condition for structural integration and normative legitimation. On the other hand, various empirical claims, as well as naturalistic and functionalist assumptions, allow for an overly easy, and quite un-Durkheimian, resolution of the problems posed by justice and individuality in a highly stratified division of labour. An attempt is made to understand how these profound tensions are sustained theoretically, and how Durkheim's own conception of the division of labour as socially interactive and morally constitutive can be rescued for a critical analysis committed to democratic and egalitarian reform.

The Great Wolf Hunt: The Popular Response in Vermont to thePatrioteUprising of 1837

During the 1830s Vermonters had largely come to accept the sobering fact that their golden age had ended, that no longer would an investment be almost certain to be rewarded nor would rapid growth take up slack and obscure economic problems. After having been the fastest growing state in the Union at the turn of the century, in the 1830s Vermont's population increased by only 11,000 souls, a meagre four per-cent. Without the old boom psychology for support during this turbulent decade, Vermonters coped with chronic cholera epidemics and severe economic dislocations and at the same time experienced a virtual exodus that caused one-third of their towns to lose population. The social fabric clearly reflected the strain as the society desperately sought outlets, and flocked to a variety of movements. Many readily responded to revivalism and, forgetting the teaching of their orthodox divines, easily adopted the word of prophets and millennialists. They turned to egalitarian reforms, anti-slavery agitation, and abolitionism. In politics they rejected the tradional parties of J. Q. Adams and Henry Clay or Jackson and Van Buren for the social nostrums of Anti-Mason candidates.

IQ, Heritability, and Human Nature

Scientific revolutions are no everyday affair. So it is of some importance that Fortune (Alexander, 1972) and several other major magazines have recently proclaimed that we are in the midst of a major Kuhnian revolution in the social sciences, one that has significant implications for social policy. According to these magazines, ‘environmentalist’ theories, which assume that equalization of human environments and opportunities will increase equality of achievement between individuals, groups, and races, are in ‘crisis'. The crisis exists because the egalitarian reform programs of the 1960's, which relied on such theories and thus constituted tests of them, failed to equalize achievement. In the face of this crisis, Fortune suggests, scientists are welcoming evidence from the study of ducks, baboons, and humans which points to “a basic intractability in human nature, a resistance to being guided and molded for improving society” (Alexander, 1972, p. 132).

Intermediacy: Conceptualization of Irish Status in America

We have held that American liberal-intellectual attitudes toward the Soviet Union have been formed largely in terms of two major liberal basicvalue orientations-freedom and ethical universalism. Between 1917 and 1941, the USSR appeared to American liberals as a negation of the former and an affirmation of the latter in certain areas of society, or as totalitarian dictatorship and egalitarian reform respectively. The relative importance attached to each of these two opposing symbols seems to have varied closely with changes in the liberals' domestic situation, with changes in the international scene, and with changes in Soviet behavior as seen through American eyes. The emergence of the Soviet Union as a highly developed bureaucratic state with definite and rigid patterns of stratification, authority, functional differentiation of role and property relationships, has fundamentally altered the value of the Soviet symbol in relation to egalitarianism. At the same time the continuance in the Soviet Union of a tight dictatorship, continued close surveillance of the arts and education, has tended to maintain the negative value of the Soviet Union as a symbol fundamentally antithetical to the liberal value of freedom. Barring revolutionary changes in the Soviet State, it may be held that these two aspects of the symbol of the USSR have assumed a relative permanency in relation to the liberal-intellectual movement. A continued liberal negative valence toward the Soviet symbol may, then, be safely forecast. Domestically, the position of the American liberal-intellectual movement is in a state of flux. It may be assumed that liberals will not abandon their adherence to the value of freedom. In relation to the goal of an universalistic society, the liberal-intellectual movement is on the defensive almost everywhere. Liberals are deeply split among themselves as to how to proceed in that defense and how to recapture the initiative. Being forced on the defensive, the liberal-intellectual movement has at least momentarily ceased to concentrate on attempts to create a state more equally balanced between various interest-groups. Whether, as the domestic climate again begins to favor liberal-intellectual aims, there will be a return to a greater interest in, or sympathy with, the Soviet model, especially in the light of the changes in the relevant aspect of the Soviet symbol, must remain a matter of speculation.