Mainstream Debate Research Articles

Notes from the Editors, April 2016

<div class="buynow"><a title="Back issue of Monthly Review, April 2016 (Volume 67, Number 11)" href="http://monthlyreview.org/product/mr-067-11-2016-04/">buy this issue</a></div>The March/April 2016 issue of <em>Foreign Affairs</em>, published by the Council on Foreign Relations, is devoted in large part to the topic of economic stagnation.… [Of the] eight articles on stagnation, only one…—"The Age of Secular Stagnation" by Lawrence H. Summers—is, in our opinion, of any real importance.… Summers heavily criticizes those like Robert J. Gordon, in <em>The Rise and Fall of American Growth</em> (2016), who attribute stagnation to supply-side "headwinds"…blocking productivity growth.… Likewise Summers dispatches those like Kenneth Rogoff who see stagnation as merely the product of a debt supercycle associated with periodic financial crises.… Despite such sharp criticisms of other mainstream interpretations of stagnation, Summers's own analysis can be faulted for being superficial and vague, lacking historical concreteness.… In fact, the current mainstream debate on secular stagnation is so superficial and circumspect that one cannot help but wonder whether the main protagonists—figures like Summers, Gordon, Paul Krugman, and Tyler Cowen—are not deliberately tiptoeing around the matter, worried that if they get too close or make too much noise they might awaken some sleeping giant (the working class?) as in the days of the Great Depression and the New Deal.<p class="mrlink"><p class="mrpurchaselink"><a href="http://monthlyreview.org/index/volume-67-number-11" title="Vol. 67, No. 11: April 2016" target="_self">Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the <em>Monthly Review</em> website.</a></p>

Female Migrant Entrepreneurs in Vienna: Mobility and its Embeddedness

This article discusses how female ‘migrant’ entrepreneurs present and connect mobility to their social realities and how spatial mobility influence their economic activities, social interactions and subjectivities and the way how female ‘migrant’ entrepreneurs experience and define social mobility. This perspective allows to critically analyze the shortcomings of the debates on ‘ethnic’ entrepreneurship and the gender bias which still dominates the mainstream debates. Based on qualitative interviews with female migrant entrepreneurs in Vienna it can thus be shown that mobility does not only become an important marker for boundary drawing but gets rationalized by the female entrepreneurs as an important qualification and a means for social mobility.

Inequality and Liberal Democracy: A Critical Take on Economic and Political Power Aspects

After decades of benign neglect, the issues of economic and social inequalities have re-entered the stage of mainstream political attention and debate in the western heartlands of the capitalist system over the past couple of years. On the face of it, this is no accident or surprise. The renewed attention on economic and social inequality unfolds against a background of very slow, partial and highly uneven “recovery” from a major financial crash which emerged in the north-Atlantic core in 2007–2008. In this setting we observe that the growing attention to issues of inequality in recent times is not unrelated to the manifest amplification of the longer-term trend towards increased economic inequalities that has become more evident in the period since 2008. This article will draw on (engage with) recent work and debates in neighbouring academic fields (political economy, economic sociology, political studies) concerning the sources, meaning and implications of growing economic inequalities. It pays particular attention to the high-profile work of Thomas Piketty on inequality trends. The article will consider the implications of such research and inequality trends for what now passes as liberal economic and political theory and also for the study, forms, conceptualisations and practice of political communication.

The Territorial Constitution and the Future of Scotland

This paper considers the ways in which constitutional thought and practice continue to shape the distinctiveness of Scotland as a political community in the post-independence referendum period. The emphasis is not just on the immediate future, nor on some ideal ‘deep future’, but on the foreseeable future. What are the candidate models and plausible pathways by which the future development of the territorial constitution might be pursued? What benefits and drawbacks are associated with different approaches and what are their prospects of success? In particular, what are the limits of accommodation of Scottish self-government within the framework of the UK state, and how, if at all, might such an accommodation be maintained in the face of continuing strong support for independence? The headline notion of the 'territorial constitution' provides a useful angle of approach to these questions. The territorial constitution could signify one of three things. It might refer to the overall constitutional order as conventionally understood. Here we use the ‘territorial’ part as mere shorthand to refer to the (geographically located) state as a constitutional whole. Yet, however familiar, this usage is of limited utility in unpacking Scottish constitutional distinctiveness. In its tendency to reduce constitutional authority to the sovereign state alone, this 'Westphalian' version of the territorial constitution obstructs an adequate appreciation of Scotland's situation and prospects in a more complex regulatory environment. Instead, the article introduces two applications of the idea of a territorial constitution that are less familiar but more promising for our purposes. One usage, which has recently gained ground in mainstream constitutional debate, treats the ‘territorial’ adjective as referring to just one discrete dimension and focus of treatment within a broader constitutional order, albeit an order that may still be understood in terms of the paramount authority of the sovereign state. That dimension involves the vertical distribution of authority within the polity. This is the usage with which we are mainly concerned in the present paper. The other possible application to which we refer departs more radically from our conventional constitutional frame of reference. More than a matter of adjectival stress, instead it treats ‘territorial constitution' as a compound noun -- a distinct and separate species within the constitutional genus, and so as only one of a variety of 'constitutional' orders (including functionally defined orders such as the EU, or the 'security constitution' of the UN) applicable to any particular population. From these broader perspectives, many of the positions on the Scottish constitutional future under review in these turbulent post-referendum times, from the traditional unitary state with limited devolution of powers, through the new brand of asymmetrical Unionism and a broader framework of multilateral federalism to the option of sovereign independence, look like positions along a spectrum rather than categorically distinct choices.

