Mainstream Debate Research Articles

The Nature and Focus of Entrepreneurship Research in France over the Last Decade: A French Touch?

This article gives an overview of the specificities of entrepreneurship research in France, paying attention to its emergence, nature, and focus. Reviewing 253 articles and conference papers from two journals and two conferences, considered main outlets for research outcomes from French scholars, our findings reveal a distinctive “French touch” of entrepreneurship research. The main facets we were able to identify with our data for the 1995 to 2005 period are as follows. There is a preference for qualitative methods, conceptual contributions, and the entrepreneurial process as privileged research theme. A particular strength of the French approach is also a strong focus of small and medium–sized organizations. The “French touch” of entrepreneurship research could make a distinctive contribution to the international research community and the mainstream debate. However, mainly French–speaking dissemination of knowledge and (still) insufficient international journal–oriented output strategies limit the diffusion of French entrepreneurship research. Implications for academic institutions and future research are discussed.

Entrepreneurship Research in Germany

This article explores entrepreneurship research in Germany, paying particular attention to its origins and current “re–emergence.” Since the late 1990s, the field has gained ground, as is reflected in an increasing number of entrepreneurship chairs at universities, and the establishment of an annual national entrepreneurship conference. A particular strength of the German approach to researching entrepreneurship, which can be traced back directly to the historical roots, is found to be its consideration of context specificity and embeddedness, going hand–in–hand with a strong multidisciplinary tendency. These are two features where entrepreneurship research in Germany could add a distinctive flavor to the current mainstream debate. In practice, the diffusion of this perspective is inhibited by an insufficient exchange with the international scientific community.

Different Trajectories: Europe and Scotland in Recent Film and Television

Since approval was given via a referendum in 1997 for the advent of the Scottish Parliament, the benefits and constraints of Scotland’s devolved role within and against the UK has, understandably, formed the primary axis of political debate, despite increasing evidence that Scotland, like other nations, is part of a globalised world. It is also argued that nationalist Scotland exercises a preference for closer ties with a less imperialist Europe rather than with the colonially tainted state of the United Kingdom (Hechter 1975, 310). However, the precise meaning of Scotland’s role within a changing Europe receives little attention in mainstream debate (Imrie 2006). Meanwhile, the European Union is engaged in the ongoing process of enlarging and renegotiating its boundaries. Despite the paucity of texts that address ostensibly Scottish-European concerns, I want to consider the meaning of Europe through a focus on how these have been written into critical accounts of Scottish, British and European cinema while also examining how this relationship is given meaning in recent films produced in Scotland, in order to map the different manifestations of the relationship between Europe and Scotland.

A Third World Approach to Debating the Legality of the Iraq War

AbstractThe international law discipline engaged in vigorous debate over the legality of the 2003 Iraq invasion. However, once the furor over the invasion died down, and attention turned to management of the ongoing reality of Coalition occupation of Iraq, the legality debate risked seeming redundant. While the mainstream debate answers questions as to whether the invasion was legal, its usefulness is limited if it does not answer other important legal questions. What role has international law played in the Iraq invasion and its aftermath? What role will the invasion play in the evolution of international law? Taking a Third World approach to the Iraq invasion can help better answer these questions and shed light on legal aspects of the war that were ignored or obscured by the mainstream debate. The first and larger part of this paper will discuss some of these issues. The latter part of this paper will consider the potential limits of Third World approaches as a critical methodology.

The Development of Consumption Culture and the Individualization of Female Identity

This article investigates how the arena of fashion, as an example of consumption culture, has been an important locus of female individualization. Individualization is defined in a Foucauldian manner as the process by which human beings are channelled into individuals. From the mid-19th century onwards, the subject of ‘individualization’ has been a central theme in sociological, historical and anthropological thought. It is striking how, even now, leading commentators are addressing the issue in gender-blind terms. Feminist scholars have therefore criticized the mainstream debate about individualization, arguing that women have been excluded from the western development of individualization. This article will sustain the point of view that while women have been banned from ‘masculine’ processes of individualization, they have at the same time been involved in many ‘other’ - often trivialized - developments of individualization. Modern phenomena such as consumption culture and fashion are examined as important arenas of female individualization. The argument is supported by an analysis of Dutch fashion magazines at the turn of the 19th century (1880-1920). The analysis highlights how the editorials taught women to conceive of themselves as ‘modern’ individuals free to choose and be aware of themselves as unique and self-determining persons.