Temporary Bans and Bad Laws: TheAarakshanBan and the Logics of Censorship in Contemporary India

This article traces several sites of film regulation in contemporary India including the censor board, street protestors, television commentators, and state governments. Among these sites, the article focuses on the quasi-legal banning of the Hindi film Aarakshan (2011) by the Mayawati-led state government of Uttar Pradesh. Although the state government purported to be securing public order by banning the film, critics vociferously objected to the ban as overstepping the limits of state power and violating freedom of speech. I argue that while the mainstream debate was delimited by competing constitutional claims and the ban was motivated by a display of support for a local Dalit constituency, both operated within a censorial governmentality driven by an ideal of representative censorship.

Juliet Rogers: Law’s Cut on the Body of Human Rights

The anxieties of Australians of European descent over immigration and the construction of an ‘Australian identity’ have, in recent years coalesced around the issues of veiling by Muslim women and female genital mutilation (Aly and Walker 2007, 203–214). These customs have often been portrayed by politicians and the media as being threats to liberal democracy in Australia. Mainstream debates on the question of female genital mutilation (FGM) or female circumcision especially have been dominated by arguments similar to those made by Geraldine Brooks (1995), whose work portrays those subject to FGM as hapless victims in need of rescue by stringent legislation. Juliet Rogers’ book comes as a valuable intervention in these debates. Rogers does not explicitly state that her writing emerges from the Australian context, but it is an important frame by which to better understand her work. For those unfamiliar with the Australian context, Paula Abood (2002) is helpful in explaining the discourses regarding the question of Arab women’s identity and activism in Australia and the public obsession with Arab, African, Muslim Australian women’s private lives. Rogers’ book attempts to use psychoanalysis to examine the depiction of FGM and torture as scenes of violence which, according to the author, informed the demand of pressure groups for changes in legislation. Initially, Rogers draws the reader’s attention to the disturbing and graphic images of small girls undergoing circumcision, which are circulated in the media by anti FGM activists. Her primary argument, which derives from the work of Sigmund Freud, is that there is an inherent anxiety of castration in the mind of the subjects, who in this case are anti-FGM activists (6).

The hidden middle: the quiet revolution in the midstream of agrifood value chains in developing countries

The food security debate has focused largely on the farm sector and on trade. Relatively neglected or ‘hidden’ from mainstream debate are the middle segments (processing, logistics, wholesale) of agrifood value chains in developing countries—and yet this ‘midstream’ forms 30–40 per cent of the value added and costs in food value chains. The productivity of the midstream is as important as farm yields for food security in poor countries. The article shows that over the past several decades the middle segments have transformed quickly and surprisingly—with a huge volume expansion, a proliferation of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), but also concentrating and multinationalizing (in some places and products), with technology change characterized by capital-led intensification, and with the incipient emergence of branding and labelling and packaging, of new organizational arrangements in procurement and marketing interfaces with farmers and retailers, and of private standards and contracts. Economic policies of market and foreign direct investment (FDI) liberalization, commercial and business climate regulations, hard and soft infrastructure investment, and food safety laws, have paved the path to the expansion and shaped the transformation of the important midstream segment of food value chains.