Reading the Ongoing Changes: European Identity

Europeans constituted their post‐Second World War political identities in terms shaped by the Cold War but matters took an unexpected turn when the events of 1989/91 required acknowledgement of the hitherto largely unremarked existence of the project of the European Union. The question of the identity of Europe/Europeans moved into mainstream debate: how can the variety of 'national pasts' be reconciled, how might ideas of Europe/Europeans fit within the range of identities affirmed by Europeans, and can the project present a clear image within the international community? The European Union is the only game in town for Europeans but it is also deficient; reform is made more difficult by the struggle to define the post bloc world: reform for what becomes the issue ‐ upgraded US ally, loose free trade area or federal polity? These are awkward questions but the continent is recovering from the catastrophe of its twentieth century and one can feel optimistic for the future.

Towards a politics of health

The importance of public policy as a determinant of health is routinely acknowledged, but there remains a continuing absence of mainstream debate about the ways in which the politics, power and ideology, which underpin public policy influence people's health. This paper explores the possible reasons behind the absence of a politics of health and demonstrates how explicit acknowledgement of the political nature of health will lead to more effective health promotion strategy and policy, and to more realistic and evidence-based public health and health promotion practice.

Governance, Corruption, and Ethics in the South Pacific

The Contemporary Pacific 17.1 (2005) 118-140 [Access article in PDF] Governance, Corruption, and Ethics in the Pacific Elise Huffer The governance agenda came to the Pacific in the 1990 s as a "polite" way of dealing with corruption. It originated from the World Bank's assessment that a failing and inadequate political environment was the underlying cause for sub-Saharan Africa's unsuccessful response to structural adjustment reform. In the Pacific, the governance agenda has been taken up by the region's main bilateral and multilateral donors, as well as by international agencies. They have been concerned about the region's lack of sustained economic development (particularly, its lack of consistent growth); its rising political instability; the increasingly visible mismanagement of public funds in many countries; and an upsurge in the so-called ideology of traditionalism. The recipe put forward to cure these ills, in the Pacific as in Africa, has been to promote liberal democracy, the rule of law, government workforce reduction ("right-sizing"), and more open markets. The donors and international agencies are not mistaken about the deteriorating political and economic conditions in the region, and they certainly have a role to play in (if not a debt toward) assisting Pacific Island countries to enhance governance and socioeconomic development. However, real transparency on the part of the agencies would require them to assess and publicize their motivations in promoting the governance agenda. A more explicit explanation of why greater democratization and economic liberalization in the Pacific suit their interests and an honest assessment of how they may benefit Pacific Island states would be a start. A second step would be to work in tandem with Pacific Island communities to build a more prosperous and harmonious future. This would require listening to alternative views and becoming serious about dealing with the social consequences of economic and financial change. Since it is [End Page 118] unlikely the agencies will take the lead on this, it falls to regional academics to deconstruct the agenda, and to help explore alternative ways of achieving better governance. Many aspects of the governance agenda in the Pacific have already been critiqued,1 but little has been said about the agenda's silence on the causes and manifestations of corruption in the Pacific, and its inability to reach beyond standardized corrective measures to governance problems. The lack of attention to the causes of corruption is a major flaw in the agenda, which was designed to fix corruption in the first place. How can it aspire to "fix" a problem if it doesn't know what the root causes of the problem are? Little in-depth analysis on corruption in the region has emerged; instead, the tendency is to assume that the basis for corruption lies in culture or tradition. Fingers are generally pointed at tribal, clanic, and family ties; the lack of a national identity and of a developed and effective contractual civil society; and "bloated" civil services that lack a public service ethic. Ultimately, "Africanisation," or the development of a "culture of political corruption" (LeVine 1993, 274, quoted in Szeftel 1998, 223), is seen as the destiny of the Pacific.2 The second major flaw in the governance agenda is its almost exclusive reliance on western thought and the accompanying policy of political and economic liberalism. Proponents of the agenda fail to sufficiently question how liberal democracies actually function today. This is particularly so with respect to the subservience of present-day democracies to market forces, which has led to widening social inequalities, a general deficit of political participation, and an increasing role of wealth in determining electoral outcomes. Some debate takes place in liberal democracies regarding how to address this situation (although in the United States, for instance, this is not a mainstream debate). But so far, the governance agenda has done little to provoke substantive thought about what political values and systems would best serve contemporary Pacific societies. At best it has reluctantly accommodated "native" institutions, some of which may be more reflective of the colonial heritage and the interests of entrenched elites than of contemporary...

THE RETURN OF IMPERIALISM TO SOCIAL SCIENCE

ONE OF THE CURIOUS DEVELOPMENTS in intellectual circles over the past few years is that the subject of imperialism is no longer a bailiwick of the Left. To be sure, so long as colonial empires were in strength, there was no denying the reality of European and American imperial expansion. But over the course of the post-war era, as decolonization rippled through the Third World and the formal mechanisms of colonial control were thrown overboard, any insistence on the continuing salience of imperialism became identified with left-wing ideologies. If it did enter mainstream debates, it was inevitably Soviet or, more generically, Communist imperial ambitions that were subjected to scrutiny.

Who Put the ‘Welfare’ in ‘Corporate Welfare’? Race, Gender, and the Critique of Business Subsidies

ABSTRACT Political forces on both the left and right have, with increasing frequency, defined public subsidies for business as ‘corporate welfare.’ While the concept has its origins in the New Left, it was discovered by the political mainstream only in the 1990s. As a result, the dominant definitions of the problem presented in political debate have been those associated with conservatives. The power of ‘corporate welfare’ as a symbol in mainstream political debates today lies in its equation of government subsidies for business with social welfare received by the poor. As with social welfare, corporate welfare is said to create a culture of dependency that must be eliminated. I argue that this critique makes use of longstanding racial and gender constructions of worthiness that are central to the US welfare state. If the term is to reclaim its earlier radical meaning, greater effort must be made to changing the context in which ‘welfare’ is defined.

A (Strong?) Voice from the South: Latin American Sociology Today

This article discusses, first, the strong institutionalization process in sociology as a discipline in Latin America in recent decades, with an increasing number of undergraduate courses, as well as a large and successful development of high-level training within MSc and PhD graduate programmes. This community has a large and diversified production, published mainly in regional journals. Second, the author uses the example of sociology of work, her own field of research, to show how Latin American sociological production can and should make an important contribution to the mainstream debate in the area. Of this large body of work produced by sociologists of work in the region, the article discusses two examples: research on gender and work in Latin America, and more recent research on flexible production, showing how the findings and analysis of Latin American sociology of work are important in making concepts richer and more complex and in understanding many recent phenomena in developed countries. Finally, the author outlines some of the challenges that remain to bring this large body of work to the attention of the international sociological community. How to integrate and to tap this large body of knowledge of great quality and interest is one of the challenges faced by the International Sociological Association.

Towards a Citizens’ Welfare State

Notions of recognition and difference do not inform the mainstream debate about welfare reform, which is, instead, dominated by a dichotomous discourse of active modernization vs passive ‘welfare dependency’. The article challenges this dichotomy within the context of New Labour’s welfare reform agenda in the UK. It argues, first, that welfare reform should treat improvements in social security benefits not as promoting ‘passive’ welfare but as complementary to labour market activation policies. Second, it redefines active welfare to incorporate notions of active citizenship, which construct welfare subjects as actors in the political process of welfare policy-making and delivery. As a framework for this position, the article discusses three ‘R’s of welfare reform, risk protection, redistribution and recognition, together with the further two ‘R’s of rights and responsibilities. It concludes by emphasizing the importance of a rights agenda both to tackling poverty and exclusion and to recognition politics.

Sustainable urban development in India: An inclusive perspective

The mainstream debate on urban development looks either at urban development or sustainable cities, and tends to miss out on people-centred approaches to development. The former addresses the issues of economic growth, whereas the latter that of environmental problems, to the exclusion of development concerns of the poor. The new perspective of Sustainable Cities in the South is an 'inclusive approach', which puts the vision of the poor and marginalised sectors at the centre and includes all the dimensions of development in a holistic and synergetic manner. The paper presents such a vision of sustainable cities in India and describes activities aimed at reaching this vision.