On Pragmatism and Legal Idolatry: Fortress Europe and the Desertion of the Refugee

This article adopts a critical approach in analysing restriction as a response to the refugee in policy and legal scholarship. eu migration policy hinders territorial access and poses methodological and epistemological challenges to progressively minded policy-makers and researchers. Contesting migration control means, crudely, arguing for removing restrictions or accepting them and advocating incremental protection improvements. This choice creates three conditions resulting in the refugee’s desertion. First, “legal idolisers”, who cling to protective laws, overlooking their exclusive function and second, “pragmatist-realists”, who argue a realist approach to restriction is necessary to further protection. Consequently, the field becomes vulnerable to opportunistic research designed to be palatable to policy-makers. This creates, thirdly, a sinking ship for those arguing for the removal of restrictions. Mainstream scholarship and public debate paint migration control critics as adopting a “cuddle policy” towards “illegals” and abstract the migration discourse from structures of domination and questions of historical injustice.

From the Right to Life to the Right to Livability: Radically Reapproaching ‘Life’ in Human Rights Politics

This article critically reflects on the current mainstream debate on abortion in international human rights discourse and the conception of life underpinning it. The public health focus on access to safe abortion which has dominated this discourse can be detected as committed to a fundamentally liberal idea of bounded and individual subjecthood which mirrors the commitments of the liberal right to life more generally. However, feminist challenges to this frame seeking to advance wider access to reproductive freedoms appear equally underpinned by a liberal conception of life. It is asserted that feminists may offer a more radical challenge to the current impasse in the international debate on abortion by engaging with the concept of livability which foregrounds life as an inter dependent and conditioned process. The trope of the ‘right to livability’ developed in this article presents a means to reposition the relation between rights and life and facilitate such radical engagement which better attends to the socio-political conditions shaping our interdependent living and being.

People, Planet, Power: Toward a New Social Settlement

This article presents proposals for a new social settlement – a framework for deciding how people live together and what they expect from government, now and for the future. The proposed settlement has three goals: social justice, environmental sustainability, and a more equal distribution of power. To achieve these goals we have identified a set of objectives too often ignored in mainstream debates: achieving prosperity without depending on economic growth; shifting investment and action upstream to prevent harm rather than coping with the consequences; strengthening the “core economy” of unpaid work, everyday wisdom, and social connections; and fostering solidarity and an understanding of how individuals depend on each other to achieve shared goals. The article draws on a report from the New Economics Foundation, which focuses on the United Kingdom but offers a framework for developing policy and practice that may be useful in other countries, especially in the developed world.

EU RETURN POLICY AND INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAW: KEEPING THE BALANCE BETWEEN BORDER SECURITY AND HUMAN DIGNITY

This article focuses on the current state of EU immigration legislation and aims to provide a critical analysis in light of international human rights law. Over the past ten years, EU Summits have emphasized the need for the adoption of new legislative measures to converge to a true European common policy on immigration. At present the mainstream debate on immigration in Europe focuses on several different topics. On the one hand, there is the need to secure the borders and control undocumented immigration, while on the other hand there is the question of the protection of migrants’ human rights and the improvement of the EU immigration system. There is also a third element, which is EU relations with the immigrants’ countries of origin. The current legal framework articulated around the Return Directive sets out the rules and principles to be applied by Member States to third country nationals who do not fulfil, or no longer fulfil, conditions of entry in accordance with EU legislation. I intend to examine the EU return policy in the light of EU law and of international human rights law. In addition, I discuss Italian and Spanish practices in their relations with the countries of origin.

Sexual and reproductive health and rights in the post-2015 development agenda

Women's health is currently shaped by the confluence of two important policy trends – the evolution of health system reform policies and from the early 1990s onwards, a strong articulation of a human rights-based approach to health that has emphasised laws and policies to advance gender equality and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). The drive for sexual and reproductive rights represents an inclusive trend towards human rights to health that goes beyond the right to health services, directing attention to girls' and women's rights to bodily autonomy, integrity and choice in relation to sexuality and reproduction. Such an expanded concept of the right to health is essential if laws, policies and programmes are to respect, protect and fulfil the health of girls and women. However, this expanded understanding has been ghettoised from the more mainstream debates on the right to health and was only partially included in the Millennium Development Goals. The paper argues in favour of a twofold approach in placing SRHR effectively in the context of the post-2015 development agenda: first, firmly ground it in an inclusive approach to the right to health; and second, drawing on two decades of national-level implementation, propose a forward-looking agenda focusing on quality, equality and accountability in policies and in programmes. This can build on good practice while addressing critical challenges central to the development framework itself.