Gender and the politics of the land reform process in Tanzania

In 1998, over seven years after a Commission of Inquiry into Land Matters was appointed by the then president of Tanzania, Ali Hassan Mwinyi, in January 1991, it is expected that a Land Bill will be tabled in the Tanzanian National Assembly. These seven years have witnessed mounting debate on the purpose and direction of land tenure reform. The purpose of this article is to review the debate in order to show that the question of women's unequal rights to land has been almost totally neglected. The article explores the politics of the land tenure reform process in Tanzania, and examines the reasons why the gender gap in the command over property has received little attention. Tanzania is presently at an important juncture in the restructuring of land relations. Since the issue of land reform came to the forefront of the political agenda in the early 1990s, an opportunity has existed to address the question of women's ownership and control of land. I argue, however, that this opportunity has not been taken, and that the issue of women's land rights has become marginalised within the debate and consequently in policy.Examining first what may be termed the mainstream of the land tenure debate, conducted on the whole by those involved in making major policy recommendations and drafting legislation, it is argued that the issue of gender has been largely ignored. There have been a number of opportunities when the specific issue of women's relations to land should have been explicitly addressed in research findings and recommendations. Instead, one sees no more than a passing acknowledgement of the gender dimensions of land tenure reform. This is most noticeably the case in the academic writing of those who profess themselves to be most concerned with the land issue as one of democracy and justice. A number of reasons will be canvassed to explain this.This article goes on to discuss the role of gender progressive groups, such as women's advocacy groups and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), in the land reform debate. Whilst it might be expected that such groups would be concerned to ensure that women's land rights are addressed, especially when the issue is being neglected in the mainstream debate, it is clear that in Tanzania they have been unable to challenge the marginalisation of gender issues in the reform agenda. I advance a number of reasons why feminist analyses of the land issue have been hampered and why there has been a failure to respond effectively to the opportunity to press the government for reforms to address women's demands.Women's unequal command of property, and the question of how it might be overcome, merits attention. If there is to be progress, researchers and activists will have to document and theorise women's land relations, and I discuss some issues which might be addressed in order to broaden the land tenure reform agenda. These include questions about the form which women's land rights might take, how they might be achieved, and the strategies which will need to be adopted in pressuring the state for land reforms.

Democratic “Talk,” Access Television and Participatory Political Communication

This study draws on the participatory political philosophy of Benjamin Barber to assess the contribution of public access cable television to political communication in the United States. In contrast to neo-liberal political theory which views government-mandated media access as infringing on the speech rights of media owners, Barber’s participatory democratic theory positions direct and widespread access to the media as a vital aspect of democratic processes. Barber puts forward a set of concepts which describe the various functions of democratic “talk” and which provide a theoretical framework for understanding some of the ways in which access television functions as a political communication resource. Using interviews and original source materials, the study examines the political uses of access television by radical media projects, a type of media seldom granted access to commercial or public television. In their attempts to organise and empower communities that have been under represented or excluded from mainstream political discussions and debates, these projects perform many of the functions Barber attributes to democratic “talk.” Conclusions drawn from the study suggest that access television hosts a range of democratic speech which is largely absent from professional media industries and which merits the support and protection of democratic states.

Democracy and Feminism

Although feminist legal theory has had an important impact on most areas of legal doctrine and theory over the last two decades, its contribution to the debate over constitutional interpretation has been comparatively small. In this Article, Professor Higgins explores reasons for the limited dialogue between mainstream constitutional theory and feminist theory concerning questions of democracy, constitutionalism, and judicial review. She argues that mainstream constitutional theory tends to take for granted the capacity of the individual to make choices, leaving the social construction of those choices largely unexamined. In contrast, feminist legal theory's emphasis on the importance of constraints on women's choices has led to a neglect of questions of citizenship and sovereignty within a democratic system. By comparing mainstream constitutional theory and feminist theory, Professor Higgins highlights the existing limitations of both. She argues both that mainstream constitutional theory must take into account feminist arguments concerning constraints on individual choice and that feminist theory must take seriously the mainstream debate over democratic legitimacy. Integrating these distinct concerns, she suggests a framework for constitutional interpretation that reflects a feminist conception of citizenship under conditions of inequality.