Demographic shifts: how an increasing “active Third Age” could come to shape the future of our cities

Purpose – This paper is adapted from a Royal Institute of British Architects Building Futures project and is intended to stimulate discussion around the impact that the ageing population could have on the way cities of the near future are designed (and lived in); specifically the positive contribution that an active, older generation could make to both society and the economy in the UK. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – Following a public debate and a series of roundtable discussions with experts across a wide range of disciplines from architecture and urban design to gerontology, in both academia and practice, the project team developed a series of potential future scenarios; speculations that draw out the potential positive contribution that an active Third Age could make, both socially and economically. Findings – The author has made a series of practical recommendations for architecture and design professions related to the speculative scenarios presented that they believe would begin to harness the potential of an active Third Age whilst mitigating some of the likely challenges. It is imperative that ageing becomes part of the mainstream debate on city design and planning. Research limitations/implications – Whilst the scenarios presented respond directly to trends – key drivers of change – identified and evidenced, they remain speculations to stimulate debate and are not themselves grounded in rigour. Practical implications – The practice of architecture, urban design and planning must better recognise the implications of an ageing population and look for ways of harnessing the opportunities that this presents, whilst addressing the clear challenges. Urban policy must also better reflect a shifting demographic landscape and adapt appropriately to encourage the necessary innovation in this area if they are to make a successful transition to an older population in the coming decades. Social implications – The author hopes that this work begins to reposition ageing – and particularly active ageing – as a positive opportunity for both society and the national economy, shifting the debate from one currently focused on challenges and the potential public sector burden. Originality/value – There is little in the way of progressive thought as to how architecture, planning and urban policy can better accommodate an older population and ensure that cities embrace the whole population for the duration of their lifetime, whatever that may be.

New Resistance to Hate Crime Legislation and the Concept of Law

This article addresses the implications of a new resistance to hate crime legislation that has yet to be addressed in the mainstream legal debate in Canada or the United States. It comes mainly from groups in the US that represent lgbtq communities who are poor and/or of color. These communities are particularly vulnerable to victimization by hate crime yet the groups have repeatedly opposed the inclusion of sexual orientation and gender identity/expression in hate crime legislation. This article addresses the underlying rationale of the new resistance and its implications for the mainstream debate. It begins by undertaking a comparative analysis of hate crime legislation in Canada and the US. It then considers the mainstream legal debate in both countries as well as some statistical data on hate crime. The third section turns to the new resistance as well as emerging data on the connection between victimization and the criminal legal system itself. It then draws on the legal theory of Walter Benjamin to reveal limits in the way that the mainstream legal debate conceptualizes criminalization. The final section of the article considers the implications of Benjamin’s concept of law for both the mainstream debate and the new resistance.

The tragedy of responsibility in high Asia: modernizing traditional pastoral practices and preserving modernist worldviews

The nomadism/pastoralism debate has always been closely connected to discourses about modernization theories whenever development issues were at stake. While the mainstream debates have changed since stage models apparently became outdated, it is surprising that the Chinese development model seems to adhere to classical modernization theory. Consequently, it appears worthwhile to consider present challenges in the pastoral sector first from the Chinese perspective and, second, in comparison with the situation in neighbouring countries. The discussion reveals that the Chinese model is quite different from neighbouring countries' practices and is embedded in an authoritarian approach that suggests similarities with the implementation of a development model during the collectivization phases in the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, when Stalinist- and Mao Zedong-inspired models were implemented under autonomy and sedentarization regimes. Nevertheless, the present context is quite different because ecological degradation of pastures and the non-existent closure of the development gap between affluent urbanites and remote farmers and pastoralists have been addressed by implementing the present resettlement programmes. In China's pastoralism regions, the tragedy of responsibility is related to top-down approaches without adequate participation of stakeholders. In neighbouring countries, pastoralists tend to complain about negligence by state authorities, nonbinding regulations and arbitrariness by powerful actors. Countries such as India and Pakistan are still reworking their colonial legacies and trying to adapt pasture legislation to the demands of rangeland management and nature protection.