Economic boundaries of health policy: factors influencing 1993-1994 reform proposals.

This article offers a theoretical framework for understanding the crisis of U.S. health care system and the mainstream debate on restructuring health care financing and delivery subsystems. The author argues that the crisis of the health care system is a cause and a consequence of the long cycle of structural changes in the U.S. economy since World War II. The article distinguishes between the level and the rate of growth of health care expenditures. It is possible to moderate the level of health care expenditure by adopting measures in the direction indicated by the historical experience of other advanced capitalist economies. However, in the long term the rate of growth of health care costs will exceed the rate of growth of gross domestic product, thus any attempt to limit it will result in deterioration in the quantity and quality of health care services. The 1993-1994 mainstream debate is revisited to show how these proposals were a part of the overall effort to resolve the long-term problems of the U.S. economy. The defeat of the Clinton plan was due to its concerns with efficiency of the health care system in the face of the demand by a majority of the U.S. capitalist class to cut costs.

Indexing news after the cold war: Reporting U.S. ties to Latin American paramilitary organizations

According to Bennett's indexing hypothesis, the range of voices and viewpoints in news and editorials is “indexed” to “the range of views expressed in mainstream government debate about a given topic.” This seems particularly true in news concerning U.S. foreign policy goals and practices. This article suggests that journalism in the post‐Cold War environment has greater latitude in including dissident voices and ideas that previously would have been “marginalized” from the mainstream press. Two comparative case studies are offered in support of this argument. We also expand on the notion of “news icons” as vehicles for the introduction of previously marginalized issues.

Economic Boundaries of Health Care: Factors Influencing Reform Proposals

This paper offers a theoretical framework for understanding the crisis of the U.S. health care system and the mainstream debate to restructure health care financing and delivery system. It argues that the crisis of the health care system is a cause and a consequence of the long-cycle of structural changes in the U.S. economy that has occurred since World War II. It is further shown that the mainstream debate on how to reform the health care system has been dominated by the relentless effort to overcome the restructure the U.S. economy. The Clinton plan was designed to combine cost containment with increased access to enhance the efficiency of the health care system in order to boost profitability. Its conservative rivals focused mostly on cost reduction. It is shown how rapidly rising costs, diminishing access, and relatively poor health outcomes pose a threat to capitalist accumulation and reproduction. After distinguishing between high level and fast rate of costs, it is argued that the latter is best understood from the perspective of the labor theory of value. In this context, it is shown how the fast rate of growth of health care costs poses a definite limits on proposals to reform the health care system. The mainstream debate around the Clinton plan is then revisited to show how these proposals were a part of the overall effort to resolve the long-term problems of the U.S. economy. It is argued that the defeat of the Clinton plan was due to its concerns with efficiency of the health care system in the face of the demand by a majority of the U.S. capitalist class to cut costs.

Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis and Diane Ravitch: a classic controversy in education revisited

Summary Two important books in the field of US education, Samuel Bowles & Herbert Gintis's Schooling in Capitalist America and Diane Ravitch's Revisionists Revised, are reviewed. The author contends that the dynamic tension in the debate on US education that existed in the late 1970s when these two books were published has virtually disappeared from the mainstream of educational thought. After more than a decade of conservative national leadership the mainstream debate on educational reform has centered on more technical and institutional issues and away from the fundamental philosophical debate over the role of schools in US society. The radical analysis informed by Marxism which Bowles & Gintis employed has been essentially eliminated from the mainstream of educational thought, while the conservative‐to‐liberal analyses have moved to the right politically. Diane Ravitch has continued to be a force in this debate; she is currently a US Assistant Secretary of Education. The author examines Ravitch's response to the radical critique represented by Bowles & Gintis and argues that without the latter's challenges to conventional reason, liberal educational thought will become increasingly conservative, sterile and reactionary. No salutary dialogue can emerge from parties (i.e. US conservative and liberal thought) who share similar basic assumptions about the nature of society and education.