Brand Aid and the International Political Economy and Sociology of North-South Relations

This forum brings together a diverse group of scholars from international relations, international political economy, sociology, geography, and development studies to explore “Brand Aid”—a new concept in studies of North–South relations that can be advanced by IPE/IPS scholarship. In Brand Aid, branded products are sold to “ethical” consumer/citizens through celebrities who link them to worthy causes in developing countries. Brand Aid is “aid to brands” because it helps sell products and improve a brand’s ethical profile and value. It is also “brands that provide aid” because a proportion of the profit or sales is devoted to helping “distant others.” Brand Aid reconfigures images and representations of the legitimate role of business, civil society, and the state (and their overlaps) in North–South relations in ways that are not easily situated between “exploitation” and “development.” The contributions collected here stem from a series of roundtables organized in 2011 (including one at the International Studies Association annual convention in Montreal) to discuss how “we” in the North engage to “help” people in the South beyond the traditional international aid and trade channels (see contribution by Lisa Ann Richey and Stefano Ponte). The roundtable discussions developed into examinations of the broader aspects of contemporary North–South relations around gender and security, the morality of health, the changing role of the global South, corporate practices and social responsibility, biopolitics, celebrities as global social actors, and mediating material cultures across distance. These areas could be usefully informed by contemporary IPE/ IPS scholarship, but are not yet part of mainstream debates. Five of these points of engagement are highlighted by the contributions in this Forum. First, visual representations are a key feature of Brand Aid. By mediating Richey, Lisa Ann et al. (2013) Brand Aid and the International Political Economy and Sociology of North–South

Report of TNI/IDPC Expert Seminar on the Future of the UN Drug Conventions

As the debate on drug policy and law reform gathers momentum on the international stage, the failings of the three UN drug control conventions (1961, 1971 and 1988) have come into stark relief. Criticisms of the global drug control regime established by the drug treaties have now entered the mainstream public discourse and political debate. The discussions around treaty reform that would allow or facilitate a wider spectrum of approaches to drugs are assuming a degree of urgency. The technicalities of convention reform form an important part of the discussion but arguably subservient to the wider political discourse. Until sufficient political will exists, substantive reform of the UN drug conventions will not be possible, despite growing recognition that the current drug control regime is not working. For this to occur the political calculus will need to shift so that the cost-benefit analysis for individual States moves decisively in favour of proactive engagement. This expert seminar is the fifth in a series of expert discussions on drug policy funded by the European Commission Drug Prevention and Information Programme and the Open Society Institute. The report of this seminar has been divided up under key headings that reflect the structure of the days’ discussions, with a summary of key points and conclusions at the end. Exploring the technical and bureaucratic dimension of convention reform The political calculus: Dealing with sub-optimality How to constructively frame the debate on convention reform Potential drivers of change / avenues for progress Lessons from Latin America Lessons from Bolivia The role of Europe Discussion and Conclusions

Expecting the unexpected: engaging diverse young people in conversations around science

The issue of limited engagement with science for young people from Indigenous, minority and lower socio-economic groups in Australia appears to have been sidelined from the mainstream debate around falling rates of engagement with science at the secondary schooling level. The ‘closing the gap’ mantra of education policy in Australia has seen an extraordinary focus on improving literacy and numeracy outcomes for Indigenous students, which, while valuable, has subsumed the importance of other key learning areas including science. Teachers are soon to be expected to incorporate Indigenous Perspectives within the science subjects of the new Australian National Curriculum yet appear to be under-resourced to meet this challenge to traditional approaches to science teaching. The purpose of this paper is to explore the pedagogy of a teacher working at an alternative secondary schooling site in North Queensland Australia who volunteered to modify his teaching of science to explicitly incorporate Indigenous Perspectives. The qualitative data collected through classroom observation and teacher interviews demonstrates the complex and multi-faceted nature of the science education experience when traditional pedagogical boundaries are dismantled to allow for a drawing upon of the lived experiences of diverse young people. The teacher’s ability to embrace this broader vision of science is linked to the inclusive culture of the alternative school environment that is brought into being through a ‘common ground’ philosophy of mutual respect and democratic relations.

Liberté, égalité, fraternité?: Views from the far‐right fringe in France (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

The current financial, economic, social, and political crisis is widely thought to benefit far‐right parties in many European states. The Front National party, a fixture in French politics for more than two decades, achieved its best result ever in the 2012 presidential elections. This article explores far‐right voters’ accounts of their political life‐stories, analyzing the factors that trigger people's “conversions” to the right, and examining the ways in which this increasing, yet diverse minority views French history, society, and politics. Far‐right supporters legitimize their political convictions and actions in different ways. Some believe that they are part of a “resistance movement”, others draw on what they believe to be sociological or anthropological insights. Many pretend to advocate Republican ideals such as equality and freedom. Democracy stands to gain from drawing this growing part of the population back into mainstream debate, and social scientists may have a role to play in this effort.

For God and Gaga: Comparing the Same-Sex Marriage Discourse and Homonationalism in Canada and the United States

For God and Gaga: Comparing the Same-Sex Marriage Discourse and Homonationalism in Canada and the United States